skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Therefore, simplifying GHC development likely wouldn't attract any larger user base for the language.

I can agree with that. What I meant was more that I see it as a sort of symptom of its complexity. A kind of complexity which causes problems elsewhere.

> Can you elaborate on this? Dynamically typed languages essentially have no type system (but yes even they do have types).

Of course they have a type system. You define types and the types of values determine what you can do with them. That is not different from static typing. It is just that the enforcement happens at runtime.

One example of complexity in static typing is what you get when you try to do any kind of meta programming such as templates or generics.

Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate the problem is to look at the terra language. http://terralang.org

In terra you see Lua serving the same job as the templating language in C++. Yet a typical templating language is very limiting compared to a full blown dynamic language.

With static typing you just very easily end up in a catch-22 situation: What are the types of the types of the types?

For instance in Julia I can write:

A = Int
B = Char
c = 10
bar(name::String) = println("Hello ", name)
foo(x::(c < 10 ? A : B)) = 2+x - 10

Which is kind of complete nonsense code, but it illustrates a few different things which I can trivially do in a dynamic language like Julia but which would be hard in a static language. Here I am storing types in the variables A and B. Then I define a function `foo` which has a specific implementation depending on the type of its single input argument `x`.

In `bar` I specify the type of `name` as String. However in `foo` the type of `x` is evaluated at runtime. When the function definition of `foo` get evaluated, only then do we decide what the type of `x` is.

Here an if statement is used to determine the type of `x`. However I have the availability of the full Julia language to make that decision. I can make multiple functions to do that.

Try something like that in a statically typed language and the type system will tie itself in knots. If you could even support this in a static language, the complexity of describing what I just did in a static language would make most software developers dizzy.
I was relly looking for something like that. I'll give a try!
There are I think two important factors at play here:

1) A lot of the 'filler' isn't filler at all, but the process of communicating ideas in ways that work for many different people (since we don't all process information the same way).

2) More validly, the publishing industry doesn't really have a workable model for a 100 page book. The effort to put this out is not 1/3 of a 300 page book.

Would you buy the 87 page version for, say a 20% discount?
As a reader of Wirecutter I am personally comfortable with the referral/affiliate model that they use to make money. It does mean that they only review products where they can collect the referral fee, so their choice will come from a constrained pool. But since that usually means Amazon, and most products are on Amazon, it's usually not a problem.
More than anything, I admire him for the way in exemplified a balanced life. He was obviously hugely influential in the realm of business, but his career was clearly only ever a single part of his life, rather than the entirety of his life. He was wise without being arrogant. He was spiritual and contemplative without being preachy. He seems very much like the kind of person I aspire to be.
> Which makes the argument of your initial comment, that the median is not a meaning of "average", again, false.

As you note, my point is that "average" is most commonly understood as mean.

The original article seems to fall prey to the classic mean-vs-median distinction. The compensation numbers being presented do not necessarily represent what one would expect. FAANGs are known to give a small number of employees multi-million-dollar comp packages -- that will skew the average (erm... mean) but not the median.
RIVEN SPOILERS

I actually didn't play Riven until about 5 years ago, when it came out on iOS (I played Myst on CD as a kid). Learning the game's number system was a fascinating exercise that I don't think I've ever had in any other game.

Basically, in your explorations you eventually happen upon a small empty one-room building, which (if you look at the arrangement of desks) you can deduce is some sort of schoolhouse. In that room you'll find a mechanical wooden-and-string toy on a table. If you interact with it, the symbol on the base changes, and the toy performs some sort of action (I think dropping a weight) some number of times. From that you can deduce that the symbols are numbers, and the toy is for teaching what number each of the symbols represents.

If you're playing correctly, you've got some scratch paper handy (I used a drawing app) and you can write down each symbol and what number it corresponds to. And you'd better do this, because you're going to see a lot of important numbers in the game, and this is the only way they are written.

Towards the end of the game, you find a journal from one of the characters, which is written in English. However, when referring to the Age (the game's term for different worlds) that they've gone to, they use these numerals. If you've done your homework, you'll know that they've named their new world "The 233rd Age".
Bills Seek to Exempt Freelancers, Newspapers from New California Labor Law AB5
I am Jack’s total lack of surprise.
Can the mods add a "(2014)" in the headline for this one?
If they offered a premium "no ads" search option it would draw too much attention from the media/public to just how bad the situation currently is.

