skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Python has way more metaprogramming capabilities than people think.

Of course you can intercept pretty much anything with __dunder__methods (attribute missing, method access, instantiation, etc), you have full instrospection of pretty much anything (functions, objects, modules, call stacks...) and you also have monkey patching, decorators, metaclasses, bytecode injection...

But while we are far away from Lisp based languages, import hooks give you access to the ast of any module, and allow to use your own parser, before the result is loaded, to decide what to return. Which means you can pretty much make your own syntax and import it like a regular module.

However, the reason those tools are not very well known is that the community regards magic as dangerous as it is powerful, and everybody agrees on using it sparingly.

Hence the only popular libs that use a lot of magic are ORM (lot of metaclasses, dunders, etc) and test libs (monkey patching, bytecode injection, ast parsing), but not a lot more. I don't know of any popular lib that actually uses the import hooks to create a DSL.
Yes, I'm sure many people think like this. Let me get back to the Gutenberg=Net analogy. I take as relevant history points (rounded numbers)

- 1450 Gutenberg - 1970 Arpanet

- 1500 Luther - 1990 Berners-Lee

- 1700 Leibniz - 2010 Open Access, Open Science

- 1800 USA - x, major event towards the freedom of the internet

If we count in decades, suppose both processes as exponential and we take Gutenberg - Arpanet as the 0 point, then we see

2^t_internet = 5^t_gutenberg

which suggests that the major event x would be at about 4.6 decades after the Arpanet. :)
Making Great Video on a Tight Budget
I never understood this type of comments, is what you are trying to say something like:

"It was already tried and failed, why is this time better"

"Mainstream languages always end up not using it"

"People should reference more the original works of the past"

...

One of the many explainations of the name Rust is that it represents a collection of old ideas. What was the point you were trying to convey in specific?
> definitely more empowering than deferring that power to an external entity for the manufacturing of reusable products.

While it would certainly take a huge effort to create the base silicone product, creating the molds and use them to create reusable cups could be done on-demand and on-location.
With 20000 USD you can have a very comfortable middle class life in India.

One interesting thing to note is that India has among the highest divergence between Nominal GDP and Purchasing Power Parity numbers.
Duckduckgo is a search engine, most people get the difference and I think Facebook ultimately wants to be something else.

They don't want to be 4chan...

Of course that is their problem in the end.
It’s illegal in my state in the USA
I agree with you on this. Also, from the article:

> "Once you take that high-quality photograph, why not run it against the FBI database? Why not run it against state databases of people with outstanding warrants?"

I actually have no issue here. I would love it if law enforcement is aided in doing their job. I really don't want someone evading arrest for a recent violent crime or a person on the FBI's wanted list trying to board an aircraft with other passengers and succeeding.

My issue is transparency on the data governance, security, and data residency of the entire system viz. where it's stored, who has access, and how is it accessed.

OK equates to only the government having the database, secure access done remotely via API by the airline at check-in and boarding, a human present to verify any anomalies with the facial recognition & records access, and the boarding pass/ID/PP being used as a second factor if necessary.

NOT OK equates to a private company running a central database, local copies of any database being stored by any airline, having facial recognition as the only option available, and having the data shared with any entity other than law enforcement.
What does that mean? I'm not following this analogy.
Why are these always on a highway and never in the city?
Find it interesting?
A dopalov cycle.
> ... shape the world ...

For the first time we probably have the technology that could help realize something like this if we knew what the shape should look.

Unfortunately we will never have that because that would mean the shaping had already been done.

Then again, if you think about it, maybe the shaping has been done and the shapers already have what they want...

> ... tracking and stalking

I think governments have a vested interest in being able to track
"Minority Report" was about something that Humans couldn't really do, meaning to look into the future, and they even needed psychics to do it...

Good luck trying to advance science by avoiding to invent anything that can recognize image!
Elon Musk says Neuralink that connects human brain to computers 'coming soon'
Language VM:

HotSpot, ART, V8, SpiderMonkey, Chakra, JSC, Dart, and CLR are all written in C++. Are there any modern serious language VMs that aren't written in C++?
Melbourne man collects hundreds of pieces of jewellery made out of human hair
No, I think the opposite of this: that whenever you have individual people as powerful as billionaires, you have crony capitalism.
Do the UK's remain parties need an electoral alliance?
Politics my dude
After the 80's terrorism in the EU basically died off, with some exceptions like North Ireland which lasted a bit longer.

Then came the EU, Merkel and Co and look it it now. After crackdowns on cash and crypto, the next Big Brother pet project is biometrics. What a globalist shithole!
Are there a fixed number of objects?
Kernighan's Lever
You seem to assume that all successful projects succeed on their own merit in a fair market, but that's not always the case. NPM's success is due in large part to enterprise investment and hype. Part of the reason for enterprise investment is controlling costs by not having to train or recruit developers for another language besides Javascript, which was already commonplace.

