skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> OpenCL is not a disaster at all.

I'll probably need to be more specific. OpenCL 1.0 through 1.2 is fine, but fell hopelessly behind NVidia's CUDA efforts. NVidia CUDA has more features that lead to proven performance enhancements.

OpenCL 2.0 was the "counterpunch" to bring OpenCL up to CUDA-level features. However, OpenCL 2.0 is virtually stillborn. Only Intel and AMD platforms support OpenCL2.0. Intel Xeon Phi are relatively niche (and their primary advantage seems to be x86 code compatibility anyway. So I doubt you'd be running OpenCL on them).

AMD OpenCL 2.0 support exists, but is rather poor. The OpenCL 2.0 debugger simply is non-functional and you're forced to use lol printfs.

That leaves OpenCL 1.2. Its okay, but it is years behind what modern hardware can do. Its atomic + barrier model is strange compared to proper C++11 Atomics, its missing important features like device-side queuing, shared virtual memory, unified address space (no more copy/paste code just to go from "local" to "private" memory), among other very useful features.

> Even today OpenCL is a viable solution for GPU

OpenCL 1.2 is a viable solution. An old, crusty, and quirky solution, but viable nonetheless. OpenCL 2.0+ is basically dead. And I think only Intel Xeon Phi supports the latest OpenCL 2.2.

I bet you there are more Vulkan compute shaders out there than there are OpenCL 2.0. Indeed, there are rumors that the Khronos project is going to be focusing on Vulkan compute shaders in the future.

> The "single source" argument is completely overrated. Furthermore, you can have single source in OpenCL putting the code in strings.

I like my compile-time errors to be during compile-time. Not during run-time on my client's system. Compiler-bugs in AMD drivers are fixed through device driver updates (!!!) which makes practical deployment of plain-text OpenCL source code far more of a hassle in practice.

Consider this horror story: a compiler bug in some AMD Device Driver versions which cause a segfault on some hardware versions. This is not theoretical: https://community.amd.com/thread/160362.

In practice, deploying OpenCL 1.2 code requires you to test all of the device drivers your client base is reasonably expected to run.

-----

But that's not the only issue.

"Single Source" means that you can define a singular structure in a singular .h file and actually have it guaranteed to work between CPU-code and GPU-code. Data-sharing code is grossly simplified and is perfectly matched.

The C++ AMP model (which has been adopted into AMD's ROCm platform) is grossly superior. You specify a few templates and bam, your source code automatically turns into CPU code OR GPU-code. Extremely useful when sharing routines between the CPU and GPU (like data-packing or unpacking from the buffers)

With that said, AMD clearly cares about OpenCL and the ROCm platform looks like it strongly supports OpenCL through then near term, especially OpenCL 1.2 which seems to have a big codebase.

However, if I were to do any project these days, I'd do it in ROCm's HCC / single-source C++ system or CUDA. OpenCL 1.2 is useful for high-compatibility but has major issues as an environment.
GDPR. It comes into effect in less than a month; it's high time to shake out the bugs.
Sheets has had macros for a long time via Apps Script, which I've used to automate a lot of simple tasks. The feature added here is the ability to record macros from manual actions.
It's almost like this was directly addressed in the article:

>especially the idea that women and people of color felt particularly unwelcome. There’s a weird paradox with bias. Those of us who have privilege, but care deeply about reducing bias should be uniquely positioned to help, but we struggle the hardest to recognize that we are (unintentionally) biased ourselves

And this line in your post:

>pointless virtue signaling.

Really nice recycled talking point. It also strikes at the heart of the above quote.
Show HN: HiringPlan – free cash and equity comp data to plan your future team
That is assuming people are not exaggerating or outright lying about their feelings to achieve some goal.

Since feelings can't be verified it costs little to not be truthful.
Change closed due to being offtopic

Honestly I just want them to noindex the questions that are closed so that they stop turning up in Google searches
The app is developed for use within the government. In which case, a keylogger in the app makes as much sense as a keylogger on any civil servant's workstation or professional phone.

At some point, if you work for the government you have to use and trust the tools at your disposal. You are part of the executive power, after all.
Shocking News: Facebook Not the Worst Data Pirate
> "extending the language" is described by some other Lisp programmers as creating a "DSL"

Lisp can be extended in many ways without creating a DSL. That's the basic error you make. Paul Graham talks about extending/changing Lisp and you assume that this must be a DSL - while it is just a larger Lisp.

Typically bottom-up programming does not mean developing a DSL. Though it can be that one develops one or more DSLs during bottom-up programming. But it's not necessarily so.

Remember DSL means 'Domain specific language' - a language (that means syntax/semantics/pragmatics) specific (means offering a set of operations and data structures) to a domain (which has a problem which needs to be solved).

A larger Lisp is neither specific to a domain, nor a new language.

