skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Trying to figure out what a compiler might do in the face of undefined behavior is generally not a worthwhile exercise.

That is exactly the point of my post! If you think I disagree with that statement, we seriously miscommunicated somewhere.

The parts you seem to be concerned about are those where I try to explain why the abstract machine is the way it is. Hardware and compiler concerns do come in at that point, and my feeling is just dogmatically giving an abstract machine won't help convince people of its usefulness.
Certain podcast apps (I use Pocket Casts) will let you start a podcast at a certain timestamp. I've found that really helpful to skip the intros of the podcasts I listen to regularly.
tl:dr :

Do my son's engineered superpowers make him more human, or less?

The more different you are, the more valuable you become.

My particular area of research and development is cognitive neuroprosthetics: devices that directly interface with the brain to improve our memory, attention, emotion, and much more.

How can we respect someone's humanness while also giving them the choice to become more like the majority of humans?

In a world that values difference, untypical humans paired with neuroprosthetics might become even more powerful than fully abled ones.

If these kinds of augmentations can lift them above the crowd, soon everyone will want to be more than human.

It's seductively easy to imagine a world in which we're a little smarter or a bit more creative, in which our kids have the latest advantage.
but still no Windows support for native image, plus no position independent code on *nix platforms
That's pretty darned normal. If it gets bad enough we call it PTSD, otherwise is a quarter or midlife crisis.
Usually "we" means "the rich".

And "the rich" usually means "everyone having more money than I do".
Correct, control was their innovation. However control without enough power isn't useful. It is possible (albeit very unlikely) someone in the 1300s was able to build a controllable glider much like the wright brother's but lacking any means of propulsion it would be impractical and forgotten to history.

I'm not discounting their innovation, just stating that it depending on propulsion. Once propulsion was there it was inevitable that someone would figure out control in a few years when they realized more power wasn't enough.
I sympathize with the romantic view of FP, and I'd say that the choice of language defines culture in companies I've worked in. I've hacked around with Haskell/snap and worked (as non developer) in a clojure shop and my impression is that functional languages are an expression of a culture that values a certain quality of thinking that is just not commodity today.

I suspect you can hold off imitators in an early stage company for a few extra months by giving the impression that there is a high cost/high risk aspect to your product, and it creates a foundation of quality reasoning about features.

However, I have also witnessed a culture clash a few times, where to build a business with investors, you need to scale up with commodity developer talent, and you lose the core team when you try to integrate them. Anecdotally, functional languages also tend to attract personalities who can be difficult to focus on products, which are to them just side effects of discovery. A company that depends on "geniuses," to run it is probably not a very sound business.

If I wanted to build a company positioned for linear growth over a 20 year horizon that was services heavy, in a specific niche like utilities or security, I would choose a functional language for the platform. If I wanted to position a company for exponential growth or integration/acquisition into another product family, I'd pick something with less friction around its cultural edges.
How to Create an Agile Backlog by Breaking a UI into a List of Features
Yes, mainly. I vastly prefer pseudonymity/anonymity on the net and would only reveal my real identity for services that explicitly require it. For shipping, banking, etc.
I added a few sentences about that to the post:

> In the case of our example, the program actually compares such an “unobservable” bit pattern with a constant, so the compiler constant-folds the result to whatever it pleases. Because the value is allowed to be “unstable”, the compiler does not have to make a “consistent choice” for the two comparisons, which would make such optimizations much less applicable. So, one time we “look” at x the compiler can pretend it is at least 150, and then when we look at it again it is at most 120, even though x did not change.

Also see http://nondot.org/sabre/LLVMNotes/UndefinedValue.txt.
My intentions are neither to start flame wars, nor to troll, sorry if I came across that way.

I am being sarcastic against posts contrarian to common practice only for the sake of being contrarian, this being one.

If a current good practice is to write tests, there will be a post against writing tests.
If a current good practice is to write documentation, there will be a post against writing documentation.
If OOP then functional.

In my consulting job I do have to untangle code written using contrarian practices, obscure languages, and other temporary fads.

Not that Haskell is not a good language, or that functional programming is a bad approach, but rather that neither are a secret weapon against anything else but specific problems these are good at solving.

Good luck to those companies scaling to more than a handful of devs - they could also hire people to migrate them the right language for the task at hand.
Best Practices for Startup from Google
Scalability, safety and ease of refactoring are usually the exact problems you should NOT focus on in a startup. Development speed and easy prototyping are much more important and is better achieved by dynamic, multi-paradigm languages like Ruby, Python or JS. Choosing Haskell for a startup could easily be a form of premature optimization that would slow down development.
Most northern tip of Canadian Arctic breaks heat record
I think this is a valid response but ultimately an invalid comparison.

