skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>There is no responsibility or obligation to one's ancestors to have children

I think it's probably a philosophical, maybe even a spiritual argument. Enlightenment individualism has ingrained in western cultures the idea they have no connection or ties to the past, or their ancestors, and shouldn't even conceive of themselves in terms of these other people. Blank slate, complete autonomy, etc. I think it's just a fundamental philosophical disagreement to start from a different premise that isn't self interest per se.

"Lack of choice", I like that. It removes the consideration to construct arguments about self-interested "choice".

I'll make a logical one though:

Every single person's existence is the sum total of all previous generations of ancestors action of making the choice that led to you. Not just one or a few of your ancestor's, but all of them are owed this choice. Maybe even this choice is owed to the universe (~God) itself?

The evolutionary "winners" will be the ones that consistently take this action. You can simply say, are you evolutionarily a winner, or a loser? Will you continue the propagation of your genes, or won't you? This is the "forest for the trees" way to frame it, I believe, as it steps back to avoid endless lower-level convenience rationales for opting out (if the choice is available to you of course).
How consulting companies like McKinsey optimized American inequality
Gasoline is not under pressure and does not burn. Only gasoline vapors burn.
Irrelevant to the individual, but relevant when talking about groups.

For example, upon observing that more women than men tend to take up nursing. Do we conclude that there is a gender bias in healthcare recruitment and a distorted soceital expetation of gender roles, or can it be explained as a consequence of the aggregate personality bias between the sexes resulting in more women choosing that career. The personality science comes in to play when trying to answer that question.
Mine's 2, so I'm about to hit the period that didn't work for you. I'm sure a lot varies on the specific kid's disposition. Mine's now at a stage where he loves certain activities like sorting stuff into boxes, and can spend extended periods entertaining himself with those, as long as I'm in sight.

I'm more or less mentally prepared for rapid change now though. Having seen how rapidly a child's habits can change, I know that any day can mark the beginning of a particularly hectic, or quiet, period.
I strongly disagree. And in general, it seems like poor quality code in science is often not because of the language, but because scientists rarely lose their jobs when code breaks.

There are many books that cover how to develop in R in detail, and they are no less thorough than treatments of the subject in other languages (e.g. Hadley's books are as good as any I've read for python).

Many issues around inconsistency, etc, in language design (mostly how base functions / data types behave) have very clean, consistent implementations in libraries like rlang.

The main differences I see when comparing R vs python package code, that affect style are...

1. Most R operations are immutable.

2. R often uses single dispatch, rather than putting methods on a class object.

3. In R, vectorised behavior is often the norm.

4. R functions can choose to use lazy evaluation (it usually very clear when this happens in e.g. tidyverse packages).

These issues are covered in detail in books like Hadley's Advanced R.
A new theory argues same-sex sexual behaviour is an evolutionary norm
The article suggests that you can do the opposite of that (use traits of the individual to reasonably accurately infer that they're male or female).

The parent's concern is that, given you know someone is male or female, you will make further assumptions about them based on their group membership rather than their individual traits, something that is not supported by the article.

> I am a strong believer that individual differences are more important than sex differences.
I did not and will pick it up, thank you for the recommendation!
Nothing would surprise me less than banks implementing a bank user accessing the bank via the website as a Unix user on a system.
This is one of those things that would be cool if it was true, but probably isn't.
One of the reasons imposter syndrome is so prevalent in the tech industry is that everyone with more than a few years of experience has worked alongside people who talked their way into the job but cannot code their way out of a wet paper bag. It's directly related, in my opinion, to the terrible state of interviews in this field.
I don't think that is true at all. If wealth was taken away, physical attributes would simply become more important.

It's true that culture has effects on what is considered attractive. That doesn't mean it is arbitrary, though. And I don't think any culture managed to make unhealthy people attractive, for example.
These are a few of the ones I read this year and that the average HN reader would also probably enjoy (links are to my blog):

* Why We Sleep: https://j11g.com/2019/05/31/why-we-sleep-matthew-walker/

* The Effective Executive: https://j11g.com/2019/03/18/the-effective-executive-peter-dr...

* High Output Management: https://j11g.com/2019/01/29/high-output-management-andrew-s-...

* Bad Blood: https://j11g.com/2019/01/21/bad-blood-john-carreyrou/

* The 7 Habits (I reread this after a long time and it still holds up!) https://j11g.com/2019/09/30/the-7-habits-of-highly-effective...