To give you an example: For some engineering problem (process control of chemical plant) one needs to express fuzzy values and needs to compute with them. PG advocates to implement these fuzzy data structures and operators. One then constructs further parts using these new building blocks. This could be a bunch of classes and functions. Just an extension of the existing Lisp - it would not only work with boolean values, but also with fuzzy values. While using the fuzzy operators, one extends them until all needed operators are available.

With the new set of operators large parts of the solution can be written in a shorter way. One can do such bottom-up programming in many languages and now also in many popular languages. One thing that made Lisp attractive early on for this style is the interactive development mode. One creates a new building block and one can immediately try it out - improving it and testing it again was always very fast. Thus one can extend the running program piece by piece and play around with the code in combination with domain data. Something which would not be typical in C, C++ and Java. Still, if one wants, one can do bottom-up programming in those languages too.

The result is neither specific to a domain (because all the other functionality is still there), nor would be a 'language' - it's just more vocabulary in an existing language - probably not even new syntax. One could also use the extension points of the language. For example Lisp would use T and NIL as constants for boolean values. One could extend the s-expression reader to add a new syntax for fuzzy values. That would not make a new specific language, but just extend the existing language along the prepared extension points.
Matrix also supports WS actually but nobody bothers with it: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/master/drafts/...
Congrats Matrix team! That is huge.

Competitor here, few questions:

- You guys are currently implementing federated protocols, right? We do P2P protocols, I'm curious why you guys chose federated - why do you think it is better?

- How are you guys different than Signal? Obviously way different than Telegram, as it isn't even Open Source (thanks for Open Sourcing your work!).

- When I was working on our E2EE private messaging app (ugly demo here: https://twitter.com/marknadal/status/989602258638684160 ), I ran into problems about metadata. Stuff like, do you guys reveal which public keys are talking to which other public keys? And the frequency of those conversations? Or do you encrypt that information as well (and if you do, how do you handle discovery then, and is it vulnerable to network frequency analysis attacks?)

Awesome work, congrats again, keep it up! Curious to hear more about your architecture.
The serf argument is a Chinese justification for invasion of Tibet. This has nothing to do with "human rights". It was a simple and plain invasion of another country which violated International Laws. You cannot shove that under the carpet with any sort of justifications: even if it is a dislike for social structure. If China really cared about the people of Tibet, it would have done what India did after East Pakistan liberation. It created Bangladesh and allowed the local people to rule themselves unhindered. India did not colonize Bangladesh. In fact, this "reintegration" argument is bogey. India could have used the same "reintegration" argument to justify colonizing Bangladesh as it once belonged to Hindustan in the ancient times. It did not. There is absolutely no justification for invasion and occupation of a territory.

> China is still a developing country and it didn't show off to be a superpower. The major agenda is still developing its economy and addressing poverty.

Are you seriously telling me that the militarisation in disputed South China Sea is not showing off? How about building the CPEC across disputed territory? How about China trying to build roads in the Doklam region? Are all these part of it developing its economy and addressing poverty? Seems more like unwarranted expansion to me.
Flask 1.0 Released
Looks like they had the interns design this during their down time. Really forgettable, and uninspired.
"Collapse of the housing market" is a funny way to talk about affordable housing. It assumes that everyone already owns a house and will have a problem if / when the value drops below the remaining debt.
I'm old too.

Coming up on 50 in a few short months.

Been there done it all, from humble beginnings to the upper echelons of big five corporates.

Had the whole house in the burbs with the three car garage and five cars, the dance music studio in the basement.

Stock options and pay up the wazoo.

The money wasn't the problem, the environment was.

The cash just wasn't enough

More importantly my mental health was suffering.

Specifically I wanted to continue being a professional developer with a private space, a shared space and above all work with extremely talented people on serious projects.

My colleagues and myself didn't need break out rooms and enumerable meetings to get stuff done, because creation just happened.

So my wife and I gave it all up and started doing start-ups. She's from a similar background and couldn't stand the facade of modern corporate culture either.

Emotionally draining and ultimately unproductive. You get tired seeing a team of a hundred doing work that can be done with a team of ten or less.

Checked out of corporate and went for a walk in the metaphorical desert.

Came back from it rediscovered the joy of programming, dispersed all my assets and started again.

Now we do things on our own terms and with a low impact that we believe in.

Somehow great people, young and old appear out of nowhere and want to help. That's awesome, and we learn from each other.

Hopefully soon our current project will be released and maybe even useful.

The main thing is you don't need a lot honestly in this business. Patience and just wanting to do the right things goes an awful long way.

I say screw corporate culture, at least SV culture. It's nothing a mirage designed for churn and burn and cares less for actual humans

I mean just look how FAANGM create actual cities around their campus to suck you in.

