skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Overall good summary, and that growth chart explains a lot of SF's problems over the last decade. Every city must have a capacity based on space available, SF is tiny at around 45 square miles, which is a fraction of most other large cities, yet the amount of people that want to live here is probably disproportionate, and obviously the current administration of the city has not been able to keep up.
Sure, today, military-grade plutonium is down-blended in MOX fuels. But your own source backs up the fact that from the 1950's to the 1980's (the time period we are talking about) the USA was the world's leading uranium ore producer.

One could argue that the mines were subsidized by the federal government (so they could enrich and breed nuclear-grade materials), but that is a far cry from GP's claim that "Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way", which is incomparable to the degree of subsidization as the USSR and their dual-use for RBMK reactors (why else design a reactor with a positive void coefficient).

EDIT: I'm not sure whether you're really concerned about the buildout of nuclear powerplants or the evolution of the USA's policy with regards to the nuclear fuel cycle, but I hope I addressed both.

EDIT2: Also: The "big 3" enrichment locations that the military used would also sell to civilian nuclear powerplants. But that's a far cry reason to "subsidize" the construction of nuclear powerplants. This "fuel subsidization" goes on today (MOX fuels) and the American monopoly of uranium enrichment has been broken since 1970 with the formation of Urenco, so the commercial civilian powerplants have always had other places to purchase from (if a regulatory hassle). There's really not a lot of strong evidence that the mining and enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons somehow subsidized the construction of civilian nuclear powerplants.
I plan to offer several options for search (as covered in the blog post). Some existing themes provide search. YMMV.
No it can't. There are systems that track things worth less than a penny for later billing, but at the end of the month when they bill someone, they do some sort of rounding.
For many years, I've recommended AirVPN, Insorg, IVPN and Mullvad. And formerly BolehVPN and PIA. There was chatter about BolehVPN's logging policy. And now about PIA's acquisition by a firm with an iffy reputation.

Those are all relatively old, compared to mainstream VPN services. So there's been more time for bad news to come out.

I've also used older ones, such as Cryptohippie and Rayservers. They're among the first OpenVPN-based services. Cryptohippie used to be quite expensive, with a ~low usage limit. But now its price is comparable to many others, and I don't see a usage cap. It's not as fast as many others, but arguably far better secured against adversaries.

Rayservers is extremely old school. They only accept gold-based electronic currencies (Truledger and Loom). Those are pre-Bitcoin. I'm not sure whether they still work.

There are others that I use. But I'm not going to talk about them.
i said qualified and knowledgeable. try to stay on topic :)
Salt Lake City is what immediately came to my mind as well, if we're limiting it to "major" US cities. There are, of course, small towns that are basically known for having ludicrously beautiful surroundings, like Telluride. And I assume we're just not counting Hawaii since that obviously wouldn't be fair?
This was in the 90s. We were all self taught and I had never met anyone who had formal CS education.
Pro-DBA here. Not sure why you're being downvoted. I know what you're getting at. Different vendor SQL engines and query optimisers behave differently. There's isn't really a silver bullet for all database engines past the simple and obvious stuff like making sure columns you query most have indexes. Once you've exhausted these tuning options you really need to know your specific database engine's internals.
It looks like it can be headless if you want it to be. https://github.com/apostrophecms/apostrophe-headless
I think that's a temporary setback only. It's a one time thing to replace your resource intensive good with a more efficient one. But that doesn't give you growth forever, because any level of exponential growth with any level of resource consumption can't be reconciled with a finite universe.

Sooner or later all exponential growth must end. That includes all forms of compound growth, such as GDP increasing at any percent you want year after year.
it's usually done through algolia, but that is a proprietary service, and adds loads of js.
I agree. It’s amazing how easily people slip into the ends justifying the means.