So, even if they could increase revenue per power user (RPPU?) it would do irreparable harm to their ad-supported model (for non-power users) in the long term.
No, I think the original statement is fair. Good engineering managers, like good staff-level engineers, will generally receive multiple solicitations a week to please come work for some company or another. Notice how the author considered it "entirely believable" that the candidate would have disabled his Linkedin profile due to recruiter spam; people at the level he was claiming really can get recruited so much that they need specific strategies to deal with it.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729408
To be fair, for Italians to get a driving license they need to go through a fairly intense driving school (much more intense than in the US). As such, you'll regularly see Italians drive in a "risky" manner because they know the other drivers on the road are more competent AND because their driving skills are actually better
If you pressed "Z" it would autoplay extra fast, making those battles progress at a reasonable speed.
well... (1 2 3) is syntactic sugar for (cons 1 (cons 2 (cons 3 nil))). What prevents someone from adding syntactic sugar f (x y) for (f x y)?
>They ignored the actual fact that it was sagging more than predicted and insisted the calculations were right.

Seems like they lack the expertise needed to properly evaluate their model.
The GitHub Archive Program and Arctic Code Vault
At best, review sites are funded by affiliate referral fees. The other business models for reviews are even worse.

It sounds like the Wirecutter (under previous ownership) may have gone over the line, but NextDesk also comes across kind of holier-than-thou if they think they can survive without paying to acquire customers.
We have migration instructions in the Aurora documentation. See, for example: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide... (MySQL) or https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide... (Postgres).

Again, both are compatible with the open-source versions, so you can export your data if you need to via the standard tooling.
You're kind of getting at my point, at 0 resistance you can route around any of these problems. A planet wide mesh is just logistics at that point.
I just did an ifixit self-upgrade of my late 2014 Mac mini. For a small price of $65 for Crucial SSD, $25 for ifixit toolkit and $5 for logic board removal tool, I successfully completed surgery on my Mac mini. It is so much faster! It’s a shame that APFS has led Apple into making dinosaurs out of Macs with rotational drives for startup, especially since you need to be a surgeon to replace it yourself with an SSD. Thankfully, I didn’t damage the very tiny connectors.
My Windows 10 laptop is from the same era, with similar CPU and memory. It has no problem running the most recent Windows updates without any hour glass waiting.
I’m thankful that I upgraded, it’s like getting a new Mac for under $100, but Apple should respect rotational disks. APFS is the reason.
There's also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141125 ("Google is Backtracking on its Controversial Desktop Search Results Redesign").

We don't need two. Which is better? Edit: we've got https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144210 now.
If he's talking about multithreading he probably wanted to say immutable data structures in combination with clojure's atom (CAS semantics).
I wonder, if natural disasters start increasing in impact and frequency, at what point people would start reconsidering economics in order to accelerate environmental protection.
I recognized only one book from his initial list: Quiet by Susan Cain. It's a good book. It is not, nor does it claim to be, a self-help book.

The same can be said of Gladwell's books.

There's a bit of strawman stuff going on in the article.
When I used comcast (which was several years ago) the actual service was fine - it was the terrible customer relations that really got my goat, and it's harder to quantify customer satisfaction but the fact they aren't the absolute worst company isn't a mark of honor, showing up on customer surveys as one of the worst companies is enough of a black mark - the ranking is less important than being on the top ten at all.
Show HN: Kanye West Quotes API (Kanye as a Service)
Which Haskell design decision flies in the face of production use or what kind of feature would you like you to see in Haskell that isn't picked up due to it being an academic language?
Hackaday did a "Tell Time Contest" that ended today, featuring this and other devices: https://hackaday.io/contest/168639-tell-time-contest
The problem is near term interest rates are near 0, so the casual pathway of money saved -> lower interest rates -> more investment isn't as effective. This is why quantitative easing has so little impact.

And a saved dollar is spent less than a spent dollar.
Once you are making your pancakes in a full mold, with no pan to speak of, you should revise your nomenclature: you are now making cake.
(Deliciously light steamed eggy cake, sure, but not a pancake.)

I've made similar souffle / jiggly "pancakes" using ring molds on a lidded pan. This replicates the technique that was popularized in Japan. Of the recipes I've tried, this one is the simplest and had the results closest to what I saw and ate on my travels - https://kirbiecravings.com/japanese-souffle-pancakes/
How do you track your customers and communicate with them in a B2B company?
My co-founder and I are trying to learn more about how founders/PMs/growth/customer success managers at B2B companies track their customers and reach out to them via email, phone or in-app text.

We're seeing data in databases, Salesforce, CRMs, internal dashboards, Mixpanel. And then automatic communication seems to happen via Mailchimp, customer.io + a lot of ad-hoc that's not tracked. Was wondering if anyone had a system that works well for them.

