skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A. Engineering Management shouldn't micromanage, but a manager can be invaluable in helping resolve interpersonal conflicts and escalate issues. They can be the "bad guy" when dealing with someone the team reports is consistently underperforming or engaging in poor behavior.

B. Are you an engineer or a technician. An engineer "just" creates fixes. A technician will implement it. Lines blur in programming more than other fields, but some "engineers" make a big deal out of just figuring out solutions that have been solved many times before, like making a backend call.

This is my perspective as an engineer.
Duh. Why not clean water instead of vaccines? http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/how-plumbing-not-vac...
An SVG that always shows today's date
Unifying the Software Toolchain
Those leaders had mandates from the people in any case, via elections they could lose. Unless you are talking about the Taiwan and South Korea dictators of Mao’s era.
What happens when a 800A 230kV 3-phase cable shorts?
Google might make web apps that work in only one browser, but publishers won't publish in a format that supports only one browser. That's why Microsoft, Baidu, Yahoo Japan, etc. also have AMP caches.

On the other hand, using the web package standard as the ancestor suggests would currently trap you to Google.
Royal Caribbean has become masterful at the nickel-and-diming of passengers. My wife and I used to cruise with them, but no more, precisely because of this.
> Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don’t have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen—or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark
1. Even if it is of infinite capacity, one datacenter will not be able to store everything. The data needs to be moved there as well.

2. My point was that there's no way NSA will use the data stored there in ways that will give the effects mentioned in the grandparent post.
3b1b - Uncertainty principle? It's not about quantum
The gold standard gets abandoned because countries want to manipulate their currency independently of the impact of other countries' currency manipulation. This is sometimes because they want to pay for costly wars via currency manipulation, but that's not the only reason.
like this? https://www.eevblog.com/2018/02/15/eevblog-1057-µcurrent-mur...
I wonder if they could quantify the human suffering and death that has happened as their proprietary surveillance operating system has betrayed it's users to totalitarian governments worldwide and just how vital it has been in eroding the constitutional protections of the fourth amendment by essentially backdooring everyone that uses it.

Bill Gates was never a good guy, and I don't really give a Fuck if most of you reading this don't like me saying this because you forgot what the word hacker really means because there are too many businesspeople here pretending to be hackers here instead of the other way around.
"abundance" is a strong word, there are a "handful" at best.
Ask HN: What's a good self-hosted email stack nowadays?
I've been aiming to delete my google account for a while. But email is a real pain, and gmail has been the hardest thing to get off of. I already use a local mail client and never touch the web interface, but I'd rather be completely off the google ecosystem.

The last time I hosted my own email was about 13 years ago, using a single linode with postfix, dovecot, and various spamassasin/procmail rules to mitigate spam (I even remember using Postgrey with postfix to "greylist" email... those were the days.)

Nowadays I know at the very least I'll have to mess with proper SSL (which I didn't bother with back then), SPF records, and probably other technologies that are all but required for other mail servers to not think I'm spam.

I'm wondering if the self-hosted mail world has matured to the point where running a decent stack on AWS is automatic or at least simple. I'd like to be able to administer all the pieces, so I'd prefer it to not be a complete black box, but hopefully still be easy to automate and require little maintenance.

Has the open-source mail administration world gotten better in the past 10-15 years?
You could be making triple, or the people below could be making double. Imbalance runs both ways, and encouraging it in either case ends badly for all of us. Why are you surrendering so much power and wealth to the top?
Gets me thinking of one episode of the original Connections series.

There Burke talked about automation (keep in mind this was recorded back in 1978), and how it would make management simply sit around waiting while the mainframe in the basement churned out the action plan for the next week (or some such) and then implement it.

Effectively he envisioned that computation could eliminate the managerial class.
At some point those people will be responsible for themselves and the sponsor's responsibility expires.
He might have a point if a simple API-change impacts 170 test cases. This sounds suspiciously like "no functional tests but let's go for 100% coverage with unit tests" - not necessarily the efficient thing to do, from a management perspective.
About AlphaZero particularly, a few things must be kept in mind.

First, AlphaZero still makes use of a Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm to
search for good moves. MCTS is a powerful algorithm with a very limited scope:
zero-sum, perfect information games. So for instance, it would be very
difficult to see how to use MCTS-based AlphaZero in, e.g., training
self-driving cars.

Second, the AlphaZero architecture is precisely mapped onto a checkerboard and
will not learn anything about games that don't use a checkerboard, or any
situation that is not possible to model as a game played on a checkerboard.

Third, the AlphaZero architecture is also precisely mapped onto the range of
moves of pieces in chess, shoggi and go. Again, AlphaZero would be useless in
any game that used pieces with different moves (e.g. a piece with a zig-zag
move, or a piece allowed to move in spirals etc).

