skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I never said I was a big-government proponent, I just pointed out that your attack against them was fallacious.

And you’re repeating the same logical fallacy (false equivalence [0]).

To elaborate a bit, an average big-government proponent might support taxing cigarettes.

I doubt you’d find a big-government supporter who would support banning all goods that werent produced by companies with an even number of letters in their name.

Both of those examples are of government intervention in the market, but one is clearly absurd. Not all government intervention is equivalent.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
It's certainty an exciting area to keep an eye on. I have not looked at containers too much, I understand the basic theory but I've not had a use case myself to deploy them in production. I am much more familiar and in love with virtual machines however. If applications could be built as a self contained tiny VM's I can see myself using these quite heavily.
OK, sorry. I misunderstood your comment.
I can't find it ATM, but recently there was a good article that linked this phenomenon to the disappearance of unions. As unions disappear in the private sector they become increasingly dependent on the public sector to employ their laborers.

Because union members vote and because unions so visiblly represent the working-class, in many cities the best way to be pro labor is to support union labor.

In areas were unions are strong but increasingly relegated to public sector work, that translates to pressure to bloat public sector projects with union labor.

One way to think of it is as a form of work program.

On a related note, some conservative commentators have pointed out recently that if you combine U.S. healthcare spending with U.S. welfare spending, it roughly equates to what European countries spend on healthcare + welfare. IOW, we don't overspend on healthcare so much as we trade-off social welfare spending for healthcare spending.

Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if you combine the overspending on public works projects with similar jobs programs, it would likewise roughly equate to what European countries spend on public works + jobs. IOW, public works projects are expensive because we refuse to adequately fund training, long-term unemployment benefits, etc.

I think this is all comes down to Americans' inability to embrace the necessity and role of social welfare programs. But because we can't admit of the need doesn't mean our society doesn't ultimately respond to the need; our response is just obscure and indirect in a way that preserves the fantasy of the free-market. For example, we can blame these excessive public works projects on "corruption" and "bloat" rather than admitting that they're pressure-relief valves for legitimate political, economic, and social demands. Something similar could be said regarding the Trump phenomenon.
It's a calming, reassuring article about something that will destroy people's lives and societies in unpredictable ways and disrupt the balance of power for worse.

At least there's always the soothing "solution" of "regulating it". The people who get to "regulate it" are exactly the ones who will wield its power.

After some millions of us have died the other people who survive will eventually find a new equilibrium.
It seems like European infrastructure construction is more centralized than its American counterpart. In the Bay Area, there are two competing transit providers, each funded by the same taxpayers. Every city seems to run its own show, and CAHSR infamously rejected offers from European companies to do construction. It's just my view from 10000 feet, but the average city council has few civil engineers on board, so maybe a more top-down system could be better. The Boring Company might be a meme but at least there's not a different one in every city.
Google confirms investment in Indonesian ride-hailing firm Go-Jek
It depends on the procedure. I had a minor cavity filled when I was younger, and it really wasn't all that horrible. Something like a root canal would be unimaginable.
I've used web components in production in two different companies and in a number of personal projects, so I'd say so. The move to official TS support is brand new, so you might catch some turbulence in that area. Polymer generally is about to make the move from 2.x to 3.x, so there could be some issues there. However, you can work with 3.x code now, and the official release should be in the next month or two, so getting started now might be just the right time.
If we’re talking about the self driving cars here like mentioned in the article, the cars could go to a dealer / workshop on their own. You’ll only have to tell the car “I don’t need you for the next x hours”. So you go ahead and have the firmware updated.

Unfortunately there’s no quick fix about the current cars having the “guided” self driving principle.
You're lucky you can pay for map updates. The navigation system for my car has NEVER been updated by the manufacturer. It's simply not an option. Which means it was out of date the day the car was built.

Every now and again I'll look at the screen and see my car floating across a barren landscape. That's how I know the road I'm on was built after 2013.
but the article does and compares the US to it, hence the peers part of the title.
...and DRM: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xykkkd/why-americ...
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You're welcome here if you want to use the site as intended, but comments need to be better than this. If you'd read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html and take that spirit to heart, we'd appreciate it.
Ways to Make More Money Online Without Investment
I don't get it. Wasn't this already released under MIT like two years ago?
>> supposedly efficient capitalistic market

> Unfortunately that's not what we have

We're stuck because "invisible hand" zealots keep doubling down on deregulation when faced with the phenomenon of market failure, as if they stay willfully ignorant of "market failure" the market will magically start behaving.
Devices exist to filter out modbus data that doesn't belong [0], but I have yet to see one in the wild. Whenever I have offered plant owners additional security such as a VPN endpoint at the satellite ISPs base station, they have opted against it due to cost.

