skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The most interesting use case for Dropbox is enabling cross-app workflows on iPad. Most apps support the Dropbox APIs now. Apple needs to get its shit together and make iCloud the back end. They can mandate that apps support their APIs, and then iCloud gets more revenue.
The story exceeds my suspension of disbelief. What particular jumps out at me is the backwards details - nobody off the street knows what "TPA" means, sure, but everybody who's ever gone to see a doctor knows what HIPAA is, even if they think it's called "HIPPA".
They hear/smell the hunters, thier trucks, and thier dogs. When a unussual number of pickups start driving into the woods at 5am, it is time to retreat.
link to research paper: https://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~ymostofi/papers/MobiCom19_KoranyKa...
Brave/BAT’s R&D Team Creates Distributed VPN
No License - They won't see your funding plea if they never look
That's (purportedly) a quote from the person posting this on HN, not the purchaser of the company.
Australian Capital Territory votes to legalise cannabis
Ah, finally we can have 10x developer by developing for Windows 10 X
> These fucking algorithms are killing me, and making me have a hard realization that maybe I'm just not cut out for this. Yea, I've built shit... but you know what... anyone could.

I wouldn't get too discouraged about this: they couldn't - not necessarily anything of value anyway.

I've worked enough places now where the product the business is built on was written by somebody who wasn't necessarily a great programmer, yet this "bad"[1] code is the foundation of the company's success and may be the sole reason they're able to pay me.

You can build a really successful business on really "shitty" tech.

[1] Inefficient, non-scalable, hard to follow, poorly architected, spaghetti code - call it what you will.
Not criticizing OpenBSD, but this has nothing to do with OpenBSD in particular (which uses Clang now).

Grandparent 'takeda is just flat wrong. hello.c compiles and runs with extremely modern Clang and GCC versions (8.0.1 RC and 9.2.0, respectively). The former is a development RC and the GCC was released August 2019.

And we can expect this going forward! The C standard is extremely stable and loathe to deprecate anything. gets(3) is finally gone in C11 and it has been deprecated since the 1999 standard. That's the only ABI removal in C history.

There is absolutely no reason to expect that tiny program which doesn't invoke gets(3) to ever stop being compilable by standards-conforming C compilers.
”Delete a node from a singly-linked list, given only a pointer to that node.”

From the ‘solution’:

// if the next node is nil, it's the last node.
// this implementation does not work.

On top of that, the ‘solution’ doesn’t delete the node given; it deletes the one after it, but copies its value to the node to be deleted. That may be fine in some cases, but problematic in others, say when other code uses node addresses to access nodes.

I would change the problem statement to ”_Remove_ a _value_ from a _circular_ singly-linked list, given only a pointer to the node containing the value.”
BBEdit does if you happen to be a Mac user.
Maybe it's bull. But it has the ring of truth to it, to me, and I've worked for a few healthcare startups. A lot of developers think of themselves as "just developers" and a lot of people are brutally incurious about the world until it hits them in the face.
Thanks for sharing. Between your salary, stock options, 8% matching 401k, and being in the Midwest you can probably accomplish FIRE even faster than by age 40.
So, you leave me conflicted..

... on the one hand, I want to yell "Strawman!" "Strawman!" "Come out and see the Strawman!" from the hills but I do not want to come off as aggressive or preaching ...

The point you make here is certainly true but it is neither the point of my argument or the point of the author's piece.

