skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are many kooky economic experiments in crypto right now that are not only 1) Not failing miserably, but 2) Are growing steadily. Decentralized financial products like MakerDAO and Compound Finance are very interesting. Augur is a prediction marketplace that was pilloried for having some 30 users per day when it launched, but now has around $2 million in open interest.

It is very early days, and it is quite complicated to build new products and businesses given that the tooling is poor, the crypto networks are slow, and many mainstream technologists take endless pleasure in shitting on crypto and cheering when prices fall, but progress continues.

I think cryptocurrencies and smart contracts have earned a seat at the table for disruptive technologies of the 21st century, along with cloud computing, AI / ML / big data, and smart phones.
What in the 80s is brought to mind for you? I don't understand how you're singling out that decade.
Ah, just now noticed this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18802763
If you scroll up, above the things that are specifically for 2019, there is a section for 2020 - 2050 containing the bullet point:

- By 2020, there will be a new World government.

I wonder what is going to have to change in 2019 for this to be true? Are we already there?
I love the idea of having bacon and eggs for breakfast in the morning. The reality is though that bacon and eggs take time and effort while pouring a bowl of cereal is quick and easy.
How to test your React app
> from the top of my head, marketing gimmicks at some event, air gap jump and/or data exfiltration

data distribution over normally visual broadcast channel (TV -> mobile device, billboards -> mobile)
If your website doesn't add several additional entries into window.history just by scrolling, you're among the elite
You want them to get a heart attack instead? Lots of cultures have good breakfast that don't rely on sugar or cholesterol. Look to the Mediterranean/Middle East/Central Asia/Far East.
Thank you, how did you find that link? I can't find it from either the pricing page or the plan types... Even the call-to-action is misleadingly titled "get started" while the button next to the login says "request a trial".
I think he overestimates the impact this will have on the Eurozone. I mean, Brexit is a B.F.D. for Britain, but the continent? I'd like someone to explain that to me in detail.

Britain might start to kick out Europeans, but European countries are probably going to try and keep British retirees and professionals. A chunk of the financial industry is going to migrate out of London.

European products would get far more expensive, sure, but are British people going to actually dump them? I mean, if you're used to good Italian olive oil, French cheese and German cars, it might take a few years to switch to canola oil, American cheese and Geely-ies.
Ask HN: Scolded on a job interview for not namespacing
I went on a job interview for a Quant position.

I wrote out some c++ and I used namespaces like: std::cout, std::merge, etc. I did not write: using namespace std;

The interviewer just lost it. Went on this rant that "how can programmers now write such confusing code", "just name space it ahead of time".

And he was just plain mad. Uncomfortable mad. I tried saying "what if functions have the same name"..he spouted off about "how compilers are smart enough to know what the programmer wants based upon parameters provided and why would any programmer use functions with the same name and how so many people he talks to don't know how to code but call themselves coders...and why didn't I write my own code to merge 2 files. Did I need to use the std.."

What does everyone else do?

using namespace std;

cout << "blah" << endl;

merge(...);

or

std::cout << blah" << std::endl;

std::merge(...);

and I always use std:: instead of writing my own. I mean "time tested" versus "have I had enough coffee...". In 25 years of c++ I always used std:: before re-creating.

Has anyone else had a horror interview like this?

Edit: I didn't shout or get mad. I practiced my Buddhist learning and turned the other cheek without emotion.
Please don't blame "us" / "the species" for the decisions and objectives of the 0.1%. That's putting the blame on everyone, while most people don't have any influence on the worldwide direction things are going in.
China's growth in the past 30 years largely depended on foreign direct investment and export. With current dispute on trade escalating to an all out trade war, the prospect in 2019 would be even more dimmer. If China invades Taiwan and further disrupts global supply chain, a such slower global growth could be expected.
So by the same token, would you say banks don’t generate any economic value?
You bring a good point! So I wonder if there is a way to come back to that more with buying foods from a store. Buy things that are preserved without sugar or similar preservatives? That may help?
>What other options provide good public schools, homes that are pleasant to be inside, and a clean/safe/well-functioning environment?

