skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As I read that paragraph, I thought to myself that the author should read Sabine Hossenfelder's recent book Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray. In that book, Sabine argues quite convincingly that our aesthetic judgements of new theories can mislead us. She says of simplicity,

> This dream still drives research today. But we do not know whether more fundamental theories necessarily have to be simpler. The assumption that a more fundamental theory should also be simpler—at least perceptually simpler—is a hope and not something that we actually have reason to expect.
I've often brought up GPUs while talking to folks, because they're interesting and offer a world of potential.

I have two computers, one with a Ryzen 1950X, and the other an i9 7900X. Both CPUs cost about the same, but the i9 (with avx-512) is close to 4 times faster at matrix multiplication. Yet it is still about 10x slower than a cheaper Vega 64 GPU.

But the folks I talk to aren't generally computer scientists. They're statisticians and academics, mostly. A few have tried, but they haven't been successful.

There are libraries like rocRAND / cuRAND for random number generators.

It's probably possible, and I just need to sit down and really experiment. For the MCMC chains (going on within MC), Hamiltonian Monte Carlo sounds more feasible than Gibbs sampling. In Gibbs sampling, you need lots of different conditional random numbers. You often get these from accept/reject algorithms -- ie, lots of fine grained control flow.
And ideally, each MCMC run has at least an entire work group dedicated to it. You don't want the entire work group calculating a small handful of gamma random number (with all the rest masked). The parameters of the gammas are not known in advance, so they cannot be pre-sampled.

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo is probably much friendly. However, I have heard concerns that the simplectic integrator used needs a high degree of accuracy to avoid diverging. That is, that it needs 64 bits of precision.

GPUs with more than 32 bits are well outside of my budget. Although, I could look into tricks like double-singles for the accuracy-critical parts of the computation.

The simulation I mentioned in my previous comment was using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo. However, each iteration was rather involved, and while much is vectorizable (eg, matrix factorizations and inversions), doing so on a GPU is AFAIK not trivial.
It seems like a gigantic leap in complexity.
Hi Peter,

I am a Canadian citizen in the US on a TN temporary non-immigrant visa. I live with a girlfriend, who is quite interested in marksmanship.

As I understand it, non-immigrant resident non-citizens are essentially barred from owning firearms. This is fine; I don't feel the need to own any. But my concern is about my girlfriend. I have heard it said from some firearms enthusiast friends of mine that, because me and my girlfriend live together, if she owns a firearm and keeps it in our house, this could be considered placing one "in my possession", which would be illegal.

First question: is this true? Does the fact that I am a non-immigrant non-citizen mean that firearms cannot be kept in my house, even if I am not the one who owns them

Second question: If this is true, are there any ways in which my girlfriend could own a firearm without myself being in violation of the law?

If it matters, we're in Texas, although I understand the relevant law to be federal.
If that's the correct meaning, then O.K. My bad.
I mean how does disallowing remote workers in your country make any sense.
Sort of a tangent, but I wonder if there are any EU countries that have mandatory biometric ID cards. After a cursory (5-10 minute) search I found countries that either used to have ID cards but currently don't, used to have biometric ID cards but currently don't require biometrics, or have biometric ID cards that are optional. It does seem likely that in the future some country will, if it hasn't already, concede and mandate ID cards that contain biometrics.

Practically, anyway, GDPR seems like a much more effective measure.
"Weakly typed" means that the type system doesn't detect and prevent all situations whereby a datum is misused as if it were of a different type. Programs may misbehave due to type confusion, running off with incorrect results.

"Dynamic typing" means that run-time values carry type information.

Dynamic typing that checks that type information everywhere and diagnoses misuses can be called strongly typed.

Static and dynamic situations can be weakly or strongly typed.

Ada is more strongly typed than C.

Common Lisp is more strongly typed than someone's one-weekend project whose car function cheerfully accepts an integer-typed value and uses it as a cons cell.
If you use Windows, TumblThree is a good backup option:

https://github.com/johanneszab/TumblThree
The whole point of WordPress is that you don't need to do much coding, so that point is moot. The vast majority of WordPress developers are designers or non-technical people who either don't know how to code, or who can hack a bit of code now and then.

When I make a site for a client I have to balance many options 1) how fast can I do it 2) including how many bits and bobs do I have to add in to even make it work 3) What it will look like 4) will the client be able to update it afterwards. Speed and underlying tech is way down the list.

I generally use Enfold [1] to build client sites. Divi's interface is too complex and slow to navigate. VC is faster, and I have used it on occasion. Gutenberg also has a slow interface. Gutenberg also requires the download of loads of blocks or block packages, which surely bloat the page, and cause confusion. I've tried Atomic blocks [2] etc, which only works well when you pair it with the Atomic Blocks theme. But sometimes I might need a different blocks. So now, you've now got multiple hero sections, each with different parameters, css and coding. That's bloat and inconsistency.

