skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>This idea—flight by electrostatic repulsion—was first proposed in the early 1800s, around the time of Darwin’s voyage. Peter Gorham, a physicist, resurrected the idea in 2013, and showed that it was mathematically plausible. And now, Morley and Robert have tested it with actual spiders.

>First, they showed that spiders can detect electric fields. They put the arachnids on vertical strips of cardboard in the center of a plastic box, and then generated electric fields between the floor and ceiling of similar strengths to what the spiders would experience outdoors. These fields ruffled tiny sensory hairs on the spiders’ feet, known as trichobothria. “It’s like when you rub a balloon and hold it up to your hairs,” Morley says.

>In response, the spiders performed a set of movements called tiptoeing—they stood on the ends of their legs and stuck their abdomens in the air. “That behavior is only ever seen before ballooning,” says Morley. Many of the spiders actually managed to take off, despite being in closed boxes with no airflow within them. And when Morley turned off the electric fields inside the boxes, the ballooning spiders dropped.

One amazing thing to me is how this is the sort of experiment that an educated layman could do in his garage without the need for millions of dollars in funding and a research institute. Quaint and inspiring to aspiring citizen scientists at the same time.
As far as I am aware, Siri's audio retention policy is up to two years.
Everyone would just decline because there's no incentive to agree, and their product would die. Plus it would annoy users and cause stress.
Spend 15 minutes on Grindr and learn what not to do from all the messages.
I live less than 1000' from the water's edge, so mosquitoes are ever present for about 9 months of the year. I've tried citronella candles when out BBQing, watching my children play in the lawn, etc. I don't like dousing myself in chemicals, so I don't spray myself with deet, etc. They are a nuisance for which there is little to be done other than avoidance.
Higher Empathy People Process Music Differently in the Brain
Hacked Border Surveillance Firm Wants to Profile Drivers and Passengers in NYC
A little fun anecdata from the US, I've noticed cockroaches get much bigger the further south you go: Upper Midwest, Michigan, Ohio, the biggest cockroaches get up to about one inch. Central Midwest, southern Kansas/Missouri/Illinois, two inches. Texas and the gulf? Three inches.
Is there really a need for random 4K writes on the SD card in the Pi? Couldn’t the card use a log-structured filesystem and batch writes in RAM, turning those writes into streaming writes? The new Pi certainly has enough RAM that it could dedicate some to serving as a write cache.
Our favorite things to crash are the global economy and the sustainability of the environment
Oh quit your puritanical hand wringing.

Average people can drive in an average manner and go years or often decade, sometimes entire lifetimes without screwing up badly enough to attract law enforcement attention or get in a crash. We as a society have determined that is mostly good enough. Most people are satisfied with the current level of risk/reward of driving and unless improvements come with minimal trade-offs people are for the most part not interested. Society at large does not demand the same religious adherence to traffic rules as you do.

More people were killed by fires (a hazard that most people would not consider to be a Big Problem(TM)) in 2016 than in crashes related to distracted drivers.

https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/fire_death_rates.h...
I don't need to disseminate any information, microsoft lying, insulting, cheating and corrupting for 20 years has been largely documented by the medias in the nineties.

If you were capable of reading at all at that time, it was one scandal every year.
>This is only creepy if you don't understand how the software works.

No, its only creepy if you're not sure whether or not conversations had in the "privacy" of your own home are being listened to by a faceless person
There are a lot of things that Google could have done better in this situation without meaningfully impacting their software's quality.
How many super computers can get get churning away at predicting how we can geo-engineer our way back to stability. For those that don't believe in climate change it sounds pointless, to many that acknowledge climate change it sounds too dangerous. Might it be our only hope?
The charitable interpretation would be the catastrophic predictions in the "1980s", such as around the time AGW became widely publicized with Hansen's papers and testimony and UN efforts.

https://www.apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0

"[Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program]...says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000...governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control...The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years,"

June 29, 1989

There is a big difference between 1 degree in 30 years (slightly above what has been observed, mostly beneficial) and 7 degrees in 30 years (catastrophe).

Note that the "10-year window" (and often shorter times) has been repeatedly invoked and repeatedly blown past throughout the 30 years. As Douglas Adams says — 'I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.' This has come from scientists (Peter Wadhams Arctic ice free by 2016), UN IPCC (Himalayan glaciers by 2035), political figures (Al Gore 10 years/12 years, Ocasio-Cortez 12-years), and celebrities (Prince Charles!? 96-months).

