skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thank you for this link. I read it once and think I've gotten more of the picture and I'm going to re-read it to see if I can get more. What's baffling to me is everyone who has tried to explain the LIGO detector doesn't even realize this question exists. I've independently thought this question and when people start explaining LIGO to me, and I take the time to spell out the question, they realize they don't understand LIGO either.

If light is emitted at a constant wavelength independent of the stretching of the universe, doesn't that imply light is traveling through a higher spatial dimension, otherwise the emitter itself would be stretched with the universe and we'd never be able to observe differences in the speed of light? If I understand this paper, once light is emitted, it's "stuck" to space and will stretch along with it. But if the emitter wavelength stays constant doesn't that imply it's waving through a higher dimension?
In essence this is manually implementing forking — spawning a new process and copying the bytes over without getting the kernel to help you, except over a network too.

It reminds me a bit of when I wanted to parallelise the PHP test suite but didn't want to (couldn't?) use fork(), yet I didn't want to substantially rewrite the code to be amenable to cleanly re-initialising the state in the right way. But conveniently, this program used mostly global variables, and you can access global variables in PHP as one magic big associative array called $GLOBALS. So I moved most of the program's code into two functions (mostly just adding the enclosing function declaration syntax and indentation, plus `global` imports), made the program re-invoke itself NPROCS times mid-way, sending its children `serialize($GLOBALS)` over a loopback TCP connection, then had the spawned children detect an environment variable to receieve the serialized array over TCP, unserialize() it and copy it into `$GLOBALS`, and call the second function… lo and behold, it worked perfectly. :D (Of course I needed to make some other changes to make it useful, but they were also similar small incisions that tried to avoid refactoring the code as much as possible.)

PHP's test suite uses this horrible hack to this day. It's… easier than rewriting the legacy code…
Ah, I remember reading his Soft Ice tutorials and just found out that he passed away in 2009. Sad news.
I can't read that, but nothing Facebook/Zuckerberg has done feels aligned with any principled standing that I agree with.

From a slightly different direction.. for instance: banning any content that contravenes the WHO's official recommendations for pandemic response definitely feels too narrow, esp given that the WHO might reverse course or admit they weren't optimal. I completely disagree with Trump's defunding of support for the WHO, I don't agree with everything the WHO says, but I also can't see how conferring 100% content authority to that body is aligned with democratic free speech. That position is also consistent with the idea of banning any content that isn't aligned with, say, this American administration's positions.
I happen to believe that a few generations ago people used to care a bit more about whatever group they though they belong to (family, clan, institution, corporation...) and a bit less about standing out with their own individual journey.

I do not believe this was any better for the truth in general, as indeed in-group/out-group worldview can be a strong incentive to all sorry of lies.
Except in those specific cases where one has to pick between truth that's the best interest of the scientific society and falsehood that's the best interest of the ego.
How the iPod Was Born
People who think that anything and everything can be made simple, I've found, are ignorant. Certain things are complex for a reason. The complexity represents a certain individual or team's journey toward a working solution.

All of the projects I've been on that insist on going on that journey again end up with a different, yet subtly more or less complex solution. There are rare exceptions, but it's rather foolish to think that, given two roughly equal teams or individuals a better result would be obtained.
It will ask if you want to download a 800MB package if you run the latex command so TeX is not really included in the main download.
Back in 1995, my buddy and I were on our post-graduation Great America National Parks trip (17 of them, and 7000 miles of driving, in 3 weeks.)

We sent a whole bunch of postcards to the home front in Belgium.

One of them was sent to a friend who lived with his parents at a farm in Schepdaal, a tiny hamlet close to Brussels.

The address was:

John Smith

Dear postman, we don’t know the address but it’s a farm at the end of the road somewhere.

Schepdaal

Belgium

Of course it arrived.
The examples in the article are given as things the author learned while "working on a postgres-compatible query compiler."

When writing any tool, particularly something as complex as a compiler, there will of course be many of these weird edge cases. They are not presented as flaws in SQL or anything else.
> have a sort of "ceiling" in regards to their capabilities, intellectual or otherwise.

I refuse to believe that. It depends how much motivation, discipline and perseverance you have. The human mind is capable of anything! If there's something that you think it falls your capacity is because you haven't put considerable effort on the task that you're trying to achieve. And if you think you have set a truly high bar, then try achieving less intimidating tasks, even if you aren't successful for the original task you've set for the learning journey can even be more rewarding.
Government represents what the people want, just as much as a browser bundled with OS represents what people want.