Gutenberg simply doesn't give designers the level of control over existing page builders. Read this comparison of Gutenberg vs Elementor [3]. I don't use Elementor, but the author concludes -- like me -- that Gutenberg is no match for exiting page builders. To paraphrase, he concludes that Gutenberg is for unsophisticated users who are creating single page layouts with low precision.

BTW, I don't know what themes or clients you have, but Enfold allows all the elements to be locked so that the clients can't mess with the layout. It's also very easy for them to login and see the page structure so that they know where they are. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's far better than Gutenberg.

IMHO, instead of finding out what developers actually wanted and were using, WordPress decided to roll its own system, which would be fine if it was optional. But, now that it's core, it's just an inferior, anti-competitive PITA.

[1]https://themeforest.net/item/enfold-responsive-multipurpose-...
[2]https://wordpress.org/plugins/atomic-blocks/
[3]https://createandcode.com/gutenberg-vs-elementor-comparison/
Don’t we already know how to do this? For example, the concept of companion planting — growing plants which behave symbiotically together — is a centuries old idea. The issue is whether we have an economic incentive to.
Yeah, seems the real name for this is supposed to be "All Tasks" as you can see by putting

shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

in the run dialog or address bar of an explorer window.

GodMode is just a nickname it got from some power users it seems.
Right. This was and is really scary and seems to harken back to the days of Senator McCarthy. I haven't seen or heard this happening yet, however.
Okay, so if the planet has done it on its own before, who are we to think we can stop it? Are we gods to command the sea and tides?

On a slightly less melodramatic note, it takes a massive amount of hubris to think that we can do anything to the rock we live on that will affect it in any meaningful way. The worst thing we can do is set our civilization back a couple hundred years.

Earth has been through several mass extinction events and life keeps coming back, we are only the current stage. There is nothing we can do to change the course nature has set.
obviously this dude bought the fomo at $34 and now mad he stuck bag holding. I dare you to explain it otherwise
> As I read that paragraph, I thought to myself that the author should read Sabine Hossenfelder's recent book Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray.

The author is Sabine Hossenfelder :)
>Who do these fools think they were representing

Voters? I don’t mean to be snarky, but while Tweets, submissions and letters may inform the content of bills in democracies, but the counts of these are not numerically representative of much, apart from the feelings of people who feel strongly about an issue.

That said, these laws sound exceedingly stupid.
Unfortunately, that's not allowed on the B-1 visa.
all providers
*not google cloud platform
That's a good point. Is there record of such sudden change before?
Node v11.4.0 (Current)
Indeed. Staff at the hosting service I use for professional purposes have always been very down on WP. My understanding from our various conversations is that for any systems where they were providing some sort of managed security service, it was a time sink to keep everything up to date. For any shared hosting systems where they weren't also managing the security, there would be frequent compromises and then that would get things blacklisted, so potentially other customers using the same shared resources could be negatively affected in at least two different ways. They don't seem to have become noticeably more positive about any of this in recent times despite the arguments about WP security being better these days, which suggests that there is still enough of a problem to be concerned about.
Wow, I had a completely different understanding of everything. Thank you for replying!
They'll double down and blame the government for the ensuing deaths.
Migrating to Wordpress seems like a precarious approach, but a necessary one for many out there who wish to continue what they are doing.

If you are only interested in saving content, then TumblThree is a decent tool (Windows-only):

https://github.com/johanneszab/TumblThree
I read something the other day about the Big Issue experimenting with contactless card readers for their vendors
This is kind of a bullshit double standard. Billionaires and their family jetset around the world on a regular basis. Summers here, winters there. Maybe they have great accountants that account for the income that they accumulate during their extended stay and pay the appropriate income tax, something tells me that's not the case. I suppose I have made this a class argument, but my real point is the way has already been paved.
Sen. Warner calls for US cyber doctrine, new standards for security
The Neural Search Frontier (Activate 2018)
Press releases are material statements; if Intel is lying or being unrealistically optimistic then investors can sue them and likely win.
I fully expect the reality is that nobody is going to care about a digital nomad setting up shop for a month or two. I'm more thinking that there seems to be a good argument for some countries to create something along the lines of a "Remote Work Visa" that would clearly allow and encourage this kind of situation since (at least to me) it seems to be a win-win for everyone involved.
TumblThree is also a decent tool (Windows-only):

https://github.com/johanneszab/TumblThree
At work, yes. DoH will leak corporate internal DNS and lead to the public resolvers getting null routed.

At home, I block all the public resolvers on my router and intercept DNS, tunnel it through a vpn mesh.