Yes, he’s contributing now. Doesn’t excuse the practices that got him there.
Reducing Pandas memory usage with lossy compression
The web has evolved from a collection of hyperlinked documents in the 90s to a fully featured application platform in 2019. There's still a place for server side rendering. But it's for static content, not applications anymore. Practically everyone on the web now has a client capable of executing complex application code. As a result it has become incredibly simple for developers to build things out on the client that would have been impossible with the old paradigm. Not only does it make development faster, but it allows a much greater separation of concerns across the stack. Backends can now be completely agnostic of the presentation layer, which pays for itself many times over when you realize a given application may be running across native desktop, native mobile, mobile web, desktop web, TV OS's, game consoles, etc. Having to duplicate your business logic for these use cases would be terrible.
Bulk-Upload PDFs and Query OCR'd Text with SQL
Ok, I edited the GP for you.
I'm sure there's some subtlety I'm missing, but isn't it actually the same trade-off? A 64-bit float can only represent 52-bit integers exactly. Anything above that, and you don't even have integer-level precision on the number anymore... This sliding scale of precision is exactly why floats are terrible at the kinds of operations that would cause you to use a rational instead.
i want to like StandardNotes but they basically force you to use the 5 year plan and it's much too expensive a cost to pay straight up (but i could and would use them if they slimmed it down to an annual charge, maybe even bi-annual, the current annual charge is overpriced tho). Bearapp is by far my favorite both by design, cost, stability and features, but I've left the Apple echosystem and their webapp isn't available yet and probably a long way off.

i guess, for us who can't afford StandardNotes, we're stuck with Joplin. bad phone app, no web app. but it has decent features and CLI support.
Does anyone else feel that quantum computing via the cloud is sort of the penultimate test of the "-aaS" (as a service) model?

I mean, quantum computing is something that today seems unlikely to be widely available or achievable in hardware to anyone but a handful of specialists and companies/organizations.

I wonder if someday, in the future, people will look back and see that classical computing spread because it was made accessible and ubiquitous, and we did not have the lust for centralization which we seem to now. I wonder what kind of future this spells for quantum computing - will it continue to spread or will it be limited/stunted by being controlled by only the few?

This feels like it has the potential to be the ultimate kind of lock-in. If the way that the system and the hardware/software is exposed to the world is through cloud services, and the knowledge of how to build/operate/use quantum computers stays locked-in to only the privileged who can afford to have access to and utilize it...

Imagine if you started building on quantum computing technology, but then decided you wanted to change.. to what other option!?

I'm not trying to be a Luddite here, I think it's pretty amazing you can even access a quantum computer as a service. But, I am being "that person" who asks the question.. "hmm, where is this going"?
Related: https://plaintextaccounting.org/

In particular, the beancount community is pretty strong, judging by the frequency of posts in the mailing list and the Telegram group I'm in.
Mix of feelings as usual. I love soundcloud and am sad to see this, but they have in fact seemed to struggle to find a way to stay affloat. Their subscription service probably doesn't cover it.
Some of us started around with ZX Spectrum and C64, playing some games we wouldn't bother glancing at today. You actually can find emulators for this stuff, but we're living in a much higher vibration for this stuff to even trigger a yawn. What did we "create" at the time?

10 PRINT HELLO

20 GOTO 10

Aside from futzing around with C++, x86 assembler (never could find a book for C64, so never got to learn it on 6510), there were the same "rules" then as now. The builders build, and most just futz around, play and watch some movies.

It will take time. Dedicated effort. Sweats, pain and troubleshooting. There's never been a better time than now. No need to lay the foundation, one can start right off the bat. The trick is that it has to be fun, involving and based on true motivation (hunger).

https://store.unity.com/#plans-individual

I'm leaning on the conclusion that nothing fundamentally really changed.
The large group of strategy executives that had hubris related to touch screens. RIM got killed by the iphone AND android. Perhaps it was inevitable - the iphone is the only real premium smartphone on the market. It's a zero sum game?
I also thought that's what conservative meant in politics too, but you can correct me here.
It's a tax on the (arguably undeserved) gains in the market value of your land that come from other people's efforts as opposed to your own.
"Everyone is conservative about what he knows best." - Robert Conquest, apocryphal.