[0] https://www.tofinosecurity.com/products/Tofino-Modbus-TCP-En...
More at https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/28/politics/strava-military-base...:

"From the site, it's possible to identify individuals' running routes, and around military bases users had posted profile photos of themselves wearing military uniforms."

This seems incredibly stupid. Is training of military personnel really this lacking?
Best and Worst Dressed from the 2018 Grammy Awards
it makes the union workers the beneficiaries of automation.

if automation lowers amount of labour needed, it's less work that the workers have to do, not fewer workers that the employer needs to hire.
There are examples of this principle[1], where each side would send a representative or representatives to fight on their behalf. Perhaps the most well known example of this is (at least in my cultural context) is David and Goliath in the Old Testament

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_combat
This could also be of benefit to your research: https://gist.github.com/kevinpschaaf/995c9d1fd0f58fe021b174c...
Seconded. One of the best technical books I've ever read. Wish more were like that.
> http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/20-python-libraries-...

I love to find those tips for Python. Doesn't matter what people think of enterprise-level of softwares, sometimes a small python lib comes and saves the day, giving enought room to someone (more qualified than me) deal with the real solution.
I think Pearlmutter and Siskind‘s work is primarily about using ideas from lambda calculus to clean up AD (automatic differentiation) of numeric functions. Whereas differential lambda calculus is not about numeric functions per se: the aim is to define derivatives for arbitrary algorithms.

So, for example, I do not think that in the Pearlmutter-Siskind system that a function of type Int -> Int would have a meaningful derivative, whereas in the differential lambda calculus it does (this is surprising).

I do not recall the details of the Pearlmutter-Siskind system, but some approaches to programming with AD is based on adding formal infinitesimals. There are no infinitesimals explicitly in differential lambda calculus or linear logic, but in the semantics of the latter that we use, derivatives do arise from the coalgebra (k[x]/x^2)^* which is the manifestation of a first-order infinitesimal in algebraic geometry. So in some sense both subjects proceed by adding formal infinitesimals to an existing programming language, but in differential lambda calculus this is implicit.
The article mostly suggests that personas are just done wrong, and that's why they fail. Has this method ever actually been proven to increase success? In my experience, they always end up being hideous stereotypes that nobody takes seriously(for good reason).
They are completely independent, that was the goal.
so ubuntu has the broadcom drivers for wifi baked in?

I'm thinking of nuking OSX for Solus on my 2013 MacBook and the drivers for wifi are the only things I care about right now. Usage hacks listed in the article are worth noting once I get that working.
Energy loss during transmission makes this unfeasible.
Agenda much? Is anybody in this thread doing basic math?

200 ghost workers at $100K per year (probably a bit high, thanks) is $20 million per year.

Um, so much for that causing the cost overrun.

Project management is generally the failure. And, generally, it starts with the asinine "low bid" rules.

Everyone successful at dealing with the government knows that you bid as low as possible to get the contract and then you charge them a fortune on the back end.

Edit: Okay, even if I BELIEVE the $1,000 per day (and I don't) that's $300K per year and is still only $60 million.

Edit2: I have read and searched the original article several times and cannot find that $1,000 number anywhere.

Edit3: Oh, it's in an article linked in the comment. And the linked article says that they laid off those contractors once they found them. Project management and oversight failure--again.
Apple history: iMac G3 arrives to save Apple
Waze performs surprisingly well when you have no signal during your journey - I guess that it pre-emptively downloads the bits of maps that it knows it will need.

OTOH, Waze is next to useless when trying to first pick a route when you have anything less than a great signal. 2G or patchy 3G? No hope. The dumb app will just give a timeout error after about five seconds or so and refuse to even consider plotting a route. It's like the developers never bother to test their code on anything other than a perfect internet connection.
I hear you, I just bought a new car and internet connectivity was a deal-breaker for me. Part of the reason I was in the market was I wanted to make sure to get one before it was impossible [1].

The dealers don't know about the cars at this level of detail. I had to use these questions to pry the data out of them:

1. Is this a connected car? Can I unlock it or start the engines from my smartphone?

2. Is that feature an option or is the feature part of the base model?

3. Can I get the connected feature later? Would I have to bring the car in to get something installed or can you enable them from your computer?

#3 is a really important question. Subaru (and perhaps others) ship all their cars with the hardware for connectivity, but the actual feature requires a subscription. The car is always connected to the internet, because the dealer can start your subscription remotely, but the salesmen don't understand that implication. They're thinking solely in terms of features you're getting, not what hardware the car has.