That is people do not have any way to say what they want and what trade-offs they are willing to accept, they have to choose between two or three horrible bundled packages, which end up doing things only small minority wants.

As long as we do not have a way to vote for individual policies, and to trade our support for a policy with other people we are doomed to have governments that do more harm than good.
Coronavirus statistics website with details and compare function
I don't know if it's accurate (because I never understand anything I read about it) but this is the most concise and clear explanation I've read on this subject to date. Thank you!
I mean, yes, that's possible, it's also possible there are some cognitive limitations that have a substantial impact. I've certainly breezed through a lot of things in school and work that I thought was boring, that others struggled with. I'm far from a genius, perhaps in the smartest 25% quartile, that's all. But we shouldn't discount the fact that there'll be some in the least 25% quartile who have different experiences, regardless of their interest level.

Yes, perseverance really matters, and that comes either from interest or grit. But it's not always enough. It can be a lot of fun practising guitar for 8 hours a day if, after a few months, you feel you're making some progress. It's not fun, if even after a few months of long hours of practice, you forgot the concepts from the beginning. Passion only goes so far, we shouldn't romanticise failure too much. Sometimes it just isn't a good fit and sometimes that's because of limitations.

That having been said, not trying to dismiss your point, it could very well be that the person is intellectually capable enough, but just doesn't think programming is fun. But I wouldn't take that as a given and in all honestly, it doesn't seem like the most likely case either.
You likely understand minimizing a continuously differentiable function. Now, you are minimizing a continuously differentiable error function (which measures the difference between the output of your hypothesis function and actual data), with respect to adjustable weights and biases that determine the value for the neurons going from one layer to the next. The complexity is in that the hypothesis function is a composition of many functions due to the layering, and there usually are a large number of neurons. However, you are basically doing the same thing many times.
I don't understand the second wave relation to open-source and free software. They moved to cloud platform to save cost and non of these platforms are open source.
you're right that "selected for" also implies agency. if i wrote my comment a second time i'd replace that with "came about through".

my main intention though is to point out that being the product of an evolutionary process we can't find definitive purpose in our origins.
Coronavirus: Why Belgium also counts suspected deaths
The analogy works if each binary way laid out the same - the first MB is eye color, the 2nd MB was hair color, etc. Each segment of code is also duplicated.

When you produce sex cells, you body splits the code randomly. The cell might contain the first copy for hair color, but the 2nd copy for eye color. This happens in both the sperm and eggs.

Then when they combine you have a full set of genetic data again, but it’s a random selection of 50% of you DNA.

The fun part is that the code itself determines which copy is dominant. Your offspring has a copy of your eye color data, and your wife’s.

Added on that is that the two copies combine to produce the outcome. Depending on the code, the dad’s copy might dominate, or the mother’s, or the both of them can produce yet a 3rd outcome.
> "something they did in the past" suggests they have stopped doing it.

No it doesn't. All evidence of their proclivities is from the past. It means they have form, a record, of bad behaviour.

Remember how the use of the Tax File Number was going to be strictly limited? And have you noticed you cannot scratch your bum without quoting it now?

Mission creep is a thing.

My own impression from observing his public behaviour is that Scott Morrison is a lying liar who tells lies when convenient to himself.
For one your comprehension. I said may. Give me a case by case study and I can give my opinion. Are you saying all software engineers are equal or you are better than everyone out there ? If not why don't the better ones deserve more pay / prestige etc.
You can do that in PostgreSQL, but not according to the spec, apparently, and the PostgreSQL developers regret the feature. [0] (As someone who's spent a lot of time trying to simulate PostgreSQL's name resolution rules... it's reassuring to know that the rules are painful inside of PostgreSQL too.)

[0]: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/7608.1259177709%40sss....
SQL deals with "sets", which are unordered,
and the user needs to specify the order by if
they need sorted output. I think this is an
excellent design.

Well-said, and I completely agree. However, I'm not sure that the author is complaining about SQL, so much as he is kvetching about some of the weird-looking things one needs to deal with while "working on a postgres-compatible query compiler."
> knowing something exists lets you go find details when needed

Thank you for this, it's a nice concise way to explain that even the experienced use Google all of the time.
Show HN: I made a book recommendations app
Data retention is what GCHQ has been doing for years regardless of laws.

Dutton is an ultra conservative border protector type, don’t expect all his proposals to pass.

How many DEFCons and CCC conferences do you have to go to before you hear a rubber hose cryptography joke?

