skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is a very fundamental difference between how Unix and Windows view open files:

On Windows, once the file is open, it is that filename that is open; You can't rename or delete it; Therefore, if you want to replace a DLL (or any other file) that is in use, you have to kill any program that uses it before you can do that; And if it's a fundamental library everything uses (USER32.DLL COMCTL.DLL etc), the only effectively reliable way to do that is reboot.

On Unix, once you have a handle=descriptor of the file, the name is irrelevant; You can delete or rename the file, The descriptor still refers to the file that was opened. Thus, you can just replace any system file; Existing programs will keep using the old one until they close/restart, new programs will get the new file.

What this means is, that even though you don't NEED to restart anything for most upgrades in Unix/Linux, you're still running the old version until you restart the program that uses it. Most upgrade procedures will restart relevant daemons or user programs, or notify that you should, (e.g. Debian and Ubuntu do).

You always need a reboot to upgrade a kernel (kernel-splice and friends not withstanding), but otherwise it is enough in Unixes to restart the affected programs.
>> Many Worlds - Quantum phenomena cause the world the branch into multiple worlds. The probabilities of quantum mechanics represent the 'share' of reality that branches in each direction.

I seem to have access to only one of these universes. How does nature decide which determinate state would my universe take? It still requires the magical collapse. (Or is it that I am branching off too and loosing access to myself in other branches?)

>> So long as you're willing to abandon locality, hidden variables can work.

(Asking, not questioning) Why is this so? I have read a bit or two about Bell's Inequalities, but do not understand why locality needs to be abandoned. With particles having random but entangled spins showing correlations even when separated out, how do we know there were no random hidden state associated with these particles when they separated. That is, how do we know that the decision on which particle has which spin did not happen during separation itself (getting stored as a hidden variable)?
The concept of store-bought avocado products that isnt just fresh avocado is disgusting to me.
My computer after MacBook Pro is PC with i5 7600 and I couldn't be happier. Total cost was around $1200 and I got much more powerful system than my old MacBook for which I paid $2500. Processor is not throttled mobile nonsense. I bought 16 GB RAM for few hundred bucks and if I want, I can buy another 16GB and put it there. Windows 10 is actually good enough (it's the first Windows that's actually quite usable for me) and with all those bugs in new macOS I'm not regretting about switching, I only regret about investing so much money in Mac software.

I guess MacBooks are good for people who don't want to tinker with hardware or who don't want to use Windows or Linux and ready to pay a lot of money for this. I was hyped in the past about it, but it turned out that my priorities are just very different.

Also, contrary to popular beliefs, I've found Apple's engineering very poor, hardware is very unreliable and in many cases it seems to be done on purpose. Apple is the only manufacturer, whose cords are wearing out, I never encountered that with other manufacturers and I encountered that with every Apple device I owned (2 macbooks, iPhone, iPad, iPod).

That said, I really like iOS, so, I guess, I'll still buy iPhone. And that's the only reason I'm still looking into Macs (I like integration between iOS and macOS). The only computer that I'm interested in is new Mac Pro, so I'll wait and see what they'll make. But it's very unlikely that they'll make a compelling computer, IMO.
I've not been impressed with my Windows 10 installations of late. All my machines that don't have the Long Term Servicing Branch have had wild instabilities and performance issues the past few months - crazy things, like the task manager taking minutes to launch, and the whole shell periodically crashing. The Fall Creators Update was so bad I had to wipe and start over on some boxes. It's not engendering a lot of confidence in their competence of late.
I personally think this is the main reason, coupled with the natural tendency of kanji to look like squares. Western languages deal with lines, Eastern ones with squares. The former need significant amount of empty space to be readable, the latter not really; the former must flow horizontally, the latter not really; the former is drastically different from images, the latter not really (which is why emojis originated in Japan, among other things).

That’s all stuff that directly impacts design density and so on.
> But why? What benefit this brings to the user? Practice their pre-school math?

Because these numbers are harder to fake. Suppose phone A advertises "8 hours of typical use" and a 4Ah battery. Phone B advertises "10 hours of typical use" and a 3Ah battery. Which do you think would actually last longer in use?
I know it's javascriptjanuary.com but having this:

> node -e require('https').get('https://gist.githubusercontent.com/PurpleBooth/109311bb0361f..., b => b.on('data', c => process.stdout.write(c+'')))" > README.md

instead of plain curl seems weird to me.
Hey, I took off and hid my "smug Lisp weenie" hat for a reason :).

Seriously, I replied to the second part of your comment. Lisp may be the pinnacle of DSL-friendliness, but, as you say, plenty of languages have various measures of metaprogramming support, and yet, as you note, those facilities tend to be universally disliked by the mainstream programming community :).

