skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Baldur's Gate was the first RPG I played on PC. Had to play it at a friends place (he had a PC), it was a very intriguing game with the strong characterization and choices you could make in the game. Once I finally got a PC, I bought and spent many hours playing Baldur's Gate 2, which was great. This was all in New Zealand, and ironically I now live in Edmonton, Alberta where Bioware first made them. So definitely interesting to delve into the early days history of the company. Thanks for the nostalgia!
Selling the Miracle Machine
What does your wife sell?
> To me, it feels like if you want to be cool these days, you look down on JS/JS devs.

The true hipster developer needs to be able to sneer at JavaScript with true derision while also having JavaScript be their go-to language for everything. Holding incompatible views at the same time about mostly inconsequential things is, after all, the true essence of being a hipster...
This list could use substantially better editing. "Google Allo" should not be one of the alternatives for messaging, given that Google has announced its shutdown. eBay should be on the list of Marketplaces. And how are Digg and Tumblr alternatives to Facebook?

Ultimately, I don't think it's helpful to most users to throw a smorgasbord of possible vaguely-related alternatives at them. A more useful resource would be to take up the strategy of Wirecutter, in which the best and second-best options are highlighted, with actual explanations and thoughts. I think if you had to sit down and try to explain how Digg is a good alternative to Facebook to the average user, you'd realize how annoyed those users would be when they find that Digg is no such thing.
I've made a few Electron apps, I don't use other cross-platform UI toolkits mainly for these reasons:

- I'm a JS/TS developer, with it I can make CLI apps, websites, Electron apps and mobile apps. This means I can also use the same set of UI widgets I'm familiar with across all platforms, I can't do that with any other native UI toolkit so far, maybe the situation will change with the advent of WebAssembly, but so far JS has basically been the only language capable of providing this.

- I don't think I've ever used a Java GUI app that didn't look like crap and wasn't a game, I've also never made a GUI app in Java, so this is just a guess, but maybe it's just easier to make prettier apps with web technologies.
Yeah, this is basically the reason I feel social media sites are a bad idea. People by definition present different 'faces' to different audiences, and society stays stable because (for the most part) these different sides of people's personality aren't public for everyone to see. Social media shattering all this has definitely led to an increasingly polarised society with increasingly radical beliefs.
I would not be comfortable having an arbitrary personal friend of the CEO sitting in on my important meetings.
To add to this point, virtually all software companies have devs with web dev experience that can be very easily leveraged with Electron. Native app development skills aren’t nearly as prevalent in most organisations in my experience. The success of electron has never been that much of a surprise to me: write once, ship (almost) everywhere, use the team you already have. Often cheaper than upskilling the team as well.
I assume this is due to a web limitation:
Discord has system-wide push to talk (I.e. system wide shortcut) only in the electron app, not in the PWA.
Rethinking Assert with Shouldly
I've bought both the original game back when it was released and the enhanced edition some years ago.

I prefer to play Baldur's Gate in the original engine. Sure there are some annoyances (e.g. small stacks of ammunition), but some mechanics work very differently in the Baldur's Gate 2 engine compared to the Baldur's Gate 1 engine and for me that's a dealbreaker. For example the monster summonings or the weapon skills.

If you've never played the original Baldur's Gate, then you will not be annoyed by these differences though. So if you just want to try the game out for the first time, then surely the Enhanced Edition is a good buy.
It may be tough for people to give advice, because I think your options are going to vary a lot, depending on where you live.

The first thing I'd recommend, though, is that you keep track of all your expenses, if you aren't doing this already. This gives you the starting point for deciding how much money you really need to make in order to live the way that you want. Please keep in mind that expenses can increase as you age: for example, health insurance premiums can skyrocket depending on where you live, and things like hearing aids, expensive dental work, and so on, may not be covered by insurance. You may not want to worry about this stuff now, or maybe you'll get lucky. Anyway, if you track your expenses now, at least you'll have a handle on what you need for the immediate future, barring unforeseen emergencies.

A few years back, my goal was very similar to yours. I started tracking every single expense to figure out how much money I actually needed to survive per year. As someone else mentioned, you can amass a pile of money and live off the income stream from that, provided you trust the "4% rule" or one of its variants. Take a look at these blogs:

http://www.retireearlyhomepage.com/ - guy who worked till about 40 and retired, living off income from his savings

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/blog/ - guy who worked and made a chunk of money, continues to work on his own fun projects that make an income stream

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ - guy who lived a really lean lifestyle with just a small income stream (iirc 4 h/w doing jobs off craigslist) (but then he went to work for a hedge fund, iirc).

Anyway, seems like you want to check out the last link first.

You may also want to read "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.