Dan Greer’s realpolitik talk in 2015 mentions that cyber security is all aggression little defence. If it were a soccer game it would be 421-420 at the 20minute mark. The best of the best in the US struggle with this stuff behind closed doors, seeing Australia take the flak in public is fine, but don’t pretend US and UK are innocent. These proposals are not the leading edge of privacy invasion.
The short answer is this. Suppose thread OP gave you and I a box each. Each box has a some knobs to choose some settings, and if one chooses a setting and presses the GO button, a number pops up on the screen. We go far away from each other so that, due to the finite speed of light, it takes quite a while for any information to travel between the boxes. We do this, because we don't want the boxes to communicate live, even though thread OP might have recorded the same data into the memory drive of both boxes.

Then we choose some settings and press GO and record whatever number pops up. We do this many times so we each have a nice frequency chart. Now Bell proved that if you live in a local hidden variable universe, the correlations between these numbers is upper bounded, no matter how you choose settings on the boxes. Then, he also gave a prescription for choosing the settings, such that if you live a in quantum universe, the correlations between these numbers will be higher than the upper bound.

The rest is mathematics, which cannot really be simplified without leaving the reader unsatisfied.
> Note on interpretation of data: The number of deaths shown for the three most recent weeks should be interpreted with caution, as adjustments for delayed registrations may be imprecise. Furthermore, results of pooled analyses may vary depending on countries included in the weekly analyses. Pooled analyses are adjusted for variation between the included countries and for differences in the local delay in reporting.

Ad. "So we've got 1k extra deaths per week for a few weeks at a population of 200M+ people, the end is nigh?!"

There is a question about long term health of people who got COVID-19. Based on Japanese study on Grand Princess passengers [0] and some 6 divers [1] all with mild cases from Germany around 50 to 80% of people seem to have damage to the lungs visible on CT scans after mild symptomatic or even asymptomatic infection. Two of the divers had significant oxygen deficiency when doing physical exercise after 5-6 weeks of recovery. The guess of the doctor who was inspecting them is that this is permanent damage that may take years to recover if ever.

Also, the virus didn't go away - it's still there. Depending on location 0-20% of people got infected with median probably around 1%. In places where 20% got infected the virus killed significant portions of the whole population. In Bergamo province of Italy with little bit over 1 million population and 4000 deaths the virus killed around ~0.4% of the whole population or close to 1 in 200 people. It's very unlikely that there will be any mass events in Europe this year or next year before we get vaccines. Any indoors events involving more than 100 people - especially involving talking, dancing, singing or mourning are also very unlikely.

Ad. PS. They updated their website recently. This is how it looked like before - they were reporting z-scores only and only as a picture. https://twitter.com/Isinlor/status/1249252918609526784 I count the new website as a big step up :) .

Ad. PS2. Somebody would need to write scraping script from the website. Also:
> While the network fully supports data sharing, the network hub is not mandated by the participating countries to release any national data. If you are interested in exploring the possibility to access national data, please approach countries individually.

[0] https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/ryct.2020200110

[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
What’s you’re source on that? As I understand it, Sweden is almost there.
Why a Data-Security Expert Fears U.S. Voting Will Be Hacked
A single signal path on its own yes that’s true, but DAWs have been multithreaded for years now using threads for other signal paths. Some DAWS can even use threads for FX chains now too.
Ask HN: Any resource on how to repair MacBook logic board?
My macbook won't turn on and I am afraid that it is a logic board issue. In other times I think I would be shopping for a new laptop but I am thinking that with the quarantine I have some time to try and fix it myself. I am watching some videos on how to debug the circuit board issues[1] and I am wondering if anyone has any personal experience doing this. Any resources you could share in how to get started would be greatly appreciated!

1. https://boards.rossmanngroup.com/Boardrepairsbymodel
Sort of meta, but I always shudder when someone says that science has "proven" something.

What sets science apart from most other methods of seeking answers is its focus on disproof. Your goal as a scientist is to devise experiments that can disprove a claim about the natural world.

This misconception rears its head most prominently in discussions at the intersection between science and public policy. Climate change. How to handle a pandemic. Evolution. Abortion. But I've even talked to scientists themselves who from time to time get confused about what science can and can't do.

The problem with believing that science proves things is that it blinds its adherents to new evidence paving the way to better explanations. It also leads to the absurd conclusion that a scientific question can ever really be "settled."
With an attitude like that, you won't be missed.
As I understand it, the healthy majority would get the immunity while continuing to isolate the at risk groups.
As mentioned in my previous comment, it really does sound like you don't know what you're talking about.

Commuting in Tokyo is not without problem, but consistently better than commuting anywhere else I've been.

