skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks, but I think you may have misunderstood me. I meant actual optics.

I agree that better sensor tech is also very useful. It is the end of the line for the optical path, after all. Any way you can get photons picked up better is great!

But the actual optics, the mirrors, the lenses, the fibers, the filters, the E-O waves, etc. That's where all the jazz is. I'm not kidding when I say it's an easy nobel. STED was just putting the right filter in the right place. DIC was just using a 1/4 plate just off the focus. PALM/STORM is just using a specific dye and a fast lamp. Blue LEDS are just a bit of chem. Optogenetics is just the right slime out of just the right pool.

Now, all those things built up on a LOT of other work, but it's not terribly difficult stuff to do. The processes are very straightforward. I mean Hell built STED in his living room out of cardboard boxes, literally.

But, you can also toil away on these projects for decades, tweaking this, isolating that.

Optics is absurdly touchy.
Reminds me of an event here in Sweden when a military patrol boat accidentially crashed into a car ferry after the two captains could not agree about who had the right of way. The ferry lost some paint while the patrol boat sustained significant damage and was put out of action.

Military boats look strong and are built to be fairly fast and withstand enemy fire, but pure mass is still far more important in a collision. Commercial passenger liners also seem to be quite over-engineered to withstand a lot of punishment, maybe as a result of those being the boats that can continue to operate decade after decade.
On the contrary, I've heard of a story where a team decided to apply some new tool to their codebase which warned about a missing break, inserted the break so the warning disappeared, "fixed" the failing tests that now resulted, and then upon the next release was subsequently screamed at by numerous customers for the unwanted behaviour change.

but in a very high-level language like PHP, there’s really no reason for switch to fall through at all

I disagree. Switch fallthrough is very useful because it can reduce code duplication, especially when the logic has a ladder-like structure. Trying to impose increasingly draconian and such arbitrary rules is only going to lead to a self-fulfilling-prophecy where all the intelligent developers will get fed up and leave, and what's left are those which will continue to create tons of bugs some other way instead.
My first own joke in English. I hope you like it
Is there something that could plug into this stack which would allow for easy integration of a lucene / solr instance as a data source?
Well, you did say you didn't finish it. So would it surprise you to learn that topic is addressed directly?
> Walmart's margins are low, but their employees aren't in great shape. They usually live off of state benefits

Even if this is true, benefits + low-wage job is better both for the worker and society than a lesser total entirely from public benefits and no job, so, the WalMart jobs are a net win.

> presumably have worse education

Hence why they can't get better jobs, but punishing WalMart doesn't fix that.

> and health outcomes than the average American.

Probably, that comes from being poor and is exacerbated by a wealth-dependent healthcare system. Again, punishing WalMart for employing them doesn't improve this.
The first seems like a nonserious thing and D-Wave is a crank company.
Even if companies were legally and easily selling masks for 100x normal price, I doubt any employees on the factory line would ever make more than a small double digit percentage in overtime payments.
If your creditors and landlord don't believe in your product and mission, I'm not sure how that's actionable. Small businesses aren't in a position to make big financial bets.

If Goldman-Sachs wanted to stockpile masks made at 10 cents each and take on the risk of never being able to sell them, great. I cannot fathom how someone running a non-diversified business could possibly make such a choice.
That doesn't help the businesses who are saddled with the debt of their building on top of reduced customers or straight up loss of operations but still maintaining the space as storage essentially waiting out the storm. Many still have to pay their salaried employees.
Yes, it is completely true, and not in a probabilistic way, either. A model is a mathematical construction which relates observations to predictions. However, there is no epistemic basis by which predictions can be turned into observations; we can never ultimately draw conclusions just based on inferences.

Perhaps you have heard of the idea that "the map is not the territory" [0]. Models can never be exactly descriptions of reality, not without some sort of special rationale and argument from the outside of reality.