(I believe that another strong reason for this is that the mainstream programming community is, for better or worse, eternally stuck in the "cater to the newcomers" mode. Effective use of metaprogramming requires a deep understanding of more abstract principles behind programming and complexity management, and are indeed dangerous in hands of beginners.)
> In west, companies try to communicate the utility or the feeling that this product will give you and most of the technical information is seen as distraction

So you mean typical manipulative advertising that distracts you from informed decision making to get at your feelings so you'll want their product.
I think the difference is that everybody believes that they too could be a sports star, in the same way as everybody believes that they too will one day be rich - whereas intellect is a rather fixed quantity - so point taken, I was overly broad.
I don't think so, they're still under discussion on LKML, including an alternative proposal by Ingo Molnar.
I haven't had time to get into the details of this, but I'm very interested in differentiable programming that doesn't repeat the mistakes of imperative programming. I'd like to understand how the model in this work differs from, e.g. http://www.bcl.hamilton.ie/~barak/papers/sound-efficient-ad2...
>> His claim (roughly) is that probabilities in quantum theory model our knowledge of the quantum system, rather than indicating anything intrinsically probabilistic in the system itself.

Note "our" knowledge there. If I am making a measurement, and you are disconnected to me, how and when does it become our knowledge? How is it that one human measuring results in a collapse, with no other human knowing about it. Does something more happen when this first human tells about it to others?
The only thing that still keeps me MacOS is the trackpad.

When my MBA 13" breaks, I will just replace it with another MBA 13", which I already did two times. One got orange juice, the other vomit of my son.

But what if the MBA 13" is not available anymore?

It will be somewhat difficult for me to find a replacement. Perhaps a Surface Book but will xfce handle the trackpad as smoothly as the MBA? But how to find out for myself without risking a purchase first?

Did anyone install Linux on a Surface Book and compare the smoothness of the trackpad with the one of the MBA?
I certainly can understand why they released a watch with a touchscreen. They're trying to appeal to people who aren't necessarily as serious about fitness (or rather, don't feel the need/desire to closely track their workouts), but do want to start doing more, and want some of the benefits that they've heard smartwatches are supposed to offer.

I think the smartwatch fad is actually good in some ways, because it is forcing Garmin to look at what they can realistically add into their core watches to help make them more appealing, while still not turning them into a full smartwatch until the technology is there.

And I'm calling smartwatches a fad for now because they really are at the moment. The potential for them to be more than a fad is there, but the technology, specifically battery life, isn't there, and the current lineups don't offer a compelling story about why we should consider them an integral piece of technology to keep with us all the time.
Probably a bit of an impossibility with this format. Adrian writes one of these paper reviews a day on the train into work.
I have been fired from a few jobs - some of them because I was experiencing an undiagnosed medical issue.

Don't over think this.

Don't use coy words to hide this. It just invites interviewers to drill down into the "why did you leave?" question.

Be boldly honest if asked:
"I was having difficulties in believing in the new direction of the company."

"I was experiencing the stress of a new baby keeping me up at night."

As an interviewer, the things I care about are:

1. Is the same issue likely to repeat itself if I hire you;

2. Was the situation a sign of anything that is going to cause a lawsuit ( i.e. sexual harassment )?

3. Do you have anger management issues?

4. Do you have the ability to recognize and correct your own bad behavior? Or do you blame others?
A statist is just a libertarian who had his crypto stolen :)
Why I rewrote it in Rust (RediSQL)
We had those phones on the wall though, confined to a dedicated location, and not in our ears.
Blockshell – A minimal blockchain learning CLI
I really had no idea about json datatype. Thanks for sharing.
Interesting argument :) Do you mean that a happy, well-balanced person would not engage in discussions on Hacker News?
Show HN: One on one meeting template
About postgres: Uber has bashed it really bad here https://eng.uber.com/mysql-migration/
That was about patches to the linux kernel, not the microcode patches.
The main reason is that in Windows executable files and dynamic libraries (.exe and .dll) are locked while a process is using them, while in other systems, e.g. Linux, you can delete them from disk. The only absolute need for reboot should be an OS kernel update (there are cases where a kernel could be updated/patched without a reboot).
My biggest problem with the current MacBook line up is the much higher price, reduced feature set and the widely reported hardware quality issues with keyboards, speakers and body rattles.

I won’t be buying a Mac with the current keyboard simply because I don’t want the risk of it failing, not that I can afford one. Fortunately my mid 2014 15” is still going strong.

iirc the first generation 2012 15” also has all kinds of problems. I’m hoping Apple get their act together, and USB C is more ubiquitous, by the time I have to upgrade.