[1] It's almost impossible now to buy a new car without passive keyless entry that isn't a bottom-tier economy model, despite the well documented security problems with many of those protocols.
Wow, apart from the book, this is something I am thinking about a lot. Does the book give any further thought on this?
Hottest course in AI town!!!

(I was trying to be sarcastic. Thankful for the courses :)).
It happens sometimes when a popular project gets criticized on HN and people make accounts to defend it. What we do in such cases is close the thread to new accounts, and we've done that here.
Its enough to just plug in a cable into two switch ports.
Even that would be impressive. But it's just not clear that that is what the data says. 4 hours of storage, if the storage is expected to cycle twice per day (once in the morning, when sunlight is still dim but demand has picked up, using fossil/nuclear/geothermal/wind energy generated at night when demand is super low, and once in the evening as sun sets but demand still high, using solar energy generated during the day), then that is a factor of 2 better for costs than if storage is expected to only cycle once a day or worse.

But we can't tell because the article doesn't mention any of these details. This factor of two (or more) is the difference between status quo and a revolution, but the article remains unclear.
I imagine it's just a coincidence that Steve Yegge recently left Google, joined Go-Jek competitor Grab, and posted a disparaging take on Google's slowing rate of innovation, but it's funny to imagine this as Google's revenge.
What justification is there to simply sidestep certain classes of solution that have worked just fine in the past? Federal environmental regulation worked pretty to curtail many wide-scale human pollution problems - acid rain, water pollution, and ozone depleting chemicals, just to name a few. The only real reason to not solve it federally is political capture by entrenched capital.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you can use a clever encoding to work with trits natively but "clever encodings to pack trits" seems like something of an antifeature when we're talking about anything within a mile of cryptography...
> - Operation outside of reliable cell connection.

This. I just spent the entire weekend outside of cell range. And I can't always download maps in advance because I rarely know where I'm going from day to day.
Please don't compare activities in the private market to public infrastructure. They serve different purposes and the latter is there for the good of humanity, not to make a profit, be innovative or be disruptive.
Thanks. We've edited the title above.
I think you're not being charitable to Pinker here - he's not in my view "nefarious," and he's arguing his points in good faith.

That said, I agree with you. I read Better Angels in its entirety and thought parts of it were very convincing. Others were deeply, provably wrong to anyone who is a professional historian (for instance, he let a bunch of Harvard RA's loose on some non-peer reviewed books purporting to statistically describe fatalities in wars that are very poorly documented, then used this faulty data to draw huge, misguided conclusions, like WW1/WW2 being less damaging in aggregate than the An Lushan rebellion).

I actually really enjoy Pinker's writing style and he is clearly brilliant (as I learned when I tried to spar with him a bit in a Q&A and he casually parried what I thought was a devastating counter-example!)

But IMO his intelligence is actually his downfall when it comes to this particular argument. He's convinced himself that everything is getting better, and he is indeed very convincing on certain aspects of this point. The problem, as you say, is with the scale of his conclusions. Certain things like the use of the death penalty and rates of infant mortality really are going down, demonstrably. Other things, like the risk of massive destruction due to a stolen nuclear weapon or EMP or a Nick Bostrom-style evil AI, or even just a generalized societal decline due to economic inequality and environmental degradation, are almost certainly getting worse. Pinker is so self-assured as a writer and thinker that he runs the risk of giving us all a false sense of complacency and a license to ignore these very real problems.
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to get people to click ads." --Jeff Hammerbacher
I find this stuff fascinating, at least in the application of differential calculus to things I thought non-continuous, differential grammars, differential regex, etc.

It seems like operating in the discrete domain was fine for small problems where problems could be brute forced, but if we want to get into an analytical regime for larger problems, differentiation is akin to recursion/induction in that it allows us to make tractable smaller problems. Is that roughly correct?

How would you recommend an undergrad bootstrap themselves on this subject? Are there patterns we can apply to transform discrete problems into differentiable problems?
My vehicle is ODB-II and can not talk to the internet. I was part of the OBD-III debates.
A large amount of this sounds like just awareness, authorization and authentication issues with updates. The plant should be aware and know what changes are being made. As well as be able to roll them back.
That's 30k potential deaths compared to 30k deaths right now, every year. If terrorist attacks on cars killed 20k/year it would still be much safer than our current situation. We should mandate that every vehicle death be broadcast on the front page of every national media outlet[1]; that might change our perceptions.

I contend that 40 years from now our grandchildren will be astounded that we got into such dangerous vehicles before self-driving cars.

