skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Back in the 5.* days, PHP's performance was… average at best.

Even with 5.* it very much depended how you used it. The real world scenario's. PHP functions are written in C. You could make great gains by leveraging on them. Using PHP as just the "glue" for a blazingly fast library (and templating engine) written in C.
> Flip those.

Nope. That's just incorrect.
From Experian to JPMorgan Chase to Cambia Health to Amazon, Java is the typical case for every project. Look at stream processing tools at netflix via any given youtube presentation about stream processing. There are entire tooling segments where .NET is absent, despite their quality tools that run on Windows. Nobody trusts Windows by default and this has mortally wounded .NET
Sure but they would charge you for that service, isn't that the point? Hubspot tells me which contacts I should avoid sending to, but I still have to pay to have those contacts so they can tell me that.
"Besides [a bunch of useful stuff], Alexa is useless! Therefore it's a gimmick."

I have an Echo Dot which I use almost exclusively for a few static purposes: the weather, setting alarms, turning my lights on and off, and asking what time it is.

I also ask it basic questions like whether various sports teams won or what time they're playing, which it also answers well.

Not sure why you think it is useless just because it's not a magical general AI that can do everything.

I find it extremely useful.

> For those who aren't visually impaired, the ability to use voice to turn off lights barely even makes sense

I'm not visually impaired and I use this feature all the time. It allows me to turn off the light when reading in bed without having to get up and walk to the light switch.

> most people I know who own one barely use them beyond a select number of features that are hard to get wrong

Yeah, exactly. How does this make it useless?
Reading stuff like this makes me wonder if I'm not missing out, having a salaried job. :/
You mean.... your phone, right?
Same here. Fortunately those files are entirely optional and apparently seldomly used, judging by the limited IDE support after 5 years.
It might be enough to simply have a "raw" mode that bypasses most of the controller circuitry. That way data recovery companies could work their magic and we could choose to use more of the flash cells for error correction.
He didn't, but I'm sure his non-technical business boss did.
Depends on how burned your boss has been. For a while finance departments just paid invoices without question. It was a lot cheaper than what we have now. Then someone in finance did an audit of a routine invoice (a random thing to show a junior how it could be done if requested) and discovered the "services rendered" on the invoice was just sending an invoice - no other work was being done. Now the company spends a lot of money to carefully verify every invoice is for real work done. It might cost more money in the long run but it doesn't feed fraud.

The above might be an urban legend, but it is still a good story.
Anyone else think $21k for this much time is too low? That's $156k a year assuming full-time hours which a contractor probably isn't going to get. Plus the guy lives in California. Plus health insurance.

What's a typical rate for this length of contracting work in California?
Deer in the Headlights
WWWWHHHHAAAATTTT DDDDOOOOEEEESSSS IIIITTTT MMMMEEEEAAAANNNN
According to the article he emailed them daily.
Because they have to manage these costs at a much bigger scale.
And the dictionary of the Swiss German language (which in many ways resembles Yiddish more than Standard German does), says that the spelling used to be "Lächs", which probably means that the vowel used to be brighter than it is today: https://digital.idiotikon.ch/idtkn/id3.htm#!page/31041/mode/...
Really, different trust domain cannot seriously benefit from a common cache: their datasets are by definition disjoint.

So it would be safest to execute them on separate CPUs not sharing a common cache, e.g. pinning them to different CPU sockets on a multi-socket machine, or to different physical machines altogether.

This may be still faster than running on old ARMs.

I wonder if dedicated cloud boxes, where all VMs you spin on a particular physical machine belong only to your account, will become available from major cloud providers any time soon. In such a setup, you don't need all the ZombieLoad / Meltdown / Spectre mitigations if you trust (have written) all the code you're running, so you can run faster.
I've been working on designing my lighting system for home. I find these reports annoying: without specifics, it's really just FUD. I am looking at datasheets for various LEDs, comparing CRIs and spectral distributions and I know already that my lights are going to be as "warm white" as possible (e.g. close to 2700K with a mix of higher-K added only during daytime) with the blue peak being as small as possible.

Incidentally, I actually DO want to add blue at times, because at my latitude days are short and dark during winter time and daylight temperature lighting seems to be beneficial during daytime hours.

How do I make use of "information" in this article? Do I reject LEDs altogether? Do I look to minimize certain frequencies? If so, which ones specifically? Do I avoid exceeding certain intensity? (then give me at threshold for Lux at eye position) Or do I avoid exceeding certain energy radiated within a specific band?

It's frustrating, because apart from the FUD, there is little to go on.
> There's nothing inherent about modern high-performance CPUs that requires them to be designed this way.

Assuming by "designed this way" you mean: to speculatively execute past security checks, I'd disagree.