All of the above of course can be mitigated with different architectural
choices, but to make those choices, implement them and validate them will take
a great deal of time.

So, AlphaZero doesn't mean we're closer to _general_ AI.
Quite the contrary: it's a very specialised form of AI that will be very
difficult to use in any different task than chess, shoggi or go.
at least the transaction involves the yatchmaker... who, while rich, wasn’t as ridiculously rich, and in the end the transaction came down to the pockets of people who live around the yatchmaker a little bit. Not perfect but it’s something.
blockchain all the things
As in the article about the origin of the wold "yes", the world ignores basques again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16448770

Not that I mind. We have a wonderful and cool life here. So maybe it's better to be ignored. But we have an ancient language and culture. Just saying.

I pick my favorite mythical creature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akerbeltz
Japan-
Shinzo Abe: 2012-current

Singapore-
Halimah Yacob: 2017-current
Lee Hsien Loong: 2004-current

South Korea-
Moon Jae-in: 2017-current
Lee Nak-yeon: 2017-current

Taiwan
Tsai_Ing-wen: 2016-current

I'll maybe give you Singapore's PM, but this is definitely not "decades".
Same here, except sometimes lights will brighten and dim randomly during meetings.

It's like living in Clamp Tower from Gremlins II.
Let's say a language A is syntactic sugar over a language B if A can be translated to B by macro expansion. In that case, if B is sufficiently expressive, e.g., has first class functions, then in many cases A will be syntactic sugar over B. On the other hand, there are many language features that are orthogonal to first class functions, for which the translation is no less complicated than the frontend of most compilers. For example:

- Delimited continuations

- Related to this, algebraic effects and handlers.

- Implicit types.

- Join patterns for concurrency.

- Linear/Affine ressource management.

- Related to this, type state and session types.

- Probabilisitic programming.

- Differential programming.

And many more. The point is that you do not want a language that includes all of these extensions at the same time, since many are mutually exclusive. For example, differential programming does not mix with state or first-class functions. Linear types ensure safe ressource management, but you need an escape hatch both for efficiency and your sanity. Algebraic effects or delimited continuations in a language which already has imperative features will lead to very fun bugs as soon as someone unfamiliar with the language implementation tries to mix the two features.

On the other hand, for every single example in this list I can point to an application domain where the additional expressivity is beneficial.

E.g., delimited continuations are extremely nice when implementing some complicated backtracking search. A DSL with (pure functions and) first class support for delimited continuations can express such a search function very naturally and later on - in the compiler for the DSL - we can decide how to implement this feature.

This allows for additional optimizations, which would otherwise be implemented in an ad-hoc manner. For example, several linear return continuations can be implemented by having several return addresses and stack pointers and restoring one of them, rather than using a cactus stack. Another example, rarely used return continuations can be tracked out of line as in "zero-cost exception handling".

Mixing these implementation details with the implementation of your search function is just a bad idea, since they are orthogonal to the problem you actually want to solve. And, as we all know, mixing continuations into an existing imperative language just gives continuations a bad name, which is precisely why you want a DSL. :)
> you're always going to have to see yourself as something.

I think this is indirectly a large part of the problem. The trend in society is that everybody must have totally unique and interesting identities, and since few people are in fact "special" enough to live up to that ridiculously high standard, they need to pile on everything and the kitchensink to get to some reasonable approximation. And you'll still wake up one day and dread that your identity is not, in fact, unique and interesting enough, which looks a lot like your "a lie" scenario. But in the meantime, you've set yourself up to spend a non-trivial amount of time fending off attacks, real and imagined, on any of the myriad of items that make up your identity.

In a past not too distant, our waiter-friend would be content to see himself as a good person, a good friend and a provider for his family.
> If you block those 3rd party scripts, AMP pages literally take 8 seconds to load.

The pages load fast, they are just styled to not be visible until after 8 seconds.

For example, using the site used in the article, you can block 3rd-party scripts and bypass the AMP CSS using the following cosmetic filter in uBlock:

scientias.nl##body:style(animation: none !important;)

With an extension such as uMatrix or NoScript, blocking first-party scripts will cause `noscript` tags to be rendered, and one of these tags disable the CSS animation, causing the page to appear immediately.

When I found out about this, I tried to find the reasons for this artificial "delay" in the AMP documentation: I can't find any valid reasons for the artificial delay.

The net result unfortunately is that most users wanting to block `ampproject.org` out of privacy concerns are going to feel the need to whitelist `ampproject.org` to "un-break" a site making use of it.
Be Newsletter: Article Index
Grr. The old Denon bookshelf hi-fi had an analogue pot with slow motor tied to remote control, and infinite fine adjustment when using knob directly. After it died we just bought the current equivalent without exercising enough distrust.