James Hansen speculated (1988/1989) that "West Side Highway...will be underwater" - about 20 foot sea level rise, but sea level rise has remained constant at about a foot per century. Also droughts (have to ask for water), increased crime, and boarded up windows because of wind speed. Note that this was reported as "in 20 years" - so 2009 - by Salon https://www.salon.com/2001/10/23/weather/ reporting the 1988/1989 interview, but after this article was highlighted by skeptics, Hansen corrected the numbers saying it was for 40 years and with a doubling of CO2 (which would be really fast and outside the bounds of even the extreme scenarios) - http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110126_Singing...

Hansen also predicted (1988) strengthening hurricanes (no trend observed, despite warming, media attention, and increased observation) https://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/07/us/ferocious-storms-and-d...

Both sides tend to exaggerate their positions and ignore contrary evidence. Both skeptics and advocates tend to focus on "Scenario A" - the extreme, unrealistic worst-case scenario - rather than the more realistic moderate emissions, moderate warming scenarios.

I wish both AGW proponents and skeptics would call out inaccuracies - even from "their own side". For instance, the IPCC's "Himalayan glaciers gone by 2035" was initially defended and widely publicized before being forced to be acknowledged as an error years later https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-him... The exaggerated sea-level rise predictions in the Salon article above stood uncorrected for years until it was called out by skeptics, then Hansen clarified the "40 years and doubled CO2".
There’s also the question of cost: A world-class teacher for (almost) free online vs a non-world-class, very expensive teacher in person.
Yes, and that's why it used to be text from books, where they wanted to confirm their OCR.
In Russia you are also guaranteed (unless you have friends in power) to spend some years in prison if you hit a pedestrian. Even if the pedestrian was crossing the road at an inappropriate place where you couldn't even see them. But this doesn't help much, Russian drivers still are crazy.
Why not just use one of the 737 MAX planes? They're gonna crash anyway, might as well use them for entertainment.
You can get “industrial” SD cards that are rated for more severe environmental conditions and more write cycles. They are more expensive though, but probably worth it for commercial applications.
We already have the actor model in Rust, via threads. Some people want better performance than what threads can provide. M:N was tried in Rust and the performance was found to be insufficient (and there were other downsides too). So async/await was the next best option.

If you want the actor model, you can use it! There is nothing stopping you from going thread-per-connection in Rust. It's quite fast on Linux for all but the most demanding workloads. If I were writing an ordinary network service expecting moderate traffic, I'd probably go thread-per-connection.
I very much believe the only reason smartphones aren't listening to us and recording us constantly is due to battery purposes. When you plug something in, yeah, I have no trouble believing they're recording everything and storing it somewhere.
Thanks for your patient and kindy reply. I believe many people in China, especially young students or businessmen have read or heard what you mentioned more or less. People from mainland definitely know the official news is not the full picture. But just don't simply assume they have no picture at all or their knowledge is totally incorrect without anything in line with the facts. That's my core point.

> They could only examine prima facie evidence, a much lower bar than guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

How low is that? Do you have some serious materials easy to read on this issue?

I think mainland people never deny Hong Kong's superiority on juridical system. Tourists would have a great interest knowing how it works and make Hong Kong a great success in business. However, it's superficial and hateful to propaganda just by focusing on familiar things and pretending nobody knows.

> a proper legal system and accountable democracy are the key to long term stability

Every sensible protester knows the importance of stability. But to get more support by propaganda, instead of taking it for granted, there's a lot to explain along the way between their behavior and the value both side shares. For certain group of people, it's not as obvious as the protesters see.

>Britain wanted to give more democracy to Hong Kongers, but got opposed by Beijing

Notice Britain could have given more democracy for Hong Kong without China's pressure before 1980 but she didn't, like Young plan. My point here is, according to history, the colony is not a better symbol for freedom and democracy than the SAR in mainland people's eyes, but more like a symbol for independence.
Even if they had successfully made their bags offensive, deliberately offending your customers doesn't sound like a great idea to me.
They could use data that doesn't come from their customers, many of whom are not aware that they're training Google's models…
Interesting install a SATA card and make a NAS. I think better than a usb.
I've had three jobs where I commuted from 10-30 miles over public transit. All those long commutes were either suburb to suburb or from city to suburb via reverse commute. There’s no need to drive a car if you’re commuting to a fixed location and you live in the burbs or the city.
First time I visited my cousin in Illinois, they took me into Chicago for dinner at a pizza place and then to show me the rest of the city. During dinner, my cousin told me not to slow walk when you cross the street. As soon as the light changes, cars will barrel right into the intersection, so be careful.

Sure enough, I went to cross and my cousin tried to grab my arm and not let me cross. The light was green, but the timer on the crosswalk light was going down from 5. I figured I was good to go.

The light turned green for the cars and I was just about across the street when two cars who clearly had seen me, raced into the intersection. I had to nearly dive to the curb to get to safety and in the process both drivers shouted at me to get the F out of the street.

