skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The ad hoc method of parameter estimation used here needs some explaining. It looks like the author is trying to minimize the distance between the two lines on the y-axis which is not traditionally how you fit parameters to a distribution and will lead to weird results.

Notice that if you estimated a Gaussian the traditional way: by just computing mean and sample variance you do get wider tails caused by a higher variance estimate. Likewise the estimations for the Cauchy are definitely off using this technique (and precisely because of the Cauchy's infinite/undefined variance you shouldn't use the mean, like the author does, to estimate the center of the distribution).

Since the author uses mean for the estimate and sample sd in the other code I'm confused why this isn't used as the estimate for the variance in the guassian? If you want to demonstrate some sort of numerical optimization it would be better to use a correct, more standard technique like minimizing the negative log likelihood of the data given the parameters.

On top of all this there's very unnecessary amounts of superfluous R code in here. With rnorm and rcauchy there's no need to role your own sampling function
Why would anyone ever want to compete with Microsoft apple sun or ibm? Yet we have Linux.
From a spaniard perspective, the fact that he started with no experience making double what I make now (10y) blows my mind.

I know outside of Spain is different and all of that, but man it is depressing
I do wonder how easy it would be for someone who has your business card to frame you... Is it possible to overwrite the OS on these with something malicious?
> It’s impossible to differentiate a field that was missing in a protobuffer from one that was assigned to the default value. Presumably this decision is in place in order to allow for an optimization of not needing to send default scalar values over the wire.

Isn't this just flat incorrect? You can tell the difference between set-to-default and not-set with buffer.has_some_field().
Even if you get stuck in traffic, you still can get to more places quicker than on foot. Yes?
> IT was mad at being outsourced and played the game.

This is called "work to rule", and anybody who doesn't know the risk and repercussions of such an event happening, should not be in business management in the XXI century. Unfortunately, a lot of people try to pretend that trade unions never existed, and in so doing they lose an excellent occasion to learn how workers actually think and act.
This is a very cool project. I know very little about embedded engineering. I have a question: Why would MicroPython be needed? I thought it was useful only for simple chips, and this chip runs a full Linux, so couldn't you run CPython on it?
Self-cleaving ribozyme – “jumping gene” – activity increases with stress
Can recommend https://buildroot.org/ for building complete Linux system images. Been using it on multiple embedded projects, both personal and professional.

Somewhat related, I've also used buildroot in both AWS and GCP to run workloads from read-only system images. Quite liberating in my opinion. No ssh, no ansible, etc. Build the image, launch it and off it goes. GCE even allows you to use the same boot disk, if mounted read-only, for multiple instances, perfect for these type of images.
That can be hard. Very few people have all that many realistic options, especially when they have to wrestle with things like health benefits, age discrimination, and so forth. There are relatively few places in the country where a person can find multiple jobs within cycling distance of affordable housing.
Huawei Graphene Battery Description
> These blog posts also present AOT as if its just another option you can toggle, while my impression is that it's incompatible with common Java libraries

I agree. I have experimented to make one of my smaller application (~20 Java classes) to Graal native image. After 4-5 days of trying I gave up. Most of the commonly used libraries like JDBC drivers, Kafka, log4j etc work in totally opposite way that Graal Native image like to work.

The way I see it is J2EE all over again. Various vendors will find overall complexity of native images for practical or business Java apps as consulting or business opportunity. We can already see Quarkus, Micronaut and others are trying to offer native images for their framework. This would mean only a set of libraries would be compatible to native image in practical sense.
Part time, maybe. Not short term. It takes that much time to get up to speed on a non-trivial existing codebase and process. The value prop for the first couple months is usually just about zero once you take into account existing staff’s time guiding and answering questions.

Maybe for an agency model where everything is green-field or throwaway. Or to work on a proof of concept for something new (tho usually you want to save that work for your in house team, because it helps keep them happy.)

Or someone with deep knowledge in a particular area where our in-house expertise is shallow to solve a very specific problem or design an architecture and teach us what we need to know to understand and maintain it (example: Solr cluster configuration).
Since it is travel season, I believe Lyft is offering 10x miles on your ride to the airport.
You could look at ASN.1, which was pretty much created for that purpose.
I'm in Boston, and our rent was about $1100/month for a couple. Rents are higher now (https://www.jefftk.com/p/boston-rents-over-time) and we have kids now.

Taxes would be higher but we donate 50% of our income (https://www.jefftk.com/donations) so I'm not sure how you'd count that?