Someone else mentioned Timothy Ferriss' "Four Hour Work Week". I agree that it can be helpful, but I think he makes it sound easier than it actually is to set up a small lifestyle business. So I'd suggest reading it for inspiration more than anything else. Also it's a bit outdated.

I think maybe what you're asking is this: you don't want a FT job because you don't really need all the money you'd make from a FT job. You'd rather have much more free time, and screw the FT job. If this is what you're asking, definitely check out the retire early extreme guy.

I'm sure you're aware that you might change over time and may suddenly discover a passion for sports cars, a spouse, travel, or whatever. So, if you can squirrel away any extra money, it won't hurt. Just keep that in mind, it can happen.
Is there a way to easily learn how to use this?
The reason Java has been so successful is that avoiding memory errors is far more important than being fast. Once you have removed the possibility of those errors, being fast is still valuable, which is how we end up with people spending so much time optimizing their Java instead of switching to C.

It's more likely that people will switch to OCaml or Rust than ever go back to unmanaged memory. First secure, then correct, then fast.
There is a difference between law and morality and for good reason. There has never been massives groups of people that completely agree on right or wrong. Instead of trying to codify right and wrong, law is about defining how we can all get along despite those differences.

I'm not saying that regulatory capture is not a problem; that would be an absurd claim. But trying to make the law about right and wrong is not the solution.
I don't know, but I'm also interested!
Fun fact: secret societies — and the resultant woes of society — is a central theme in the Book of Mormon.

> ...And it came to pass that they formed a secret combination, even as they of old; which combination is most abominable and wicked above all, in the sight of God...

> ...And it came to pass that there arose a rebellion among the people, because of that secret combination which was built up to get power and gain...

> ...And the regulations of the government were destroyed, because of the secret combination of the friends and kindreds of those who murdered the prophets...
The way I think about it is "the stock market" (by which we mean the total value or price of stocks) is 2 different things.

1. Company financial performance (aka earnings)

2. Multiple at which the stock is valued (aka P/E)

These are two independent features. Investors, for a variety of reasons, may change what multiple they value stocks at. Regardless of the company's actual performance.

This can cause the price of the stock (and usually the market as a whole) to rise or fall, even if nothing changes about economic performance.

Consequently, you can see the stock market deleveraging (the multiple decreasing) even while earnings (somewhat "the economy", ignoring tax impacts) remain strong.
I've never had the chance to see Fugazi, but my friend did bring in The Evens (Ian and his wife Amy) a while ago and I got the chance to play his guitar afterwards. Definitely a special moment in this old punks life, and what sparked my interest in baritone guitars.
Interesting use of Bayesian inference to prove the brothers Grimm were mostly plagiarists
What kind of sick content did they train this model on?
Is it me or does this article seem a bit submariney despite itself?
That video is great. It's short, well organized and after watching it, I feel like I could recreate the project without any further research.
Oh fond times, I bought BG2 the day it was out and the early adopter CD with bonus.

I also spent lots of time scripting the game, like trying to replicate Balthazar IA (the monk spawn of Bhaal that lead one of the last locations in Throne of Bhaal).

Sadly it seems like SCS (Sword Coast Stratagems) does not exist anymore? The IA it introduced is crazy good, though it gets tiring to beat mage and have to stock up on breach/spell-pierces.
Assuming the stuff is actually safe, I've seen 1000MG for $15.
It never fails to amuse me how a worker desiring a better wage is something frequently and deeply mocked here.
Not entirely on topic, but Jane Street (HFT ETF market maker) wrote an OCaml to FPGA compiler

https://www.janestreet.com/tech-talks/ocaml-all-the-way-down...
You can DnD on the fly, but the goal is to have at least two 2h blocks booked before hand so you know there is protected time every day. You can always spend more focused time at your discretion.

This gives you at least 4h of deep work each day, which Cal Newport heavily supports in his book "Deep work" (http://forimpact.org/4-hours-deep-work-day/)

There is nothing worse than days when you are completely distracted and at the end of the day you ask yourself "What did I even do today?". This system prevents that from happening.
At one AI startup, we had what was called "Matthi's Law of Talking Robotics", after one of the founders:

"Tell me you actually understood these rules!"

The startup didn't make it, and its failure may actually have been connected to this insistence on being too smart for its own good. But it also never released half-ass products hurling racist insults or suggesting murder.
You could spend a lot of money lobbying for those laws to go away before you hit $1bn...
Uber also wouldn't be a thing today if they didn't have billions in VC money buying them lawyers and lobbyists, and developing Greyball to help drivers avoid giving rides to people identified as regulators.

