skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You can't predict the exact rate of technological progress, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We were further away from the goal 30 years ago than today.
Complexity as defined in most scientific disciplines today refers to systems which are "greater than the sum of their parts," i.e., where the behavior of the whole system cannot be predicted by looking at each component in isolation, but only can be understood by the action and interaction between components and how that evolves over time. Most systems of interest are too big to enumerate all the possible n-ary interactions between constituent parts, so we must study them by other means: probe plausible simulations, define and compute statistics from observable data, or fit models which capture plausible correlations. To complicate this further, it usually takes just one cycle or feedback loop in the network / system to introduce enough complexity that most traditional analytical mathematical tools break down.

I studied complex (adaptive) systems as my Master's education and can confirm most techniques reduce to "linearize around the important bits and extrapolate from there".

Examples of complex systems include: social networks (IRL and online), economies, biological systems. Machine learning is one of the most promising tools for probing these because if we can fit an appropriate model, we can hopefully capture enough of the behavior that we can reliably extrapolate to unseen data / states.
There’s a great discussion of this on Buzzard’s blog.

https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2019/09/27/does-anyone-kno...

Read the comments too.
Which means you're not eating into your insurance's deductible or out-of-pocket max for the year.

In many cases, that's not going to make financial sense.
Not the OP but I can tell you about my experience. I used to work at Udacity, both on engineering and content creation.

We for sure had engineers who were self-taught / learned using online resources (myself included). In fact, I hold zero certifications related to programming.

Over the years we recruited and employed a handful of engineers who pretty much learned everything they knew about programming through Udacity courses. Frankly, I always felt it was a very supportive environment for non-traditional engineers :)
Passive design can be climate specific, but I agree, it needs to be built into new designs. The problem that I'm seeing is that "no one" cares: developers will build houses with gorgeous kitchens/bedrooms/living rooms, but the HVAC stem will be bottom-shelf equipment with flex duct run all over the place (and pinched in a few other places). Because no one sees it, nor thinks to question it. We really need to figure out how to make it desirable and something people demand. Maybe that's raising electrical rates or taxing antiquated system design? Some form of hitting a wallet?

I like what you're thinking about geothermal; it sparked a few thoughts, though: Geothermal is expensive because of labor, not necessarily price gouging. Most installers (in my area) put a 10% mark up on everything: finding competent installers is harder and harder these days, so you're paying more and more. HVAC techs can make six figures if they have the experience and aren't afraid to negotiate.
Unless, of course, they ARE price gouging, which happens, especially if they're already busy (which has been the case for the past three years).

The technology is solid, though to be frank, a high efficiency air-to-air heat pump will be comparable to geothermal, depending on the climate zone. If we can figure out a cost-effective way to replace gas-fired heat in northern climates with something more eco friendly (and consumer friendly), progress would be made.
I think they’re made with Miro (formerly Realtimeboard). Can’t recommend it enough!!
Proper classes in 5.0, "true" OOP in 5.2.

Namespaces in 5.3

Javascript namespace/module handling is a nightmare, they should have copied PHP's.
It's actually type checking. Per the Curry–Howard correspondence, proof checking is equivalent to type checking, just for much more sophisticated type system than in an ordinary programming language.
I don't think so. I just cited their monorepo as an approach close to opposite polar extreme.

In reality they don't actually have a single, company-wide repo, and they also have some groups that have isolation almost as extreme as Apple's.

Any large company will have these communication problems I cited; the part I find weird is that Apple not only takes no steps to address them but takes steps that as side effects exacerbate the issue. Clearly it doesn't bother them and they do ship good products so...
Maybe for blending, white on black text and things like that - after calculating shades the "wrong" way for compatibility with fonts' built-in expectations. See my other comment about that.
Good question on the fish, I suppose that quite stretches the metaphor :). I suppose if I were the fish I’d still be traumatized after being yanked out of the water and provided a solid meal.

On feature vs news titles I’m totally with you and your point is very much taken. Yes it is a problem from that perspective when only the title is syndicated without the context of what type of article it is. For example the Washington Post runs a column that is a satirical take on the news, written with a straight face. Google News syndicates it as news with no differentiation, and I kept having surreal “wuh??” moments until I started recognizing the author. I guess we need more metadata besides title and source. Thanks for a good discussion.
Especially as a form of revenge. Yeah, it's petty, but it's been my experience that "petty" (and so many other gamers are going to down vote this) describes 90% of gaming cultures.
The Tyranny of Time
I guess you mean this: https://placesjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/mattern...

still not clear to me how one gets from one building to another without a car.
First you need to find a formal definition for “general AI”.
The format of outlines is only difference between .ttf and .otf, yes. .ttf has quardratic Bézier curves and hinting is done by interpreted programs (on Windows; TrueType has generate hints at run-time). .otf has cubic Bézier curves and declarative hints.

