skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No word that he was a psychopath and a Corporate bully, Instead we have a hagiography for Steve.
Every article on this topic has the same presumption: that we'll continue to have a power grid. But the grid kinda sucks.

Having lived for 2-years on a school bus with an off-grid solar system, I don't see the advantage of investment in the grid.

I question whether, in 2018 and beyond, the advantages of the grid (sending power where there is none, borrowing power from where there is some) are better than very small batches of battery storage.
Show HN: Open source, end-to-end encrypted task management for activists
It's called "Pursuance" and it's built using React, Go, and Postgres.

This project was envisioned by Barrett Brown, whose 2011 crowdsourced investigative journalism endeavor, Project PM, was so successful in uncovering corruption (involving Palantir, WikiLeaks, and the DOJ) that he was targeted by the state and was sentenced to 63 months in prison.

We won the National Magazine Award when in solitary confinement.

In this Wired article[1], Barrett says that he, Project PM, and Anonymous could have been even more successful if they would have had better tools.

Pursuance is that tool.

We just began a closed alpha, with the focus being on improving the usability and nuances of how the features work for users trying to use this for real-world (but not-yet-super-high-security) use cases, so not all the encryption has been added yet.

Main repo: https://github.com/PursuanceProject/pursuance

Our Kickstarter, which ends today: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/85883596/barrett-browns...

The Kickstarter video includes our clearest explanation of what Pursuance is and what we're trying to enable.

I'm the tech lead and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

P.S. We're not rolling our own crypto, of course; the libraries we're using have been audited by a 3rd party and/or were written by a cryptography expert (like https://github.com/dchest ).

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/12/anonymous-barrett-brown-free-r...
By being unable to use his warchest on a changing market. As an example: missing the smartphone boat twice (once with Windows Mobile vs Symbian, and once with Windows Phone vs iOS/Android). Another example: Microsoft search / Bing.

Microsoft kept Office relevant though, made Azure relevant, and are reinventing themselves from a proprietary to a data company (like Google, Facebook, and Amazon) who also do a lot of open source (like the previously mentioned companies). But I suppose Nadella takes credit for that.
>Somehow, after all of this, fans of the thread still remained adamant that no wrong had been committed. “We do it everyday to celebrities. No difference. Outrage culture is so dumb,” wrote one Instagram user below a BuzzFeed News post on the story.

It does seem no different from what society seems to be ok with towards celebrities. I have always been uncomfortable with the idea that because someone is on a TV show, society is ok having photographers follow them around 24/7 and reporting on their personal lives.

We have set a poor precedent.
Ask HN: What are the best Sci-Fi books you've ever read?
I've been reading non-fiction almost exclusively, and now I'm looking to get into reading more fiction. Can you recommend something awesome?

I'd love to read something fun, lighthearted, and enjoyable (as opposed to gritty dystopias or super hardcore hard scifi). To relax, explore cool worlds and likable characters, and encounter some cool ideas. I'll be extra happy if it's available on audible.

Things I liked: Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, The Martian, Ready Player One, Mistborn.
You know, I totally agree.

I think everyone missed that the whole point was to provide a counter-example to "far-away restaurants with large parking lots" by describing my personal experiences with the exact opposite. Just because someone thought it was a big enough problem to get the city involved doesn't mean that I personally felt the same way, I simply quit giving them my money and called it a day. Well, also got rid of my truck (that I didn't drive for six years) so I had somewhere to park the work car that wasn't on the street because I didn't want to go get a resident parking permit -- problem solved without involving taxpayer funds...
Will Robots Simplify Your Life?
> The meaning of 'formal' really depends on the context

Yes, I say, "in the context of proofs."

> That immediately forces the question: which machine?

From Aristotle and up until Turing (exclusive) the answer was no machine, but the mechanical application of formal -- i.e., "of form" -- inference rules. That this mechanical process could actually be carried out by a machine was only realized later. Today we know what "mechanical" means, and the word is better understood than "formal" in this context, so it's easier to explain that formal just means mechanical.

> Outside of automated theorem proving and checking, very little done in math or theoretical CS actually meets the definition you gave for 'formal'.

That's right, but mathematicians know they're working informally. It is true that on occasion you do see a mathematician use the word formal for an informal presentation and proof, but I think that mostly happens because they hear the word from logicians and computer scientists and may not know what it means. Given that the word in this context originated together with the concept of computation, computer scientists should know better.

> If you relax your definition of 'machine' to include 'humans with mathematical context following a sequence of steps', then most proofs can be 'formal', depending on how much context the proof assumes of the reader.

If the derivations are not done formally then they are not formal even if a human does them. We certainly do hope that most mathematical proofs have formal counterparts, but unless you provide the formal proof, or make the relationship of your proof to a formal one obvious, then you are not providing a formal proof.