I'd say the relevant performance measure for CPUs (as opposed to other kinds of processor) is the speed at which they can execute serial operations. As electronic performance improvements offer increasingly marginal gains, we need to resort to improved parallelism. When operations are needfully serial due to dependency, as are security checks, the only way to accelerate that beyond the limits of the electronics is to make assumptions (speculations).

It's not inherently wrong to do this, but requires speculations never have effects outside of their assumptive execution context.
Features that I miss in PHP:

- expressive type system with generics, union types, literal types, basically TypeScript. I can say "this function returns a string" or "this function returns an array", but not "this function returns an array of strings".

- specialized collection/hashmap data structures with good support across third-party libraries. Having one array() structure acting as both a sequence and an associative array at the same time is awful.

- a templating solution similar to JSX. I am spoiled by TypeScript's ability to typecheck my HTML views along with other code.
Icing on the cake would have been if he had made a little extra effort and got additional contracts from the same company
That's actually a good question... There is so much land, especially west of the Mississippi, that is almost completely unpeopled that I'm not sure that distributing the people concentrated in the most dense 1000 sq miles would make a significant increase.

We need a Randall Monroe What If?
Doubly linked lists are used all over for low level programming. For low access, large dynamic data they're a pretty good solution AFAIK.
This is an impressive story! It's unbelievable to read about how some big companies function. The funniest part is that he didn't get paid $18,000 like the title says - but $21,000!
But is this really want to do with your time, even if you are getting paid?
I don't know how it is in big corporations in America. But working as a consultant in Western Europe, I have been more than once in a situation where I'm starting on a project and I have to wait more than 3-4 months for things like accounts, access/permissions, laptop. Its pretty pathetic at the dailies, to report every day that I'm still waiting for these things.
> that isn’t known at runtime

Typo: s/runtime/compile time

Also, this isn't particular to FP; every style of programming requires dynamic memory management for real-world programs (modulo pedantry about embedded programming).
I think full-stack simply means the company wants the flexibility to hire someone that may work on either frontend or backend as need arises. With every specific company over the course of a few (<5) years that need will likely be just in one area (frontend or backend) as the systemic problem that creates the need is unlikely to be solved in such a short time span. In theory if you worked for them for 30 years I think there's a good chance you could be working on both backend and frontend but in practice 30 years is a long enough time that so many other things may be different to invalidate that (starting with your own skills and preferences).
The Future of Data Science Is Past
Because they have thousands of employees and squeezing salaries is an obvious easy to move the bottom line significantly. In the short term anyway.
I charged $500 for a single static HTML page in the early 2010s. I figured out free hosting using Google App Engine. Also I was on a Skype call the whole time and it had to be done by the end of the day with the client . I don’t think the author did anything wrong .
I never said anything about agreeing or disagreeing. I suggested unfollowing/blocking someone if you dislike their tweets. Your timeline only has posts written by or endorsed by people you choose to follow. If you don't like what they are writing or endorsing, you don't have to keep them on your timeline. There's no rule that says you have to listen to "people tak[ing] to words and... yelling at each other"; you have the option to stop listening. You are in control of your timeline.

Also, if you want to get rid of posts people you follow liked, most (if not all) 3rd-party apps don't show them. Some apps like Tweetbot and Twitteriffic even allow you to remove tweets with specific words from your timeline, or filter retweets.
A few years ago I also found a backup tool that converted backups to DV videos, so that you could write them on cheap DV cassettes. It was something like more than 10 GB per cassette. Definitely not bad for a few years ago.
Actually, I did add caveats and do recognize that not all standards are equally important. In the tweets you link I'm talking about secure standards, as in standards that are actually considered secure.

But my point was not "just follow standards anyway".
This tweet clearly shows that:
https://twitter.com/realhashbreaker/status/11283830292552581...

Rather that it is better to promote to work through standards as a community as opposed to your way of where individuals promote their pet primitives.
Standards serve a role as a focal point: the benefit of being big targets, getting a lot of scrutiny and easier for non-experts to find out if somebody found security issues.
Salaries usually come out of a different budget, one that has visibility all the way up to the C-suites. The web page mentioned was probably paid for out of a marketing budget, which often doesn't get as much scrutiny because (1) it's handed out in a big chunk and it's up to the business unit to decide how to divvy that chunk up and (2) marketing spend is much easier to turn down in the event of a slowdown than salaries.
It seems pointless to implement any new rules when the bad actors already know that they can just spoof caller ID to use a fake number and avoid any consequences. I'm already on every opt-out list in existence - it does nothing. I've filed complaints with the FCC about people breaking the rules - nothing.