(I’m also lucky enough to have a couple of work supplied machines of all types)
It does look like it just sits there static. I actually saw this robot/bike at CES earlier this month (just the showcase, I didn't see it in action). The robot looked like a 'dummy'. As if there's no real practical purpose of the robot being there! They might have as well just fitted all the sensors on the bike itself, but that probably won't be good for PR.
It did not help Plan 9 to conquer the world.

I found a good introduction to Plan 9 architecture in this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15989697#15990077
> On Windows, once the file is open, it is that filename that is open; You can't rename or delete it;

This is wrong... there's no clear-cut thing like the "file name" or "file stream" that you can specify as "in-use". It depends on the specifics of how the file is opened; often you can rename but not delete files that are open. Some (but AFAIK not all) in-use DLLs are like this. They can be renamed but not deleted. And then there's FILE_SHARE_DELETE which allows deletion, but then the handle starts returning errors when the file is deleted (as opposed to keeping the file "alive").

To make it even more confusing, you can pretty much always even create hardlinks to files that are "in use", but once you do that the new name cannot be deleted unless the old name can also be deleted (i.e. they follow the same rules). This should also make it clear that it's not the "name" that's in use, but the "actual file" (whatever that means... on NTFS I'd suppose it corresponds to the "file record" in the MFT).

The rule that Windows always abides by is that everything that takes up space on the disk must be reachable via some path. So you can't delete in-use files entirely because then they would be allocated disk space but unreachable via any path.

> What this means is, that even though you don't NEED to restart anything for most upgrades in Unix/Linux, you're still running the old version until you restart the program that uses it.

What I expect it also means is that you'll get inconsistencies when doing inter-process communication, since they'll be using different libraries with potential mismatches. Is this correct? Because it seems to me that the Windows method might be less flexible but is likely to be more stable, since there's a single coherent global view of the file system at any given time.
I don't know of any chat logs.

But it was very interesting to see the 'next response' candidates for the two sample chats in Table 1 (p3 of the PDF). In particular : it was alarming to see how much their Deep Learning response selection mechanism had to chose not so much the best response out of a selection of decent responses, but more the most acceptable response out of a selection of mostly horrible ones.
By my reading of the article, Microsoft is disabling some mitigations for Spectre due to instabilities that Intel's microcode update have been causing.

Intel certainly isn't making any friends these days...
I was under the impression that the reason is what u/beagle3 mentions (in a sibling comment to yours): open system files. I'm curious to see your comment on what he describes, as what you mention (reloading some security context) does not seem to be the whole truth. That websites make one log in again after changing your password has nothing to do with this.
I think the idea is that the seed and associated private keys are stored securely on a secure element, and they cannot be transferred to your computer. Only a signed message that allows broadcasting of a signed message can. But I could be mistaken?
Great code is so obvious and simple that once you've read it you can't possibly imagine ever finding the problem it solves difficult or confusing.
Thanks! Changed from http://designmadeinjapan.com/magazine/web-design/why-japanes...
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718067
But in real terms, that might actually not be the case. The OS implementation, use case, and hardware setup will affect all of those things meaning direct comparisons aren't really all that valid.

You can dive down the rabbit hole of comparisons; a 3500mah battery might be bigger than a 3000mah, but if the 2.6Ghz processor demolishes it faster than the 2.1Ghz one, it'll end up worse.

This assumption that humans only make rational, logical decisions is inherently flawed. I know HN likes to decry marketing, but humans crave the way these things are framed. Granted that means it's open to manipulation, but the continual argument here is always "give me every single piece of objective information about absolutely everything and I'll make my decision" doesn't extend too far outside of this echo chamber.
Yeah, or a build-it-yourself Z80 kit. I'm not being sarcastic.

An rpi or an arduino would be way better than an iPad.
Is this just a technical possibility or is there evidence that this could be the case?
So everyone downstream of weinzierl has to be aware that (1) the PDFs he hands them may be full of malware (2) have to use VMs (3) must open said malware-packed PDFs in a disposable VM (4) must strictly adhere to D-VM usage protocol.
How to 6X Sales Revenue in 12 Months with a Simple Change in Mindset
> Apple is losing its edge by not having the newer form factors

I think that the iPad Pro is supposed to cover that base.

(This is not an endorsement of the iPad Pro. I agree with your point, and I'm very happy with just having replaced my 2014 Macbook Pro with a Lenovo X1 Yoga.)
Fit leaking: When a FitBit blow your cover
It's one of the features of Ibuprofen that you can take it at those levels without killing yourself. Most people don't, but some people do - sometimes because doctors tell them to.

This makes it different to Paracetamol, where you only have to double or triple the standard dose to cause temporary liver damage, and increasing it only slightly further puts you in danger of death.
Good time to be a contractor who knows about GDPR compliance
A Faith-Oriented Social Network
What do you guys think of a community focused on people of faith, where they can ask questions, share testimonies e.t.c? https://thefaithcircle.com.
Windows executables are opened with mandatory exclusive locking. So you can't overwrite a program or its DLLs while any instances of it are running. If a DLL is widely used, that makes it essentially impossible to update while the system is in use.