> the better definition of formal is not mechanical, but are we attempting to abstract the problem down into a collection of fixed rules, and it's clear the author has done so.

I don't know if it's better or not, but it is not the one that has been used for centuries. For example, in the book Formal Logic (1847) by Augustus de Morgan, he writes, "This logical truth depends upon the structure of the sentence and not upon the particular matters spoken of." In this particular case, the discussion of time machines in the construction of the proof clearly was not related to the structure (form) of the presentation but on the particular matters spoken-of, hence it is informal.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic#Logical_form and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_form

> 'Is there another definition of 'formal' that would be reasonable, even if it's not the definition that I am most accustomed to?'

I don't think it would qualify as a defintion, but clearly some people mean precise or mathematical when they say formal. This mistake is merely annoying and not serious. The reason that's annoying is that the words precise and mathematical are both more accurate and simpler/more familiar.
I'm really into taking notes -- both written and typed. The tactile part of taking notes helps me register things better and the notes themselves greatly help with recall. For written notes, I use Peter Pauper notebooks (https://www.peterpauper.com/) and Staedtler pens (https://www.staedtler.com/intl/en/products/products-for-colo...). I'm a sucker for good stationery. For typed notes, I use Google Keep on my phone and the Notes app on my Mac.

Lately I've been using screen recording to create video notes. I developed an app called Outclip (https://checkoutclip.com) with my buddy. Although the app is meant for a different purpose (bug reporting) I use it to screen record as I'm doing things (like configuring an AWS service for instance) in case I have to repeat the steps later.
ooh, this sounds wicked cool! unix pipelines and unix tools is what made me like computers.
The following video is probably reasonably well known, and I wish that I had a more intelligent commentary than to say that it blows my mind, but it does I think bear out the point of expressivity rather well.

https://youtu.be/a9xAKttWgP4

Conway's Game of Life in some 50 characters of APL.
I actually started using the GOPATH structure for all my repos after discovering three full checkouts of github.com/torvalds/linux [1] on my drive.

[1] I know it's not the official upstream remote, but I find this one the easiest to remember.
It definitely takes passion. Commercially, there isn't a lot of chance that the game will earn more than 7 years worth of earnings...
GP suggested a command queue. So the answer is that then you send another message to modify the vertex or however else you would prefer. I would imagine that VBOs could be represented as additional files and then they could be mmapped.

A file is a byte stream with some metadata - i.e. permissions. With such an API you can really do anything.
How do you find OCaml to be a more practical language? Interested in trying it out.
If you take a look at the code for HN written in Arc, you can compare it against other Lisp dialects. I point to this as it is possibly the most widely-used and familiar application to most here written in Arc.

https://github.com/wting/hackernews

This is a great place to start with understanding Arc, as the jump to Anarki (an Arc fork) will make more sense as it comes bundled with News - a Hacker News style app - which is fun to play with if you have experience with HN and want to try a variation of this site.
Eventually, it will happen. Teenagers will be able to cheaply go anywhere they want without learning how to drive. When they get their first apartment and the one without a garage or parking spot is several hundred dollars cheaper, they'll probably not bother getting a car.

Sure, many people are set in their ways. In the long run, that doesn't matter.
> But he is also the person who proved what is universally taken as granted: Plants are alive.

I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about. Farmers have known that plants are alive for a very long time. Nowhere on the Wikipedia page is anything close to this being suggested.

The work he did that is described on the Wikipedia page says that he found that plants have an electrical nervous system, but I don't think that's what makes modern people think that plants are alive, so I wouldn't exactly call this something that's taken for granted.

If there is some brief controversy in the 19th century where they decided that plants couldn't be alive due to a lack of an electrical nervous system (The discovery that animals had electrical nervous systems happened in the 19th century), I have not heard of it, but perhaps this is what you are referring to? It sounds interesting if that's the case. Can you expand?
The cost to get up and running. You're taking hundreds of millions in capital expenditure for an engineering R&D lab. Double that if you want to actually produce something.

Compared to a pile of consultants, laptops and whiteboards. Software is cheap to make.
Idiomatic Python – Looping Approaches
Reminds me of [this game](http://tobiasgame.co.uk/about.php) which also took a quite bit(13 years).

They also have video presenting great tips for prolonged development such as ‘different mechanic for every rooms’ and ‘stick to your original plan’.
There are perhaps some things worth considering, much of it in wild opposition to other studies, but I’m going to say that this type of prognostication without myriad examples of success in application is probably dangerous to be considered as expert advice to the average disinterested person.

If you are interested in an example of a healthy person that eats this way, check out durianrider on YouTube. Dude lives on a bicycle though. It is actually hard to get fat on just sugar, because such a small amount produced satiety so quickly - unless you also wary regular foods like starch and fat along with it, and then you are going to explode.