In particular, QM models aren't 100% right. Gravity is missing almost entirely from the model (!) and there are some glaring experimental discrepancies, particularly around the vacuum catastrophe [1]. We know that the combination of QM and relativity gives a hybridized model that cannot work at all scales but explains things like the color of gold [2], so we know that there ought to be a single unified model which does work at all scales and has the same explanatory power.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant_problem

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_quantum_chemistry
Roosevelt Pursues the Boat Thieves
I’m taking a Japanese class right now. Thinking about wanting to get to the level where I can play video games in Japanese to learn more. I don’t really play video games anymore because I largely find them a waste of time, but it’s an intriguing way to get back into them. I found a YouTube channel called “game grammar” which is really neat.
>they couldn't have virtual/multiple accounts in one physical card

why would you want that?
Thank you for sharing.

The example of B vs P is interesting, as modern Korean has the same. The airport code for Busan (South Korea) is PUS because there is no practical difference between B and P in Korean. Same with G/K, R/L, and D/T: each pair is interchangeable and has been subject to changing fashion over the years in Gorea.
Bathymetry & swells, specifically for surfing. I've been a recreational surfer and getting back into it now, never took the time to learn how waves are formed and all the things that impact how then end up on our shores
> Why is the data model important?

Because every single software program ever to enter production is a domain model wrapped around interfaces.
> So the question is obviously, how do we change the news ecosystem from what it is, to a system that makes people better informed?

People tend to want their worldview confirmed. If you want people to be better informed, one way would be to make them angry when they encounter things designed to manipulate them.
Earth Is Vibrating Substantially Less Because There's So Little Activity
I’m surprised to see nobody brought up the 12 Factor App principle about config,

https://12factor.net/config

Anything that's changing from one run of your application to another is config. Static settings that don’t change from one run to another are not config, they are just static pieces of data and it does not matter how you store them other than that you ensure it meets the operating need of your application.

Configs, however, which can change from one run to the next, are different. They need to be factored out of code completely and only addressed by inspection of the runtime environment.

Whatever tool you use to ensure they are injected to the environment is also a totally uninteresting decision as long as it meets the operating needs of your deployment system.

That’s it.

1. store static constants and data items however you want as long as your program meets its operating requirements

2. config is not the same as static constants or static data, config can change from one run of the application to another.

3. factor config completely out of the code so it is solely referenced as part of the environment

4. store external configs however you want so long as the operating constraints of the deployment system are met.

Within items 1 and 4, debate over relative merits of different tools is almost always useless bikeshedding unless it boils down to a real operating constraint of either the app itself or the deployment system.

For example, a system that puts secret access tokens (config, not static settings) into the environment by storing them in plaintext environment variables might violate a security operating constraint of the deploy system and so a different system that manages encrypted secrets injected into the environment safely could be the winner for real operating reasons.

Meanwhile, whether to store “staging” vs “production” database connections in Python / YAML / JSON / TOML / etc. because of comments / whitespace / use of builtin library “extra” code / whatever is just pure bikeshedding waste of time.
Thanks! I'll give this one a shot too.
We know that those accounts exist, and that they were created and deployed by numerous governments when opportunity struck. We can see their activity: what countries they came from, what they were saying, and what hashtags they made up. My understanding of the data is that they were pervasive and influencial in the 2016 US President Elections and in many other socially sensitive events such as the protests in Hong Kong. So I dont think the word paranoia is really fair. It's a real, known problem. (Edit: and now there's evidence[1] that they are spreading climate denialism as well).

Anyone calling someone a bot when they are clearly not a bot is probably just being intellectually lazy, dishonest, or arguing in bad faith. But that's just another flavor of the issues with political (or any rational) discourse we had already. If it weren't bots, it would be something else.