The laws of physics are specific and testable. When we abstract them from reality we can be very clear about what the abstractions are and the rules of the hypothetical world we are testing the abstractions in.

In economics the situation is very different. We don't even waste time trying to define how things work in reality. All that exists are the abstractions and its never clear in which hypothetical universe those abstractions are being tested because even the poeple writing the theories frequently don't bother with defining them and then change the rules as people challenge their theories.
Excel for Mac, while better than Numbers, is worse than Excel for Windows on the same hardware.

Ignoring the missing functionality (power-anything), even the one ported is buggy. It manages to crash with the same ODBC drivers, that work fine with Windows version (namely psqlODBC).
Learning Neural Networks with Adaptive Regularization
To be honest, I think the idea that we should expect ML algorithms to give a single, certain answer is misguided. I would expect the output from this algorithm to be "King - Man + Woman = King (90%), Queen (83%), Prince (70%)" or something like that, i.e. a list of answers with some measure of how "good" those answers are. Then again, I work in a field that doesn't really have categorical answers so maybe I'm missing something obvious.
As others have explained in this thread: Yes, easily, the projection is that population will top off soon and start declining. It is unlikely (frankly ridiculous) that we will go extinct in the next few decades because of overpopulation.

Also, be careful with the we/them separation. 'They' will lift themselves out of poverty, just like 'we' did.
I did not. I hold a degree in economics and another in anthropology.
It's interesting that wood is considered impractical for a bicycle... but somehow practical for a carriage?

Carriages used to have suspensions (made from some elastic whale bone I believe).

If someone would attempt to build a bicycle in a time of carriages with carriage wheels, I would then expect this person to also copy (at least in analogy) the suspension systems for carriages of that time, if not on the first try at least on the second...
Second: spend more time feeling and less time in your head. The head is populated by constructs of your own creation, and usually they are quite poorly made up. On the other hand feeling is understanding.
In the case of India, the men seek arranged marriages and bring their wives. Women (parents) express preferences like they want men settled abroad, or that they studied nursing and got the English certifications to work abroad, or are in the process of getting a permanent residency. Bad dating prospects != dying lonely.
It seems strange that no one has pointed out the PG essay making this claim (for Lisp) and then the latter discussions where he acknowledged it slowed Reddit's development down, and Aaron Swartz made the right choice switching it across to Python.
Unless I'm not undersranding this correctly. This is basically 'zip' in most functional programming languages.
Show HN: A tool that saved 750 founders from building useless landing pages
>Apple would be actually courageous for switching to USB-C and forcing everyone's hand.

Last time Apple was courageous ─ the headphone jack got killed. The word 'courage' was used to onboard Airpods and move the general trend towards sealing off most ingress points on a device; contemporaneously selling an adapter for a pretty penny.

Whilst I agree that some manufacturers followed the above-mentioned trend. They were not pushed, but rather jumped willingly, as it made financial and commercial sense by applying the maxim - where Apple leads, others must usually follow. There were also unsubstantiated rumours of Apple abandoning their role in development of USB-C implementation, perhaps due to the lack of a moat[0]. Nevertheless, I don't expect them to be altruistic in their motives and fully expect them to monetise the USB-C standard via a plethora of cables and dongles, possibly under the umbrella of MFi program, especially targeting the lack of certification and/or the vacuum/ambiguity created by USB-IF, leaving the rest of the field to carry on dealing with the existing issues.

Also, I would much rather put up with the current botched up state of affairs, than have EU involved in meddling with it and make things even worse.

[0] https://9to5mac.com/2015/03/14/apple-invent-usb-type-c/
Isn't this trivially explained by the fact that it costs money (often a lot due to refrigeration, etc.) to ship food?

If I could teleport any excess food to a place in the world where it's needed, I would.
I'd also like to see a historical tech article about magnetic amplifiers. These were used for gunnery also.
Thanks, I noticed that!
I am shocked and feel kind of betrayed that the de facto "Web documentation" moves away from using Web technology for static documents to something that treats the Web as a broken runtime for apps.
If that's a concern then serialise using s-expressions. You can still edit using i-expressions or something equivalent if you like (it's trivial to convert, after all). Code on-disk doesn't need to be the same as code in-editor (for example, syntax highlighting isn't saved to disk either)
Can we trust GitHub stars?
I liked how he wove it together (or attempted to).

Agreed that he made points which appeared to stop you and think up the story to draw a parallel but I believe there is a cyclical nature to this.

I like seeing the story behind great rivalries, Tesla and Edison, Marconi and Maskelyne, Einstein and Hilbert. Arguably you could say it parallels across the mere premise of rivalry.