For most people at public open WiFi spots, DoH could certainly help.
We don't come close to seeing all the posts here, so if you want us to take a look at a baity headline or some other concern on HN, you need to email us at hn@ycombinator.com. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Someone pinged me about your comment and I've changed the title now, but of course it's too late to make much difference.
Wow. That's an interesting question and something that I've never looked into. Email me as a reminder and I'll look into.
Oh, well, your faith is strong with this one.

But praying for the downfall of your enemy due to their own weaknesses isn't very good strategy leads towards victory, as we all understand it.
Do you see any benefits for a permanent resident to become a citizen?
You can also get VTune as part of System Studio through a 90 day perpetually renewable community support license - https://software.intel.com/en-us/system-studio/choose-downlo...

No talking to Intel's engineers, but kind of cool if you're alright going without a real support channel.
Really.. They had to make the entire article a hyperlink to the tweet?
driving without a seatbelt is not just more dangerous for you; it's also more dangerous for the people around you in the event of an accident, because your body can become a dangerous projectile.

obviously the projectile argument also applies to a motorcycle, but for the most part only the rider is exposed to more risk when they ride a motorcycle.
Masks are a boring, defensive option. We need t-shirts with patterns that identify as multiple wanted criminals and lots of people wearing them at the same time.
A forum dedicated to a single topic is certainly getting less common, yes. I remember the Good Old Days(tm) of finding the best forums for whatever topics you were interested in. These days it's just old.reddit.com/r/whatever. I guess it makes it easier to find things, but less interesting and exciting.
It's a shame that's a scam, it's actually kind of a cool idea.
Brad is very specific about the problems with facial recognition and he generalizes an approach to regulation that seems sound. The argument that the government is always going to abuse power and should therefore not attempt to regulate anything is a rallying cry of politicians who were hired to run for office to stop regulation at all costs. There is skepticism and then there is cynicism. Skepticism serves the purpose of finding realistic solutions while cynicism serves the purpose of finding a reason to justify doing nothing. When someone in government proposes that a problem be solved by doing nothing you can be sure that they don't really work for the people. We can't fix environmental problems by shutting down the EPA, we can't fix public schools by reducing their funding and when a company reaches out publicly to talk about regulating their own industry we can't prepare for the future of that industry by telling them to stay in their lane.
GUN – A Decentralized Mutable and Immutable Graph Database, New Version and Docs
I think that’s a little harsh. The human mind is very good at mixing things up and connecting them together in unexpected ways. I think the author is being genuinely more protective of his own memories than he is of Steve or even his opinion of Steve.
>it takes a massive amount of hubris to think that we can do anything to the rock we live on that will affect it in any meaningful way.

I think the scientific consensus is that we already have, sadly for the worse.
the big difference is that the data is stored temporarily in a human brain.

as opposed to, you know, somewhere in a poorly designed system which gets hacked.

(sorry, apparently joined a chorus)
I'd like to see some real teeth in their implementation. For example:

* Rather than merely forbidding biased uses in their TOS,
an internal team should review relevant source code & use cases of anyone implementing MSFT facial recognition, a'la Apple's app store.

* Build apis, libraries and easy-to-use tools that allow consumers to destroy their face data.

* Increase the concentration of pressure on Amazon by refusing to engage in the race to the bottom. Specifically, refuse to license facial recognition technology to law enforcement, military, or intelligence agencies until such time as they have independent civilian oversight, direct neutral-party monitoring, transparency, and demonstrated accountability for mis-use.

MSFT (and any corporation) is fundamentally untrustworthy. Principles are easily changed or ignored. Instead, they should begin creating institutions, code, and business process that make abuse difficult. Testing tools and APIs are the right idea - more of this approach please.
I don't know if the oath comparison works out so well for development. Let us not forget that each physician is directly responsible for a life every time they see someone. They also have a more direct effect on the success or failure of the procedure as they tend to produce a large portion of the work.

I'd argue few companies ever reach this level of risk, and those that do are so large that the individual contributor cannot reasonably take on that burden of responsibility.

In the example of some Amazon surveillance 'big-brother' software: Max the software dev is just making facial recognition software to the best of their ability. They aren't privy to the motivations, long-term plans, and potential consequences of those decisions.

The oath is always a fun topic to discuss though: In reality it holds no meaning other than to the one who takes the oath. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in malpractice cases I doubt they cite the oath as evidence since all students are essentially forced to recite it.
When someone follows you around constantly, lurking and observing your actions, that's called stalking. And it's illegal.

We are to the point where commercial entities and governments are full-on stalkers. And that should be illegal, too.

Further, it is immoral. There is a fundamental hypocrisy when people are exhorted to autonomy and personal responsibility -- "by your bootstraps", "entrepreneur", "gig economy", etc. -- at the same time they are, with mass surveillance, being left with none of this, in truth. Your every action monitored, measured, standardized, and compelled to conform.

You are left with no agency, save that granted -- left -- to you by the powers that be.