Also, I didn't have ~9 years of full time work when I started at Google, I had 3.5. My first full time programming job started fall 2008, and this was Spring 2012.
“As for maglevs: they are a cute boondoggle, but not worth the expense. China isn't building them anymore because the cost isn't worth it. ”

I mentioned that they are building them and provided a link.

They are focusing on the cheaper low-medium speed maglevs. You don’t need 150 mph trains to travel within a city, or metropolitan area.

120 mph is sufficiently fast.

Newark airport to JFK, for example, is only about 35 miles. Park at Newark and fly out of JFK.

Manhattan is 20 miles long. How about an express, with a few stops, that covers it in 20 minutes?
Open-source and the demise of proprietary software (2018)
Guardian articles including this one are paywalled in the UK but not elsewhere it seems.
> 1. Thwart cyber attacks

By whom? State actors can just launch attacks from computers that have both a Russian internet link and a link up to a internet providing satellite, no?
USB-A is not 'just fine'. It's uni-directional. Which is an insane design for something being constantly plugged in and out. It's also low-bandwidth and low-power. Most devices these days have bluetooth, so it isn't really needed except for power and monitors. USB-C is a step-up in everything and I'm happy with only USB-C.
I think you're thinking too narrowly about what "testable" means. Everything can be made testable.
Ask HN: Startup Founder Required Reading
I’ve been asked to join a dizzying number of startups/companies for a specific role. By taking a job, I can help any of them, but I can’t help all of them.

I believe this role has the potential to be productized. I’m tossing around the idea of doing a self funded startup. I’m solid on the tech and leadership side of things - today I am in a role that would translate to a high level engineering leadership role in most companies - and I have above average design/marketing skills.

I don’t have any experience starting a company. I have questions that I’m not sure when to ask, and I have so little context I strongly suspect there are questions I should be asking that I’m not.

Things like:

* When should I seek legal council?

* How should I approach incorporating?

* What does the process of hiring employee number one look like?

Do folks have any good resources for this?

Submitting under another account for privacy.
Do You Need Approval from Your Intuition in 2020
I've followed a similar trajectory over the years, but I'm currently back to minimalism. Perhaps the pendulum will swing again. In any case I'm not as extreme about NIH as I used to be. I try to make the decision for pragmatic reasons, not emotional ones.

What pushed me back was the current JavaScript landscape, with endless breaking changes to the major UI frameworks and constant security vulnerabilities being reported in our code bases by GitHub (they're even doing auto pull requests now).

In my experience, updating any decently sized web app project is a huge pain, and very time consuming. Everything is constantly moving. Libraries, frameworks, build tools, node, etc etc. These are all dependencies.
Shouldn't, yes. But why would you choose nine months of inconvenience over paying $10 for a new doorbell yourself? What kind of rational decision is that? How are they valuing their time here?
I like that 'guru' quote. When it comes to the trip. I always hear about the 'have a sober friend, or a trip buddy, etc' I've never thought this was the best idea. I think it could be worse for someone in a bad state to have to deal with other people.

Let a person be by themselves. Chances are they will just sit there and go through the corridors of their mind. There may be sheer terror, and at some point there will hopefully (likely) be peace and euphoria. If nothing else it will wear off in a handful of hours and if they were just sitting by themselves then they can hopefully shake it off and get on with things. I think it's dealing with other people that could raise the situation to unstable levels.
This is great! Thanks! I'll use the global setting:

git config --global commit.gpgsign true
Wow, what malarkey, what clickbait. PG says nothing about ambition at his 9-5 job, which is what a job should be. If an employer is looking for someone available around the clock, who'll work endless hours tirelessly, complaint-free... well, that's not a place I want to work at. That is, pardon the mixed metaphor, a red-flag-toxic-expectation.

I read this essay as being about personal ambition - the hours you put in above and beyond on your own projects.
So he'll no longer make money if Uber stock takes off?
Ten years ago or so, our NMR spectrometer was held ransom. OK, it was a completely out-of-date Solaris, not Linux, but if don't use Windows you are not immune.
Absolutely, but the commentor could have just done that, rather than lamenting that we should be discussing it... in a discussion thread that only exists because someone posted the video here in the first place.
LAN messenger IBM.com video channel
Policy ‘Clarification’ All but Ends Punishment for Bird Deaths
Or as I like to call it, xkcd 1179 time
It doesn’t help that most shoes squeeze most people’s toes when weight is on the ball of the foot, preventing us from using them for their natural purpose in stabilizing our stride.

