skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Leverage the type system? Type systems exists to allow you catch errors at compile time. That is what it's there to do. It's like saying leveraging the compiler to compile or leveraging the cup to drink water.
Types are not implementable as conventions. Use the language, not some failable process. Otherwise we could all write in C using void* as the only type.
the economist publishes articles of extraordinary quality and offers quite a few of them for free. This is not the financial times
This speech made a very strong impact on me as well.

I find listening to the speech even more chilling: https://youtu.be/8CrOL-ydFMI
I think this is where the moral issue pops up. Is handing out bread and circus a meaningful response to taking away people’s agency?
I've done embedded stuff for 25+ years. I find that it's always far better to stick with simple C code. Because it's the native language of the embedded world. It has a lot of good advice on how to write robust code. If needed, layer something like lua on top, but for the most, stick with simple C and proven embedded techniques. The article mentions a HAL. That's definitely a must. But don't get too fancy with trying to do that. Do I keep wanting to use something else? yes. Am I fan of C? No. Is my embedded device really just a scaled down PC with an OS and a MMU and good amounts of memory? use what ever language you want.

Rust is promising, but will never be a good option on low level devices.

I have seen some nice stuff done with Forth
If I depend on library A and B which both depend on the standard library, I have a diamond dependency. How is that bad design?
you can't just exit existing credit contracts. these aren't bonds that could be traded.
Yup, and we went a decade without a good space show.

But not really everything applies. BSG - which I absolutely love - wasn't based on a series of good books, wasn't hard sci-fi, and didn't have a VFX team doing their best to stick to real physics.
See my post way down the bottom, I do mention this. GNU awk also has a lot of useful extensions and builtins so that sometimes it's painful to use a plain Posix awk. But, when you need the speed, it's nice to know mawk is out there.

I'd love to see the mawk compilation technology merged to GNU awk. Or mawk updated with Unicode support and a few of the GNU extensions.

The other item on my awk-like wishlist is CSV support, ie split $1 .. $N by CSV rules instead of just a field separator. I usually end up copying CSVs into postgresql because it is fast and then I can process it very flexibly, but it's a bit heavy for things that could be one line-ers. Also, postgresql won't load malformed CSV, but I suspect awk could be less picky.

There is miller which hits some of these points, but I haven't really grokked it yet and the syntax seems ... awkward.
It is going away … slowly :-)
"We didn't chase the fad of using every tool that was at our disposal". And he's even proud of it, lol
I agree. It super suspicious sounding.
I don't think the concern is other people having different opinions in itself. The concern is that by having preferences that are not represented by consumers in general, it is less likely that you'll find your preferences satisfied by a product on the market. If the mainstream is heading towards a set of standards that are uncomfortable to you, I think it's a valid cause for concern.
POSSIBLE SPOILER

The proto-molecule isn't paranormal, except for one aspect - the FTL communication. It's basically just a species-generic virus with an embedded AI.
Exactly, the point is that unlike existing laws GDPR has a chance of success.

That is awesome.
For context see the CVE[0] and HN discussion[1]

[0] https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=3DCVE-2018-88...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17037862
Time to make some money
It is not NPAPI. It has not been supported since IE 5.5 SP2.
It wasn't over-training at all, it was simply the fact I hadn't incorporated extensive stretching. Once I stretched and my muscles had their full range of motion, that fixed it. (If I was unclear, that was the balance I was referring to above -- of tightness, not of strength.)

I started going to the gym because of that thesis, and then I discovered it didn't work. From what I understand, our muscles are in balance with each other not according to their strength (except in cases of extreme imbalance), but according to the amount of tension our brain signals for them to maintain. This signaling arises from our mental image of the position our body should be in.

For me personally, for example, I was sitting, standing and walking, always leaning slightly back, which my body compensated for with an overly curved lower spine and overly tight abdominal muscles. Standing straight literally felt like I would topple forwards, because I had an incorrect sensation of body positioning. Once I learned to become aware of that, it took me a couple of weeks to actually stand straight, and learn that as the new normal. And this took care of the other problems.

It had nothing to do with the balance of muscle strengths, and everything to do with my perceptions. (Extensive hamstring stretching was also necessary, but not sufficient, to make standing straight possible.)

I'm not saying don't go to the gym -- I love the gym! -- what I'm saying is, if you want to fix your posture, you have to change how use you your body. Stretching can be necessary to unlock tight areas, but lack of or imbalanced strength is not the issue in an otherwise healthy adult.
> And I see the same trend in Machine learning, Big data, AI, Cryptocurrency, Internet of Things, Social networks, Decentralized networks, etc. Everything in life, however trivial or hard, is a nail that can be solved with those fancy hammers. So we can have a tablet juxtaposed on a fridge, a bluetooth speaker integrated to a salt shaker, a subscription model for juicers, and machine learning for all kinds of social problems.