And yes, shilling (and failure to recognize shilling) is endemic on that platform. One of the many reasons I try to stay away from it now.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/climate-t...
Exploiting the Starcraft 1 EUD Bug
I got hooked on Overtone and then switched over to hacking on a roguelike in Clojure. It's a fantastic language. :)
Are you saying this because you have read both books and prefer ETS?
Very excited to check this out. Congratulations on finishing the race!
I’ve been using Moqups.com for along time now. Does the job, but I don’t have much to compare to.
Thanks, I have ordered the book and plan to start the nand2tetris. I really loved the way the guy explained the HDL. Very clear, I look forward to learning it and doing a lot with it.
It's about using the simplest thing that could possibly work, not about excitement. PHP is pathologically uncool, but it does work and it is fast for building new stuff. (God forbid you get stuck maintaining it though...)
Author here.

Yeah, you can't just mechanically insert the breaks :) I carefully went through each instance where my rule tripped, looked at the surrounding code, and figured out the right fix. Trying to automate that would indeed have lead to disaster -- and the lack of ability to automate this is why no one had done this in the past, it sounded like too much work. (It wasn't that much work.)

And I agree switch fallthrough can be useful! We just required it be annotated from now on, to convey the intent, as opposed to doing it by accident.
> I'd never use Firefox to take an online test at University for example because the one in a million chance it has a hiccup isn't worth the risk

You're not complaining about Firefox. You're complaining about how the guys who developed the online test failed to put together a standard-compliang app, and instead opted to develop a bug-ridden platform-specific web app.

This argument is a tired old throwback from the 90s internet. Have people learned nothing?
One insight when it comes to building note-taking apps with portability in mind is that when you want to build more rich features, like collaboration or backlinking, is that a database is more suitable to build upon than a basic filesystem. But that architectural choice is at conflicts with portability, because while bringing-your-own-file-system is possible with Google Drive and Dropbox, having your own personal database isn't as popular. Anyone share similar sentiments?
The Keto Diet and Weight Loss
OCaml, MirageOS and Irmin. Lots of fun, the tooling is better than I was expecting.
Sonic Pi (IMO) is very quick to get started with because it's batteries included - you have everything needed in a single installer. Within the UI are tutorials, samples, synths, effects, a language reference, metering, 10 code buffers, and an OSC server built in - so once you config audio/MIDI devices you should be good to go. Sonic Pi is based on a subset of Ruby (though it's not clear which Ruby version, and what's left out) and Sam Aaron (dev) has indicated he's considering moving to another language. Though I haven't played around with Raspberry Pi, Sonic Pi integration is another benefit if you're into hardware.

I remember trying to install Tidal Cycles a few years back and having some difficulty - IIRC it's a library that requires other components/config. Same for Overtone [1] (Clojure frontend to SuperCollider), it took a bit of time to configure Leinengen at first.

Cabbage [2] interface to CSound would probably be closest to Sonic Pi, rather than straight CSound iteself.

Also worth investigating is Pyo [3] - a Python interface to DSP code written in C.

So many interesting (and free) choices - it really just comes down to your language preference. I make a lot of music in DAWs like Ableton Live & Apple Logic, but I have some fairly original, very specific ideas around exploring pitch, rhythm & harmony that a text-based language is better suited for.

[1] https://github.com/overtone/overtone

[2] https://cabbageaudio.com/

[3] http://ajaxsoundstudio.com/software/pyo/
I am working on trying to make an accurate model for predicting COVID-19 growth based on the per-county figures we have with COVID-19 (courtesy The New York Times). To say the data is noisy would be an understatement.

What I have found, so far, is that if we look at current daily growth (averaged over seven days) and use exponentiation to predict future growth based on the previous week’s figures, the numbers are too high (usually by a factor of two, but the error amount is all over the place).

Point being, we’re seeing a more complicated growth model than simple exponential growth; the actual growth is lower.