Please don't make it seem like Uber's law-breaking is some kind of brave sacrifice protecting mom-and-pop restaurants everywhere.
When I tried out Windows tabbed shell in the Insiders build I found myself using the web versions of Electron apps (e.g. Slack) way more than the apps. They can do everything the app can nowadays (including native notifications), and with tabbed shell, they can appear next in a tab right next to a native app - but with all the benefits of web apps: linkability, hackability through browser extensions, accessibility, no annoying update prompts. And of course only running one browser engine instance. You can even pin them to your task bar like native apps. I feel like on macOS many people install native apps only to have a dock icon. We really overvalue packaged apps
The Worst Tech Trends of 2018
>providing them a shared space where they can meet and share images

Just like houses. Except you can share more than images on those.
Wouldn't memory compression and disk compression resolve those issues to some degree?

Sharing libraries is definitely more efficient but at the cost of isolation and versioning issues. Similar to some of the reason vms and containers are used.

Over time I have come to appreciate self contained apps and deal with redundant bytes at a lower level.
Thanks. Taking a look.
i don't really know anything about this, but my first guess would be that dropping an anchor to the depth required in the middle of the pacific ocean is completely impractical
The email introducing the feature (May 2017) described it as follows:

`Get an inside peek at the Amazon-sponsored university competition to advance AI. The Alexa Prize "socialbots" are in early development and understandably rough around the edges. Help students develop more engaging AI by striking up a conversation and providing feedback. To get started, just ask: Alexa what's a socialbot? Alexa let's chat`

The only interactions students would have access to was interactions that occurred via the chatbot
Looking forward to the many positive comments here regarding this widely-used piece of open-source software.
So what happens when you run this paper's algorithm on itself?
Disagreeing with the law just because it would personally financially benefit you to break it is pretty weak sauce. I think a much stronger argument could be made that many laws — and particularly regulations — fail even at their stated purpose.

There was an article on the front page last week [1] about the total cost to the economy from licensing “professional” work which can clearly be done safely and effectively without a license, for example, hair weaving.

While the direct cost of obtaining licenses and completing the educational requirires (which often provides no actual benefit in increased skill or earnings), is relatively low… If you factor in the cost to the economy of people who aren’t able to work at a more profitable profession because they are restricted from entering it due to the licensing, the cost was extraordinary.

I think any analysis which covers all the myriad misguided attempts government makes to micromanage our lives is going to blow far past 1/100 of laws and regulations being damaging rather than helpful, even when considering the general populace.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18682946
'Alexa has also chatted with users about sex acts' Uh... so? Are they implying that even in the privacy of your own home, with your own property, you should STILL be so neurotically terrified of sexuality that you dare not even speak of it? How crippled by their hatred of human nature is the author?

The real interesting point here is all the people offended by a mindless piece of software. It's really very stunning. Normal healthy human beings only get offended when it's a person making a judgement that affects them in some way. The ability for some sounds coming out of a speaker, when it's known they do not represent any conscious thought of any living person and has no influence or control over ones own life, to offend someone is probably a sign of mental illness in the listener.

Can we go the other direction with this? Will we find people looking up to Alexa as a creative genius? As the most loving parent to ever exist? If an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters generated Shakespeare, I guess we need to ask - are the monkeys then Shakespeare? We might figure not since the monkeys are unlikely to be able to make a repeat performance. But Alexa, oh she would be full of wonders! Once you've totally abandoned the notion that the involvement of a conscious mind is relevant, all kinds of things become possible.

Much science fiction presumes we will engage in grand combat with AI when it demands respect -- it seems we are much closer instead to thrusting it upon them and exalting them above humanity before they've even got the capacity to recognize themselves in a mirror.
What is AI? Your artificial intelligence questions, answered. – Vox
Speaking as someone who definitely doesn't want alcohol banned, this is kind of a specious argument. Bad-for-you-X is not banned therefore bad-for-you-Y should not be banned either, is not really sensible. A better argument, should you wish to produce one, is to describe the societal benefit you get that offsets the potential negative consequences. Or perhaps you can explain how banning does not produce the desired societal effect in the first place (I'm visiting Canada at the moment and it's amusing how legalisation of cannabis seems to have led to a dramatically reduced availability...) I think these kinds of arguments are going to be more effective in getting your message across.
The inside box is poorly located because they can't overlap in this model.

In this case it would be better to just have one detection box, and say 'pet is at door'
we're working on this problem with mendoapp.com

but instead of following "feeds" you follow people, and it queues up links they've shared on twitter
Question: Doesn't the fermentation process destroy some/much of the vitamin C content of the spruce?
I’ve always thought, without any real evidence, that these societies are a way for the upper class to collect dirt on each other before they enter power.
Forget about centralized/decentralized. There is an ecosystem around existing cryptocurrencies. Wallets, exchanges, dapps, etc. All of it wouldn't work use they an SQL table of transactions.
>People are forced to use Javascript

People are not forced to use Javascript since there are a dozen of great LangName->Js infrastructures.