I'm frustrated by this as well. I see these days, especially, junior engineers excited about machine learning analyzing data sets that could be tackled easily with learning the problem space and excel or a jupyter notebook. 90% of the work in analysis problem is, usually, identifying data sources and possibly curating the records to a workable data set. So it really doesn't help much to apply ML off the bat. If normal regression and human inspection don't help, maybe then you can iterate on the problem and try some ML approaches.

So why are junior engineers trained to think this way? Are their professors and guest lecturers excited about these approaches and teaching the students about their favorite hammers?
Everyone is different but S1 of The Expanse gave me more joy than any other show I've watched in a long time.

While S1 did have its fair share of space battles, it was so nice watching something that wasn't all guns and fist fights and did so without having to resort to hours of dull pseudo-emotional monologues and barely relevant flashbacks.

Usually that kind of highbrow writing is reserved for "who done it" style crime dramas. It was refreshing to watch that same formula applied to the sci-fi genre given how cheesy or needlessly "emo" the genre has been of late.
Will Robot Surgeons Ever Be Creative?
How’s the old interview question go?

Using the programming language of your choice, sort the strings in this file and remove duplicates. You have 30 minutes.

sort foo | uniq
To each their own, but I personally didn't find the book characters flat in any way. They're developed just enough for my taste.

But my view is that if I wanted to read a character development story, I'd pick up just about any other genre than science fiction. A romance novel, a crime novel, a drama novel, etc. I like my sci-fi when it's about something else than usual, mundane interpersonal drama that real life is so full of already.
Thank you. I probably have some deep seated issues that I seem to be working with, one of the women I had attracted to had said some remarks (about a third person) about these features and I implicitly assumed that most women looked for those qualities.
Team object in GraphQL discloses team group names and permissions
Force fields are plausible, but FTL (including telepathy and stargates) are what ruins it. However, it's one big exception that almost all space-based sci-fi allows.
I think it's the wording. You say "Seems it's exactly the GDPR to blame", but you could've said "the GDPR is to credit" and it would be equally true. The thing is that those two have different conotations. The first suggests that GDPR is bad (for motivating companies to follow UK law, which is bad), the second suggests that GDPR is good (for motivating companies to follow UK law, which is good).

Personally I would prefer more neutral language. Something like "As a consequence of GDPR, companies have started changing their behavior from X to Y." If you want to give the readers context you could optionally add "Y is already law in the UK, but UK prosecutors have for the most part chosen not to enforce it."
There are 7458 hits for simple code search for "%G-%m-%d" on GitHub:

https://github.com/search?q=%22%25G-%25m-%25d%22&type=Code

Plenty of code to go through and fix.
> If you want to be this pedantic over it

I don't think it's pedantic to point out that many (but not all) people who voice “anti-government” attitudes are fine with particular government interventions.

> it's that they oppose every piece of government regulation, regardless of merits

That doesn't really change the issue; corporations (and even more the only motivation to form them) are products of government regulation.

> so basically everything the government does that isn't unchecked capitalism.

This, on the other hand, is spot on; it's just the idea they it somehow corresponds to the absence of government activity (or even particularly regulatory activity) that is wrong: the service of capitalism is an active, regulatory pursuit of government.
What do you mean? It's not like the ships "stop" when the drive is turned off.
http://prebake.eu/

Block them with your chosen ad blocker.
Modern Education
If you like hard sci-fi books, Iain M Banks "Culture" series is excellent. Excession isn't the first in the series but it's a great standalone adventure that gives an overview of the universe (literally).
Simple async job queue written in golang
I think everyone is misunderstanding this. It is not saying that autonomous cars must stop driving in ambiguous situations. It is acknowledging that in clear emergencies driver inputs can be ignored, but once the emergency is over driver inputs must overrule software.

For example, the car is driving me somewhere, and there is a wreck on the other side of the road. Foolish human nature takes over, I take control of the car to slow down and look at the accident. I am overriding the cars autonomous software. The car in front of me is doing the same thing, but slows down even more. My car senses a collision about to happen, and takes control by applying the brakes, ignoring my input on the gas. Once the clear danger is over, the car must give control back to me, but only if I continue to choose to override its normal operation. Otherwise it will resume driving itself.