Try traveling to Europe or Japan sometime. They have dense cities with nice homes, great public schools, and a clean and safe environment. Japan in particular has basically zero crime. Cities in Europe are walkable and bikeable, and it's commonplace to have residential units on top of commercial space so that people can easily walk to a nearby cafe or restaurant or grocery store. You see this in NYC too to an extent.

>I hate sprawl and fast-casual architecture as much as the next guy, but it is the only thing that can grow at scale under our economic and political reality.

Continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Sprawl doesn't scale, that's the whole problem: you're just going to get worse commute times, more traffic congestion, etc. It isn't going to help, it's going to hurt.

>So of course we are going to see a large and growing segment of the population in the only kind of housing it's both legal and profitable to build.

Then you need to change the laws.

>Commuting 1-2 hours each way is something transit riders do; for drivers it's very rare.

Here in the DC area, it's extremely common.
Of course, but they're talking in the language that they prefer to use. Why should they speak in English with other Spanish speakers when they're more comfortable in Spanish? Now it'd be a problem if they tried to speak to a random cashier in a grocery store in Spanish.
Interesting how several of the 2009 predictions were very wrong at the time but now are coming true in 2019. Perhaps we can look at the 2019 predictions to see what 2029 might look like.
https://laughing-stalk.blogspot.com/2016/12/an-open-letter-t...
There won’t be a report until we get closer to reelection. He’ll drop it then.
https://seedlawyers.com/ "A platform dedicated to helping early-stage startups find legal help" was posted to Show HN a couple of times, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17801136 Can't tell (not affiliated) if they're still in beta.
Um, I don't see your point here. You swapped a 30-minute commute for a 30-minute commute....
I use moon reader pro on Android. It allows annotating and highlighting pdf text. I am not affiliated except as a long time user.
Towards a New Cyberpunk Reality (2006)
Digital Marketing Specialists (u/digitalmarketingDE) – Reddit
> Oh wow these are way off. I wonder what went wrong?

Ray Kurzweil went wrong, they're his predictions.
>>Cables connecting computers and peripherals have almost completely disappeared.

I am still dubious of the above statement.
I assume you mean the BSEG section is included?

Off the top of my head Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Moldova, Turkey, Georgia, Northern Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Belarus, Romania and Bulgaria are all there anyway.

I think I've still missed a handful but I'm pretty happy with my European flag knowledge apparently from that.

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank the Eurovision Song Competition apparently for my education
Reading the "Add proper programming and debugging interfaces" section it sounds like the author might have been using factory burned uCs. They definitely burned the chips before assembly at least.
I'm going with the herd immunity for my personal stuff.

The calculation is basically:

their_waste = likelihood enough people have the mitigations enabled (not tech enough to disable them) so that "bad people" will not waste time developing exploits for the tiny number of unprotected people like me (herd protecting me)

my_risk = likelihood of "bad people" actually finding me and being able to run their code

their_reward = likelihood of them actually finding something meaningful and valuable in the memory they can manage to dump

oops = (my_risk * their_reward) / their_waste

I am assuming my_risk and their_reward to be low and their_waste to be high, so oops will be acceptably low (hopefully :p)

Wish me luck!
Yup. The word you’re trying to remember is a ‘deflationary’ currency. It encourages hoarding of the currency, rather than spending it.
People want to believe we are capable of anything as humans

A depressing thought I've had is that maybe we will reach a point where we can go no further due to biological limitations. Think about monkeys, they have primitive tools but are effectively stagnant.

It's an objective fact our progress has slowed

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601199/tech-slowdown-thre...