I turned around petrified and saw my cousin and uncle were laughing hilariously at my introduction to being a pedestrian in Chicago.

I'm sure there are still many cities where cars will (wrongly) always have the right of way; regardless of whether there are people in the crosswalk or not and don't care if someone gets clipped or run over in the process.
Not true. Apple has demonstrated how to do it and has published a paper on the topic.

A. Bhowmick et al. Protection Against Reconstruction and Its Application in Private Federated Learning, 2018.

Don’t just dismissively say “oh that’s different and doesn’t apply” until you read it and understand the range of problems Apple is tackling with this and similar approaches. A lot can be done when the organization makes privacy a priority.

Let’s not forget I am replying to a person who has chosen to use a throwaway account for this topic. Why did they do that? Hmmm.
Designing ML-powered mobile apps: Best practices
JEP Proposed to Target JDK 14: 352: Non-Volatile Mapped Byte Buffers
Since they specifically point out back-end state and full page reloads as an option, they're clearly asking from a place of incredulity. As in, "Wait, HNers actually think this is good UX?"

And no, moving client-side logic to the back-end isn't self-evidently superior. Not for your implementation nor for user UX. So you'd have to use more than condescension to make your point. Full page reloads for an "Add Row" button died for more reasons than just "web developers are idiots and don't realize how everyone actually loved that."
Learning Python and Flask for my home projects. It’s really making me wish I was paid to write Python instead of JavaScript.
Thank you, this makes a lot of sense and it's really interesting to hear.

It's depressing how often 'disability' gets reduced to a single quality, as though changes have a standard effect on disabled people as a group. Our different experiences seem like a great demonstration of that. On one hand, complex care that makes "brilliant" new solutions unlikely to do anything, and a distraction from access and support to existing care. On the other, issues so straightfoward that access to care and social support are largely meaningless - but also leaves me with an eye on shiny new advances because existing treatments start and stop at pain relief.

As an aside, I really appreciate the point about relevant training - I do worry that there's a "Gellman amnesia" issue here where I'm acutely aware that I should be skeptical of motorized medical devices or brain-training games, but don't have an adequate skepticism about drugs or surgery. I think medical devices really are singularly prone to ludicrous overpromising, but it's hard to know how much of my doubt should extend to other topics.

I wish you well, and I hope the mundane business of living and getting care goes as well as possible. There's a lot of interesting change on the horizon, but people shouldn't let it overshadow improving lives however we can today.
I'd rather see a random list of posts that are actually being deleted rather than examples that Twitter officially uses, before making the determination that the rule is applied fairly.
I really like Bucky Roberts. His channel name is "TheNewBoston." He has a fun way of teaching and gets to the point. I started programming 6 years ago watching his intro to java videos. 6 years later he has millions of subscribers and has videos on a ton of topics including how to make beer lol.
Although they keep denying it, Nintendo has made it pretty clear that the Switch is the replacement for both the Wii U and 3DS console lines. For people who want a portable experience, there's no reason to go for a full-size Switch when they won't use half of its functionality. That's who this is marketed toward, and the special edition for Pokemon Sword and Shield only seems to confirm that idea. This isn't for the people who want a family console but would rather have a personal one instead, so the lack of ability to switch to two players doesn't make as much of a difference.

I agree that it's not as portable as the 3DS. However, there's size comparisons that show that it's at least small enough to be pretty portable as long as you have a bag of some sort with you. This will still sell well especially if all the new titles shift from 3DS to Switch.
Living in Florida, and being married to a wife who considers the presence of cockroaches a dealbreaker for living together, I've managed to keep a roach-free home for several years now without _too_ much effort.

I use this as one part of a multi-pronged approach, dusting around areas they would need to cross to get into the house. It's super-cheap and lasts a long time.

It does need to stay relatively dry, though. When I've needed to repair drywall on occasion, I dust a bunch in the opening figuring it will basically last forever and not get wet.

I also use a bait with boric acid placed in various random areas. I also use a product that slowly emits a vapor in closed areas that basically neuters any roaches that get near it (for places like under the sink). Finally I used Home Defense spray around the outside.

I treat the condo once every three months, and it takes about 30 minutes. I've seen maybe two cockroaches in the past few years, and both were belly-up.
Easy tricks to improve your brand awareness
Thanks btw for the warning, I'm learning Rust slowly by going through the awesome Rust book.
https://www.reddit.com/r/computervision/comments/c9ta80/the_...
How do you square that with a security cameras? Do you need to consent every time you enter a space secured by them?
Looks like a lightweight borrow checker, although I wonder how well it fares in places where lifetimes are difficult to track. Or is there a way to annotate methods with this information as well?
I'm not familiar with HomePod, but if I ever get an Alexa/Siri kind of assistant, it will be one that analyses my voice locally rather than sending it to the cloud.