I'm sorry but that isn't normal. It may be convenient, it may be fun when you are young, but it isnt natural and it creates echo chambers and bubbles that are not sustainable.

My hat is off to anyone who does this job, young or old, it's tough.

But please do it for the right reasons, know that you have to be in it for the long game and the game gets bigger every single day.

Good luck people.

And by the way..

It's worth it
Big Nerd Ranch Named as Top 5 UX Agency in Atlanta
These are not fixed rate loans?
Maybe this will help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuIOGazSmHg

(It's from the 90's.)
Just because housing prices in NYC and healthcare costs have risen fast doesn't mean inflation is high.

This is why we calculate these numbers using a broad basket of various goods and assets.
I am 50 and living in Silicon Valley.

I have been laid-off 3 times (most recently in January, 2017). Each time, I have had little troubling finding a job.

I should mention that I am active on Kaggle and that I code during my day job (C#) and code in my free time (mostly Python).

I have not yet found any problem in finding new roles.
In the article about non-Turing-complete languages, I kind of expected to find a mention of Dhall which is a fancy new programmable configuration language:

https://github.com/dhall-lang/dhall-lang
"inability to fill out an application"

No really the last time I filled out an application it took me two months from start to finish and I considered it progress because I wasn't crying by the end of it. January 2017 ish a Prof offered me several research projects, after not responding to him for two weeks I am now hiding from him for the rest of my life.

I am absolutely aware that I am on paper qualified for all sorts of shit.

That doesn't change the reality that I am emotionally incapable of doing anything with it.

Which goes back to my coworkers who are all absolutely capable of better paying jobs but at some point you just stop believing that something else is possible. Then what?
This is the standard HN trap, where I provide links and a dozen commenters respond saying how unreliable these "non scientific" sources are.

There is no point. I'm not trying to convince anyone to do anything. I plant seeds that hopefully will encourage people to take their health in their own hands and reconsider their blind faith and reliance on modern medicine that is strongly incentivized against finding a cure for them. They make money when they keep you breathing, not when you walk away cured.
That's not true, though. People who have had sedentary jobs their whole life are likely to also have neck and back problems, be overweight, etc.
Deploy a fully functional serverless back end in about an hour
Incognito mode often doesn't help for me either, but if you look for workarounds posted in the threads, you'll usually find one. It's also ok to ask for one.
Don’t Over React Rendering Binary Data
The logo reminds me of the old ATT 4G LTE logo https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lcdgiiTwcYs/UYvQNF3qnzI/AAAAAAAAm...
Months of bad news has battered Tesla’s image with customers, poll finds
Well there you go, I've never ridden one, and they don't have them around here, so that's a hopeful factoid. So maybe if a significant fraction of trips are being done in that speed range, there's a better chance of creating a space for it.
I think one of the main worries from a security perspective, as the article mentions, is the fact that despite a patch being released, one has to rely on the hotels to be aware of the issue AND to decide to patch the devices. Would not be surprised if that happens at a glacial pace.
The issue is the updates are not always functionality neutral. Like in GP's case and many others updating to the new iOS means the device becoming very slow and annoying to use. In those cases the update is not a good thing because it severely degrades the device.
Thank you for all that context! And for not building traffic shaping at the time!
Not to mention running these video cameras and computer systems is fairly minor in terms of how much energy they consume compared to other activities in the country.
I will add Finance and Insurance as two more industries where older developers (who keep their skills up to date!) are welcome.

Yes, COBOL is still being used at many of these companies, but other departments are using up-to-date .NET or Java and don't ever look at COBOL.
I tend to have the same outlook, i.e. the US govt will be hard pressed to "afford" high interest rates, but I struggle with your statement about QE. QE does not reduce inflation - QE,i.e. printing money to buy debt that is not productive - would devalue a currency and increase inflation. QE is only made possible by deflationary pressures existing elsewhere. Such as Japans shrinking population and lack of productivity growth.

Inflation is how a debt load becomes affordable again.

Is that not correct?
The US used to regulate "exports" of cryptography under the U.S. Munitions List. Some of the restrictions still remain, but most of them were gradually relaxed in until 2000.
The Go gopher is a redraw of Glenda, the Plan 9 bunny. Many of Plan 9's principals worked on Go, which is itself an update of Alef, Plan 9's planned systems language, before it was canned and replaced with C.

I'm sure he'll still be around as a mascot. He's still on the site's main page. I really don't see the problem with him -- most commercial internet servers run a kernel with a cute penguin mascot, and many of the rest run a kernel with a cute mascot who is literally the Devil -- but I can appreciate the strategy of opening with a punchy, barebones logotype.
There seems to be a recent tendency where web-based business that wish to make changes to their platforms cite lack of inclusiveness for the main reason for the change.

SO is a trash fire. For everyone, not "women", not "people of color", not "people without color", not "groups". Everyone.