So I’d say that he’s not wrong, it’s just not practical for most people. Honestly, if you’re fat, and I once was, the easiest and most reliable way to lose weight is to cut out all fats. You’ll be amazed how much that reduces total calories without affecting the way you feel.
Same here in Norway. I remember being jealous of people in the US with a flat local rate. We paid by the minute for everything, even more for "long" distance. My father got rather upset when we got a phone bill of 5000 NOK back in the day because I had downloaded something from a BBS in Bergen from Oslo.

Funny how things have reversed, now we are the ones with unmetered fast internet and the US has datacaps and whatnot.
You didn't answer the question if SBCL infers specialized list types. I'll assume the answer is "no".

In that case, everything extracted from a list is T and you'd have to get that warning you mentioned above.

Such warnings would very likely be false-positive, unless Common Lisp programs are buggy as hell most of the time—assuming that would be the real FUD, no? Therefore, the non-FUD conclusion is to expect a high rate of false-positive warnings in typical list-using programs.

TBH, I suspect those false-positive warnings you mentioned aren't bona fide warnings, but some kind optimizer stream-of-consciousness log stream.
This relates to the Presenter's Paradox, where the presenter has seen both options while the recipient sees only one. As such, they prefer different things.

One study even quantified it[1]. For example, they found that people perceived the value of an iPod at $108, while an iPod with plus a free music download was valued at $86. Side-by-side, the choice is obvious, but individually humans tend to evaluate bundles based on some average rather than a sum.

This has immediate, practical applications for us in everyday life:

* If you're going to buy someone an expensive gift, don't add any extras or bonus accessories.

* If you're sending out resumes, mention your most relevant experience without padding it out with less relevant ones.

* If you're up for a review, "I fixed serious issue X" will make you seem more valuable than "I fixed serious issue X, and this unaligned icon on the web site"

[1] http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/williams/Mar_3503/MAR_3503_Ho...
Yeah, that's one of those memorable moments.

Here's another one, the chair throw incident:

"At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: "Just tell me it's not Google." I told him it was Google. At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."" [1]

If you scroll up on there, you can read how very wrong he was on the iPhone, Linux, and FOSS.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#Google
“Making money on the back of comedians” implies that comedians are somehow being exploited or taken advantage of.

The actual accusation from the article is:

“But Jamie Masada, the Laugh Factory’s owner, has a different perspective on Netflix’s growing library of stand-up comedy specials. Seeing the digital giant as a bit of a comedy vulture—essentially swooping in to sign comics after they’ve built huge followings on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook—Masada said Netflix is more about making big bucks than boosting careers, because it ignores comedians who lack social media followings.”

Apparently, Netflix recruits popular comics rather than unknown comics. The gall.
That's true.

But that use case will be solved too. Automated vehicles will come in all sizes. Families aren't the only groups that like to travel together.

If there is a market for such vehicles, somebody will offer it.
So is it a good way to lose weight :)?
That's... not what bike-shedding means (which the wikipedia article you link to should have made clear).

The "computer equivalent of bike-shedding" would be arguing over indentation style[0] and tabs vs. spaces, or over naming conventions[1].

I'm not sure that the thing you're pointing out has a name, actually, but it also shows up in the form of endlessly reimplemented canonical example apps like todo lists as well as the examples you cited.

A related phenomenon - I think - is Zawinski's law of software envelopment[2], as "reading mail" is the kind of feature that meets the same sweet-spot criteria.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentation_style

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention_(programming...

[2] http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html
Really? For a family of 4 or 5? Does lift even have car seats for children? We still need a minivan, and we pay 300 a month + gas when our car isn't paid for (which it is). We generally use used cars that are a decade old to save money.

How is uber cheaper?
I hate to admit it. I tried everything, maybe except for org-mode. My favorite - which I do a bunch of stuff in real time and which generates money for me is: Microsoft OneNote thick client. Supreme user experience. Second best: tables in Microsoft Excel.

sigh I am supposed to be a die hard open source guy. Well well maybe npt so much at the end of the day. Corporate life is all proprietery high end Oracle, SAS, IBM and Microsoft.
The reference implementation is MobWrite:
https://code.google.com/archive/p/google-mobwrite/

The project got put to one side when Google Code shut down, but I dusted it off last month and everything still works.
Mid 90s, summer break. I had dialup to a BBS/ISP hybrid from which I could telnet to my university account. I randomly found the source code for uqwk on the server. It compiled. It worked. uqwk built a file of new mail and usenet posts. Then I zmodemed them back to my computer where I wrote some software to split them up and read them at my leisure. Not sure if I ever get posting working or not.
> you were likely broken (or using a specialized build tool that handled this for you)

Or you're using the isolated-GOPATH trick.