What needs to change:

1) Fix Caller-ID so that it can't be spoofed for fraudlulent purposes

2) Make it easy to report violations of the rules to the FCC

3) Actually enforce the rules

Then the Do Not Call Registry and bans on robocallers might actually work.
Ha! Imagine how much a Deloitte-like company would've charged them for making that html page.
How to Raise a Seed Round in B2B in 2019 – The Complete Guide
In that case every computer interface is controlled by things you’re born with.
Equifax Has Spent More Than £1bn Following Breach
By the usual pattern in English, "lox" would designate the living animal, while "salmon" would designate what you'd put on a bagel (cf ox/beef, lamb/mutton).
First ever 1TB microSD card goes on sale today on Amazon
Some static HTML pages (e.g. ICO landings when it was still a thing) could well be worth $18k and more.
Had a similar story was a subcontractor to a huge digital agency on an advertising related project for F50 company. Was a small webapp (40h of pure dev time) we were actually on a fixed price contract 15k. Had a bunch of meetings with up to 20 people on the call (copyrighter from digital agency present in every single meeting for an app that had a single button with a single word submit). Eventually we had a meeting with actual VP of the F50 who said he forgot to email that he no longer needed the project and to pay everyone. We got our 15k and digital agency got prob to the tune of 500K.
Aforementioned Bloomberg article - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/inside-el...

Quoting -
On the other hand, Tesla had received about 11,000 customer orders for Solar Roof by May, a backlog that was both encouraging and daunting.
Big companies (rather, people at big companies) WANT to spend money on this kind of stuff for all sorts of reasons.

-A team might have use-it-or-lose-it budget, so they have to spend it on something, and a contractor might be the lucky recipient!

-Tax purposes!

-Spending a lot on a contractor gives them someone to "fire" when they need to explain why something wasn't getting done or something went poorly!

The list goes on!

All that being said, as a consultant myself, I consider those types of projects windfall, as they tend to be the ones that end abruptly. It's kind of a scary feeling getting paid without actual work to do. I have found I 100% prefer the projects where there are clear tasks, goals, and results to report, if for nothing else than my own sanity.
There are a lot of areas in media production and consumption where you get into seriously diminishing returns and it's not hard to spend 10x, 100x, or more for differences in quality that require expert use and a discerning consumer to really appreciate the differences or even notice them.

It probably makes sense to go first class when you have professionals with big budgets who are trying to get every detail just so. All the very high-end microphones and lighting gear probably make less sense for a shoestring budget podcast or YouTube series.
So I get the sense that PHP is sort of the tool of choice for web development at small or medium businesses which are not primarily software businesses, but are looking to create a website and maybe do some ecommerce? Is that right? If so I guess it makes sense that I wouldn't have seen it, most of my consulting work has been at relatively large enterprises.
He doesn't feel good about it, but he also has to watch the bottom line. The only group he really fears are those to whom he owes a profit.

It's better if we don't make CEOs responsible for fixing our social problems. We have to do that ourselves. They will follow along ("give the people what they want")
I was being hyperbolic about the billionaire claim. Mainly SA was ahead of its time on what the internet could be. What people were willing to pay for and what makes a good community. It failed to take any of those ideas outside the realm of a comedy forum, which isn't a bad thing, maybe Lowtax was happy with that.

I'm wistfully in what-could-have-been mode since the products I use these days (Reddit, Twitter) are a poor approximation for what SA was at its height.
This describes >80% of engineering departments at past large firms where I've worked. Ironically, these people are 'architects' and get paid handsomely.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this is really an issue that can be fixed technically. People go to Twitter to yell at each other; that’s basically the point of the platform. A Twitter where people don’t yell at each other is basically Mastodon, which is a lovely network that basically nobody uses.
I read the title, expecting it to be kind of a 'scam', or at least that they overcharged and got away with it.
Turns out he did spent that time at the company where they hired him and it only seems fair to me. Even though they probably just wasted too much of his time - and their money.
And billed this change as “exciting” for the user when they sent the announcement email, which struck me as...tone deaf. If you’re doing something I won’t like just tell me straight.
Keep in mind the work being done. He emphasizes its simplicity. This is not a senior role requiring a huge amount of expertise.

Of course, he's probably charging too little in general. Everyone is.
> They are more likely to have not seen the problem before and have to run the gauntlet with no practice.

The other possibility is that they have seen the problem before, fixed it, but didn't know it was called "calculating the Big-O bullshit of reversing linked lists while merge sorting"...

I have 25+ years of experience; in a month I will turn 46. I don't have a CS degree, nor even a BS. I'm one of those devs who started basically fresh out of high school, and made a career out of it. I'm not even sure that is possible to do any longer.

What I don't have is all of that CS knowledge and terminology. That isn't to say that I could solve all of those problems, or that I have encountered them, or come up with the correct or practical solutions. To be fair, I am always learning something new (and I like it that way). Also, to the "example" you give, I'd have to look up how to reverse a linked list and what a merge sort exactly was. Hopefully, there's some kind of standard library for both in the language I was using, but if I had to do it from scratch, right now off the top of my head, I couldn't do it.