Ah, who am I kidding? I just bought a new Android phone, which probably does exactly the same thing. Time to install LineageOS on it, I guess.
OpenJDK 12 and JUnit Playground
Oh good, I finally have a justification for my behavior.
> Personally I find Actor model concurrency so much easier to deal with (e.g. Erlang). The rules seem significantly more straightforward and easier to deal with mentally.

I haven't used Erlang, but how does it deal with blocking calls? Say an actor decides to make a call to the DB. Will the runtime block the current thread the actor is running on?

The other alternative to explicit async/await, which permeates the entire call stack as you pointed out, is to have green threads, like Java's upcoming fibers (see project Loom). The runtime automatically swaps out the current fiber once it makes a blocking call and switches in another non-blocking fiber to continue making progress.
There is a beautifully illustrated arxiv paper Ballooning Spiders: The Case for Electrostatic Flight by Peter W. Gorham
at https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4731, which is a good read, if you want to get a bit more into the subject.
I feel like if you have to say, "It's only creepy if you don't know how the software worries" you're on the wrong side here.

Regardless of how the software works, it's still incredibly creepy.
Do you have a source for human annotation of Siri recordings? Do they use subcontractors like Google?
There are no “winning” products
How Do Time of Flight Sensors (ToF) Work? A Look at ToF 3D Cameras
“I rue the day I married you, Steven Robert Parker, you HIV-infected cheating scumbag! I wish I had never lied to the FBI about those classified documents you stole!”
It's not difficult to do, I agree, but time spent doing it, testing it, maintaining it carries the opportunity cost of doing other things that may be more valuable.

Usually, such things are in abundance and take priority over supporting browsers without JS. For the vast majority of apps and businesses, JS as a minimum entry requirement is a perfectly acceptable tradeoff of lost users vs additional development cost.
>The fact that I do not get any feedback whatsoever when things go wrong leads me to have no faith that the problem will be resolved in any satisfactory manner. When combined with a complete lack of consumer/business interaction options in general (w.r.t. Google), it leads to some very dissatisfied consumers.

I guess you can ask for your money back? Lets stay grounded in reality here, Google is paying money on your behalf to improve your experience. They could, and from a financial perspective maybe should try getting you to annotate your own data. But all that annotated data gets pooled and used to improve the models. I don't think their goal here is to give you faith they are resolving your issue. The algorithm is going to get some things wrong. Its a matter of improving the overall accuracy and precision in the algorithm.

>You think engineers are flagging voice requests that happen more than once? How would engineers have access to that data in the first place if it's supposed to be anonymous and private?

100% they have to be. Its too costly and time intensive to slog through all the data. Probably* they have a flag that goes off on a voice request when something is either not intelligibly interpreted so many times in a row. Or if a use has to go manually do something after repeatedly making a request. This flags the interaction for manual review. Then it processes through some algorithm to strip it of identifying data. Then it gets put in front of a warm body for review.

Trust me that the company wants to avoid putting things in front of warm bodies as much as possible. Its expensive.
Yeah, this was a big issue about a decade ago when police officers could sue someone for recording said officers doing something illegal in Massachusetts.

So they redacted that law then had to fast track an updated version of it a few years later when someone got arrested for taking upskirt photos and then it wasn't illegal. My cousin was an aide to a state lawmaker and had to explain to his boss what it meant at the time.
Background noise could be boosting your performance
In Europe, urban centers are prohibitively expensive to live in if you want to avoid living in a slum.

Imagine if every city was San Francisco, especially in realtion to income.

In the end, I can live somewhat comfortably if I commute, essentially trading my time for lower crime rates and nicer surroundings.
Rural Americans are being left behind
Top Shopify Dropshipping Stores
What would be the leanest linux browser option if one HAD to use Google Docs. I am assuming there would be no practical way for a typical user (read "not a software engineer") to do that in a text only environment.
What were your long commutes? 1-2 hours? Why would people accept that when a car can do that in a quarter the time?
> What baffles me is that, while there is certainly much to complain about the state of front-end JS dev today, the attitude of some that moving the web back 15 years is a good thing.

The problem is that many people, for various reason (accessibility, poor network connection, low-end hardware, etc.) are stuck "in the past" with regards to the web. This doesn't mean you have to make this the experience for everyone using your website: just make sure it degrades gracefully for those who can't use the new shiny stuff.
Aardvark – Real-Time graphics and visualization in F#
Yeah, it uses a service called Algolia, and unfortunately their frontend depends on JS. But you can use http://hnapp.com/ for JS-free search.

(I'm not affiliated)