The outline format of .otf comes from Adobe Type 1 fonts (.otf really is just .ttf with outline format taken from Type 1), so the .otf outline format is the older one. Apple created TrueType after licensing talks with Adobe failed long ago.

.otf is generally more compact in terms of font file size than .ttf. Really the only reason to stick with .ttf is the rasterizer situation on Windows and outlines traveling from Linux and Mac to Windows in PDFs.
A related article: https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4286-remembering-harold-llo...
There was some link a few weeks back about the low completion rate for some online coursework being abysmally low.

This is HN, I would expect a hundred anecdotes from those who have succeeded against the traditional educational system in CS.

But are there studies or other evidence this is more then survivorship bias? Is any study following dropouts, non-BS grads, bootcampers and online students in the industry over time and counting from the total population who registered for CS 101?
Famous computer public figure suffers the consequences for asshole-ish behavior
> I agree with that statement. How can you use type when you don't know range of values.

That might be a question for developers of the billons of lines of C++ in production. Asking them, you'd discover how they they actually use the builtin types.
Medium was originally a great experience for the reader. No interstitials, no ads, no unrelated photos, no pleading to "follow" or "become a member". Just your text, nicely formatted.

Compare a simple article, across the years:

2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20141201191740/https://medium.co...

2019: https://medium.com/@fields/now-its-about-the-things-that-you...

Once they started achieving critical mass, like every other free-to-use webpage, they loaded it full of crap.
I agree. Why even bother using a feature that cant babysit (manage) itself. Yikes. I rather it not be enabled at all if its going to risk my vehicle. Thankfully I am letting the masses QA those cars. I will stick to my dumb car in the meantime.
Majority of frameworks in use are:

Symfony
Laravel
CodeIgniter
CakePHP
Yii
Zend
Slim

All of these can (and recommend) using either PDO with named parameters, or a full ORM for SQL work. Most came packaged with a PDO (Doctrine, mostly) by default but have always supported whatever you wanted to use.

Write shit code, win shit prizes.
It’s a good question. This paper hints at the reason: https://github.com/treenotation/jtree/blob/master/papers/pap...

First, jtree is a bit orthogonal as that’s just an implementation. The github issue is there for convenience, it’s arbitrary.

The reason for tree notation is that it’s a level up from binary. Binary notation does not give you the ability to define new symbols. Tree notation is a 2d binary. You can define new abstractions. It is a bridge between human and machine languages.

Take any concept in mathematics, such as “derivative”. How would you define such a concept, starting only from 1s and 0s? Tree notation gives you a method to do that, in a way that’s not only efficient (noiseless), but also gives you practical tools, like complexity counting.
Sadly, no.

>One study, by Maish and colleagues in Pharmacotherapy 1996, looked at whether grapefruit juice increased caffeine effects and found little or no difference in blood concentrations and blood pressure when caffeine was given with and without GFJ. Other research has confirmed these results. Since specific enzyme systems most often metabolize similar chemicals, one would not necessarily expect GFJ to affect other stimulants, but this is far from conclusive.

https://erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=2726
In a similar way for macOS enabling the offline root user has been under Network Account Server > Directory Utility forever. Microsoft is not alone in their logic here.
Software engineering is mostly project management, with very little engineering content.
New Malware Infects Thousands of PCS, Confirms Microsoft and Cisco Talos
To find the best parking spot, do the math
My online research study was recently infiltrated by bots
Yeah its really not that high. I was reading the Ian Goodfellow, creator of GANs, was only making 800k at google. Which is honestly, really low for someone who has done ground breaking research in neural networks.
Ray Parker a.k.a. Rayparker – SymfonyConnect
I had these fears about my dissertation work, but then realized that the “elder’s” papers were highly cited because they contained important machinery which could be modified and refined to prove other results... or the paper contained an important idea which went on to be proved in a variety of ways. Maybe it’s different outside of PDEs, but I doubt it.
The biggest "passive" design from my understanding is a few deciduous trees. In the summer, the leaves block out the sun, but in the winter, the leaves fall off and the sun directly heats the home.
That assumes there is some link to the general public, to the real world. Lots of math has absolutely no practical use, yet. Why bother explaining the cutting edge when even those who understand it cannot fathom how it would ever be used?
Right - boost::units is supposed to be a zero-overhead abstraction buy there are still edge cases where the compiler can’t optimize away all the template wrappings. Generally still worth it, if you find a performance bottleneck you can move back to doubles and conventions to keep the units straight. This sounds like it may not be so easy to selectively opt out of.
They had a diff, they knew where it was. This helps a lot.
Buzzard asked Wiles himself, who stated "that he would not want to sit an exam on the proof of Langlands–Tunnell".
By geothermal you mean a ground-source heat pump? What is the bare minimum cost of the materials & digging & installation?
Gource for this repo: https://youtu.be/cyaCZDffAbQ
I feel the same way when I look at many of these papers.