I guess there is no way to receive satisfaction here.
Our Ethics, Not Yours – In Defense of Seth Vargo and Morality-First Licenses
Is building a self driving car not a new invention? Basically nobody has done it and the process has forced automakers outside of AV to rethink how they build cars (see Volkswagen https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/09/volkswagen-audi-porsche...)
Not having populist demagogs reach significant power would be a nice start. Though I'm not sure if the migrant "crisis" is actually the cause or just a symptom for deeper issues.
I'm bewildered as to why a CEO would have any opinion on version control at all. Or why you'd ask a CEO whether you could use one. It's like a builder asking a construction company CEO if he can hold a hammer lower in his hand and that CEO forbidding it. Can someone explain?
Wood-pulping can also be a filthy technology. Growing up in a paper-mill town meant smelling and breathing the particulate and gaseous effluents of the cooking process. In the spring, the remnants of this deluge covered all the melting snow-piles in a black sheet. (And lungs?) Much of what didn't come out of the stacks flowed out under the river's surface through a secret pipe. Downstream, the shores were matted and bubbling with discarded wastes.

As for the hundreds of men who 'harvested' the trees ... laboring in the gulag wilderness, far from the cities where the paper for fiduciary reports, magazines, academic wisdom and signage is consumed ... most lived marginalized lives of quiet desperation. Even if they managed to make it to retirement with whole bodies.
None of the above.

The problem this addresses is facing each front wheel the correct direction when turning.

Imagine fixing a pair of bicycles together at the bodies. When you want to go around a corner, the inner bicycle will have to turn more sharply than the outer one (which in turn has to go faster). That means that the front wheel needs a higher angle of deflection on the inside than the outside.

The same dynamic exists in a true 4-wheel vehicle, except that there is a mechanical linkage that allows you to steer both front wheels together instead of independently. The problem this linkage geometry solves is the problem of getting the inner wheel to deflect further than the outer wheel, by approximately the right amount. (iirc, this geometry doesn't get that perfect, and modern cars use a variant that's a bit more accurate. But that's a small optimization compared to the improvement this provides over just making the wheels both turn the same angle.)

The problem a differential solves is allowing the wheels on the outside edge to spin faster even when sharing an axle with the wheels on the inside edge.
This is incredibly useful for driving games. But like all physics in games, it is better to fake it.
A data point: we allowed this for all our employees (83b for everyone!) and no one took us up on it. It was frustrating because as a founder, I viewed it as a benefit, but employees didn't. At all.
I'm not sure what your point is. You have to include fringe benefits generally when calculating total compensation. Whether or not that happens to include healthcare is pretty immaterial.
>You can't spend that $165K a year when you're staring down the barrel of willful HIPAA violations.

It's much harder for the government to take back your $165k after you've spent it all. Sure they'll garnish your wages but they'll do that either way so you may as well live a little in the meantime.
PoC||GFTO regularly publishes its missives in polyglot files that are valid in multiple languages/interpretations; that doesn't mean those things are the same. E.g., a zip isn't a PDF, except sometimes with PoC||GTFO, it is.

Here's another example of a program that runs in Bash, C, C++, Obj-C, Obj-C++, Perl, PHP, and Ruby: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/7280/4545

Python 2+3 is less extreme, but still: those nontrivial programs that run in both environment are just polyglot programs that happen to run in two different scripting languages.

Given the experience with Python 2->3, is there any reason to trust the PSF not to make a similar mess with a 3->4 transition? That's my concern porting any Python2 code to 3. Are Python.org done making huge API breaks, or will they do it again?
Ask HN: What tech projects actually have interesting work?
I've worked for a number of tech companies (Goog, FB, etc.) and seemingly the majority of the work is braindead CRUD, frontend, or API development hosted on (AWS, GCP, etc).

However there are people out there building the future of technology. Seemingly these jobs are harder to find, so what's a good strategy to find them?