$ mkdir -p .gopath/src/github.com/foo
$ ln -s ../../../.. .gopath/src/github.com/foo/bar
$ GOPATH=$PWD/.gopath go install github.com/foo/bar

For example, this is one of my Go projects where you can unpack the release tarball anywhere and `make && make install` just works: https://github.com/sapcc/swift-http-import
Ask HN: How to disclose something without disclosing it?
A while back I came across an interesting problem that I've been thinking about off and on. Let's say I am thinking about taking a job working for a large company, but in some relatively dangerous part of world. I don't think I would take the job unless, among other things, I knew that the employer had kidnap and ransom insurance for its employees. However, some K&R policies prohibit the employer from telling the employee that the coverage exists. Is it possible for the employer to prove that they have the insurance without telling the prospective employee?
Can access iOS Notes from iCloud on any device.

iCloud's website does not work on Android devices. You can't even use "Find My iPhone" on a friend's device if you lose yours.
> I get that it's trendy to shit on India especially by Indians itself

Patriotism is much more than vapid flag waving and silencing criticism. I know your heart is in a good place but I ask a little more good faith from you.

A close analogue asking WhatsApp to self censor is that of the Govt asking women to cover up more to avoid sexual assault. Going by your comment history I am sure that's not a solution you would like.

Its the years and years of band-aid that has gotten us here. Temporary fixes will continue to perpetuate the problem just as it has in the past. Things will get a little better and then we will forget about fixing the problem.

Regarding trigger happy lynch mobs -- The more we yield to problem children throwing tantrums worse they become.

WhatsApp has done noting wrong here, I don't think the burden of the fix should be on them. Detecting fake news would be a burden. Rate limiting as you suggested would be less of a burden, unless that is what gives them competitive advantage
I have tried several free isposable email services, and keep coming back to 33 mail. It is simple and reliable, unlike many others. It also is least likely to be blocked my many website.
Link here to signup
http://33mail.com/hy6z0m
Ask HN: Getting promoted to middle management
I have started working in a new company a few months ago as a SW Engineer, I have six years of experience from my previous employer, the company is relative big size ~1k employees.

I am having a hard time getting along with my direct manager, his management capabilities might be good, but on a technical level I am some degrees above him. The reason this is a problem is because I feel that my ideas and the new projects I try to implement are being pushed down.

I really suck at office politics, is there any advice I can get how to try to overcome this issue and be able to push forward my ideas, this is becoming annoying as I feel I won't be able to develop and advance in the company. I do have a good relationship with the manager above him, but I don't interact with him very much.

Thanks
I separate notes into two categories "Actionable" and "Reference I may need in the future"
For Actionable I use "OK Google, note to self" to send to my email and then use a tool I developed to manage Actionable email/todo/links/files etc.
For "Reference I may need in the future" I use Evernote and add keywords I may use for searching
discussed as indentured or as not an issue?

It depends on the country of birth of the H1b visa holder. So its pretty much like indentured labor if your co-worker on H1b was born in India. "got green card" is a loaded term. The process is not easy to understand for those who dont go through it. And if you weren't born in India or China, it can be hard to understand the wait times (15-70 years) for green card applicants now.
WordPress vs. ProcessWire
Am I understanding right that Arc is a Lisp-1, like Clojure?
Clever ambiguity, or mere coincidence?
And I’m saying, yes, I know, I understand, I used to say the exact same lines before I switch to a laptop and just started doing it. Your words read like a man dying to get out of the office but blaming someone else for why you can’t. I’m not saying this to be mean, I’m like trying to talk to my former self and convince him, hey, i can do this!
It would be trivially easy to support that claim about the wine. You just do a blind vertical taste test.
Nintendo Labo contest winners include a Zelda piano and solar-powered accordion
This was discussed a lot before (according to Queinnec book at least) but people were worried that too much overloading would yield confusing code and bugs.
Odds are daunting that it is a green and safe source of energy?
Just thinking about this for a minute or so, I don't think there's a way of allowing /only/ one door to remain open-able ('unlocked') that solves the problem. Either both must lock/unlock in the same action or there must only be one door to the restroom (that is, duplicate the resource).
That's why I watch porn
C_void's question is ill formed. What do you mean by "cheap" and "permanent"? What constitutes "mass storage"? "[A]chiving" suggests durability over time, but how much time? What sort of access time would be acceptable?

The lede paragraph provides some context but is not explicit. What is the application contemplated?
Oh, the irony...
I almost never click on a link where the title is the same as the domain name, e.g., "The Story of Foo" where the link is "thestoryoffoo.com"

Such links seem to me to be usually publicity-seeking rather than information-providing.