[1] - I'm being facetious, of course.
Everything described in the blog post is using modules making infrastructure description abstract enough to understand and deploy/manage.
Can someone provide a bit more details about this. Is this only if you have a massive solar farm (which I assume is cheaper due to land value + large quantities) or does it also include solar for residential (which I assume is more expensive due to installation, limited area, etc)?

When looking at a satellite image of LA, I wonder how much power we could generate by having panels installed on the flat/near-flat rooftops of apartment buildings, at least in the sunnier parts of the city.
Yes, but for some reason you want a GUI alert to tell you important things, which is a foreign concept to me. What I envision is knowing what is running on your server and updating programs purposefully, with knowledge of how they interact and what problems version inconsistency could cause.
Software Complexity Is Killing Us
How do the computers running the HMIs get security patches then? Only the most critical equipment would have a budget large enough to pay someone to put windows or linux updates on a USB and get all of the computers updated.

I don't allow the HMI computers to access the internet, but then they remain unpatched. As an OEM I'm out of the picture once the plant is working.
I'm not sure how you're measuring elegance, but writing Lisp macros and getting them to work correctly has never been something I'd call elegant. You have the Common Lisp approach, where you work in a complicated sublanguage like this example from PCL:

(defmacro when (condition &rest body)
`(if ,condition (progn ,@body)))

and then you think hard about where the leaks are. Or else you take the Scheme approach of hygienic macros which are even less elegant. Macros in Lisp are powerful, but I'm not sure metaprogramming in Lisp is better than in a language like D.
>I plan to move far away from cities very soon for this and several other reasons.

Are you comfortable with sharing your reasons? I feel similarly but do not have concrete plans quite yet.
Based on this, I can say I think that Korea may be worse:

* Many websites, especially government ones, require Active X. You might need to dust off that IE6 installation file.

* In lieu of Active X, some sites require you to download and install their own proprietary "security" program; what it does, I don't think anybody really knows

* Like you describe Japan, lots of Korean text is embedded in an image

* Many sites try to prevent users from right clicking or copying text, for "security" of course

* The eCommerce site I used had quality issues similar to Ali Express. Listings could be anything, a seller could list a baseball bat, a cell phone and a watermelon on the same page. Sellers would play this trick of having at least 2 variations of a product, one being a very low price and also conveniently out of stock all the time, this would ensure it showed up when you sort products by lowest price first, but it was impossible to ever get it for that price.

When I was there a year or so ago it was getting better. Hopefully it's mostly fixed by now.

On the bright side the internet is really fast and cheap.
Governments Worry That Cryptocurrencies Could Be the ‘Next Swiss Bank Account’
The 1/7 GDP figure is misleading. It is absolutely true that everyone had an incentive back then to overstate the USSR's position: Communists and sympathizers for ego gratification, American liberals to use as an argument for government intervention in the economy and internal reform, and the American Right to ramp up militarism and domestic repression. That said, the revisionism that argues that it had no more power on the world stage than South Africa based on spurious GDP comparisons is just as off base.

GDP captures something meaningful, but in terms of ability to project power it's only somewhat correlated. In a Communist state, it captures even less, because pricing mechanisms are all off kilter.

For much of the USSR's post WW2 existence, it could likely have invaded and taken much of continental Europe using only conventional weapons. The USA had troops stationed in Germany not in hopes of stopping any invasion, but to buy a little bit of time and to make its defensive pledges plausible to allies: thousands of American dead would mean it would have to join in a total war, instead of calculating costs and benefits of total war (which would be unacceptable). Even then, other counties worried about America's commitment to an incredibly costly war with the USSR: that's part of why France developed its own nuclear deterrent and left NATO.

Discussion of whether the USA or USSR would "win" an all out war between them is almost besides the point: they both possessed enough military power that the only way to win would be to, um, not to play.
High-resolution grayscale image hidden in a laser beam
Yikes, please don't be uncivil even if someone else is, or you feel that they are. I'm sure you realize that it's against the rules here, and that we ban accounts that do it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Can someone compare this to Martin Kleppman's awesome book "Designing Data Intensive Applications"? I'm wondering if this book is like the old IBM, etc. whitepapers which quietly tried to sell technologies from the writer's company?
Don't we already have 1000s of self-driving capable cars on the roads in the US? I think we are still quite far from having some government sanctioned kill switch in those.

AI will be like Internet. When we in the year 2040 take a look at the last 40 years, we can't point out when it exactly became prevalent. We just know that at 2000 it was not a big deal, but at 2040 it is a very big deal and shaping the world.
Because we needed to re-deploy our database, which unfortunately requires downtime.
Could you please stop posting flamewar-style comments to HN?
So the weather prediction algorithm.
​Linux 4.15: Good news and bad news about Meltdown and Spectre