TL;DR I'm sick of programming "business logic" into UI driven apps and I'd like to work on something challenging.
Not quite. I’ve heard of even older than the following quote but it’s in the Longevity book and I don’t have a direct quote handy:

“

Researchers at the Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research Group then announced the age of another P. longaeva also located in the White Mountains — this one 5,062 years old

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/29152-o...
> TWO PROBLEMS in 1 day

One of the dirty little secrets of studying CS and math is that truly understanding 2 problems of the kind you've never seen before in 1 day is OK and expected. Hell, sometimes mere understanding of one single solution to a problem can take a week or longer. Most anyone who does better has either studied the (adjacent) material before or just trudging along half-understanding this bit and that piece hoping that sometime in the future it might all come together. And that's exactly what happens after you stick with it for awhile (often several years). Your job is to understand the thought process and philosophy of math. It's usually called "math maturity". Math/CS people reuse the same tips and tricks over and over again under many different guises and after a while you'll start seeing this repetition and even start using them yourself. It's very similar to how you learned your own native tongue. Luckily, math folk have methods to rein in this madness.

Check out [0]. It's free and teaches you some basics of structured thought. Then check out [1], [2], [3] to expand on what you've learned.

One really good unpretentious algo book that shows you how to do problems is [4].

[0] BOOK OF PROOF by Richard Hammach

https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/

[1] Discrete Mathematics with Applications by Susanna Epp

https://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Sus...

[2] Pure Mathematics for Beginners by Steve Warner

https://www.amazon.com/Pure-Mathematics-Beginners-Rigorous-I...

[3] Mathematical Proofs by Gary Chartrand et al

https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Proofs-Transition-Advanc...

[4] Data Structures and Algorithms: Concepts, Techniques and Applications by G.A.V. Pai

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0070699577/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

Good Luck and don't f*ck it up!
You're happier broadcasting everything back to Microsoft? What's the difference?
The massive power imbalance between employer and employee is the main factor here and the driving motivation for labor unions.
The target date funds have a $1000 minimum and are quite reasonable options for retirement or general diversified investments. The expense ratio is slightly higher, but if you have less than $3000, the difference is miniscule.

Or you can buy ETF versions of Vanguard funds. Same expenses as mutual fund versions, but the minimum purchase is 1 share. Free to trade from a Vanguard account (or something like this Schwab account, since its exchange traded).
I'm not sure what the answer is for version control, but I refuse to accept it's Git. I don't understand how it became so popular - did nobody say "wait, there might be a reason why Linus is known for cloning an OS and not coming up with a brilliant design for one from scratch?"
Irrigation for Farming Could Leave Many of the World's Streams and Rivers Dry
While I will agree that Schwab is decent I, personally, would rate them about equal with Fidelity. That being said Schwab didn't want to be in this spot, they were forced. Robinhood, Webull, etc have pushed all of them to this end game. And now ETrade and the rest are stuck with slumped stocks and have no choice but to follow suit.
I think you are rather over-estimating the degree to which people read those standard forms: it’s akin to expecting everyone to read the full text on the “Are you sure?” dialog before clicking OK.
I'd write that code. I don't believe that violence is wrong. I don't believe that defense work is wrong. I don't have to lean on my ported ignorance of a technology's applications because I don't buy into the moral framework that says that this use or that use is wrong.

Every technology not forbidden by physics is inevitable. If somebody else is going to get a powerful tool to use against me, I'll damn well make sure I have that tool too. And if I can, I'll get it first.

You want safety from killer robots? Make more and better killer robots than the other guy.
Similar story with Fidelity.

Honestly, I just don't understand why people bother with traditional banks at this point. Pretty much all of the major brokers offer cash management accounts that are equivalent of online banking. Pretty much all with standard:

- No fees

- No minimum balance

- Free checkwriting (usually free physical checks for that matter!)

- ATM fee reimbursement (at least anywhere in the U.S., if not internationally too)

- Free debit cards

- Direct deposit

- Deposit paper checks by taking a picture with a phone app, etc etc etc.

The only possible downside that I can think of is that I'd have to deal with a little extra hassle if I wanted a cashier's check. But even then, it would simply take an extra day or two. And it's not like I'm closing on a new home purchase all that frequently.