Also, you seem to completely ignore the point that the alternative "everyone commutes by car" (or you have other alternatives?) would result in a constant gridlock given Tokyo's scale - so it would be orders of magnitude worse.
Disc Loading is just the force on the actuator disc (such as a rotor, in which case the force is the weight of the vehicle the rotor holds aloft) divided by the swept area (pi times r squared).

It's used when discussing propulsive efficiency, as it's a proxy measurement for how much "work" each blade is doing. Because propeller/rotor blades are just high-aspect wings, if you have high disc loading your blades are at a high lift coefficient which means they'll be incurring lots of lift-induced drag which increases your power requirements.

Solidity in the same context refers to the amount of volume within an actuator disk that's occupied by actual solid material. If you have a 4-bladed rotor and you move to a 5-bladed rotor, all else equal, you've increased your solidity.

There are many many equations, and as most things in fluid mechanics you can get as deep into the weeds as you want. As a starting point, have a look at the wiki article for Blade Momentum Theory[0]

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_theory
Japan may not be the ideal economic model.

In the 1980s, Japan had an enormous economic bubble. (This was the period when MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, was the ultimate Platonic ideal of how to run a country's economy and the Japanese Fifth Generation computing project was going to eliminate "programming" as a job category.) This bubble burst in 1990-1991. It was bad.

"GDP fell from $5.33 trillion to $4.36 trillion in nominal terms, real wages fell around 5%,... Many Japanese companies replaced a large part of their workforce with temporary workers, who had little job security and fewer benefits. As of 2009, these non-traditional employees made up more than a third of the labor force. For the wider Japanese workforce, wages have stagnated. From their peak in 1997, real wages have since fallen around 13%..[as of 2013]."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)

"Japan's annual land prices averaged nationwide have finally risen since the asset bubble collapse, though only mildly at 0.1%, a process that has taken 26 years to show up statistically. [undated]

"By 2004, prime "A" property in Tokyo's financial districts had slumped to less than 1 percent of its peak, and Tokyo's residential homes were less than a tenth of their peak,...

"The Nikkei 225 at the Tokyo Stock Exchange plunged from a height of 38,915 at the end of December 1989 to 14,309 at the end of August 1992. By 11 March 2003, it plunged to the post-bubble low of 7,862."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble

"After a long climb during the decades of Japan’s economic miracle, prices exploded in the late eighties in the frenzy of the bubble economy. Over the following decade, prices collapsed by over 80%, hitting a low in 2002. Since then however, prices have increased and we are not in the middle of a stable period of growth with a positive outlook for the future."

https://housingjapan.com/buy/history/ [I note: "Housing Japan is the leading real estate agent for international clients looking to rent, buy or invest in the Tokyo property market."]

"Tokyo’s property market has had its ups and downs. At the peak of the bubble in 1989, some condos were selling for more than 1 billion yen, and buildings with more than 30 floors started springing up.

"After the bubble, prices plummeted. In 2002, the price per tsubo was about half that of the bubble era. But easier housing loans and low interest rates helped spur demand for new condos."

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Property/Tokyo-prop... [Has a nice graph of Tokyo condo prices, per-tsubo (3.3 sq. meters).]
If you ever wondered why Belgium is doing "bad", please be aware that we count the cases very differently than other countries.

Divide the numbers ( on average) by 2 to get the confirmed cases in Belgium, instead of the suspected cases.

:)
Long before this comment, I've believed software engineering is becoming more like law. There's been a noticeable uptick in credential-obsession, more of a "tracked" career, just eveything about it is heading in a more high-comp
/ professionalized / careerist direction.

Probably inevitable given devs are making "real money" (biglaw or higher) in Silicon Valley, and having real influence, but still, I agree something may have been lost.
Engineering Ladder Archive
> The vast amount of product information available to consumers through online search renders most advertising obsolete as a tool for conveying product information. Advertising remains useful to firms only as a tool for persuading consumers to purchase advertised products.

This contradicts my own experience. I have discovered products I ended up buying many times through advertising. I often use ads, e.g. Amazon's product pages, as a starting point to learn about a product.

To some extent advertising works on me, as a learning channel as well as a sales channel. I'm a weirdo in several ways but doubt this is one of them.
Recent comment on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22920237 "The effect likely isn't too big, or it would be harder to design experiments where it doesn't show up at all."
I know you are an active user here, but this comment reminded me those users on Slashdot who would only comment when there is a user id competition (ie. who has the lowest id).
For one thing, there's already a term for what they're doing. It's called sharding. Why make shards and decide to call them partitions, when "partitions" means something else in this context and there is already a name (shards) for what's being done?