Would love to have an open conversation about it here. And if you have 3 mins, please fill out this survey too: https://meettalkative.typeform.com/to/UP31zk
I have a mint account. Have not used it in three years. It kept failing to sync to my accounts and I got sick of correcting it all the time. It ended up being a huge burden compared to the value added.
I think it says more about how shady the Wirecutter CEO is. One can only hope that this behaviour was cleaned up after the NYT acquisition.
They still do that. Large content sites still sell ads and can do so in any way they want, exclusivity deals, results oriented, click based, you name it. The inventory they can't sell directly they sell to Google or whoever is paying best at that time. They can even throw an ad view into ad networks to be bid on and show the winning bid ad to the user. The whole bidding war happens in real time for each user for each ad sometimes across multiple ad networks.

I suppose a lot of people here know how real time bidding networks work but I was mind blown the first time I saw that.
Parquet is an open format. It’s part of the Apache foundation.

Would have preferred CSV as well, though, easier to work with. There’s also a little known feature called S3 Select that allows you to run SQL on S3 files and selectively retrieve data, which is what Parquet is for in the first place.
I highly recommend a Consumer Reports subscription. Yes, you have to pay for it, but that's the point, no conflict of interest.
>the current RPG trend is away from simulating a world and towards crafting a narrative.

Yes, making the mistake of the mediocre GM -- trying to lead the player(s) into following your story, instead of enabling them to create their own. The ideal GM (at least, for me, someone who strongly prefers ADnD to DnD5) maximizes player agency, while constraining it by the rules of the universe (and also operating as a manager, because you're dealing with meatbags where one guy will happily try to spend 5 hours dicking around in the bar when the rest of the party wants to go to the dungeon, and another idiot will be trying to "troll" the group, in the most uninteresting fashion).

The core narrative (and every GM inherently brings with him a narrative he wants to tell) is incentivized, in much the same way any open world videog-game RPG has a main questline, but the ideal GM allows for departure from it as long as its interesting.

The narrative-focused GM, and RPG, will only allow such a deviation so far as it doesn't detract from the main narrative, because there is only one narrative the GM has interest in telling.

Narrative-focused RPGs may be the current trend, but that doesn't make it a good trend.

>To automate that, an AI would need to be able to gauge how "narratively interesting or emotionally meaningful" something is. I think we're a little way off from that.

You're correct, but my point is that we don't actually need, or even really want that, for our imaginary automaton.

Humans, by their nature, will bring the emotional impact, and fill in the details of the narrative, entirely on their own, if they are enabled to do so. They will assign personalities to blank-slate NPCs, they will craft their own reasons for doing whatever they do, they will spin their own tale, so long as the system will allow it (and as long as its sufficiently limited; for whatever reason, limitations breed creativity). You just need to provide an environment that reacts to the players, and sufficiently interesting ways for the player to interact with the environment.

Give them a gravity/portal gun and players will come up with all kinds of stories..

In a tabletop, the GM enables the reactive behaviors of what would otherwise be a static map. In a cRPG, lacking the GM, you get a static map (except for very specifically defined reactions, usually determined by narrative events). In most open world rpgs, you get a large map and multiple narratives, but still rather static. In a simulation, you get the reactive environment; the closer the RPG approximates a simulation, the closer we get to the GM's role -- to react to player input (rather than prescribe it)

This is in much the same way that any game can be fun if you toss in multiplayer, and give players sufficient controls -- the players will do all the hard work of setting goals, spinning tales, emotionally attaching themselves to arbitrary constructs.

Games don't need narratives, they need agency. Then the narratives come for free.
Apache Druid vs. Time-Series Databases
We can call it "fact checking"!
Since this is specifically about commenting on a document, maybe Co-ment¹ would be more appropriate?

1. https://github.com/co-ment/comt
Note that being open that you're beholden to product sellers and not beholden to users is more honest, but doesn't actually incentivize user-oriented reviews.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

A few of you mentioned Dwarf Fortress. I am aware of it, and considered adding a section on it after Elder Scrolls, but this was already twice the length of one of my usual posts, and I wanted to 'ship it.'

It was pointed out that I only presented two alternatives in my conclusion, but there's a third of a super-dense procedurally generated world a la Dwarf Fortress. I agree this was an oversight on my part. This points in the direction of an interesting subtlety about whether a rigorous simulation is what you really want at all - the DM 'simulates' a world in a way that is highly biased towards adventure, excitement and fun.

I may go back and revise to try to bring in some of these points at a later date.

One person mentioned the Mythic GM simulator, I'm aware of that also, but a) it's a very niche product and b) it still requires someone to GM, that person may just also be the sole player. It does provide a biasing function so that you can by 'surprised' by outcomes and guide your own adventure in unplanned directions. It actually is more in the realm of a DM aid, as some have mentioned this may be the most fruitful direction for AI, as an aid rather than a replacement for a DM.
http://archive.md/6rZFp
Not a great story but also not as hysterical as the headline implies.