I would guess that the overwhelming majority of SF homeowners would self-identify as liberal / Democrat voters. But on the topic of local housing policy, they would like to conserve the status quo.
No, that's not the parent poster's point.

From parent post:
> If they had just let disabled individuals get cyber bullied they could have avoided this negative press altogether.
Same for Delft University of Technology, Netherlands:
https://www.tudelft.nl/en/student/education/academic-calenda...
San Francisco is basically Gotham city without Batman and City hall is Arkham Asylum. The newly elected DA is bound to make it worse as he focuses on decriminalizing all non-violent crimes. In the words of my Uncle "You made your bed, now you must sleep in it.."
While we’re on the subject, I just moved my whole financial life over to hledger (https://hledger.org/) and oh my goodness I’m so much happier (I dumped both QuickBooks and Quicken, which I’d been using previously).

It won’t be for everyone, but if you know a bit about what you’re doing with double-entry accounting, it’s so so so much better. I only wish I’d discovered this was of doing things years ago (before dumping hundreds of hours into clicking and trying to wrestle with Intuit’s tools.)
Or beaches. The author clearly hasn't been to Hawaii.
Just because a homeopathy is a charlatan field doesn’t mean all of it is pseudoscience. Ayurveda has some scientifically validated remedies. If you remember, yoga used to be considered a sham until we started discovering a lot of what was claimed turned out to be true.
The basic representation is usually good enough at 2 decimals (so a plain int), but it is often needed to have a transient representation during calculations.

For instance if one needs to apply discounts, add taxes, split in equal parts, all of the above one after the other, there will be a more precise intermediary representation before rounding everything in a way that keeps the total amount consistent with the original amount.
It's the first result for "floating point site" on Google. Sure the domain itself is impossible to remember, but you don't have to remember the actual number, just what it stands for.
> the idea more likely comes from the kind of confused climate skeptic literature

https://www.svtplay.se/video/23437510/agenda/agenda-18-nov-2...

Political debate from 2 weeks ago. Green party spoke person vs moderate party leader. It beings at 35m. The moderate describe multiple times that Sweden buys dirty coal energy when the wind is now blowing, and the green party spoke person repeats the argument of being net exporter of green energy in response.

> It can even be carbon negative as rootmass is left to build soil

Areas where we plant tree and don't cut them down has a name: nature sanctuary. There has been plenty of initiatives to plant trees in order to create official carbon sinks on the books, so how many of those are nature sanctuary?

> It can even be carbon negative as rootmass is left to build soil, and benefit wildlife too

https://www.forskning.se/2019/09/20/tradplantering-ingen-uni...
https://www.svd.se/plantera-trad-loser-inte-klimatproblemen

Counting tree planting initiatives as carbon sinks when there is no planning for what happens afterward is simply wishful thinking (quote from the study).

Criticism of the green movement is not automatically climate skepticism. How many climate skeptics want a complete ban of power generated from fossil fuels in the energy grid? If the green movement just would adapt that stance then I would not care. If people want to use other technologies in a non-fossil fueled world then good, just as priority one is a non-fossil fueled world. Sweden could adapt a ban on fossil fuel produced energy tomorrow and it would mostly only be a bit more expensive (some infrastructure to Norway might be needed in order handle still winter nights).
Im surprised this isnt the top comment. Beautiful compression!
just add 0.1 and 0.2 in fp32 (?) accuracy if you can't remember the name :)
I was listening to a podcast the other day (I can't remember what it was) but when pressed about how the term "pivot" is overused, the intervewee mentioned that the term comes from the idea of one foot being firmly planted and pivoting in new direction. He suggested there are two types of pivots. One of product and one of customer. You can't pivot on both, so, to be a pivot, you are either keeping the same customer but providing them a different product, or keeping the same product and finding a different customer.

As an example, YouTube started as a dating site, but it was a video dating site. They had built the video upload and streaming (product) and kept that but pivoted to serve a different market.