The volume is now digital, so we have a choice between "too loud" or "too quiet". Turning the knob gives the same too coarse steps. No motor is required, saving Denon a few pennies and costing them a customer next time around.

The FM tuner (much better quality than DAB hereabouts), uses the digital stage somehow anyway, so analogue transmissions gain about a half second delay. As we often have the same radio station going in more than one room, this can be really annoying.
False. All participants were born and took their IQ tests a year before the very first elements of the NHS came into existence.

And health (and all other) outcomes are strongly affected in the UK by geography. On average you'll live in Sussex nearly a decade longer than in Cowdenbeath. In Glasgow as late as the mid-1980s the average male life expectancy was 58 years, and then Scotland had the shit kicked out of it, on purpose, for twelve years, by the 1979 Thatcher government. Cuts in healthcare were inflicted disproportionately-severely on places which did not vote for the Conservatives, and nowhere were they more severe than central Scotland and south Wales.
"I think he broke the law, so I certainly wouldn't characterize him as a hero" - Bill Gates on Snowden. A question I'd love to hear any rich person answer explicitly: is it impossible for a criminal to be a hero?

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/bill-gates-the-roll...
I want to verify myself with Keybase but need at least 2 karma
Title.
Then you should be happy because the water and the air have never been cleaner.

The places where pollution is the worst is poor places, not rich places which indicate that making societies more prosperous is better, not worse for the environment.

This includes access to cheap energy which currently also means coal and fossil fuels.

The problem is that when you present this to those who are worried about the climate they don't actually rejoice and say, phew great. Instead, they get upset which I find weird.
Even domestic premises have solar with grid top-up (and they can sell back to the grid often too). Like having baseline server resources on your own hardware and AWS - or whatever - for handling high demand.
>There can be advantages in that the developers more often can do the tasks passably well enough that you can spread tasks around, but if it's not accounted for a lot of the time people are fooling themselves when it comes to the costs.

It is cheaper than hiring a full DevOps team which is a better apples to apples comparison. By spreading the load across the dev team I can automatically get a high bus factor and 24/7 hour on-call rotation. If the load cannot be spread across the team but requires specialized DevOps engineers then I lose both those very important points. Obviously once your company is large enough it's different but for small teams/companies it is an important factor.
IOTA: Can you look into our laundry detergent product and review it's safety?
DCI: Sure. We've got some accomplished chemists that will do a careful review.
IOTA: Cool, let us know what you find.
DCI: Uh oh, it looks like we found a critical problem with your detergent. We tested the product and it seems to have poisonous properties.
IOTA: How did that happen? Did someone accidentally ingest it?
DCI: Can you prove that your laundry detergent pods are safe when ingested?
IOTA: Don't ingest them. Use them to do laundry.
DCI: I see, so you don't deny that they are unsafe for consumption?
IOTA: I don't understand. Why would you try to eat them? Our instructions clearly say that's not what they are for.
DCI: Look, we have a lot of experience with chemicals. Every chemist out there will tell you that these ingredients are unsafe for consumption. Ask for a second opinion if you like.
IOTA: Ok but can you show that they are unsafe to use for laundry?
DCI: We'll let everyone know that this laundry detergent is unsafe.
IOTA: Wait, can you also tell everyone that they shouldn't eat them?
DCI: ...
IOTA: Did you just publish?
#SlotMachinesGames – #CasinoSlots – #CasinoGames – #UnitedStates
What a bunch of hyperbole. Rome flourished following Caesar for quite a while. Only if you are sure that China is now beyond the event horizon and unable to change it's constitution going forward should you make such a statement.
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design (2011)
> For example, there's a lot of evidence that eg Saddam Hussein and Hitler's yes-men regularly attempted to lie to them, hide facts from them, etc. due to the consequences.

Mussolini was not different. For example whenever he went to visit a military airport, they would bring airplanes from all over Italy to increase the numbers. What he thought was part of a big airforce were in fact the same planes over and over. When he went to war with Hitler he probably thought he had a good army. In practice since the suppliers of the army where chosen through corruption and nepotism, the soldiers couldn't even get working boots.
From Wikipedia: "Many arrow markings were removed during World War II, to prevent aiding enemy bombers in navigation, while 19 updated beacons still remain in service in Montana."

You can browse photos and Google maps here:

http://www.dreamsmithphotos.com/arrow/contrib_photo.html

Doesn't look like there are any towers that have survived or been preserved, unfortunately. Noted in the article that they were dismantled in WWII for steel.