And even if NPM did solve a needed problem, better solutions cannot be considered due to those entrenched business interests and the extreme centralization of the javascript community, not because NPM is already the best possible solution to whatever problems it claims to solve.

JQuery was revolutionary in its own time, but you didn't see a JQuery Foundation serving all JQuery plugins from a closed repository through a buggy package manager that everyone was expected to use. It is possible to innovate and not monopolize, but what NPM has done, at best, is monopolize innovation and stop it dead in its tracks.
Show HN: Decentralized Identity Management
Tesla CEO plans to hand the car keys to robots next year
How does Jet Blue know when you have opted out? By scanning your face, seeing you have opted out, and prompt for the actual boarding pass?
desktop-GUI: Yes, frontend today is a combination of Web & apps, C++ does not fit in either. UWPs can be written with JS or C#.

Writing desktop-GUI is also on the decline, however I could see potential increase in desktop-GUI-programs if governments continue to pass bad regulations of the web like content filters & link tax.

Embedded: How come C++ is not dominating embedded? According to you, it should.

IDE tooling: If you are writing a 2D-game or desktop-GUI it is.

Even though C++ is used as an important building block for other technologies, too survive, C++ must attract a new generation of developers, to continue carrying the torch & develop it further. Does it? I have seen little evidence of that. My impression is that developers learn C++ because of existing projects. Sure, there exists lots of good C++ projects out there that will continue attract developers & push the language further, but will it be enough? I'm not convinced.
LX Scala and Reactive 2019 – Europe's Coolest Functional Programming Conference
Next October, a standard AZDL will not be eligible. AZDOT has been sending out notices on how to get an ID valid for air travel, but I’ve been ignoring them because I already have a passport.
> It's an interesting subject, but I'd like a causal explanation rather than just the correlation.

A large benefit with less code is about the signal/noise ratio. If you need plenty of boiler plate logic, you will have less signal that you can physically read & mentally process at a given time. We naturally ignore the noise, but the noise takes screen space & miscategorizing noise leads to bugs.

Less code leads to less bugs, especially high-level bugs, because the programmer can see more signal at a given time, thus being exposed to a larger system.

The study that Rich mentioned could be interpreted as relating to the comprehension of the code, where more code inherently means the system has more information & is more difficult to comprehend.

Re: two-way binding, the data flow is inherently confusing whether you use imperative or declarative logic. Do you want a clear concise representation or do you want to spread out the implementation over more code/files?
> I think we need to be more precise about what exactly is spooking us and why.

When technology and law enforcement cross paths, I'd argue we'll be better served by placing the burden of proof on proponents of the new tech instead of on those spooked by it.
> Sure, if you fancy a career in intelligence or as an undercover something

Well, if you plan a career undercover, you will want you biometrics recorded everywhere linked to alternative identities. The lack of biometric record is going raise more flags than Generic Joe passing through. This move of centralising biometric database is going to seriously reduce your number of available alternative personas.

No having your biometric stored is a loudable goal and should be seen as a form of protest. Like people living off the grid.

Unfortunately, as noble parent intention are, they are aligned with the much more pragmatic intentions of criminals, which means that, indeed, it will be harder and harder to achieve it and even when he succeed, he will make his profile light up like a Christmas tree in all the system when he tries to lead a normal life.
> Any good arguments to pick C++ for a new project?

Probably niche, but almost all audio dsp (vst &co) uses C++. See JUCE framework. Possibly other "multimedia" stuff (video, image manipulation, etc)
This is a problem even without Apple News+.

When Apple News came out I really liked the idea of having a single place to get pushed real breaking news as they happened. But sadly Apple News (and News+) is not that. Some of it is on the publishers and media (ie everything is considered "breaking" these days) but I think Apple is also part of the problem by pushing out stories on their official[1] breaking news channels that are not in fact really breaking news or news at all. I'm not talking about the biases either, but it has pushed me notifications about active shootings (good) and sports (bad) using the same breaking news headlines.

[1] one of the confusion is probably what is and isn't an official channel. If i can't figure out if the channel is a hand curated one vs one generated by a faulty AI then that's a problem.
Again: You need to be able to hold companies and governments accountable. If you can't do that, then tracking technology is the least of your worries.