There is a registry key which allows an update to schedule a set of rename operations on boot to drop in replacement file(s). https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/brad_rutkowski/2007/06/2...
Is the author of the article actually complaining about not being able to run 68K Mac software in 2018? The last 68K Mac came out in 1994.

Why shouldn't Apple remove insecure ftp and telnet from the default installation? You can still install it if you really need it but who in this day and age would use anything that transmits passwords over plaintext?

As far as complaining about no desktop for Pros, I've read nothing but good things about the iMac Pro.

There are a lot of real complaints about the Mac -the Mac Mini not being upgraded in 4 years, the Mac Pro not being seriously upgraded in 5, the MacBook line being dated and not keeping up with latest innovations, etc.
So does this mean certain countries (non EU) are shut out of EU completely? Thinking of some Asian titans that share everything with their governments.
You’re probably not wrong to which you could add sports, entertainment etc. but there’s a distinction between professions that have a fairly large number, if overall minority, of well paid to very well paid members and those that almost have a lottery winner sort of effect.
I'm a cryptocurrency supporter but I'm not anti tax or anti government. I genuinely think that decentralized trust based systems such as blockchain have a place in our world even alongside government.

With that said, I would like to believe that if caught, these types of seed hacks could be prosecuted. (If viable)
> Windows executables are opened with mandatory exclusive locking. So you can't overwrite a program or its DLLs while any instances of it are running.

This is not always correct; see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16256483
95% trained accuracy was already there by late eighties

97% by mid-nineties

98% late nineties, and I still remember how wonderful was the voice recognition on old black and white Ericsson phones, and sony PDAs of that era.

And then, things stalled at claimed 98.5% without much improvement in marginal utility.

The fact that misrecognition is there and will be there, removes much of utility from applications without a dictionary or one with no side effects.

And yes, people talking to nobody feels and looks creepy. It almost begs other to come and point a finger at you saying "hey look, a computer creep is talking to his phone."
Yes, but as far as I know Linus has made no comment on the microcode patches, so mm-vorticesoft is probably referring to the Spectre patches in general.
>However, Intel does not appear too concerned that the incident will affect its bottom line - the company expects 2018 to be a record year in terms of revenue

There is an interesting paradox in our industry. If you pay enough attention (read: money) to security, you will be late to the market, your costs will be high and you lose profit. If you don't pay enough attention, you take the market, get your profits, but your product (be it hardware or software) and reputation will be screwed later. And worst of all: there's never enough attention to security.

So by simple logic, an optimal strategy is to forge your product quickly, take your profits within a [relatively] short period and vanish from the market. I guess we'll see this strategy executed from IoT vendors when market start to punish them for their bad sec.

For Intel, that "long period" just happened to be REALLY long.
This one is old, but I don't think things have improved much since then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec

It's worth a watch. Hilarious, despite the bad sound quality.
Especially as he mentioned the Unix Philosophy:

> [...], try to remember the Unix Philosphy [sic] and break it down into tiny parts that go well together, this way it's going to be way easier to initially release it and maintain it in the future.
>Apple never was design for being pro.

It was, but not for pro software engineers, but for pro designers, film editors, etc.
Isn't this the plot of Minority Report? :)
How to Flow into the Zone
Are there any good numbers on the fertility among people who actually WANT to conceive, rather than the raw total population rates (which is affected by people who don't want kids - prevented through birth control and abortions)
Ask HN: Which Serverless Database do you use? Why
Ask HN: Which Serverless Database do you use? Why I am building a serverless application and confused over a couple of options.
No, I mean a tablet is a stupid thing for a school student to have. I could sort of see the point of a cheap laptop or chromebook - at least typing on them is reasonable. But there is nothing wrong with writing on paper either.

Teachers giving homework printed on paper makes it easier for the student and parent to know what homework there is to be done.

And printing from tablets? Come on. I don't know about Android tablets but it ain't easy from an iPad.

My kids aren't living in some tech backwater - we have more than enough computers from 8 to 64 bits they could do something useful with.

But there is no upside to me having to buy each of them an iPad - not for me or them. Even iPad games are just stupid free-to-play-pay-to-speed-up-progress games. All the kids give each other for birthday these days are itunes cards that get spend on 'gems'.

The whole thing is a disaster. Get off my lawn.
How about a language that lets you put your procedures in tables?

I often wish for a more rich way to layout a complex 2-level decision tree. Dividing it up into sub-functions/classes scatters the logic, while putting it all together is too heavy. However a 2D decision table would often be perfect.