This is basically an application of Asimov's "three laws" concept.
The title is saying "companies think they need to do a bunch of stuff because GDPR, but really they already needed to be doing that stuff under existing law".
I've been meaning to start reading the series. Thanks for the reminder and giving an entry point!

EDIT: Thanks for the recommendations! I'm saving this subthread to favourites and will start with one of the books you mention as soon as possible.
I don’t think the current title “internet explorer 0-day discovered” is correct.

An new way to exploit the zero-day was discovered. But not bug itself.

In late April, two security companies (Qihoo360 and Kaspersky) independently discovered a zero-day for Internet Explorer (CVE-2018-8174), which was used in targeted attacks for espionage purposes. This marks two years since a zero-day has been found (CVE-2016-0189 being the latest one) in the browser that won’t die, despite efforts from Microsoft to move on to the more modern Edge.
The sludgy, complex problem of trains and leaves on the line
In the pantheon of tech company misconduct, opting users into marketing emails when they open a support request seems pretty minor (especially if they can easily opt-out).

This is at worst, a trivial annoyance. I don't see how we need regulation to outlaw this behaviour.
Similar accidents happen in the water. Pressure differentials are a constant threat in commercial diving operations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEtbFm_CjE0
Cuba: The untaught lesson on perils of socialism
Right, and it will make accepting the cookies optional if they are just for marketing/tracking.
Vectorised Algorithms in Java
This seems a bit too self-congratulatory to be technically meaningful. What feature did they not use?

From the thread history, it sounds like they provided no way for a userspace debugger to (ask the kernel to) set a hardware breakpoint on a section of memory. That means that when you use gdb and set a single breakpoint on some instruction, gdb must instead fall back on single-stepping the entire program until it gets there, incurring at least four context switches per instruction (program being debugged -> exception to kernel -> switch to gdb -> "nope, not there yet" -> kernel resumes the program for one more instruction). It does avoid the bug by not letting the CPU defer a debug exception until after a syscall (because the only mode you get for debug exceptions is the one that unconditionally delivers it after every instruction), but it also makes breakpoints basically unusable for large software.

First, this isn't an obscure, recent, or Intel-only feature. It's not like avoiding RDRAND or anything. Hardware breakpoints are common on basically all CPUs for exactly this reason.

Second, does anyone actually debug large programs using gdb on OpenBSD? It is hard for me to read this as saying "We're not vulnerable because we have so few production users that we can just not have standard development tools that work reasonably." I know OpenBSD is not the most popular OS, but I didn't think it was that unpopular....
Show HN: Twenty generations of dragons – Web edition
Question: say you know 5 programming languages and 20 UI libraries. If tasked to write an application, you will attempt to use them all in the project?
You made me google it. I hit an article stating about 26 seconds reaction time, in extreme cases up to 30 seconds. Add 1.6 seconds when you're reading a magazine, which seems a bit short to me. This was a study from the University of Southampton, probably done around February 2017.

https://www.zeit.de/mobilitaet/2017-02/autonomes-fahren-auto...
Dammit, please start your post with "SPOILER ALERT "!
Yes but script command on *BSD and macOS doesn't support this. Long long time ago asciinema was wrapping script then doing upload. But it work only on Linux and I wanted it to work for users of other Unix-like systems so here we are.
I'm not sure AT dismisses any research at all.

What scientific research would you present that leads to people adopting better posture?

There's a tremendous amount of work on biomechanics, of course, but from what I know that tends to be descriptive rather than normative, or look at parts in isolation and not really be helpful at all for an otherwise healthy human being looking to improve their posture.

If you say AT is "alternative", what are you proposing is the evidence-based practice it is alternative to? Because unfortunately I'm not aware of any.
Why? To reinforce the browser monoculture that is getting worse and worse? Competition is good, even if some of the options aren't perfect.
You're speaking of real history, not the watered down version that gets taught to school children.

Unfortunately, without concerted effort, the public will willfully reject an alternate history if it's more nuanced. Exhibit A, who invented the telephone?
In that case 99% of sci-fi would be classed as "paranormal". Be it warp drives, replicators, holodecks, teleporters, deep space communication platforms, shapeshifting lifeforms / changelings (DS9), ascended lifeforms (SG1) / the Q (TNG), aliens that drink lifeforce (Atlantis), artificial lifeforms, cold fusion bombs / red matter (or pretty much anything from those shitty Star Trek reboots). And lets not forget time travel.