A monkey can't understand advanced mathematics. What if there are certain things about physics and the universe humans will never be able to grasp because we are simply too stupid as a species?
I wasn't as big into Star Wars or Marvel before the buy out, so now I'm less likely to be, except Deadpool, now I feel like it's going to be beaten to death by Disney.
The theory behind it is interesting, but in practice I found it underwhelming for practical applications. The point of using it was to get a performance boost by separating the geometry composition from the node mapping. Unfortunately, even on simple models it produces erroneous protrusions until the resolution is turned up high enough. This slowed things down to the point that it was no longer any faster than OpenSCAD and since it doesn't have STL import functionality, there was no reason to keep using it.
I noticed in the US the milk seemed a lot sweeter than what I'm used to. Then again I'm all about Museli and mainly eaten with soya milk, seems reasonably healthy and quick and easy.
They are talking about the US 2020 elections obviously
Except for a very few places with warfare or seriously failed states, the world is already more or less "post scarcity". Most countries already have more health problems due to obesity than mal/under-nourishment.

But wealth continues to play a role in determining social hierarchies, and as long as it does, there will be pople that see themselves as poor.

And so far, automation has contributed to making the relative differences greater than before, not smaller.
Keynote of Guy Steele at Splash 2018 Conference
What does Bannon have to do with the article or the effect?

It's a 100 year old discovery that's been used by everyone in the media for decades. It's why films have editors. It's why news companies edit their interviews. The article even has a hitchcock example.

"In the first version of the example, Hitchcock is squinting, and the audience sees footage of a woman with a baby. The screen then returns to Hitchcock's face, now smiling. In effect, he is a kind old man. In the second example, the woman and baby are replaced with a woman in a bikini, Hitchcock explains: "What is he now? He's a dirty old man.""

Bannon does it, but so does everyone in the media.
Fascinating. I didn't realize that was how law school admission worked.

By "law exam" I actually had in mind "the final exam" and whatever other tests you have to pass in order to not be thrown out of the program, once you're already in. (It seems the "bar exam" is not a prerequisite for a JD, though.) I guess the question is, which is more selective: law school admissions, or "who actually gets their degree once they're in law school"? Looks like the latter filter lets about one third through [1], while the former seems to pass one half if you just divide total admissions by total applications [2], although if we care more about "top law schools" I see various Google results saying it's more like 25%. So... reasonably similar-sized filters. Huh.

I also see an article titled "Law Schools With Low LSAT Medians Have Absurd Academic Attrition Rates" [3]. That would seem to support the notion that the LSAT genuinely is testing ability to do well at law, despite being a non-law exam.

[1] https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/l...

[2] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/resources... , see "JD Applicant/Matriculant Data" for e.g. 2016, which shows 351k applications and 145k acceptances (I had to type in "=SUM(B7:B210)" and "=SUM(C7:C210)" to get those totals)

[3] https://abovethelaw.com/2018/01/law-schools-with-low-lsat-me...
Facebook Open Source 2018 Year in Review
>When I lived and worked in the DC area from 1989 to 1998, it was automatically assumed by everyone I knew that if you were going to commute anywhere by car and you had to intersect with major infrastructure like the beltway, then you'd be spending at least an hour on the road, just to go one way. So, that's a one-hour commute right there for many people in the Northern Virginia/DC/Suburban Maryland area.

It hasn't changed, and if anything it's worse. The traffic on I-66 into town every morning looks like a parking lot, all so a bunch of people can live in McMansions in Manassas and Haymarket and Gainesville.

>And at that time, I knew people who commuted down to the Pentagon from Baltimore, so spending 2-3 hours on their commute, one-way.

Yep, I've met people who live in DC and commute to Baltimore (because they don't want to live in Baltimore...), and people who live in NoVA and commute to Annapolis.

This stuff is common here. You can see it in the massive traffic jams on I-66 and on the beltway every workday: those people aren't getting to work in 15-30 minutes in that traffic.
> Nature prefers sigmoids over exponentials anyway, so it’s basically always unrealistic to predict things getting exponentially different unless you have really good priors to let you predict when that sigmoid necks over.