I don't think Twitter really "pivoted", they didn't change market or product really. Ok, they started with SMS, but for a LONG time you could still tweet via SMS (maybe you still can) but the core of Twitter is you can publicly post short messages. Still the same product it ever was.
Location: Boston
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: Android, Java, Apigee, sensors, telecom, embedded systems
Résumé/CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Uoq1avLk2W3YepArughK7V7ketSLaX9veAMph9IncpA/edit?usp=sharing
Email: zigurd.mednieks@surfaceable.com

Additional information at zigurd.com, surfaceable.com, and amazon.com/Zigurd-Mednieks/e/B001KE4L4G
The 3950X are heavily supply limited.

I do not think Baltics got a single 3950x allocated in the November. Theoretically some will be available on 19.12.

Where does one even look for 3950x in Europe?

Scan.co.uk says December 31st at the earliest.
TPS Competiiton with 3 BTC Rewards
Introduction of the Competition:
Sharding of QuarkChain is instrumental in enhancing TPS as we have all witnessed in last year’s competition whose winning team reached throughput that surpassed 55000 TPS. After the breakthrough from the first competition, we now welcome the Go version of QuarkChain which has even better functionalities. This time, we will continue to provide a platform that allows programmers to unleash their imagination and creativity. Through attractive rewards, we would like to encourage more programmers to learn and familiarize themselves with the blockchain industry and even take part in it!

Prizes:
Here are the different prizes we are providing for the competition:

1. Highest peak TPS prize:
First place: 0.5 BTC + 1,000,000 QKC
Second place: 0.15 BTC + 300,000 QKC
Third place: 0.1 BTC + 200,000 QKC
Fourth and Fifth place: 0.05 BTC + 100,000 QKC
2. Peak TPS challenge prize: this prize is awarded to whoever first reaches 100,000 TPS in a valid submission. Prize for the first one to reach 100,000+ TPS: 0.1 BTC + 200,000 QKC

3. Participation prize: 30,000 QKC/person
Participation prize is to award the first 50 programmers who participate in the QuarkChain competition with 20,000+ peak TPS. In case of conflicts, the award is decided by the timestamp of the submission. We will reward each participating programmer with a reward of 30000 QKC!

4. Referral Bonus:
To allow more programmers to join the second QuarkChain TPS competition, we especially set up a referral bonus. As long as the programmer you refer to joins the competition and obtains the result with a valid submission, you will share the prize pool of 200,000 QKC with others.

https://quarkchain.io/tps2/
Ask HN: Programming curriculum for a 10 year old
I'm a professional software engineer and I'm mentoring a 10 year old kid (Big Brother Big Sister).

I'd like to teach him some programming but I don't know the first place to start. I want to be careful that I'm not aimlessly pecking through scripts with him and wasting his time on a screen (he plays enough video games already). If it were my kid I'd be a lot more laid back in my preparation for teaching but I don't think I have that luxury since with this kid since we aren't together constantly.

I want to give him a taste of what programming is like. Any advice or curriculums you've used would be hugely helpful.
Yeah, I grew up in the north bay and find many places at least as beautiful if not moreso. Kauai, anchorage, death valley, cascade range, Ozarks, high desert, Smoky Mountains. I guess I appreciate nature in all its forms unlike the blogger?
It’s much harder to build good search engines on top of plain text though, because it’s not possible to deterministically detect hyperlinks within text.
European Parliament handed voter data to company linked to Donald Trump, Brexit
As far as I know (hence I could be wrong), that’s outdated. Since Yahoo was purchased by Verizon, it is predominately Bing results with some Yahoo/Oath/Verizon Media results sprinkled in, considering it now predominantly uses Bing itself. Yandex is no longer used and Wikipedia is just part of their knowledge cards or whatever they call them, like StackOverflow is. In other words, it’s mainly Bing with DDG’s own crawler used specifically for the knowledge cards and to modify the priority of results pulled from Bing.