People are not forced to use PHP or other badly designed languages as well.

I wouldn't call Go a bad language due to the subjectivity of the term, I would rather call it ad-hoc language, which is basically a DSL sufficient for some domain, but not very suitable for a general engineering.

Go is a compiled PHP, its rather weak type system and oversimplified nature are suitable and sufficient for webdev for the economical reason. Building something complex in Go is possible but painful, Go doesn't help here but rather impedes making you write your own dynamic type system and other facilities to compensate the language's deficiencies.
Handmade clothing. She runs the entire operation by herself. She also does sponsored health and beauty products.
> The flaw with that argument is that something like 99 of 100 laws exist because, basically, they should.

This doesn't pass the smell test. You actually believe that over the history of the United States that legislatures had a 99% success rate at passing good legislation?

This United States has a history of civil disobedience for a reason and it's part of what makes the country great. The law isn't something to be venerated, it should be treated with respect up to a point and that point ends when the law ceases to be relevant.

Case in point look at how people from the migrant caravans are being treated, ICE and Border Patrol are following the law by the book, can you tell me that law is good?
You mean like WeChat’s Yuan balances? The app where it’s extremely difficult for Americans to buy currency but that is ubiquitous throughout China?

It’s almost like none of these middle-brow dismissals have ever actually experienced a payment problem in another country.
Which are not expected to go inside every house because there could be child abusing ongoing there.
Cat claws at door. Opens door. Cat sits there doing nothing.
Same. And we also have some neighborhood cats that occasionally hang around. We'd need to train the network to recognize which cat is by the door...
Similar effort underway by the USDS in the United States.

Really want to underline how cool the USDS are. They remind me of the Smoke Jumpers who in the 30’s really helped build out the forest fire fighting capability of the government in Montana. It was from that experience that the D-Day invasion ultimately relied on with paratroopers. They are a real crack squad that has survived now 2 totally different administrations so their prospects seem high for the future.

https://v2.designsystem.digital.gov/
> Some might argue whatsapp or signal or Telegram E2E is exactly that. I talk about the email.

These three are not equivalent.

Signal is the gold standard for secure, end-to-end encrypted messaging. The client is open-source, and (at least on Android) builds are reproducible. It's possible to audit the code and confirm that Signal isn't intercepting the messages via side-channel and sending them to Signal's servers, encrypted with a different key. It also notifies you whenever a users's public key has changed (ie, when they switch to a different phone), which protects against someone hijacking your phone number using the telecom system.

WhatsApp does encrypt messages with per-user keys, but it's not end-to-end in the sense that Facebook still manages the keys and could provide you with a compromised key. Facebook also produces the only client, which means that it could easily eavesdrop messages and send them to Facebook's servers via a side-channel. Until recently, WhatsApp also didn't notify you when a user's key had changed. This wasn't a "backdoor" as the Guardian sensationally reported it, but it is a security liability for users looking for secure end-to-end encryption.

Telegram is completely insecure. For starters, group messages on Telegram are sent... in plain text. No encryption whatsoever.
How Complex Wholes Emerge from Simple Parts
What does this mean exactly?

> “James’” is the US English way to do singular possessive proper nouns. “James’s” is British.
Has anyone used the OBJ language family he mentioned at the end as supporting this? It sounds fascinatingly different.
That's an example of something Facebook has control over. If someone wants to fork it, they could, but it wouldn't affect the code Facebook is running. A blockchain would differ in the sense that the community/hashpower could decide to do things Facebook doesn't want to do at which point they would effectively lose control of the chain.

Open source makes sense for companies because they want to share the collective engineering efforts - because often times the code itself isn't the thing being monetized directly. In the case of Facebook it's not the code that is worth billions it's the data they horde. In the context of a blockchain that would mean sharing that data with everyone instead of hording it and acting as a middle-man for advertising, which is very much against the business interests of Facebook or any company with that model.
I don't why this is downvoted. Reminds of me bitter old burnouts at r/programming on Reddit downvoting anything about JavaScript or WASM not immediately destroying JavaScript. Childish behavior from stupid people with big tears is why I deleted my Reddit account.
The Freedom platform is open and lots of the tilelink interconnect. The xore is based on rocket but they have some internal changes that is not open source jet.

The generated RTL is open but that is of course limited.
So like a PWA?
A Year of Q#: Microsoft's Quantum Computing Language
Reddit, apparently.

That doesn't seem like it was the best idea...
> This is mostly why I'm against electron. If electron worked like the JVM and each app shared a runtime, many issues would be solved, including many electron apps running old, and vulnerable versions of Chromium.

On the other hand, requiring a shared runtime has been one the key reasons that a lot of cross platform apps failed in the past. How many times have others decried the fact that they had to install Java or Adobe AIR or XYZ in order to run an app they needed.