I think it's also worth remembering that the "fi" part of "sci-fi" actually stands for "fiction" and not "factual information" :P
> And the author's solution is to replace that one line with this:

Which does not do what the author wants it to do.

volatile auto device_registers_ptr = reinterpret_cast<DeviceSetup*>(DeviceControlAddress);

'decltype(device_registers_ptr)' yields 'DeviceSetup* volatile', when clearly 'DeviceSetup volatile*' was intended. Insert some witty rant about programmers being attracted to complexity here.
> If this show gets cancelled, this will be a huge blow to [...] efforts to keep people interested in realistic space exploration.

Out of curiosity, are you basing this on anything or is it just your feeling?
> And for the life of me I can't understand why people use the Facebook app.

When I last used it, it just felt less clunky than opening it in a mobile browser tab (Android). I bet most people who do use the app would agree. A mobile browser's address bar is also kind of ugly, so apps often just feel more 'immersive' and therefore 'better'. The ultimate reason however is probably because Facebook is somewhat good at marketing and managed to sell their apps to users better than the mobile version of their site. There are probably more reasons at hand too but I can't remember anymore as I now use neither.

> The mobile web page loads faster

Not really in my experience. Also, apps tend to have more support for gestures than mobile pages. Instagram is probably an easier example. It's more swiping, and less precise tapping. Browsers are also kind of yucky to load if you have many tabs open (Brave seems to be better with this though). Scrolling in apps can often be somehow more pleasant.

The gap between mobile pages and official apps has probably narrowed, but I don't think it's quite correct to imply that the mobile page is always better for everyone (especially those who are still enjoying the 'rewards' of Facebook).

Do you use the Google Maps with its app, or in a browser?
I think the scope differences between HIPPA and GDPR, as well as the specificity of some of the language used, are key factors in why someone might disagree with GDPR, but not HIPPA.
Could not agree more. I still wonder what their motivation is to stay together and make each decision that puts them in ever more dangerous situations, that part was poorly developed.

I've been skipping every Holden/Nagata scene for the entirety of this season, it's pure filler and so utterly tedious to watch, excluding it entirely would have caused no damage. If it is supposed to help explain the crew's motive, well, it doesn't help with that at all. I'd have thrown myself out an airlock in preference to remaining aboard with such utterly wooden personalities

Would love to see a lower budget breakout series of Avasarala just doing her ninja politics stuff -- she is the main reason I kept watching at all. But perhaps that is just the corner of me that misses Babylon 5 :)
Phishing Collage Technique
"Player of Games" remains my favorite. IIRC the Culture novels can be read in any order.

Also the unabridged audiobooks are fantastic.
Well, it’s says a lot about their company values though. That you can take and extrapolate on anything else they might do or not do
Yes. I was shocked when I logged into my dad's Google account that Google recorded every app that he opened and closed and the times.
She's one of those actresses like Jeanne Moreau...she could read the phone book and I would be entranced.
Well I'll add it, but it's not a spoiler, it's just my idea.
Is there a way to tell what version of electron an app is using?

These aren't old versions - 2 months in one case.
I’m not limiting the term, that’s what the paper is about. And why I wanted to know more about your claim. Might be a good idea to finish the paper now ;). The paper is actually very interesting.
I'm not so sure when it comes to machine learning. Those techniquss represent such a fundamentally different approach to pattern recognition that it enables the tackling of whole classes of problems that couldn't previously be sufficiently automated with hand-coded heuristics and straightforward statistics.
I too miss the self-contained-episode quality of TV shows. It gave viewers the ability to jump in and leave at any point in the series and still be able to follow what was going on (usually). And is it just me or do these modern serials just seem to stretch everything out to fill the season? I think that's part of what makes them un-re-watchable, because in most episodes basically nothing happens.

Some shows demonstrated that you can balance long-term plot arcs with the self-contained episode format really well, and I wish more shows would do that. One that comes immediately to mind is Stargate.
The difference here is that the story of Expanse is rather mediocre and the acting is partially just bad.
I had the feeling like I had to chew through the first season. Not sure if I should even bother with the second.

VFX is not enough. At least not for TV.
This is very unfortunate. Despite the negative press snaps is getting, I was planning on releasing a commercial product as a snap. One of the key reasons for doing so was that users had control over what the app is allowed do (via plugging/unplugging slots), a feature flatpack lacks as far as I can tell.

However this changes everything. Disallowing owners from controlling their software and hardware is not something I want to encourage. We have enough of that from Microsoft (and to some extent GNOME Shell developers).

Does Flatpack also force developers' intentions upon their users? Or is AppImage my only recourse?

I want a solution that doesn't mistreat customers.