I'm pretty sure that Kurzweil is aware of this, given that he sees ICs already as the fifth paradigm in computation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near#/media...

The problem (it seems to me) is that there basically was no further paradigm shift after ICs so far, which would have been necessary for many of Kurzweil's predictions to come true this year.
Finally true hacking
because it's more interesting to predict rapid advances than slow ones

I suspect it's more that futurists think in terms of our engineering efforts being poured primarily into things that advance humanity, rather than the adtech, porn, entertainment, and media innovations that our Idiocracy actually seeks to reward.

Kurzweil could have been more accurate, had humanity been more prone to species improvement than, say, ever more addictive social media apps and ever more entertaining and higher resolution Netflix marathons.
> get rid of the sugary cereals and sugary milk

It took me a long time to realise that milk was sugary. I'd grown up worrying about the fat content of milk, but all milk, whether full fat or skimmed, has like 5g of sugar per 100ml, a pretty similar sugar content to Gatorade.

We know milk has lactose but we don't usually think of lactose as a sugar like we do with sucrose or fructose.
Classic SF Works Set on Thrilling Space Habitats – Tor.com
Not an answer to your question (I primarily write C#), but sounds like you dodged a bullet, really. That guy would have been horrible to work for/with based on what you described.
Data/ML guy here, also founder of frame.ai -- we're a NYC-based startup that helps customer-facing team categorize and analyze their conversations.

There are a lot of factors contributing to widespread adoption of NLP -- certainly the availability of great tools like PyTorch/Keras, SpaCy, and Gensim, and more broadly growing technical competence and awareness among teams that traditionally handle text.

But the single biggest factor is that people are generating massively more purpose-driven text in interactive channels. A generation that grew up texting their friends is becoming core consumers and workers in every industry. People drop text in team chat, in project management tickets and pull requests, when contacting support, and more. Plus, we break our text into meaningful snippets and add our own metadata to make them more readable (and usable) for other people. Language and tools are co-evolving very rapidly in ways that make them more accessible.

As a human-and-organization-augmentation nerd, I'm incredibly excited. We are seeing so much more about how groups of people self-organize than we ever used to, and at the same time that our tools are starting to become capable of understanding us in the ways that we communicate most conveniently.
The El is ok if you live near a stop and are going downtown (Loop) or to the airport. But there are huge areas that are not practical to get to via the El. You need to then use buses, which are slow and don't seem to follow much of a timetable.
West coast cities have one key advantage that reduces their requirements for public transportation given appropriate city planning: 12 months of weather suitable for biking/walking/etc. That 3% of Seattle routinely commutes from the suburbs on a bicycle is impressive but only practical because the weather supports it.
It’s not about education or price. It’s a pure emotional thing. You can ban sugar and all fast food, but the people will find something to abuse. There is a need for some nation wide happiness improvement program.
Tips for Buying SoundCloud Followers – Get 100% Real SC Followers
Sadly some of the predictions where Kurzweil is the most wrong are the ones that depend not so much on technology, but on human society. Life expectancy over 100, the needs of the underclass being met, and most human workers spending their time acquiring knowledge are not the case, no matter which way you squint. Heck, even the paperless office is not really the case in many companies and countries.
Kudos for focusing on cooking. It really changed my life when i started focusing on things like making bread, growing my own vegetables (at least to supplement store-bought), and learning the science and history behind foods/meals. I lost about 10 pounds just by learning how to cook and gaining an understanding of portion control and managing salt/nutrition levels. Also, I'm pretty confident my daycare-enrolled kids are less sick than their classmates who eat out one or more meals daily or are reliant on the bag of chicken nuggets and yellow-weird mac and cheese.

check out these youtube channels for some motivation (which i've picked up here on HN): https://www.youtube.com/user/BrothersGreenEats, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPzFLpOblZEaIx2lpym1l1A. Also, I recently fell upon Alton Brown's new Good Eats Reboot... good stuff.
No, kufi is named after a city in what is now Iraq not Iran.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kufa
anyone compiled this for Linux/OSX ?
> intentionally derailing a train resulting in deaths

That seems oddly specific, do you know why it singles out trains?
There are quite a few false assumptions here.