Most of us have toes that make the front of the foot square-ish when weight-bearing (stand barefoot with your weight on your toes to see what I mean). Walk barefoot on the beach and pay attention to how all of your toes stabilize your stride, relieving your ankles, knees, and hips of some of that strain.

But most sneakers are tapered or at best rounded, squeezing the 3rd through 5th toes inward and preventing them from extending properly.
Yeah, I don’t really get the practice of sharing contact cards with people. A coworker sent me his once and now I have the names of his family members, his birthday, and home address.
If you believe Uncle Bob Martin it's the ability to pair. He recently tweeted "If you don’t like pairing, don’t pair. But be prepared for the folks who have developed the pairing skill to fly past you."
Great article.

As I pointed out in another comment: End all subsidies to all transportation modes.

Simple, all roads need tolls, all parking should reflect land values usage, end fuel and public transportation subsidies, taxes pollution.

Then people will find the economical and ecological to travel.
Growing pains, we'll get over it. USB-C fixes the problem everyone complained about forever of turning the plug over three times before getting it to be rightside up, and gives us enough contact points for modern video streams. I feel like making it compatible with the older USB standards by just connecting a subset of pins is super useful, and it's about as much backwards compatibility as we can expect with major sacrifices in other regards. I've got a phone with two USB-C ports, a hub that gives me two USB-A ports, an ethernet, and another USB-C, and a separate USB-C to HDMI adapter. I wouldn't trade either of my USB-C ports for a dedicated USB-A.
1. NEVER practice Coincidence driven development.

If you get lost, and no longer know why something is not working, do not just keep fiddling and changing things.

Simplify the problem. Disable all confounding variables and observe your changes. Open up a repl and try to reproduce the issue in your repl.

Read the source code of your dependencies. I have seen this a lot: People fiddle with dependencies trying to get them to work. Crack the code open and read it.

2. Choose your battles. Not every hill can be the one you die on. You cannot control every part of a code-base when you are working on a team. People are going to move your cheese and you need to learn to not let that affect you.

3. Learn to lose. Similar to the last one. Treat technical discussions as discussions, not a competition. Use neutral language that frames your ideas as NOT your ideas, but just other options. Keep an open mind and let the best idea win.

4. Write tests. There are outliers here, but the majority of talented engineers I have worked with are all on the same page: If you don't have tests, you cannot safely refactor your code[0]. If you cannot safely refactor your code, you cannot improve your codebase. If you cannot improve your codebase, it turns to mush.

5. Simplicity is golden. Keep your projects simple, doing the bare minimum of what you need, and do not refer to your crystal ball for what you might need later. Single responsibility principle. Keep your Modules and your functions simple and small, and combine them to create more complicated behaviour.

6. Quit shitty jobs. If you are not learning at a job, or they are abusing you, you need to get the hell out of there. Burn-out is real. Burn out on something cool that helps YOU, not pointless toil for some corporate overlord.

0: Martin Fowler's Refactoring 2nd edition
Yeah, I definitely don't disagree that informal reports are useful too. Was just reacting to the idea that it shouldn't be studied at all because of some rumors.
Germany's Ministry of Defense Is Building a FOSS Encrypted Messenger on Matrix
C structs do not compose extensively. Protobufs do. You can't put variable length data into a struct, and hence you can't put extensible structs into it either.
I want to agree, but the story is incomplete. A lot of those products also started as MVPs, but accreted functionality in response either to customer demand or opportunities to monetize.

The classic example of this is Word which started out as a small clone of Bravo but kept adding features that some subset of customers found indispensable until the whole codebase and UI became a mudball.

I don’t really like MS software but a big part of the reason is a consequence of something I admire: their strong attempts at backward compatibility and preserving features that are actually used even if by a small minority. In other words: you can’t win.
> I agree, most startups would view spending a week to avoid a one time $5k expense to be worth it for several years at least

Sorry, what I'm saying above is that I don't agree with that.
As others have mentioned, there’s literally a thing called Java Card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card
XDR and ONC/RPC for the win!
Here’s a nice write-up by Gil Kalai: https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2019/05/10/sansation-in-the-m...
Oh, during a social unrest in Egypt in 2011 the government famously shut down the internet. Didn't help them much :-)

I think the main concern of the Russian internet users is to get isolated from the rest of the internet indefinitely during peace time, in a way of China or North Korea. I am not sure we are seeing signs that the Russian government intends to go that far yet.
Unrelated-but-related: why is it that the in-flight-status screen on the IFE or WiFi flight status page sometimes stops and simply shows the plane fixed and unmoving?

