skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is the strange thing about this book. There was content before:
https://de.scribd.com/document/420577417/Fleming-RJ-2019-The...

I don't know how this was published and can be taken down without any comments by the editor.
Springer Book is one of the main scientific books publishers on the market.
>The trick with a well-implemented smart home system is to consider failure modes in the design phase.

I mostly don't object to optional "smart"/Bluetooth/WiFi features. I'll use them or not use them as I see fit. What I really object to is if some perfectly good appliance no longer can be used because the manufacturer stopped updating an application and now it doesn't work with the latest iOS version or whatever.
A coworker and I were discussing this trend as it relates to the physical workspace. We imagined a psuedo-virtual cubical which you can “decorate” in any theme you’d like - jungle, sci-fi, steampunk, tropical beach, etc. - which would be rendered by your coworkers’ AR wearables/implants.

My favorite concept of that discussion was virtual guardians to protect your flow - look, you can interrupt that developer but you’re gonna have to defeat his virtual dragon first.
I vehemently disagree, you can't just redefine Pi-Day to what you want. Pi Day is 3/14, not 4/4 or 6/6.

As for calling it Doomsday, well, it's from the title of the paper about the algorithm, by the man who invented it, the famous John Conway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule
International cyber law: interactive toolkit [NATO CCDCOE]
Every version change, even minor revisions, come with a real risk of breaking your compiled asset bundles. From shaders to light maps to referenced classes. It's a huge amount of effort to keep a project tracking Unity version upgrades.
You don’t get the impedance mismatch of text to objects that bash has when dealing with the complexity of AWS resources.
'Online machine learning' would avoid the confusion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_machine_learning
Also "demonetization" on the downsides.
AI and machine learning have no business being mentioned in the same sentence. The AI hype is pushed by marketers and journalists because it gets clicks and invites the futurist crowd to chime in. We're decades away from anything that will resemble an AI system and any talk of it now is a waste of time.

Machine Learning has made amazing strides in the past decade and will change all aspects of our lives. There will be a ton of startups in the next decade using speech recognition, image recognition, natural language processing and etc to automate all of our repetitive tasks. If hardware keeps up we'll probably see a boom in robotics in the next 5-15 years that will allow us to automate most manufacturing and food production.
TIC-80 and LIKO-12 are pretty decent open source "clones"

https://tic.computer/

https://ramilego4game.itch.io/liko12

And then there's the BASIC engine:

https://basicengine.org/
COSS Media (https://coss.media/) is a new blog that's focused on the niche of building companies out of open source software.

Disclosure: I write for the blog from time to time.
Eventually ideas like this always eat theirselves. The "speaking at conference" meme is now thoroughly eaten; there's a cottage industry of bullshit around the whole thing. People do it now to advance their careers and achieve an extremely modest amount of e-fame. Most talks are pointless. It's people giving talks to give talks about helping other people give takls about giving talks for their boss's arbitrary stipulation that giving talks is a required feature for "team lead" engineers, etc..
Even quite underpowered phones can boot in ~1-2 seconds if optimized for that. Not everything in the phone will startup in that amount of time (modem, wifi), but it's possible to start to Linux userspace and display fully interactive UI in that amount of time.

Even my e-book reader Linux port boots to UI in ~2s.

It really is just bloat and lack of care.
Saying they are free of bias (or "free from the usual bias", like that's a big difference) is absurd, and attempting to backpedal by qualifying that claim and redefining the meaning of the word is no more useful.
What about demographic collapse in the west/china? will it not overshadow a lot of this? Esp coupled with demographic looming catastrophe in africa. Poor countries becoming increasingly unsustainable at a time when the developed ones will be least able to help.
And yet even though a perfectly usable Windows 10 computer which they used for years is available, my parents have not touched it in years after getting iPads and iPhones.
Yes, one such bug was covered here:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21743424

- https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/on2-again-now-i...
Exactly why I'm frustrated with you. You're doing more harm than good and you're able to do it because you are an open source maintainer.

Redux is

(state, action) => state

Sure, wiring it up is clunky without a few helper functions and you're right there should be a set of reified best practices. Unfortunately, the ones you are holding up simply do not buy the developer anything and serve to make the js ecosystem even more impenetrable than it already is.

I'm only angry because I know that I'll be wading through piles and piles of garbage as a result of this library.

This gets to a bigger problem with the javascript ecosystem. Someone writes a useful library (s, a) => s, then a hundred other people decide to create "opinionated" frameworks to manage that library. What you're left with are hundreds of arbitrary practices yanked from inside development organizations. They almost always obscure the thing they're trying to illuminate.