If Apple is violating the law, you can sue them. If the Chinese government tracks your movements, well, that's probably the least of your problems with the Chinese government...
He wanted the website dead, he essentially put a hit out on the website, just without any monetary rewards and no follow up. He did this because his was upset at the moderators for not tolerating his inappropriate behavior. While it doesn’t deal with murder, it’s like some news articles you read about people posting on Craigslist to have someone take out their ex, for which they get prison time.
Yet further proof that their online legislations are not about privacy but attacks on US companies.
IME, it depends on the location. At one post office, the desk clerk was very antagonistic. At another, or at the State Department, it was about the same as getting a DL (except for the wait)
Hold people accountable for how well their shit works.
Would you support creation of genetically modified cows with no brain/very small brain so that they don't feel any pain?
I stand corrected, and I agree with you here on both accounts - I'd love if CL in particular had a better type system standardized (current one sits in a kind of uncanny valley) and a better ecosystem. CL implementations are solid, but the mindshare unfortunately isn't there anymore.
Close your door.
Social media sites are shut down in Sri Lanka, that could make problems worse
I don't know about Thailand but in the Philippines many phone plans only offer a few sites.
Ideally I’d like to subscribe to a curated actually “breaking news” feed that doesn’t spam me. Terrorist attack? Yes please. Plane crashed? Yes please. Rumors of Megan/Harry moving to Africa? Who the fuck cares?
I started came from a C background (mostly for embedded stuff, where on many platforms a C++ compiler wasn't an option) - and eventually moving to C++ for backend and library work was a pain in the ass. I got the hang of it, but never loved it, although for the goals we had to achieve, it was a sensible choice. I however moved into more of an ops/SRE role mainly due to to C++ not entirely being my thing while the dev that was always most in touch with the ops side of thing.

I do see many of the advantages of both Rust and C++, but one of the reasons I like C is its relative simplicity. I only did a single small thing in Rust to try it out, and while still quite complex, at least it felt more manageable than C++ once you understood the borrow checker. The big elephant in the room however is Go. Every time I started something and would consider Rust, it ended up being 'why not just Go?'.

At least for me, it was much better suited language to be moving to coming from a C background. The biggest initial hurdle was setting up the dev environment with the completely backward GOPATH and GODIR environment variables - which just feels absolutely wrong (although this now in the process of being addressed). The language itself however was an absolute breeze, I felt right at home. Simple, quick, straight-forward, with tons of libraries and tools for my current field of work, coupled with performance more than acceptable for 99% of the applications I need and static binaries which are easily deployed anywhere, also eliminating a ton of complexity. Is it perfect? No, but what language is? But if you want to convince C-programmers to ditch C for a memory-safe language - Go is imho in many cases a much better option to move to.
It depends a bit what you mean, but Groovy is quite interesting from a meta-programming point of view. Much of the syntax can be completely reprogrammed at run time through an object's 'metaClass', and you can write AST transformations that deeply rearrange the code at compile time.

Although it is certainly not as pure as the Lisp-like languages, it can be an incredibly fast and easy way to create a DSL to solve your problems in a very idiomatic way.
> "...subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."

Which they did not do.
It is a bit more amusing than that, sort of a Catch 22 situation.

In neither Ireland nor the UK, nor for travel between them (except by 'plane) is one required to have or produce ID.

What one has to do (if asked, and then a right asserted) is establish one's right to enter the country. The easiest way to do that is via a Passport.

One can still travel (by boat) between the two countries w/o a passport, you just have to be prepared (if challenged) to argue and maybe waste some time.

Driving a vehicle in the the UK (and I assume in Ireland) is a situation where one can be required to produce ID (even then you do not have to carry it), but not in normal day to day life.
I have an early music band (medieval / renaissance). We play at castles, battlegrounds, festivals, for museums etc :)
How much women take the money of the man that work hard? 99%? Come on, stop with this trend of equity we don't and never will have the same life.
Not the person you're asking, but FWIW, I regularly read the comments before deciding whether to read the article. In many cases, the top comment is some expert in the field in question who explains why the article is a waste of time.
In terms of generated coded, it is exactly the same. But that's not the point of optional types.

The point of optional types is to force you to write checks for undefined values, otherwise your code will not compile at all. In the old-fashioned style of your example, you might forget to check for the possibility of a null pointer/otherwise undefined value, and use it as if it were valid.
It’s absolutely false. The eye simulates the dynamic range by continuously changing the pupil size.
If you take a camera with a lens that can go from f/1.4 to f/32 you have a much much bigger dynamic range counting that you can also modify the exposure time.
Your comparison between the eye with his changing pupil size and a single image taken at a fixed aperture value and a fixed exposure is totally incorrect.
Y'know, I thought so too until I saw the system in Suriname.

Women are expected to work around the clock there, carry heavy things and do all the cooking. This system means that you actually don't have to work while possibly in pain and probably unwell, and you don't have to explain yourself to anyone. Yes, it is a bad taboo system that assigns women a 'dirty' status, but there are some positive effects as well (in a patriarchal society).
I think when your lawsuit's claims sound more like a quote from Dr Evil than anything remotely plausible, people are entitled to apply appropriate quantities of mockery.
Another point is that using rust is great for products, but not so much for PoCs, since the compiler will complain about most ‘hacks’ to release early, or even refuse to compile.