In any case, that was a new one for me!
if one was in the market for the entry model this is the opposite of a price cut.
One problem I have with audible is that because I'm paying around $15/month I feel the need to use my credits on books that cost more than this. So I miss out on shorter books, plays, etc I'd like to read. I have a bunch of books in my wishlist that are around $9 and I won't burn a credit on them.

I guess that's part of their business model... get you to spend money in addition to your subscription.
It was indeed Churchill's role in "trouble" abroad (that's a characteristic British euphemistic underplay). Which has only recently become an issue that's openly been discussed in the UK media AFAIAA.
That's an absolutely fantastic point and I thank you for raising it.

This is another example of where infrastructure pays more dividend than simply dropping aid onto areas. You truck in concrete and build a water-way, a region could eat for one hundred years, whereas if you bus in aid they can eat until the aid runs out (and it competes/undercuts local food).

This is why China's effort to build infrastructure (on loan) in this regions[0] is kind of a double-edged sword. While China's motivations may be anything but pure (regional influence/military supply lines/indebting poor countries) the side-effort could be reduced hunger/famine regardless.

[0] https://africacenter.org/spotlight/implications-for-africa-c...
Vugu – Modern UI Library for Go and WebAssembly
> It is true that occasionally the author’s invention plucks at the coverlet, and she can do no better by her brainchildren than to name them Mr. Jones and Mrs. Smith. But it must be said, in fairness, that the Joneses and the Smiths are the horrible examples, the confirmed pullers of social boners.

Was this really written in 1927? It reads like modern satire. If so, it might be the first written usage of the phrase “social boner”.
At this point I think that hardly matters anymore, the damage is done, there are already too many people. Even if population growth were to drop to < 0 (below replacement) today, this planet can simply not sustain 7.4 billion humans at their current consumption rate. Even less so as that rate is still increasing (as more and more people attain Western standards of living). A trillion ants aren't as impactful as a billion humans are.

impact = population * consumption

One way or another, our impact is going to go down.
Yup - they specifically talk about partial pressures of a few gasses as needing to be brought up. But holding in just the partial pressure of those two is a lot easier than holding in a full atmosphere of pressure.
I haven't listened to audiobooks for a long time because I don't drive much. (Don't commute.) I find for podcasts, listening in the car is about the only time they really work for me. Probably because driving requires a level of attention but usually not too much attention.

When I try to listen to podcasts at home my mind usually ends up drifting. And I can't stand having earbuds with music or anything else in my ears when walking. Separates me from my environment too much.
You're right in that our atmosphere will not soon "prevent the planet from cooling and from having liquid water on its surface." In other words, yeah, we aren't going to literally boil the oceans. We shouldn't throw around the term "runaway greenhouse" in serious discussions of anthropogenic global warming.

However, reality is somewhere between "doomsday cult nonsense" and the flippant, dismissive tone of your comment that characterizes the worsening climate crisis about which our species is not doing enough as "minor/major climate changes." That's definitely understating the costs and disruptions that human civilization is facing on its current course.

I wonder if OP was referring to any of the more immediately concerning positive feedback loops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback#Positi...
At the end of the day, what exceptional products have developers with this certain quality of thinking released?

It's more likely that this aura of cultured mystery is a self-defense against the hard truth that's been recognized by businesses for decades: programming language choice doesn't matter that much towards success OR implementation quality, with some exceptions.

When someone wraps so much of their self-worth in a programming concept, it would be painful indeed if it turned out that said concept is remarkable only in their bubble.
Topic models are going to get blown the hell out by UMAP and other manifold based dimensionality reduction algorithms
This... the them and us dichotomy is really telling.

There are different lenses through which to view the world: a collaborative one.

Someone could also say something similar with regard to pollution, where it’s not the poor countries that are posing today an extension threat to the world.
I think you crush opposition because you're good at selling. Then you need something to sell but it's the least important thing. I'm writing this as a 95% developer and 5% salesman.

However using reasonable tools is important. The wrong ones can slow down companies and make business fail beyond the skills of the marketing departments. In my experience I didn't see much difference between Elixir, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby. Properly handled any of them could be ok even if I've got preferences. JavaScript... too much cognitive overhead because of constant ecosystem changes and fragmentation but maybe it's slowing down now.
Colleges expect to graduate 10K data scientists; Amazon need up 500%
Did you end up working there ? I'd suggest not to judge the idiom of their solution quickly. I understand it feels like a 20T hammer for a small nail. But it may be that they use a very high degree of function based programming composing abstraction rather than writing logic on atoms.
Honestly it depends on what your developer is most comfortable with.

If developer is more comfortable with haskell they will likely be faster in that than python. The added advantage it will also likely to be more correct.
What do you mean _other traffic_? These are different people. Probability that you suffer from hunger in your life reduced from 0.8 to 0.08, an order of magnitude.