Opinionated frameworks are only effective if you get them as a whole package. Rails works because it's every single thing you need for a web app rolled up into one suite of libs. Opinionated Javascript frameworks have been unable to mimic this because the big ones are focused on narrow domains: ui rendering, state management, etc.

This creates an explosion of cargo culted opinions-turned-libraries, which are basically what we had in the 00s with all the Java libraries that were design patterened to death. Believe me, there was a lot of citing going on in those discussions too.

This library will do more harm than it does good if people buy in.
Single opt in vs. Double opt in which one to pick for your email marketing
They're having trouble even controlling these type-2 outbreaks. The fear is that attempts to do so by deploying live type-2 vaccine in the surrounding areas may instead be triggering a positive feedback loop, with more rather than fewer infections over time. This would be a clearly misguided response, even before you account for opportunity costs - which is not easy, because letting things be and hoping that the outbreaks will die out on their own has costs as well.
I think moving the pawn two squares forward is one such rule innovation (as in the movement was not there in old time chess, also because of this en passant had to be implemented as well)
Ask HN: Which books are in your 2020 reading list?
I purchased the Python 3 Standard Library by Example book today, as well as The Pragmatic Programmer. I'm looking forward to working through them over the next couple of weeks.

Which books, or which topics, do you plan to get familiar with this year?
> my best contributions to society will be those I initiate and see to fruition on my own accord

This is pretty much the essence I was getting at and what the goal is to solve
Several of his answers are between laughable and decades sooner than would be possible under any scenario. It came across as Fred reaching desperately to say something interesting and instead he just wrote a bunch of well-worn low value fantasy from other sources.

Just look at how comical this stuff is:

> Plant based diets will dominate the world by the end of the decade. Eating meat will become a delicacy, much like eating caviar is today.

In one decade? Dominating the whole world and meat becoming a delicacy. That's such a bad prediction it's borderline sad. Maybe over the course of 50-100 years. It would take a decade just to scratch the surface of that prediction. It'll take decades just to scale up the necessary food production changes and distribution required by that prediction. He entirely ignores the massive investment required, the slow moving nature of it, the entrenched gatekeepers that dictate food policies, and the very slow moving nature of changing global consumer taste & demand (more likely to occur via aging out and new young people adopting, rather than true mass adoption by existing people that have all been eating meat for the entire lives; that will take a long time).

> Asian crypto exchanges, unchecked by cumbersome regulatory restraints in Europe and the US and leveraging decentralized finance technologies, will become the dominant capital markets for all types of financial instruments.

Things at that scale, dominated as they are in finance by giants with vested interests and tightly regulated and influenced directly by military muscle, do not change that much in the span of ten years or less. Another absurd, impossible prediction. This is Fred going overboard on a crypto binge.

He might as well have said in his list that we'll all be piloting flying cars in ten years. It's the exact same bullshit worthless futurism fantasy backed with the exact same supporting basis (vapor).

> China will emerge as the world’s dominant global superpower leveraging its technical prowess and ability to adapt quickly to changing priorities

In ten years the US will still have the only global projection military and will still have the world's largest economy. Another obvious error of projection by Fred and a bad one at that. If everything goes right for China, in 30 years they could theoretically occupy a dominant superpower position. That's best case scenario. However what is most likely is that China will split the world in half with the US and never achieve such an overwhelming position and that they'll suffer stagnation due to well understood problems they're already sinking under (demographics, debt, increasingly extreme authoritarianism).

Basically none of what he lists in item #1 will occur in the next decade. Most of it is so impossible to occur in the span of just ten years, that again, it's super far fetched. Someone should have screened all of this for him before he hit publish.
Right, and just before all of that started we had the Great Depression which was proceeded by the "roaring 20s".

Look up what people like Ray Dalio are saying. He says that US entitlements are intractable, global debt is at historic levels that look like 1937, and in one interview he even seemed to imply that he status of the dollar was in question and there could be a global depression and war. He says we are in the giant slump portion of the long term debt cycle.
A real draw for me is working with C++ in it, since both Unity and Unreal appear to favour managed languages (C#, some JS variant, some weird Python style thing, etc.)

No real reason for preferring C++ except I want to learn it, and my pet project is a little game rather than yet another web app/thing that renders DB records to HTML/thing that takes one JSON blob and turns it to another. I never did computer science so this sort of trial by fire is super appealing to me.
I noticed reading some of the comments here that they don't get into what a "good" comment is. Many critiques on HN will try to identify best practices, but with comments, and writing generally, it's more a skill you have to learn.

The weirdness you mention can be explained, I think, by the fact that the project has a single contributor.[1]

A person learns which patterns work or not when patterns clearly work or fail. Since bad comments are something that affects maintenance without breaking the code, it wouldn't be surprising if the internals are solid while the code is less maintainable.