* A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again – David Foster Wallace (This is just an amazing book and became one of my all time favorites) https://j11g.com/2019/08/08/a-supposedly-fun-thing-ill-never...
You don't have to wait if you click on the timestamp. That's what the comment you're replying to is saying - there's a workaround to the timeout.
> However, this doesn't say anything about individuals

That is an often-repeated line but as an absolute statement it is not true. Statistical differences do have predictive power. It's just that they are weak predictors and trumped by concrete information. But you don't always have that information at hand and in that case those heuristics may be better than nothing. The problems arise when people stick to their heuristics (stereotypes) even when better information is available.

> so emphasizing differences between groups will lead people to make unwarranted assumptions about members of those groups.

Yes, that may be a problem. But denying the existence of heuristics and demanding that every single person you ever interact with should be treated as a carefully analyzed individual seems unrealistic.
> destructive monkeys that you're legally forbidden to cage

In the same vain as "What you can't say", is there any solution to this problem that is ethical (at least under consequentialist morality) but taboo?
"Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth Century Italy" by Carlo Cipolla
I Started a $15K/Month Business Making Bold Stationery
But then the question becomes whether they would have crossed the legal line if it had been an actual child instead of a bot designed to entice them. Maybe a real child would've been more hesitant and made them reconsider their course of action. Maybe a real child would've been genuinely innocent in a way that would've triggered their conscience. I'm not saying that's likely, I'm just saying this is a program designed to turn pedophiles into intended child molesters.
That's what I meant. I have spent a lot of time in the countryside and have visited most of the countries in the EU, but I see a truck like F-150 only once in a few years.
> The depiction of the part-human, part-animal hunters may also be the earliest evidence of our capacity to conceive of things that do not exist in the natural world. This ability is a cornerstone of religious thought and experience with origins long shrouded in mystery.

This irks me a little. The claim that the figures in the painting "do not exist in the natural world" stinks of the "we already know all the things" philosophical bent. Making this claim overlays a rather modern conception of a strictly materialistic world onto a culture we have little to no knowledge of. Our whole worldview mars our ability to conceive of a culture different than ours. I suppose we must view the world within some context, some worldview, but I think more awareness of our preconceptions is necessary.

I think any analysis beyond "there are old paintings in this cave, and these are the paints they used, and these are the things they painted" are almost certainly pure speculation and should be relegated to publications that deal in pure speculation.
This is a big part of why a lot of sports like to cross-train their athletes in Ballet. A huge thing that Ballet training gives you is an extremely good sense of where your center of gravity is and how to place your foot under it to stay upright and under control. This is extremely useful for high school football, where "being able to place your foot underneath you after getting hit and ending up in an unusual place in body configuration space" often makes the difference between whether or not you wind up getting tackled.
Because farms are huge, and any given unit of area needs to be touched relatively infrequently.
Evolved instinct is my guess. Makes sense - people watching you don't always have the best intentions.
AMDs initial x86 processors were indeed as an IBM mandated second source, but I think their 386 class (and definitely 486 class) processors were independently developed. I suspect Intel won't cancel existing licenses for anti-trust reasons, but also would price a new license for a lot more than in the 486 days.
Solving a programming problem is very different from solving a business problem, and building something that has customers falls more into the latter category. Lots of people want to simply improve their programming and problem-solving skills, and this list is perfect for that. Customers add a whole new dimension of complexity which most people might not want to deal with, especially with fun side projects. So setting the expectation that everything you build needs to have customers is definitely wrong.

Building stuff like a text editor, simple game, database etc. from scratch which will never be used by anyone other than yourself can be immensely challenging and satisfying.
Parent is saying he didn't enjoy wasting it. He didn't choose to be alone.
I think you’re right. My intuitive guess of how many teenage kids there are would have been a full order of magnitude lower. At that count, even adjusting for not everyone being on Instagram, I agree there’s no way the numbers can check out.
Part of the reason that Toyota continues to pursue hydrogen fuel has to do with a Japan’s energy needs. It’s a pragmatic approach that acknowledges that energy needs to be stored and shipped long distances in order to avoid generating fuel in-country. Also, the idea that Toyota isn’t all over battery tech is a complete misunderstanding. All one needs to do is read their public strategy, which is available. They’ve been working on personal and ultra compact EVs, people movers, trucks, etc. They tend to release domestically first and move thoughtfully (cf. Tesla), as US consumers have proven to be very fickle, prone to nationalism, and so on.
Usually, the correct answer is "insufficient data." The systems are circular and self-reinforcing; what does maternity leave look like in the nursing profession, for example?
Also don’t forget that he has a carefully cultivated brand to maintain. You think he’s going to be like, “hate my kids.”
If you want to look at data frames as you run sections of your code you will have to use r markdown chunks.
Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
The caveat there is you can write up a fairly simple nosql database in an afternoon. What I like about the other projects is that the barrier to even a minimal thing is a bit higher. I think that leads to more opportunity to work your creative muscles.