I get that I don't have a post doctorate in super math or whatever the bleeding edge academic ivory tower game is these days, but at the same time I feel that if 90% of the research cannot convey any practical description of real-world implications, or at least how it relates to other abstract things that DO have real-world implications, maybe there is some BS house-of-cards fantasy game going on.

From what I understand, there are some financial benefits to cranking out research papers. Perhaps researchers are incentivized to build layer upon layer of abstraction so they can spin any tale they desire in order to turn a quick buck? What better field than math? The purest and most non-tangible of fields.

Another perspective I have on this - Virtually all computer technology or software papers I read are typically understandable to some degree, despite my not having the highest credentials in my field. It would seem the constraint of "if this is in a compsci paper, it needs some reference implementation pseudocode" seems to help keep people honest. If the computer can run it, at least you can view things in a more concrete (albeit still somewhat abstract) manner. Especially imperative code examples. These quickly take very abstract algorithmic concepts and transform them into a step-by-step understanding. If the paper is total bunk, you can usually tell pretty quickly from the results on the computer.

Automated proofs, where feasible, seem like a very reasonable requirement for published math papers. My ignorance at the higher levels of this field fails to inform me if all math papers could be proven automatically, or if there is some more 'complex' realm of reasoning unsuitable for classical/quantum/etc verification. Perhaps this should be a good constraint regardless - If you can't implement your algorithm/proof on a computer, where are you headed with it anyways? Surely piling another 500 papers worth of layers on top isn't going to move you any closer to a practical outcome.
My main concerns are power management and HiDPI support. How long does it run per charge in daily usage?
Since the discussion is about "earth's gravity", I'm assuming the change would be in its mass, not in the universal gravitational constant, which is not Earth-specific.
> Apparently at least one is just Manish's name?

Yes, I noticed that. :) Both मनीष and منش are "Manish", though he didn't bother with the vowels in the Arabic-script version, so alternative readings are possible.
Ask HN: What are some good resources for learning about vintage computers?
Recently, I came into possession of an early 1980's-era vintage computer from Wang Laboratories. It belonged to my grandfather and was found in his attic along with a monitor and keyboard from the same company. Unfortunately, after getting home with the equipment, I discovered the computer is not working properly.

I don't have any of the documentation for the computer (assuming there was any to begin with), and I know next to nothing about troubleshooting vintage computers. I also having trouble finding any resources (technicians, learning materials, etc.) that could help troubleshoot the issue(s) I'm having. I've always been particularly interested in vintage computers, and now that I have one, I'd like to be able to get it to work.

What are you recommendations? Are there any wikis, books or otherwise for learning about vintage computers?

Details about the vintage computer I found, for those interested:

Manufacturer: Wang Laboratories
Model No.: PC-XC3-2
Year: 198?
CPU: Intel 8086
RAM: 256KB
Drives: 1 FDD, 1 HDD
Keep an eye on the port. If they aren't kept adequately clean and end up infected, it's ugly from what I gather.

Best.
Joker 2: The mayor of Gotham recruits Batman, because law enforcement has no jurisdiction over silly criminals
Multi-stage, fileless Nodersok campaign delivers rare Node.js-based malware
Be Egoless: let go of your ego and be open. Ask the stupid question after doing your research. The guys who don’t ask because they’re afraid of looking stupid also don’t learn anything.
> Most of the benefits people talk about with thorium are related to using a liquid fuel in the form of a molten salt (LFTR), which allows for things like continuous operation, 100% fuel utilization, and "meltdown-proof" designs.

If it is really that great, China will make it happen. If not, then it's just overhyped, like hydrogen. People like to focus too much on arbitrary metrics, when really it's economics first, politics second and science/engineering last.
Hey, could you please not post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? Especially not shallow dismissals, as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

If you know more, a great thing to do is to share what you know, so the rest of us can learn.
Most things that use DC use pretty low voltage, like 5 or 12 volts or so. High voltage allows you to transfer energy much more efficiently. So, for low power devices it might make sense to run a low voltage line but you wouldn't be able to run high-power devices out of it unless you wire your house with really thick wiring.
Theorem Proving in Lean [pdf]
Very interesting, thanks! This is definitely along the lines of what I’m thinking. It uses EBNF, i think if we switched it to tree notation it would be much, simpler, tighter, and more self contained.
I wish more devices would run on PoE. It's DC, it's easy to install, it carries power and data. There are some (but few) PoE light fixtures, but not as many as I'd like.
It's not really like that. NN's are only used when searching for new proofs or steps which can be used to fill in details, the verification of a finished proof is done by a classical program by a series of substitutions which are very straightforward and spelled out in detail.