I have not much experience with go, but my feeling is that it should be faster to have something working, and then if it’s worth it (e.g. if it needs high performance with concurrency), migrate to rust.
The EU flavour of democracy. Do what you're told, livestock.
What It Takes to Write a Good Story Without Dying Inside
Bitcoin's Fundamentals Continue to Strengthen
What data analytics can do for you?
Making bombs in your backyards is much less popular and much more consequential than recognizing images.

And image recognition happens completely in silicon. There is no way to know from the outside if a device is recognizing patterns in image data, much less differentiate between recognizing faces or dog breeds.
Its awesome - we've recently launched a team version https://kyso.io/for-teams and our beta users seem to love it
United states of Europe.

Just wait till the chatter about a combined EU army crops up again...
I do find that I feel a weird kind of 'tension' as an Elixir programmer where on the one hand I think I'm pretty proficient with Phoenix and Elixir's syntax, conventions, and ecosystem, but way out of my depth when it comes to OTP, distributed systems, and so on.

It almost feels like these are two completely distinct worlds, but because they're part of the same language and community, it's difficult to feel proficient or even 'adequate' at times.

I never quite felt this way as a PHP/Ruby/JavaScript developer, as for the most part the challenge seemed to be knowing the right frameworks, new language features, or bundler/build tools to be 'good'.

In the most recent episode of Elixir Outlaws, the topic of overusing OTP/processes/Agents is discussed (https://elixiroutlaws.com/37), and it made me feel a bit better about my lack of experience in this area (and much as the podcast can be on the 'whiny' side of things, it's probably my favorite Elixir-focused one and I highly recommend it! If you're reading this: Hi Chris, Amos and Anna. being a friend of the show one day is on my bucket list :).)
I maintain R and Shiny where I work. With Shiny, one can now build any web application imaginable, even a completely generic one.

R has such a huge library of software now, that it has gone far and wide outside of statistics and analytics - any kind of application can be built in R now.

In fact I see no point in using Python for mathematics or number crunching any more as R has it all and performance critical parts can be rewritten in modern Fortran for very high speed and made available inside of R transparently.
While blood might be good for compost that also sounds like a prime method to distribute germs and viruses. Seems dangerous.
Speed. Your laptop simply is the "thin client" then, which can dramatically reduce your render time.
I think the only case of DDOS attacks resulting in a prosecution and later sentencing here in Sweden was when a 16 year old took down the websites of our two biggest banks.

The maximum sentence was apparently 6 months, but since he was a minor he got 140 hours of community service [1].

I'm not saying our legislation is more appropriate, but always fascinating to see the difference in sentencing between the US and here (and I guess most European countries). 26 months seems somewhat excessive.

[1]: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...
> All it would take is a few more Trump-style presidencies.

I agree with the first statement, but so far, Trump presidency was not exactly a bad thing for the climate.

Economic war with China and renationalisation have positive impacts on CO2 emissions.

Iran sanctions increased oil prices.

Coal subsidies haven't succeeded in reviving the coal industry.

Poor, uneducated families still die from drug overdoses and immigration has decreased, reducing the US population growth.

I know that not all of these things are glorious, but I just wanted to point out that the bigger picture is more complicated than that.
Very true. The Terminal is like cave painting or cuneiform pressed into clay with reeds. It will last forever.
Old school forums are far from non-existent. They are simply not money makers, and typically focused on specialized topics. They still exist in large numbers.

One of the biggest shifts that has hurt the visibility of forums these days is not in everything becoming gamified with internet points, or "robotized" with preference-oriented content.

IMO it's actually our societal inability to pay attention to one topic for more than a few minutes at a time. We've become so well trained by the constant drip feed of randomized content, and the chase-the-rabbit research methodology of wikipedia, that when you encounter a forum in your search results, you probably didn't even consciously realize it because you skimmed it for the content you were looking for and moved on.
I turned off notifications for the News app a long time ago, so I never noticed this problem.

The author just read ‘Digital Minimalism’ which is a good book so far (I am almost half way through reading it). Like the author, from reading this book I have been very mindful of use time on digital devices.
> Rust is still a niche language

Only just barely at this point. It has significant projects from a lot of the largest companies (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc). Firefox is using it, Dropbox is using it, Red Hat is using it.
> In several EU countries you're required to carry id at all times.

Any idea what the punishment is for not carrying?
I couldn't figure out how to change the resolution of the output video. I'd have to try again to come up with a useful description of why I found it confusing but I do remember not being able to just enter a width height and frame rate. And if I remember correctly, changing the video size and or feamerste to one of the presents screwed up the position and timings of the clips and and animations I'd edited in the timeline.