And I predict that if it takes off, you'd see other contributors pushing back against the extraneous comments, and Abhishek's style in commenting evolve.

[1]: https://github.com/abhiTronix/vidgear/graphs/contributors
To be fair, "I give out vague loans in internet money" doesn't naturally default itself to being a good thing, and namedropping "smart contracts" and assuming that means anything aside from spam&scam technobabble to people outside of the ethereum is a bit of a miss on your part.
What is demographic wealth?
Looks like you commented on the wrong article. You're quoting the 2020s piece.
Remembering them.

But to add along the same lines: what's an equally easy alternative?
Seems your underestimating how much research and infrastructure was required for eradication. This isn't just evil greed money going straight to the pockets of cold CEOs. All those scientists, doctors, lab techs and everyone associated with the manufacture of vaccines/drugs have to eat.
What's Godot's C# support like nowadays? I remember there being some criticism of the early implementation, but I haven't checked back recently.

I keep on getting really curious about Godot, it seems like an engine that should be up my alley, and I really am in the market for Open Source engines. I don't want to keep coding everything myself.

But I'm a little thrown off by the idea of learning a new scripting language, and dipping into C++ for an engine like this seems counterproductive. If I cared that much about memory management, I'd probably write a game-specific engine again.
While its correct that telecommunication will become much important at work, i dont see why people will be stuck in VR outside work. If all work is remote, why would anyone choose to live away from loved ones?
A simple step toward thwarting a mischievous app that demands internet access privileges (even though its functionality has no apparent need for it) is to install a firewall like NetGuard[1]. It's a simple step because it doesn't require rooting your device.

1: https://www.netguard.me/
I am biased because the author is a friendly acquaintance, but this is a great book (and Al is a great person.)
That's funny and I agree that _some_ people are bad at using passwords, but I have a feeling whatever replaces them will be worse for everyone. It's like some people cut their fingers with knives so let's all use plastic knives instead.
I’ve seen at least one article suggesting the end of centralization into cities. I suspect LEO based internet services will further help people move back to the country. All that’s needed is work out there.
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18012334
Buddy, oil isn't running out anytime soon. If you want better programmers, maybe we should have more than a handful of universities that have programs whose sole purpose is churning out the same type of developers you're shitting on.
That's pretty cynical, but I'll admit there's some truth to it.

I take the optimist's view of it though: speaking is a good way to advance your career, but with so many new people getting into software development it's also a great way to teach others. Even if you can watch the video online, conferences allow you to actually meet and ask questions of others who know things you don't.

It's hard to replicate these interactions online.
Ask yourself what do you want/like and why.
Thanks for this, it still shows a rather small benefit, however. I do think that in a few years time electric can become the best choice. The mechanical simplicity alone is worth it
Would going back to the trivalent solve all of the problems?
There was an old post by Bruce Schneier where he suggested people write down passwords on a piece of paper and keep them securely. This is something people have been already doing for centuries with wallets, keys, etc.
That's not really what he's saying. Here's an article that better explains his position: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/187932/polio-going-away-with...

> The oral polio vaccine contained three types, or strains, of the virus (types one, two and three). The vaccine, given to young children, is dropped onto the tongue, where it then travels through the stomach and digestive system. The live viruses in the vaccine have been weakened, so that it can’t cause disease. However, in very rare cases, and only in populations where immunisation rates are low, the vaccine virus can mutate in the intestines and regain the ability to cause paralysis, resulting in VDPV. The most common of the three vaccine strains causing VDPV has been the type 2 strain.

> Although the person who received the vaccine does not develop polio, the reactivated polio vaccine leaves their body in faeces and can potentially infect others.

> This is not a risk with the injectable polio vaccine, such as the one given in the UK, as the virus has been inactivated and doesn’t enter the gut. However, this vaccine cannot be used alone in places at risk of polio and where immunity is low. Although it protects an individual from paralysis, it does not prevent the virus being transferred from person to person – an important benefit of the oral vaccine
> the AP Computer Science A exam

Biden said learn to code, not learn to do advanced placement computer science.

(I still think is advice is unfortunately going to be impractical for many members of this particular group of people.)
Sounds like a soul crushing job.
Amazon uses machine learning to forecast demand and ship products to warehouses before you order something. It's part of what makes their 1 day deliveries work. https://www.npr.org/2018/11/21/660168325/optimized-prime-how...

Data is obviously crucial, but it's useless if it's just sitting on hard drive. Machine learning allows them to squeeze out as much juice from it as possible, and a few % point lift makes a huge difference at scale, especially in high volume businesses with low margins per transaction.
A couple threads on this from when the paper came out:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18666392

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18023452

I think there might have been others too.
Autonomous Cyber Capabilities Under International Law
I agree it's all slower and sucks. But I don't think it's solely a technical problem.