I was looking for towers to learn if they lighted the arrows at night, in addition to the beacon. Just curious.
>We are outspoken about our optimism. These days, though, optimism seems to be in short supply.
The headlines are filled with awful news. Every day brings a different story of political division, violence, or natural disaster.
Despite the headlines, we see a world that’s getting better.

It should take a lot of nerve to open this way. Sympathy, or I guess we call it empathy, who knows, cannot be achieved through optimism alone. The unfettered optimism in this intro seems tone-deaf. I think it undermines the effort they make to the contrary.
eikons https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7zztey/full...

IOTA: Can you look into our laundry detergent product and review it's safety?
DCI: Sure. We've got some accomplished chemists that will do a careful review.
IOTA: Cool, let us know what you find.
DCI: Uh oh, it looks like we found a critical problem with your detergent. We tested the product and it seems to have poisonous properties.
IOTA: How did that happen? Did someone accidentally ingest it?
DCI: Can you prove that your laundry detergent pods are safe when ingested?
IOTA: Don't ingest them. Use them to do laundry.
DCI: I see, so you don't deny that they are unsafe for consumption?
IOTA: I don't understand. Why would you try to eat them? Our instructions clearly say that's not what they are for.
DCI: Look, we have a lot of experience with chemicals. Every chemist out there will tell you that these ingredients are unsafe for consumption. Ask for a second opinion if you like.
IOTA: Ok but can you show that they are unsafe to use for laundry?
DCI: We'll let everyone know that this laundry detergent is unsafe.
IOTA: Wait, can you also tell everyone that they shouldn't eat them?
DCI: ...
IOTA: Did you just publish?
Didn't Google try this? It didn't work out for them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2013/07/17/googl...

https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-man...
>> AGI is computable on present day hardware if one has enough knowledge on how to correctly structure it. (...) Hardware reached capability in recent years.

How could you possibly know anything regarding whether this is true or not, given that we know nothing about AGI?

Also, may I ask what you mean by "AGI Developer"?
I'm pretty sure Bill Gates has a very different view on this than anyone reading this site. He would have doubtless been exposed to the realities of the US government for decades.
Any programming language with pointers such as C or c++ where you can have wild pointers, use after free etc can be a breeding ground or hisenbugs. Consider yourself lucky.
>Doesn't quantum transmission infrastructure require direct connections from A to B?

No, the retransmitters can preserve the entanglement (and A and B can verify that this has been done).

In fact (providing qubits can be stored) the transmission can be done indirectly and in advance.

The telecom company produces lots of entangled qubits and gives a bunch to each customer, keeping half of each pair for itself. Then when Alice wants to communicate securely with Bob they ask the telecom company to take the corresponding qubits and perform a joint measurement. This entangles Alice's qubits with Bob's (like making a connection at a telephone exchange). Then Alice and Bob can measure their qubits (in various bases) to create a one-time-pad.

The clever thing is that Alice and Bob can (by checking that on a portion of the qubits their results always matched when they used the same basis) verify that they did indeed have maximally entangled qubits and therefore no one was listening-in.
In this light, it's interesting as a counterpoint to look at inflation's systemic effects.

After the 2008 real estate loan bust, many economists hoped for more inflation so that the existing pool of loans would be a little more manageable for the debtors. (In Japan, they've been trying to increase inflation for decades). Even today, on financial news feeds and Bloomberg, when economic observers talk about "good news on inflation" they usually mean inflation going up, not down.

I guess, overall, there's a sweet spot for inflation. Or what's good for corporate profits and banks is sort of opposed to what's good for the overall collection of people in the economy.
Which features are available that you find useful? I'm surprised any are turned on if you declined the EULA.
I agree that mass shootings aren't a large statistical risk for an individual. I'm only objecting to the use of language that suggests they aren't a systemic issue.
Compatibility aside, how in the world can fetching a page then rendering it be faster than “a full page load”? That’s the definition of a full page load! Are we assuming heavy JS in the <head>, and that it’s also present on the current page?
Providing clean water, infrastructure ('outhouses') and good-enough nutrition are much harder problems than organizing vaccination campaigns.
For me the pessimism stems from the fact that having 8 billion or so well off consumers is not environmentally sustainable. We are polluting on a grand scale. Plastics, toxins, and trash are doing great harm to the environment. Right now it appears we are headed for a crash. Maybe not in my lifetime but within 100 years or so will the planet be so polluted that living in it is hellish?
In analog houses, restoring the power means "lights come back as they were prior to outage". No state is lost, no matter how you spin that.
previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366263
? It's his money that he actually decided to give away why should you or I have a say in it?
> their chalk doesn't run out or disappear.

Unless they're stuck in an update loop, or the power is off, or sometimes the internet is down.