Here is an example.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.02644.pdf
It has less to do with ac vs dc and more to do with the voltage and distance from source to load. If you wanted a dc bus inside a house you would need to have voltages in the same range as ac power 120/240V in North America. At this point you have the same challenges of how do you reduce the voltage to something low and easy to work with for an end device like a light bulb or cell phone. Stepping down voltage is easy to do with AC power but difficult for DC which is why I don’t think it will ever be practical.
I think the intended implication is that Wiles has not read or understood all of the proofs he built on.

If someone said, "nobody dead or alive understands all the details of Windows" I doubt anyone here would find it controversial. It's too big to fit in one person's head.
>I have my doubts there will be cushy FAANG jobs for everyone capable of playing around with network architectures in a few years.

Presumably because technical needs of FAANG might be moving in other directions.
Could someone comment why this might be the case, and what other fields might look relevant
They do not record back to amazon 24/7 though. I have myself watched amazon echo traffic in wireshark. It sends nothing much of the time and then sends data when you issue commands that start with “Alexa”. That’s it. They listen for the wake word 24/7 but detect that locally, and then only send short sentences to the cloud for more advanced query processing.
LOL to anyone who didn't see this coming
readable version
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178308065268920320.html
Again, it may very well be a vanilla TLS, but then you have a bit of code in some obscure corner that repoints random() to an alternative weaker implementation when some conditions are met, including, for example, not being run under a debugger and not having certain popular functions trampolined.

Good luck finding even this without a fine comb. And that's us just getting started with code flow obfuscation.

No source = no trust. It's as simple as that.
Yes, that is always a case, but with deep learning, the hype train I feel was uniquely big in terms of salaries and money in the space.
Governments are thinking about abolishing cash and when there are few enough users they will. Use it or lose it.
I'm waiting for the day when advertising is built into the kernel as a fundamental part of the OS.
Metamath is awesome if you're willing to slum it :)

https://jiggerwit.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/the-architecture-...
Not everyone running Windows PCs at work is in an enterprise environment with in-house IT specialists. Remember, most businesses are small businesses.
No surprise coming from The Economist, this article has done the best job (that I've seen) of explaining these complex topics in a language accessible to most. I now understand the significance of this new discovery and its limitations. And I like how they've stayed humble with their tie-in to Watson's famous prediction in the last sentence.
Unless I'm missing something, it appears Mr. Stamos (and others) are refuting the original reporting [1][2] with details from the US CLOUD act [3]. The original reporting did not mention the CLOUD act and only mentioned an upcoming "treaty" or "accord". While it's a reasonable guess that these are related, I fear the Hacker News headline prematurely burns Bloomberg with unsubstantiated opinion that currently holds no more weight than the original reporting.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-28/facebook-...

[2] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-can-access-suspect...

[3] https://www.justice.gov/dag/cloudact
Antialiasing (nominally) makes text easier to read. Motion blur makes everything it's applied to harder to see.
I understand what you are going through and am sorry I cannot solve it for all of us in this boat. I try my best not to dwell in the past and be angry, but its so hard when the past's errors and slights affect your quality of life every day.
As wonderful as my smartphone is at accomplishing a billion different tasks, occasionally I want something that does exactly one thing and does it well.

For many years I listened effectively to just one radio station, and something like this would have indeed been delightful.

I could see using this to rekindle my love for public radio.
SAT solvers are really fast now. Some sort of "neural SAT problem definition" followed by solving it seems to be an interesting direction, but I'm relatively naive on it all. Not sure how training would work since there's no backprop through Boolean logic.
I've seen a lot of linkbait from phys.org (and other press release reposter). It's usually better to try to explain why the title (or the whole article) is wrong than just complaining. [Someone will downvote you anyway.]
It seems like you could have a similar system which also has some type of internal lever to release the lock although I assume this wasn't part of the original design.
Check out EventGeek.com, this company is basically a copycat
> Whatever is needed for humanity to become carbon neutral, we need much more to become carbon negative, to remove carbon faster than nature adds it.

We have processes to do this, cheap electricity would really help there.
Doesn't it depend on the screen and user preference though? On my old Thinkpad's screen grayscale antialiasing looks awful (fuzzier and harder to read), to the point where I've filled bugs when some aspect of a program's UI doesn't obey my system settings.
That's fine when you live in a house. Not so relevant when you live 20 storeys up. I feel like way too much time and effort goes into improving single family houses, as opposed to larger multi-family buildings. They could be built to be much more efficient and just as comfortable. But alas.
Nice Project. Nice emojis :)
Here is some non pay-walled content: https://qz.com/1718506/boeings-737-max-mcas-has-better-desig...

The key quote from there:

Notably, pilots of the KC-46 are able to override the MCAS—or Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System—simply by pulling on the controls, the Journal reports. It quotes an Air Force procurement chief as saying, “We have better sensor data. But most importantly, when the pilot grabs the stick, the pilot is completely in control.”