Nevertheless, people that I talk to get weird and SCARED when I talk about it. Even my wife keeps a separate checking account at a physical bank, because she just likes knowing that a brick-and-mortar building is there. I don't get it myself, but human nature can be odd when it comes to money.
Resources, and therefore trade of those resources, are necessary for the country to function. Corporations don't exist in a vacuum separate from other considerations. They don't, for example, care about oil in and of itself. Yes, they make money on it, but only because petroleum and it's byproducts are a necessary feedstock at all levels of the global economy. Reducing complex issues of geo politics and economics to "corporate greed" is overly reductive. Demand for their products is what gives rise to them in the first place. I'm not saying corporations don't influence things, but they cannot be isolated and analyzed separate from the system in which they operate. Google wouldn't have much influence on foreign policy in the middle east. Oil companies have influence there precisely because there are factors outside of their corporate greed that makes them relevant. Things just aren't as simple as "because money".
Is offering Brex's financial infrastructure as a service similar to the Bancorp Bank's offering on the roadmap (similar to Stripe considering itself financial infra)? As Pedro mentions in his top comment, "we took the approach of building our core systems from scratch, building directly on top of the payment rails (NACHA and FedWire)"; it would seem to me that this would be a superior foundation than fintech startups could acquire through traditional white label providers (ie Bancorp).
Thanks for sharing it, this is a very interesting approach.
> There are currently 474 supercharger stations in Europe vs. 150 for Ionity

But the difference is Ionity is CCS and all EVs can charge at its chargers. CCS cars can use any CCS provider like Ionity, FastNed, Allego, etc. which is the correct approach. I can fuel my ICE car at any fuel station and I should be able to charge my EV at any charging station.
Depends how good your test coverage is, I guess. The legacy Py2 codebase I have the most familiarity with is probably more than 50% C extensions with zero tests, and migrating those to Python 3 correctly is non-trivial. If you've now got to write a bunch of tests, you might as well test a reimplementation in a language with a history of more API stability.
I've got a philosophy/gender studies background and I +1 this summary. The only point I'd make is that "radical feminist" doesn't necessarily mean anti-trans, and of the radfems I know, the vast majority are actually pro-trans. I get the feeling from news and commentary that radfems are overall welcoming to trans people.
Ah, the GDGS (gradient descent by grad student) approach where you estimate the gradient direction using an educated guess, tweak the system towards that, run an experiment, write down the results and repeat until you're happy (or run out of time).
>These are people who either can't, or never wanted to, be anything other than burger-flippers, and everything they talk about is in terms of burger flipping, and life is just a big burger to be flipped.

Lol, hilarious! I love your writing style.

I'm in a similar situation. Thankfully rare but random unpredictable urgent but formulaic jobs to do, fixing things for well-educated burger flippers.

My job is ostensibly to improve things but that's impossible because everything is managed by inept naysayers, with the added entertainment of crippling bureaucracy mixed in.

So I'm on hn instead.
What do you mean the humans are lucky enough to have a stop in _our_ system?!
How to Get Away with Gerrymandering
I have news for you:

You can study for technical interviews and get good at doing them. "Cracking the coding interview" is a good start, then there is interviewing.io and other resources.

You can learn to be good at that shit with a bit of practice. You're probably not dumb.
Another one is hiding the unhealthy drinks (e.g. soda) behind frosted glass in the fridge, so you can't see it. Kind of silly, in my opinion. Googlers are presumably adults, and can make their own decisions on what to consume.
Yes, I have no issues with transmitting my digital life back to Microsoft. I have done so since I got my first Hotmail count 20+ ago. Since then, my digital life has in one form or another been connected with Microsoft Services.

I have never felt Microsoft has abused this trust I have given them. I have never thought that they have used my information for purposes I am not comfortable with.

I have this thing against advertisement agencies. I don't trust them. I felt the same even before Google was there even before my life became digital. It is not something new that I try to limit the information I give to advertisement agencies.