Background: I’m a terrible flyer (I’m okay with turbulence, but unexpected manoeuvres really spook me), so on a recent SEA-ORD night flight I woke-up as we were approaching a O’Hare - doing a 180-degree turn over Lake Michigan so it was pitch black outside the window, but the IFE map showed we were over South Dakota where the flight should be straight and level, no turns for hours. So for more than just a brief moment I was convinced the plane was starting to spiral out of control like Lauda Air 004 - or it was a pilot suicide like Germanwings 9525. It wasn’t until a minute after Chicago came back into view that the IFE map refreshed with our current location. My friend I was travelling with said the map froze an hour earlier.

Paranoid me thinks that if something were to go wrong with the plane that the pilots or flight attendants would shut down the IFE map or have it show false information to stop passengers from panicking. (Why yes, when I was younger I did believe the urban-myth about the brace-position only being there to preserve your jawline for later body identification through dental records)
>> This world needs an alternative to anything built by the USA.

Be careful what you wish for - there were 5 bullies 105 years ago and we know what happened!
I should also note that they go to fairly great lengths to muddy the exact amount in comparison to a cigarette. Most of the copy on the internet about the amount is a direct quote from Juul (1 pod - 1 pack).
US steel tariffs didn't work
Setting Status Code and Handling 404 Pages in Angular Universal
There are lots of suspicions about how LSD might be good for people too; how do we figure out which suspicions are factual and not?
Easy - study children in Eastern Europe/Baltic states. Lots of people grow up bilingual, with English as a third language, too.
Right, you only pay for the memory reachable when the slow / blocking part do the garbage collection runs, so a lean program that churns through small objects can be very responsive.
You’ve abbreviated it one too far. "Steve Jobs-ing it".

Good find.
It's still one of the top methods.

See for example Symantec's report [1] with lots of data.

[1] https://www.symantec.com/content/dam/symantec/docs/reports/i...
You bring up a good point, but I think the takeaway is that you need to be thoughtful about the process, not necessarily that one way or the other is always right.

How often are breaking changes introduced to the APIs of OpenBLAS or LAPACK? I would guess approximately never (I could be wrong though. I'm actually surprised and a bit disturbed how much activity the GitHub repos are still getting).

Beyond that, how much of the API do you need, or are likely to need in the future? Why not implement that matrix multiplication yourself to start, but abstracted in a way where you can drop in OpenBLAS in the future? You can even copy their API if you don't want to abstract, and include a bit of profiling to warn you if it suddenly gets very slow on a certain platform.

In my experience the chances are good you'll never need that last 20%.
I am wondering about the ending statement in your comment:

> As usual, it is hard to correct for other factors; children who grow up bilingually usually belong to privileged classes.

I am pretty sure that is true in Switzerland, but in the USA kids like that frequently start out in the lower-middle class (first generation Americans).
Like most business cards, you mean. Actually, if I got one of these I’d probably keep it around just for novelty.
Yeah, I've pretty much exclusively used Altra shoes the last few years and have had much fewer problems. Altra have incredibly wide toe-box! Pair that with some Injinji running socks (seperate toes 'compartments') and I'm in running heaven!

However, please note that everyone's feet are different and don't just buy whatever shoes someone else wears.
I agree with many of the responses here. The easy jobs will go to people who are less passionate than you are and there are still tons of jobs available so I wouldn't worry about them making the field unstable quite yet.
I also wanted to point out that even though many people enter the field for the $, that doesn't mean they can't or won't fall in love with it the same way you have. I say this as someone who didn't know what they wanted to do, was encouraged to go into CS, hated it because everyone around me just wanted to prove how much they already knew than their other classmates, but I ended up loving it when I started working. At the end of the day, people still need to work to provide for themselves and their family, and that's not a bad thing. I'd focus on sharing the joy you have of computing in hopes of motivating others and be grateful that your preferred career also pays extremely well.
I think Micropython is fantastic and you can get an ESP8266 + FTDI cable for around $25. You can make this a web server and do fun hardware integrations with it like flashing LEDs for successful CI builds. Here's a good tutorial: https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/esp8266/tutorial/inde...

ESP8266's can also run NodeMCU, which is Lua but node.js stuff translates super easily: https://nodemcu.readthedocs.io/en/master/