It's an openly hostile place where mods close questions unrelated to their expertise based on the whims of those in private chat rooms while belittling the questioner with those "your question was closed because X" explainer boxes.

It would be refreshing if they just said something like "We've realized that SO is a hostile place, and it's not better if you just happen to be a white man."

If you read their change list, nothing there has anything to do with "identity". It's just a list of very small tweaks.
The gopher didn't go away. You can find it on pages 21 & 22 of the new Brand Book: https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v...
> But there are lesser number of Senior Engineers than Engineers, and lesser number of Principal Engineers than Senior Engineers. What exactly happens?

More and more people going into software engineering than in previous generations.
> Countries that we normally think of as very well off, such as Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands are among the most indebted people on earth in terms of household debt to income. They can't afford much higher interest rates at all,

That's a little mixed up. The effect of inflation is to reduce the effective size of debt, not increase it. So if you owe someone $500US(which has a barter value of ~100 lattes), and a burst of inflation hits the dollar such that the price of a latte doubles, then you only need to pay back 50 lattes to the lender. You win!

Obviously it's the holder of the debt that ends up on the hook for this. Which is why interest rates of lots of debt get indexed in some way to adjust with inflation (or things like the prime rate, which itself tends to track inflation). So the net effect is complicated. But on the whole it's the lenders of money who stand to lose the most when inflation rises. Those who have borrowed come out ahead, on average.

So the net effect of inflation (assuming no second order effect like a global crash, yada yada yada) is to effect a wealth transfer from the lenders of money (e.g. banks and institutional investors) to the borrowers of money (consumers and governments).

There are some very smart people who think this isn't necessarily a bad thing at all.
why kill the gopher?
OK, but you can't tell much about national inflation (even inflation in housing costs) from smaller-than-metro-area statistics.
Even if you sue and win you'll likely never work again due to it.
This is terrible advice and frankly it's a bit shocking to see so little insight into contemporary CMS architecture and why it exists on a tech site. Yes UGC is a very important driver, but many organisations have an internal community of non-technical publishers and marketers whose needs are served by a CMS.

These original web publishing systems used to have a complete separation of back office and front end. For large publishers back in the day, one of Drupal's major innovations was the concept of a single type of user who could publish using the web front end - that enabled content to be filed and updated from out of the office, covering court cases and music festivals for example. Before they adopted Drupal, I saw a case at a major US publisher where minor changes to a site layout had to have externally conducted pen tests booked in at great cost and then go to a signoff committee which met every 2 weeks - that's what applying strict backend and frontend separation entails.

Publishing to HTML isn't a new idea - it's how CMS's used to work and wasn't up to the task. Using HTML files as a caching layer as you propose is already available in Drupal but has terrible performance due to the number of variants that a modern site can generate (think about permutations of Drupal Views here) and how that hits filesystem limits and OS architecture. You also have the fun of cache invalidation and recompiling every HTML file which uses some upstream fragment you decide to edit - it's ultimately using the filesystem like a very inefficient version of what a relational database is designed for. Quite apart from the latency, that's why people use CDN's instead for caching static content.

Every piece of software we use has periodic bugs which are potentially catastrophic and need patching - yet nobody is saying we should switch to a pen and paper instead of OSX and Windows. I shudder to think what is going on in router firmware and yet somehow we are getting advice that a business shouldn't use a CMS - it's complete nonsense!

If maintenance is too much hassle, the model isn't to switch to static publishing, it's to switch to SaaS - which is exactly what we see. If your needs are too specific for SaaS, then by definition you are going to be creating a tailored solution and managing that in-house or outsourcing.
I think a big part of it is women just aren't interested in these jobs as much. Not that there isn't harassment, but if you asked most women and men, "do you want to be a welder?", I'm sure far more men than women would say yes.
TBH I've always thought of Go as Google's Java. With some decisions to make developing at super-big-co even nicer, which helps you at google scale.
My rent increased by a whole $50 a month from 2009-2016 and I moved once during that time period. I own a house since 2016.

I just looked up the current rent on the apartment complex I lived in from 2005-2009 in another part of the country. My rent didn't increase in those 4 years I lived there and the current rent is basically the same I was paying back then when you take into consideration CPI inflation.

Two data points, for what its worth.
Anyone know what PSNow/ cloud gaming services use? I’m using it to play some ps3 games and the delay is immediately noticeable when you start playing, but your brain adjusts and it’s not noticeable. Has to be around 300-400 ms round trip
I think "confirmation" here means "additional information that confirms my theory so I can write it up".
Then press enter, and then type in your password.
Isn't QE just injecting more money into the system? How can that not result in inflation, eventually and if done excessively? It's the classic "more money chasing fewer goods." It's not just where the fed pegs the discount rate that drives inflation, it's also the money supply.
Ask a technical question or two and assess the candidate based on their reply.