My work so far is on GitHub: https://github.com/samboy/covid-19-html

This is a work in progress and I’m nowhere near being able to make a simple easy to read graph showing a reasonable projection of COVID-19 growth in the United States.
C can be extended with your own datatypes though. You could create a Roman numeral datatype if you wanted to. You wouldn't have literals, of course, but you could initialize them using string literals. This is how arbitrary-precision numbers work in the C library GMP [1].

So the question is: can you make up new words in Toki Pona? It would seem the answer is no. This would keep the language very simple but also drastically limit your ability to express complex ideas within it.

[1] https://gmplib.org
In case of China it is helpful to see the breakdown of in-Hubei (epic-center where lockdown enforced after widespread infection) / outside-Hubei. In Hubei CFR is around 4.73%, outside Hubei ~0.86%. It roughly shows how many cases they missed.
Focus has been an issue for me too. I think it helps to view yourself as having a limited number of focus 'slots', but to view each focus as just a medium-term commitment (a few months or years). So e.g. you're not choosing an instrument _instead_ of drawing, you're just choosing to learn the instrument _first_.

Setting specific goals for each month, which I track on Trello, has helped me a lot. It encourages me to make concrete progress and not tackle too many things at once, but reduces FOMO since I know I can always go a totally different direction the next month if I want.

(I blogged a little about focus: https://brokensandals.net/three-books-on-focus/)
IANAL, and also too lazy to research the relevant laws for the jurisdiction he's in, but wikipedia[1] says there are usually exceptions for price increases that can be justified.

>Laws often include exceptions for price increases that can be justified in terms of increased cost of supply, transportation, demand or storage

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging#What_the_law_pro...
Is that like an ancient Roman language?
4 years ago or something I changed to chrome..because firefox did only strange stuff (changing the UI with every update etc.and mad it worse)

But 1 month ago I switched back to ffx. It is easy to use and a lot of stuff improved in the UI and is better than in chrome. Privacy topics were only the "icing" on the cake...but also a very good direction

And last but not least...don't believe these numbers from single source...
It's not a conlang in the sense that anyone expects it to be taken up as an international auxiliary language. It's a conlang created for creative and artistic purposes. It's not meant for "wide adoption." It's meant for fun.
Maybe not what I’m learning but I learned a little bit about learning from this ted talk https://youtu.be/5MgBikgcWnY
FYI your local library may offer free streaming services. Mine does with Kanopy. It’s actually pretty good.
Is it an online Japanese class? Which one and what has been your experience?
If healthcare was really a capitalist endeavor then it wouldn't cost $5k for three stitches. Prices would be transparent, there would be a free market with competition, and healthcare wouldn't be linked to employment. You can thank regulations for all of those problems.
... and THIS is exactly why we need a functioning government

and why government is NOT like a business

In business, the main concern is optimizing product and cost. Extra inventory and capacity is considered wasteful, not adding shareholder value this quarter or this year.

the govt's job is to build the infrastructure (physical, legal, technological, etc.) and ensure preparedness. Calculate the greatest plausible need, and ensure that the resources are there to meet it. That is why we pay for firehouse & firemen to, we hope, hardly ever work, pay for soldiers to, we hope, mostly shoot at targets, etc.

This is why we should not be outsourcing entire supply chains, even if it is most profitable. Some second sourcing, sure, but critical manufacturing capability and intellectual property capability offshoring is just foolish.
Large-Scale BGP Hijack
General topology, Lean and lattice theory.

I am also making steady adjustments to my xmonad configuration so I suppose I'm also learning haskell and that particular library ecosystem.
Perhaps. I believe that doctors are licensed at the state level, and if I were a doctor, I wouldn't care to cross a governor making such a statement.
Wow. Looks like he learned his lesson. On the other hand, we American consumers haven't.

I'll echo what most have said here already: the moment this crisis is over, we'll be overseas trying to find the cheapest possible price. We don't care about keeping the local guy in business. We care about our margins.