Edit: spelling
At the University of Texas at Austin they have a "Lavatory Safety Update" that's usually posted at eye level above the urinals. It discusses lab safety related issues.
A meth head burned down the oldest tree (3500 YO) in Florida a few years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Senator_(tree)
Changing to a different image format may not be possible because WhatsApp still needs to show historical images, and these images are not stored on a central server where they can be migrated.

Also, it's called the "Android NDK" and not the "Android C SDK" - a big part of what the NDK gives you is not C-specific. It makes almost no difference whether you compile your code with GCC vs rustc, at the end of the day you're creating a native shared library and loading it from a java application.

For example, these instructions from 2017 show how little work is involved https://mozilla.github.io/firefox-browser-architecture/exper... and support has only improved since then.

Using static analysis tooling on C/C++ code is more work than the above to set up, so I really do believe that Rust is the easiest way to reduce the chance of these kinds of bugs happening again.
1,488

Yeah I often do exactly 62 trials with 24 combinations (eyeroll)
Pioneered by Bernard Madoff[1], an extremely reputable broker in his own right. The market-making business was totally legitimate, let's not forget.

[1] convicted of running the largest Ponzi scheme on record
Surely just record the last shot parameters? or even all shot parameters?

As long as the simulation is deterministic you'll be good to go.

Given a level and a list of velocities any sequence of shots should be reproducible.
It's not remotely that simple.
The initial goal was set by the policy makers who understand "unknown unknown" very well, along with most mainstream media journalists who share the same ideology/beliefs/cult. However knowing "unknown unknown" prohibit them from knowing "unknown unknown unknown". So the the final result doesn't align with initial intentions.

The same mistake is repeated again and again, even today.
whats great about this is that you don't realize that you've written a new classic.

also, get out while you can!
I can relate, I haven’t gone more than a week without a job in that same amount of time. I fantasize about just straight up taking a week or a month or a year off and doing absolutely nothing.
How do you start finding clients for freelancing? How do you figure out a competitive rate without going too high or low?

I have about 10-15 hours of real work to do each week at MegaCorp. The rest is idle time at my desk/couch. Thought about moonlighting and doing 2 jobs but freelance sounds better.
Companies referenced in the article:

- Vigilant Solutions

- Giant Oak, whose founder was quoted in the article as saying "the better we have entity resolution” — that is, the better we can compile and measure people’s data — “the less of a surveillance state we’ll have.”

- CLEAR (Consolidated Lead Evaluation and Reporting), a product of Thomson Reuters, with "real-time access to address and name-change data from credit reports and to motor-vehicle registrations in 43 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico"

- Appriss Safety, which runs a database called Justice Intelligence

1. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/07/eff-responds-vigilant-...

2. https://www.giantoak.com/

3. https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/clear-investiga...

4. https://apprisssafety.com/
Under normal circumstances Redis doesn't lose writes. If it did, we'd be able to detect it in metrics for cache misses or stale data. Our vector clock state machines wouldn't work. We have very fine monitoring for all of these classes of failure.

Operationally, we sequence Redis downtime events. They're very rare. This is when most would be concerned about losing data.

We shift traffic to be hitless. Our model is eventually consistent across multiple regions. We won't accept writes in a cluster that is going down.

The Redis replication chain was chosen so that the primary Redis doesn't have to fork (aofrewrite, bgsave) or even do disk IO (AOF ops in general). We let our offline replicas do that work. The primary Redis can focus on serving reads and writes.

We alert on replication chain breakdown. We sequence traffic draining and primary / secondary swap operations for things like OS or Redis upgrades.

It's pretty sophisticated and largely automated.

This model tolerates losses of Redis instances. Only writes to the primary occurring in the short time before replication while not failed out might be lost. But that number would be incredibly, incredibly small. We would tolerate such losses.

We've got a lot of nines of reliability, and this pattern has scaled and served us well.
Maybe California should worry about having adequate affordable housing before worrying about where said housing is located.