And with everything recorded and stored, seemingly indefinitely, you become self-monitoring, self-constraining. Will this be used against me in a year? Five years? Does one slip or oversight last a lifetime?

Fy the way, do you see them taking action to swing the cameras, and the monitoring, the other way? Even Obama, with ever and ever more secrets and aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers. The police, who have fought cameras and monitoring for years. NDA's left and right, disparagement suits. On and on and on...

And, I've gone on too much, here.

Never mind just the philosophy of the matter; look, too, at how it works in practice!

Do we all want to spend not just our work hours, but our lives, in virtual cubicles?

The post-modern panopticon.
You'd need to have a way to replace humans with machines and do so both flexibly and at-scale

Isn't this something that Elon Musk is working on? I think I read somewhere that one of the reasons his car factory was so expensive to build is because the robots have the capability to do more than just one thing.
this looks like a paid article from some involved party, saying calling it addiction is too much as there is no data backing it up triggers a lot of alarms to me as Gaming addiction is now officially recognized as mental health disorder by the World Health Organization.
I'll be taking another short break and will be back online in about 30 minutes. Thanks.
I used to see my neighbor walking his cat on a leash every morning. It was always an amusing sight to behold, but the cat seemed alright with it. I think the practicality of it varies from individual cat to cat though.
No, my company's lawyer advised for premium processing the I-140 first and then filing the I-485 depending on that outcome. Thank you for doing this again.
Acoustic locators, used to detect planes before radar invented
Behavioral Programming (2012) [pdf]
Apple wanting me to know all special keys by heart and not having ergonomic keyboards is one of the reasons that puts me off.

Plus why do they have to have a microscopic return key on laptops?
From the article: "The law should specify that consumers consent to the use of facial recognition services when they enter premises or proceed to use online services that have this type of clear notice."

So that's what Microsoft really wants. Allowed everywhere, minimial notice, no user ownership of data, and no opt-out.
No. Well, not for shops that have non windows. In the bay area, it is quite common to have a mix of Windows, Mac and some Linux. We are 60+% Mac.
Some countries seem to be fairly tolerant of this type of nomadic work and offer suitable visas to foreigners who don't compete with locals for jobs. It seems to work if you are working for a company that otherwise has no presence in the country.

On the other hand if your employer has a business presence in-country that can be quite problematic for the employer because it may cause them to run afoul of local visa regulations for employees. US companies also can run into tax problems if they make payments to people resident in other countries as this may look to the IRS like aiding tax evasion. (IANAL but have some experience with this issue from the employer perspective.)
You raise an interesting point. It's one thing to be on "vacation" for a month with a computer; no one is going to know how much remote work you're doing. It's another thing to have had a company specifically set you up as a digital nomad who will be working full-time.
it probably takes a lot of hubris to think anyone can possibly overfish the oceans. but here we are. if you have any doubts about it, ask literally anyone who's been in the industry for a few decades.

humanity is headed for very bad things in the next couple hundred years. unfortunately capitalism [and investment-fueled perpetual growth] doesnt see much further than a human lifetime and externalities seem rather inconsequential at those time scales.
It's been discussed here on HN many, many times[0]. Personally, I'm a huge, huge fan. I've written my own version and use it extensively.

I've memorised the periodic table of elements, the poem "Ozymandias", the regnal dates of the English throne, the poem "Clancy of the Overflow", Formula One drivers and teams, the poem "Cargoes", the competitors and partners in the 2018 UK series of Strictly Come Dancing, and more.

Spaced repetition is phenomenally effective when used properly. I have somewhere an academic paper that explains the underlying model, and could probably dig it out if someone really wants it. But it's available on t'internet if you look.

[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=spaced+repetition&sort=byDate&...
“The worst thing we can do is set our civilization back a couple hundred years.”

I'd like to avoid that, thanks.
I can loan you a clue if you need one...
How to create your own vanilla JavaScript DOM manipulation library like jQuery
SPY – Surveillance, Privacy, and You
I like the idea of improving a sense of developer responsibility. But the challenge here is how to you define evil? How would you interpret this oath when building a web browser? Have a blacklist of "evil" sites? Obviously, a lot of issues to sort through there.
Apple has been doing so for a few months at least.
There are 2 interesting facts in this article: 1. They were sued for name/trademark infringement by Roam (global shared living spaces), 2. They were sued for theft of trade secrets by RemoteYear (ostensibly the same business model). The article then talks about a huge % of their revenue was going to those settlements.

I feel bad for the customers who got stiffed on this startup. I don't really feel bad for the founders who built this company though.
They're not missing anything; by regulating hot topics individually they can prevent sweeping GDPR-style privacy regulation.
Is whiteboard interviews a sv thing? Because they seem to be rare in the Midwest? Maybe I've just been lucky. But they seem like an incredibly poor way to interview someone.