I'd hate to say it but what made us great, could very well be our downfall...
You're receiving downvotes instead of an answer because you're coming off as a smug prick.
Finding upends theory about the cerebellum's role in reading and dyslexia
I'm writing my own low code framework[0], so I'm really interested in this space. Over the past five weeks, I've been compiling a list of the most interesting software in this space.

Here's an early draft:

"The Low-Code Ecosystem"
https://blog.remaketheweb.com/low-code-frameworks-for-buildi...

I think there's _a ton_ of amazing tools being developed in this area right now. I'm looking forward to seeing how things develop!

[0] Remake (https://remaketheweb.com/) — Build web apps with only HTML.
One annoying thing about the war on case fallthrough at the language level is the lack of imagination.

`continue` is a thing, compliments switch's existing `break` statement usage and is overall a much better solution for explicitly specifying fallthrough then returning special objects or c#'s abuse of goto.
Chiropractors Told to Stop Pretending They Can Treat Covid-19
This really reminds me, it's been two decades now since I've taken _any_ Algebra. I'd really love to go re-learn it from the basics on up. I mean, I still remember a lot of it here and there but some sort of refresher course up to doing more advanced would be awesome.

Any recommendations?
Zoom's gallery view and pin video solves some of the problems with Hangouts discussed in the article. I like the idea of somehow building cabaceo into the app, although I think something simpler might be preferable (E.g. right-click on person, request to create breakout room.) I think Zoom kind of has this but it seems like only hosts can create break-out rooms, and they have to turn it on or something.
I just made an example for how to do this using Refinery (most of the pieces were off the shelf using "saved blocks").

https://app.refinery.io/import?q=9lvohdvqd50g

This project will:

- Run every hour (via timer)

- Grab URLs from a Google Sheet

- Go screenshot all of the URLs

- Write each screenshot to an S3 bucket

- Email you at the end after the jobs finish

There is more I could do with this (like trigger an email if something fails, etc). But at least does what you describe above in a (hopefully) succinct fashion!

Also, shill alert as I'm an author for this service (but this was a fun project to build over a few minutes, so thank you).
Page 296 of this book has a good illustration of the field changes around a transmitting antenna: https://archive.org/details/principlesunderl00unit

(It's almost 100 years old but the physics have not changed. If anything, these early books often have far more detailed explanations because they assumed far less about the reader.)
Dangerous misinformation on Covid-19 being amplified on Twitter
South Africa has had numerous issues with fake news on Twitter, most notoriously when UK firm Bell Pottinger tried to ignite a race-war on behalf of its clients.

Although the issue was brought under control, a number of fake accounts such as @advobarryroux were allowed to continue spreading misinformation.

South Africa entered a lockdown on March 27 and it seems to be working. However, a local news website, News24, owned by Naspers, reported incorrectly on an interview by Trevor Noah with Bill Gates, claiming that Gates was planning to "test vaccines" in Africa. This ignited a firestorm on South African Twitter. News24 has subsequently withdrawn the article, and apologised. However, fake and extremist Twitter accounts are amplifying the message claiming that the original article was valid, and disregarding the retraction. They are now, more ominously, advocating against testing, as South Africa prepares to ramp up testing efforts in order to fight the virus.

Twitter's claims its abuse team is running at diminished capacity, but a possible public health catastrophe could be unfolding in real-time on the platform.

Many of the fake and malicious accounts can be found in the replies to this Tweet:
https://twitter.com/news24/status/1246843832689451008
DevOps tools. VirtualBox, Vagrant, Ansible & Jenkins.

Good list?
Perhaps using abstract names A, B, and C was unclear. The following is the rule that is commonly referred to as modus ponens:

A → B A
-----------
B

However, modus ponens is just one of the names for this. I could also call it function elimination. I could call it →e. Or I could not bother giving it a name and just say that this is a rule in my logic call it whatever you want in your head if you so desire.

Things can get complicated, but they aren't always complicated so naming rules isn't strictly necessary.