> People have certainly managed to create test suites that make it harder to maintain the code.

Sure, but pretending that this is the norm is just not true. And arguing against an extreme case can be done against anything .

> I get the impression Google has been able to migrate a lot of C++ and Python to Go using this approach.

Not only is this heavily suspect (I'd love to read a citation for this) but if there's a language that represents the "engineering" side (?) pretty clearly, it is C++.

> Gradual type systems has started to garner a lot more interest.

No they haven't. Those have existed for over five decades . Another problem with these articles is how they seem oddly ignorant of the history of computer science. This is specially odd coming from a PhD (assuming that I looked up the right person in google).

And, last but not least, some of the best engineered pieces of code are precisely shells, dynamic languages and frameworks.

It's things like these what makes these articles seem like they were written by java developers annoyed because java is no longer the trendiest toy.
Oh wow, and here I was thinking of getting the Dell XPS 13 developer's edition with Linux installed

Or may I suggest HP Spectre x360 check out the link below.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/dtdeals/hp-spectre-x360-13t-sa...
That's not my experience at all, even here in the DC area. Houses far from work still cost a lot, what's different is the cost per square foot. The problem is that those people aren't willing to live in a smaller dwelling, or a non-single-family home. Then they whine about there not being any "affordable housing" because they can't afford a free-standing house with a giant lawn right in the middle of (or close to) the city. There is affordable housing, but it means they need to settle for a condo or townhouse.
Take a whole package of bacon, put it on a cookie sheet. Bake 15 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees to your liking. Remove, Drain/cool. Place bacon in freezer.

Take eggs. Boil in water. Place in refrigerator.

Voila, you now have bacon and eggs in the morning for multiple days with zero effort.

Another easy one - McDonald’s style Egg McMuffin:

You’ve got your frozen English muffins because you’re lazy and don’t want to deal with moldy bread. Throw one in the microwave for 30 seconds. Remove and place in toaster to toast. In the meantime crack an egg into a cereal bowl and microwave to poach. I think that’s 30 seconds? Now your egg and muffin are done, add cheese and ham or that frozen bacon from the above, microwave to melt the cheese and such.

Not the healthiest stuff out there but it’s by no means difficult. I think many people wanting to transition from buying pre-made food to making actual food need to do so in baby steps.
I have two columns on my resume. One for f/t employee jobs and one for freelance/contract jobs. I even call it "Select freelance/contract jobs". It gives me the freedom to list the gigs where I did something worth showing off and/or where the contact would make a good reference. It illustrates that I'm a contract worker, and I've never had anyone ask me "why do your contracts turn over so fast?" It's the nature of the work.
How CSS display:none affects images on page load
Sorry about my choice of wording; I was just annoyed with the bold claims and the apparent lack of definition of this specifc concept.
Algorithms are named after al-Khwarizmi, and "algebra" comes from the Arabic name of his book, but logarithm was coined from Greek.
Riding momentum strategy worked well in crypto in 2018
Where is the car engineered and manufactured? I'm pretty sure it's not India, just like Volvos are not engineered or manufactured in China.
Vietnam's Draconian Cybersecurity Bill Comes Into Effect
Wired monitors are the norm. Wireless keyboards and mice are probably about as common as wired variants. Wireless headphones are growing in popularity (somewhat forced by Apple's decision to kill the headphone connector). WiFi is more common than Ethernet for connecting printers and computers, especially anything that's not a desktop. (And even for desktops, most prebuilt PCs seem to come with a wireless card installed, which suggests that WiFi desktop usage models is very common).

As I elaborated, "almost completely" is not true. But in the sense that the wireless alternatives are a strong share of the market and growing, I'd count it as a partially-true prediction.