1/ What didn't seem to get mentioned was the speed to market. It's far worse to build the right thing no one wants, than to build the crappy thing that some people want a lot. As a result, it makes sense for people to leverage electron--but it has consequences for users down the line.

2/ Because we deal with orders of magnitude with software, it's not actually a good ROI to deal with things that are under 1x improvement on a human scale. So what made sense to optimize when computers were 300MHz doesn't make sense at all when computers are 1GHz, given a limited time and budget.

3/ Anecdotally (and others can nix or verify), what I hear from ex-Googlers is that no one gets credit for maintaining the existing software or trying to make it faster. The only way you get promoted is if you created a new project. So that's what people end up doing, and you get 4 or 5 versions of the same project that do the same thing, all not very well.

I agree that the suckage is a problem. But I think it's the structure of incentives in the environment that software is written that also needs to be addressed, not just the technical deficiencies of how we practice writing software, like how to maintain state.

It's interesting Chris Granger submitted this. I can see that the gears have been turning for him on this topic again.
> making use of privacy tech and devices will ... serve as barriers towards getting access to various societal instruments

This already happens.

For example, in the US good credit is often necessary to rent an apartment, open a bank account, get insurance, or even land a job. In order to maintain "good credit", one needs to make sure their financial activity is reported to the bureaus. If you do everything using more-private cash or debit transactions you lose out.
I assumed that was covered by #8 ("The biggest consumer technology successes of this decade will be in the area of privacy"), somewhat by #9 ("Millennials and Gen-Z will be running many institutions"), and mostly the second half of #5 ("a killer decentralized consumer app").

Network effects of centralization explain why current big companies prefer to build centralized services -- but the next big idea never comes from existing big companies, anyway.

My 30,000' view of computing history is that big companies, as a rule, don't create big ideas that survive. They pick up small ideas that work and scale them up (Gall's Law). Git and HTTP and Python didn't come from Microsoft or Google or Amazon, but those companies took them once they were already popular and made them scale -- in large part by making them work well in a centralized architecture.

The software that comes next won't win because FAANG like it better for building centralized architectures. It'll win because everybody and their dog will be using it at home. Then companies like FAANG will see that and pick it up and try to centralize it. Then the cycle will repeat.

We've already got a billion tiny data centers -- the powerful computers and smartphones in our houses and pockets. All we need is the right software, and the desire to not have every service delivered free-with-ads-over-the-web from big corporations.
> That's because in a lot of cases they're optimizing for the wrong metrics, as in maximizing their revenue instead of your utility.

What? How do they maximize their revenue by spending money on ads the users actually laugh about for how bad their targeting is?

Based on what I know about machine learning - it almost always gives great short-term results, and it almost always fails to deliver the expected long-term results. What's worse is this comes with the weirdest most indecipherable bugs that pop up more and more over time. Unless you have a large enough database to show statistical errors that are negligible (something like 99.9999% precision or recall, depending on your metrics), you should assume it will break in ways you cannot possibly predict. And even then, you might be using the wrong training data without even realizing it.

I'm not saying ML is bad, although I am saying it is ridiculously overhyped. I'm saying ML is still nascent enough nobody really knows how a lot of edge cases will shake out, simply because there are too many edge cases to test before putting it into production.

It's not hard to find examples of ML algorithms gone wrong even for sites like Amazon.

https://gizmodo.com/amazon-prime-day-glitch-let-people-buy-1...
>Oh, this won't be DRM-bound like half of what it does? If you're sure and not just guessing, good.

Not any more so than in similarly priced German cars.

>Next up, can you order parts without this procedure yet?

Sourcing parts via official channels continues to be difficult.
The predictions about China are a little confusing. I know they’ve copied lots of foreign tech, but have they demonstrated any ability to source original research and development that had no external links? This read a little like what China would want the 2020s to look like.
The problem is the effect of the 'bad PR'. The end of the article goes into the struggles involved in distributing the vaccine and making sure it's used. If the program loses credibility, those struggles could increase to the point where it's no longer effective.

Honestly what's surprising to me is that they're able to overcome that resistance at all. Imagine trying to distribute a vaccine in the US that is known to trigger outbreaks of the virus it's supposed to protect against. Regardless of the fact that things would be far worse without it, all the evidence in the world wouldn't be enough to convince many people.
> Yahoo demanded a cut of the merchant's revenue.

Doesn't every payment gateway do this?
Since today is a holiday (New Year's Day), it should appear tomorrow, on the first business day of the month.