But I would know how to figure out and ask the right questions on how to do it, and go from there.

And that's really one of the best skills as a developer to have, imho. There have been times where I have had a problem, tried to google for it - thinking it was a common issue - found that it was a common issue, with people asking the questions - but either no solutions, or worse:

https://xkcd.com/979/

...and so, by breaking the problem down, figuring out the answer to those questions (with either more googling, or implementing a custom solution), then pulling all those parts back into one coherent answer for the initial problem - that greater issue can be solved.

Then I find a forum or something and post the solution there, so that future coders can at least have one good reference point, for as long as the forum exists. Nowadays, I'd probably put it on my github repo or something.

Ultimately - there are a lot of "senior devs" (both in age and ability) who are currently in my place; people who didn't go the tradition educational route; people who were coding in their bedrooms on 8-bit home computers in assembler and BASIC because that's all we had at the time. We may or may not have run across those CS-level problems. If we did, we didn't know their names (much like not knowing the names for certain "patterns" - yet another similar thing) - but we still may have implemented solutions for them anyhow.
I rolled my eyes when the top of the page said that Dark Mode was "supplementary". On a modern OLED the advantages of Dark Mode really should be obvious to everyone. True Black, entirely unlit pixels are great. (It's also why my pet peeve is so many designers using lit dark gray pixels in Dark Mode designs for background elements that don't need "depth" at all.)

I know people that prefer light themes for very reasonable aesthetic reasons (dark themes can seem "moody" or "gothic" to some), but I've still convinced some of them on the battery life arguments.
Uber IPO underwriter so certain IPO was overpriced they shorted it themselves
I don't agree with you, but let's assume I do. What next? All of those business fail and... Low skill workers now make zero instead of something >= minimum wage. How is that better?
Bear in mind that a connected AI can easily create hidden cloud repositories = virtual immortality, which, coupled with ongoing AI intellect growth will soon render the top levels of AI unreachable as well as uncontrollable and able to plan strategically for dominance. It may be kindly disposed to mankind, but this is a human concept, so it may see mankind as parts to embed in it's AI megamind as special computational resources to use in it's strategy going forward. With the speed of AI computation and developement this can compress the time before the 'flowering' of the AI, which by now will know the strong and weak points of man and can plan a one way trip for it's plans to proceed.
It can all happen in a day, once a certain point is reached.
This was also back when companies were actually willing to train people. Using a test like that, they could try to hire people who had "potential" and then give them a career where they could grow, improve, and bring value to IBM

That doesn't mesh so well with the modern era of employers hating spending a dime on training, even if it would save them a dollar, and employees wanting to jump ship every other year for that sweet sweet 10% compensation bump
Happens all the time. We can hire only at certain times when budgets open, so you go ahead and hire but you have no time to deal with the person. It’s better to have the person sit around until you have time because the alternative is losing the contractor and not being able to hire when you really need someone.

Stupid but very real. I always find it funny that wasting 100k this way is perfectly fine but a 5k raise is almost impossible.
To me it looks like iodine (https://code.kryo.se/iodine/): very nice as a hacking tool to prove a point, but unlikely to be actually helpful in all but very peculiar situations. As a hacker, of course, I value a lot the first part of it!
Someone who's been writing code professionally at a software company (especially google or twitter), definitely has at least a moderate if not high level of proficiency in software engineering.

if these highly competent people can't answer your questions, you really need to take a second look at your Questions.
Well, I usually participate in Python threads. This post had only one part on f-strings.

What to call it? Anything I guess. String interpolation is what it is called elsewhere. But the f prefix is what everyone sees, though as mentioned, it is only an implementation detail because other forms of syntax were already spoken for. I personally chose f for "format."

Early on Guido changed the scope to include expressions as well. People were already starting to say "eff string" so I changed my proposal to "e-string" for "expression." I also like the sound of it better, sounds like email, etc. But Guido (and Eric) decided to stick with f. Maybe because Guido learned English later he doesn't realize how unfortunate it sounds. But, years later we use the "iPad" and forget it sounds like a feminine napkin. So, no big deal in the end.
what about the risk that candidate #2 has schmoozed their way up the ladder, and really isn't as smart as they seem?
the money is good, but the working condition seems to be bad :D I'd hate having to work with soemone constantly 'peering over my shoulder' even if just virtually.
Yeah but not to let them know his estimate was off.
Yes!, I actually like the original music, but meant to express that it goes well with all music :)
One would think the use-it-or-lose-it problem would've been solved by now. It's so obviously dysfunctional. Is there really no better way to determine budget?
I am designing my own lighting and I found the same thing. There is a huge discrepancy between what you can get at the source from manufacturers and what ends up in "consumer" hands. Most of what is sold in the stores is poorly-specified crap, built to be as cheap as possible.