If one had choice, one would certainly choose to be born now.

Yes, there is still lots of suffering, but as Rosling says, things can be bad and getting better at the same time
Support of OpenBSD's pledge(2) and unveil(2) in programming languages
What does turing complete mean?
1. Those two cars have been out long enough for them to know what sells and what doesn't

2. If they need to flash a lower price in marketing materials, they have the Model 3 now

Seems like a sensible move.
Jsonstore.io / Store your data just by sending us HTTP Requests
I concur with everyone who says Khan Academy - their UX will let you speed through the stuff you already remember well enough, so you won't waste too much time on the basics, and it will help you focus in on the gaps where you have forgotten the material.
The Curious Case of BitFi and Secret Persistence
> Any time you're studying how you might influence human behaviour, especially if they may be unaware that you are seeking to do so, you need to run it by an ethics board.

They were going to influence human behavior anyway, the only difference to business as usual is that they were studying the effects rather than making changes blindly. Do you think that it's the studying that requires review by an ethics board?

If you require review for studies but not business decisions, you'll end up with people not evaluating the consequences to avoid having to get approval. If you require it for anything that influences behavior, you don't get that perverse incentive, but you'll have a hard time finding a reasonable threshold beyond which "influencing behavior" needs to be reviewed.
True, but it sounds like the base Model 3 also got a price cut.

So, if you’re in the market for a “cheap” electric car, you have a price cut. If you’re looking for a high end one, you have a price cut. It’s only if you’re looking for a “cheap, high end” electric car that your cost goes up.

That seems like a reasonable trade off for Tesla. Let the value buyers go for a Model 3, and push the premium buyers to the higher end. Plus, with the Model 3 released there may not be too many people getting the entry level Model S and X anyway.
Forest coverage has been increasing in several European countries as well (e.g. UK and France off the top of my head)
I wouldn't want to ride on such a road with a racing bike or a normal city bike; but with at mountain bike with suspension and perhaps somewhat fatter than normal tires I think riding there would not be too uncomfortable.
One could run superconducting cables around the planet.

The mass required is prodigious, but the energy requirements would be surprisingly small. The magnetic field of Earth above the surface stores about 100 megatons of magnetic energy; on Mars, and if the field were a bit weak, the energy needed would be much less.
Might this be a memory issue? I run it on Xubuntu and noticed it sometimes uses all my 8GB RAM so the PC starts swapping.
Aka we don’t want you reselling them/ buying used books
Yeah... politically it would be hard, I agree. But I don't think it would be a show stopper technically to bring fissile material from earth. For one, automated nuclear power plants are being designed for use on here on Earth. The fissile material itself does not weigh very much. It's also not (very) radioactive until you start the process.

The bulk mass of a (normal) reactor is shielding and cooling plumbing. You don't need any shielding on Mars, and cooling could maybe (probably?) be some kind of radiator/convector to the surrounding air. Maybe you could even crack the CO2 with the heat directly?

Fusion needs a lot plumbing and containment. Fission is just basically a pile of fissile material in proximity. Not very hard if you can skip on all the protection.
Your examples are terrible. East Timor is a classic case of conflict based on language and religion (Indonesia is Muslim, East Timor is Portuguese-speaking and Catholic.) Your water example involves a private company being forced to raise rates to pay for a dam that it was forced to build as part of a government I funded mandate.
Extension Framework for File Systems in User Space
where there is hunger, birth rates are too high

where there is obesity, birth rates are too low
Written in 1997. My picture of RMS is slowly changing from religious zealot to apocalyptic prophet.
What would you describe as your expectation of what should and should not belong to HN?
In developed countries, and increasingly in developing countries, vast tracts of farmland are wasted on an extremely inefficient form of food production: passing the energy through an extra trophic level. Furthermore, in developing countries, a large fraction of arable land is used to grow exportable luxury products like tobacco, chocolate, and coffee.

But hunger, globally, is not caused by insufficient production. It is almost entirely a problem with distribution.
I would bet their thought process is more that there is less competition in the longer range market, so they will do better. There are lots of options now if you don't need much range.
People who are better at finding and keeping jobs -- are, typically, against minimum wage increase (because they better understand the consequences of such restriction).

Ironically, people who struggle with keeping a job -- are more likely to shoot themselves in the foot by supporting minimum wage increase.
You're absolutely right, the environment ('market') matters as much as what you bring to the table ('product'). I've been in similar situations before where I've gone from being highly regarded by one manager to being regarded as average by the next manager. In a situation like this, it's best to change teams. While scouting for a team, pick one that gets a lot of attention from company leadership as they tend to focus their attention on teams with growth prospects. A team with growth will have more room for you to shine.