1. Man/most/all wirecutter links are relatively benign "affiliate" links, mostly to Amazon.

2. Wirecutter updates review, usually annually, and frequently selects a new #1.

3. Price is a key component of Wirecutter selections. They are not just picking "the best" but instead, "the best for most people".
Geostationary satellites are in fact in a ring around the equator. No other orbit would keep them stationary in the sky.

Geosynchronous orbits are orbits at the same altitude, but not necessarily aligned with the equator. Most of what I know about orbital mechanics I learned from Kerbal Space Program, but given that it's very expensive to change orbital inclination, I would be shocked if geosynchronous satellites were returned to a flat inclination before being disposed of.
The main reason everyone likes Google is clean design: as it was from the start, blue links and black text on a white background. It always had the simple-HTML feel, making it light and fast, which is what really mattered. But here they are, trying to insert more images and assets into every page load...
In my (very limited) experience, the benefit's not from representing functions this way, it's from representing everything this way -- including things that would be special syntax in other languages. It makes it easier to write and debug things like macros if the input is already represented as essentially an AST and the output doesn't need to be converted back into special syntax before it can be run.
And who started those camps? Trump, or Obama? But sure, label this administration fascist...

So, yeah. You are in fact part of the problem.
If I do not like a company but need to visit their site, I also do this just to increase the cost for said company as Google Ads are 'cost per click'.
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. Also, avoid snark on HN. It's not worth what it does to the container.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I second this. I'll also add that the items I've purchased based on their reviews have consistently lived up to expectations.
Read through the entire thing... mostly sounds like a pretty normal attempt to get some kind of affiliate revenue from Nextdesk. And it doesn't look like there is anything in the emails that says "pay us or we will decrease your ranking" or "pay us and we will increase your ranking". At worst, the CEO erred by using the phrase "kickback", instead of affiliate program or similar.
IPOs: SaaS Company Revenue versus Money Raised
def(fact(n acc)
if(=(n 0)
acc
fact(-(n 1) *(acc n))))

I'm not a fan.
The Photon Battery – a new concept for electricity storage
The ads I see on my paper newspaper are often better “targeted” than the ones I see (or block ;) ) on their website.

Of course this is not data, but the parent post has an interesting stance.
Leaving the EU most likely means leaving the single market, which will be similar to suddenly having sanctions.

Norway and Switzerland are in the EU from an economic PoV (they're in the single market). Hell, they're even in Schengen.

Canada, US, Aus never had a closer trading relationship with the EU that they opted to leave.
The idea that there is an "edge" to the funnel is misleading. And if there were any edge, and it was at geosynchronous orbit, the Moon would have fallen off long ago.
A Guide to the GitHub Code Vault
Once javascript gets immutable types and better handling of objects, the gap between it and clojure will very small for most daily tasks.

https://github.com/tc39/proposal-record-tuple

https://github.com/tc39/proposal-object-iteration
The article is more why than how, so I have a question for HN. Is it acceptable for a company to not do code review until late in the funding game (like series E/F)? Like move fast and break things to get MVP going and break a lot of best practices doing it, and at what point should that be reigned in?

Imagine you are at a unicorn with physical product already operating in public, and a C laughs at a suggestion of code review and says its too long, hard and expensive. What would you do?
Funny enough, the only friends I chat with on WhatsApp are US expats living in Europe for the last couple of years.
In the early 90's, TV's started including low-resolution "Teletype" type chips (the kind you see overlay information on security cameras) that would generate menu text for volume control, etc.

Frequently these TV's would have a "muting" mechanism - if you selected a channel without a signal, it would mute the audio and display a blue background instead of the underlying signal.

When LCD TV's and HDTV started gaining traction the "No Signal" screen was often some text bouncing around in some manner.
Very interesting. Another way to look at this using their numbers is that there is bias, but not very much.

Using the numbers from the study, of the 40% that used a pronoun, by the end, 60% of those folks used "They" - implying she or he.

It's unclear, but we could infer that about 25% used he and thus 15% used she.

So, really, it's only 6% of the population that was "biased" - i.e. using "he" when they expected a woman to win. (Since expectations were relatively mixed, let's say 60/40%, we can take 25 minus 15 to get 10% of a "biased" potential population...and then assuming a similar distribution, about 60% of those expected Clinton to win, but still used "he")

Is 6% endemic of society-wide challenges? Probably. But looking at probable trend lines (and even the increasing use of "they" towards the end of the election), it would seem the bias is becoming far less pervasive, and what remains is a very small proportion of the population.
Fantastic. Go UK! Article 13 is antithetical to a free society.
Well, they start getting spread out — except when you have everything together for that one special geosynchronous orbit. That's a bit of a problem too.