Though if you add some constraints like it must have jdbc compatability then that becomes interesting.
Reactors: Deterministic and time-aware Actors [pdf]
I think the answer is to time travel to the year 2020 (it should take you about two weeks) and to also be in Europe. Here's just Volkswagen's EV models for the next year or so:

- VW e-Up!: https://www.carscoops.com/2019/09/vws-updated-e-up-offers-16...

- VW e-Golf (sold over 100,000 but will be replaced by the ID.3): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah4lrqWx8E0

- VW ID.3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op4HO6GHC8Q

- VW ID.4: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-frankfurt-mot...

- SEAT Mii: https://www.electrive.com/2019/09/11/seat-mii-available-to-o...

- SEAT el-Born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZI7WFtwc8g

- Cupra Tavascan (maybe, not confirmed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNYHRKp4n1w

- Skoda Citigo iV: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/new-skoda-citigo...

- Skoda Vision iV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f1g9xl6W_E

- Audi e-tron (and also the new "sportsback" variant): https://www.audiusa.com/models/audi-e-tron

- Audi e-tron Q4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiwevzHsCbU

- Audi e-tron GT (maybe 2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMEdiq2xTbQ

- Porsche Taycan (and the Sports Turismo wagon variant in future): https://www.porsche.com/usa/models/taycan/

And other manufacturers are delivering more EVs in 2020.
C.f. UK election 2019
Are you saying that with a high accuracy, you'd feel comfortable treating an individual according to their group?

I don't want to appear too argumentative; it's just not exactly clear what you mean when you write

> .. difference here is strong enough that you can do that
I empathize, having been in a very similar position, but it's time for some tough love. You need to grow up and deal with your life as it is now.

You are getting 35-40 hours a week of structured time at the office away from your kids and you're complaining about not having enough time to absorb your "bursts of energy"? Only a "couple hours" to think about something interesting before getting 7 hours of healthy sleep?

You aren't having "absolutely no life". On which planet do people get to have 2 tiny kids, work full time, then have a jam-packed evening full of "freelance clients, learning/hobbies and interesting stuff"? Your expectations are just fabulously off-beam.

The good news is that you're at Peak Kid in terms of how much time they take - in a couple years they'll be at school, and a while later, you'll be looking at them wistfully wishing they needed you to entertain them all evening like they used to. I have 2 kids (13 and 16) and while they are not stereotypical sullen teens, they are almost too capable of entertaining themselves. One of the secrets of parenting is to let yourself enjoy each stage for what it is as far as that's possible (modulo scary events like illnesses and injuries and so on), not sit there waiting impatiently for the Awesome Next Phase of parenting when the workload is lighter or the kids are somehow "better".

I would suggest that if you have the luxury of a structured 35-40 hour work week (who is looking after your kids then, I wonder) that you find a job that can absorb the bulk of those bursts of energy and doesn't leave you thinking you need to work on something interesting for a couple hours. I joined a startup with a fun algorithmic problem and would often think idly about NFA matching and the like while watching the kids in the early AM (my wife called me, mildly exasperated, "notebook guy").
There were no other compliant bidders ten years ago.

What was notable about that process was the province required bidders to taking on risks that the province would not back. The only bidder willing to do that (Areva bid but did not do so, so their bid was not compliant) priced the cost of the risk into the bid.

This demonstrated that, properly priced, nuclear is far out of the running economically. It only gets built when the risks are forced on others (taxpayers, ratepayers) outside a fair competitive process.

In retrospect, this should have been a serious warning that other new builds in the "nuclear renaissance" were extremely risky, as they turned out to be.

Given this history, I would believe NuScale only after they've built their Nth-of-a-kind system on budget and aren't bankrupt.
You're not alone. My kids are 4 and 9, and I've got a similar experience. Used to try and take on freelance work, but after missing some commitments, I've stopped doing that now as I don't have the time or energy for it, and take on very little freelance work now.

Still have the desire to build stuff and learn new technologies, and find myself watching random tutorials on YouTube sometimes late at night if I don't feel like watching anything on NetFlix.

It's been a challenge to get my kids into a good bedtime routine, so by the time they are asleep, I've usually got little desire to sit back down in front of the computer and actually work on anything else, including actually working through those tutorials.

Hoping things get easier when they get older and I have more time to myself again (and hopefully more energy) to work on side projects. Combined with working on stuff in my day job that isn't particularly fulfilling either for most of this year, it's a bit of a depressing predicament in some ways.
I can't help but notice that this post is just below PG's "Having Kids" post. That's a challenging project right there.
William Manchester's American Caesar, a biography of Douglas MacArthur. Probably a bit too sympathetic to him, but fantastic writing.
'“We wanted to create a programming environment that doesn’t require every researcher to be a computer scientist,”'

For the more than 60 years it has existed, most Fortran programmers have not been computer scientists. I wish the article had explained why the designers of the language are starting from scratch rather than building on Fortran, in particular Fortran 2008+, which introduced coarrays for parallel programming.
I got married and had an “instant family” a wife and two sons who all needed my attention.