With that said, I do believe they have a special deal with Microsoft to not pass along any information. Instead, the only information Microsoft sees is DDG requesting the results on behalf of the users (aka Bing/MS just sees DDG’s IP, etc. which can be seen sometimes in the results, not the knowledge card, when you search for “what’s my IP” in DDG). My one gripe though is that they’re definitely not as transparent as they could be about where and how they source results.
Neural networks are by their very nature a bit vague, random and unpredictable. Their output is not suitable as a direct, real monetary value you can rely on. At best, they predict trends, approximations or classifications.
> Yes, but then the disabled individuals would have been mentally traumatized.

This is absolutely backwards, as it is based upon the presumption that disabled individuals are so fragile that they cannot face any adversity or be "traumatized."

That's just reverse-discrimination, and it's just as damaging as outright discrimination.

> Companies shouldn't avoid doing things just to avoid negative press.

Companies aren't going to arrange themselves along moral lines, we've seen this failure too many times to think it's a possible or even desirable goal. Negative press is a useful tool and is simply reflective of our societies attitudes and morals.

I'm perfectly fine with companies using "negative press" as a bellwether for internal policy.

> They're providing a service for the people.

...and those people _willingly_ decide if they want to use it or not.
Browser vendors have spent the past several decades trying to fix those weaknesses and haven't, it seems like a very strong indication that it is not exactly an easy thing to do.
i think the assumption is that the op was being sarcastic.
From a sociological perspective, you won’t find a more interesting city to study.

I can see this argument. There are certainly enough interesting sociological issues in San Francisco regardless of whether you think it deserves the "most" qualifier.

San Francisco has the prettiest natural surroundings of any city in America.

I think this one is very hard to argue. It's highly subjective, so I don't doubt that the author believes it, but if someone were asking me where to move and told me that they prioritize beautiful surroundings, San Francisco wouldn't make my list of recommendations.
"Why you should never, ever, ever use MongoDB" (2015): http://cryto.net/~joepie91/blog/2015/07/19/why-you-should-ne...

Choose boring technology - especially for a relatively simple use case such as a CMS.
The Lierean Alphabet
Me in 2001 (dot com crash): "the web gold rush seems to be over"

Me in 2007 (market malaise): "the web gold rush seems to be over"

Me in 2012 (Facebook IPO): "the web gold rush seems to be over"

Me in 2019 (finally having learned my lesson): there are probably still plenty of opportunities left, if you know where to look
When you're trapped between wanting to support the Hong Kong protests, and believing that China must be good because Trump says they're bad...
Thanks! Just when I was looking for new stuff to read.
Show HN: HowTruthful – Concise Arguments
The third puzzle mentions Halt and Catch Fire, a brilliant TV show about innovation and the lives of the (fictional) people behind it.
TikTok’s Criticism and Competition Guidelines
It isn't really a price though, it is a rate for an infinitely divisible good, i. e. $/L. You get the price when you multiply with the quantity purchased.
I wonder does it help? I'm sure that it's easy to find some homeless person, who don't know you and register SIM for his ID.
It's far from perfect. It demands a tax in blood during peacetime as a faulty guard against tyranny in time of civil war (to say nothing of the fact that---as the Civil War indicates---there's no particular guarantee that the armed civilians will be defending particularly virtuous rights against government interference; it was, after all, the state's rights to nullify laws curtailing slavery that was the crux of the conflict).
A typo such as misspelling "principal".
An other compromise in to use fixed point which is effectively a rational with a fixed denominator. Extremely popular on machines which can handle integer arithmetics but not floating point (since you can trivially do fixed-point arithmetics using integer operations, you just need to be very careful when you handle overflows). If you look at the code of old school games (including classics like Doom if memory serves) the game engine used fixed-point to work on commodity hardware without FPU.

There's also BCD (binary coded decimal) that can solve some problems by avoiding the decimal-to-binary conversions if you're mainly dealing with decimal values. For instance 0.2 can't usually be represented in binary but of course it poses no problem in BCD.
I figured this was some counter wrapping around but this is a size field, for what looks like data?

Who is transporting 2GB files over RabbitMQ? I did not think that was a thing reasonable people would do.