I made a rule shortly thereafter - no side projects. Anything we can’t afford from my main job, we don’t need. If I can’t learn skills that keep competitive while working 40-45 hours a week, it’s time to change jobs.

They are older now, but I still have the same rule. I spend my time on hobbies - not development side projects either for pay or resume building.
I think that as a policy matter (what interviewers should do or should even be allowed to do), a stronger claim can be made. Suppose there are some groups A1 and A2 (men vs women, different races, etc — there could be A3, etc). Then I would argue that, regardless of whether the groups have substantial differences affecting qualification for the job, group membership or perceived group membership should not be allowed as a substitute for individual qualification. So, as an extreme example, if a job requires heavy lifting and short or contained hair, then an applicant should not be preferred because they’re male.

Obviously there are nuances here. If the groups are actually job qualifications (hiring a singer based on vocal range, for example), then none of this applies. There are surely plenty of gray areas, too. Gender doesn’t fit cleanly into a pair of groups. Sometimes it might be very hard to measure actual aptitude, and proxies of various quality are needed. College admissions are an example of the latter — you can’t measure how well someone can do, so admissions departments use proxies of varying quality and social acceptability.

As for gender differences, if I’m hiring someone, I believe that it doesn’t matter whether one gender is likely to be more qualified for any reason — if I’m hiring, I have an obligation to consider the applicant as an individual regardless of gender.
From 'The Alcatraz of the Rockies' to the Streets
Please note, if the title's link doesn't work, this should: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/13/how-consu...
> Instead, he goes for 20th century tech and infrastructure that's proven to work and tries to squeeze every efficiency drop out of it.

Ironically, this is Musk being more SoftBank than SoftBank.

Given our current and near term technology level, what industries have attainable new local maxima/minima, for want of only capital?

Nobody thought lithium ion batteries were a bad idea, they just weren't willing to pour crazy money into them.
Or better, just forget about business customers, concentrate on problem solving skills, and build tools just for programmers.

Basically I found out the few customers you have and the further you are from business, the happier you are, i.e. considering you are still programming of course.

*Edit:
For programmers focusing on businesses, the only happy solution, imo, is to be a consultant. But this basically asks for taking business skills. Of course this is a biased view as I work as a BA, who deals with business every minute.
Can't people reassure themselves by picking a wet paper bag to code themselves out of?
I think we're quite lucky as a species, and from an egalitarian perspective, that our genders and ethnicities are so similar to each other. The problems we face today eradicating sexism and racism are nothing compared to a world in which a human subspecies had evolved in isolation for two hundred thousand years and ended up with an average IQ of 50, or if we had much more significant sexual dimorphism and one sex was vastly more intelligent than the other.
I recently stumbled on painscience.com blog.
It is a great resource to understand pain and be able to live with it.

https://www.painscience.com/articles/central-sensitization.p...

Physical therapy involves a lot of proprioception retraining that is lost due to injury, surgery or inactivity.

https://www.painscience.com/articles/sixth-sense.php
I think most of these are based on the Big Five, so they're defined from self reports. Personality questionnaires are far from ideal but they're what we've got and they're fairly reliable.
Sure, if I'm buying a new car I'll pay less for last year's model all other things being equal. (And the dealership will sure want to provide an incentive for me to buy last year's model.)

But if I already own a car, how long I will continue to be able to drive it is far more determined by the mileage than by how old it is within reason. This is admittedly from the perspective of someone who basically drives cars until it's no longer economically sensible to do so.
I can offer that I, too, have a 4 year old and a 2 year old and I’m often in bed at 9pm because I am completely wiped. I can offer that you are not alone.

The other thing I’ve learned is that all (and I’m banking on) is that none of these stages is forever, because right now I know I can’t keep this up. Like when my first child didn’t sleep through the first 14 months we thought we were going to lose our minds and then...he did. And it all changed.

So at the very least, this part is brutal but it will, at the very least, change.
All your senses are constructed out of more basic sensory inputs and presented to the rest of your brain as higher-level abstractions. Hearing, for example, doesn't just present the raw noises being heard, but also yields a best-guess about the direction and distance of noise sources, and you can argue that the audio-location function should technically be a separate "sense".

Proprioception being an abstraction over touch and sight data that generates awareness of how your body is arranged in space is a sense in the same manner. And you can definitely get proprioception over more than your own body - partner dancers will quickly develop a felt sense of how their dance partner's body is moving, as well.