skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
AI is having some reproducibility issues, especially reinforcement learning:

https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-confront...

In other areas of machine learning, things have gotten a lot better. A decade ago people rarely released their code or trained models. I did this for an early feature learning paper in 2010, which led to it getting a lot of citations.

What I'm more worried about is the lack of science in machine learning papers. The code reproduces the result, but the reasons for the efficacy given in the paper are spurious. I like this recent paper that pokes this issue in metric learning:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.08505
Here is how YouTube is dong their best about this:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=spiderman+elsa

And this, by far, is not the worst case of what's proliferating there.
For anyone interested in hearing more about this, John Oliver ran a segment on this -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
> If you are that rare

Except it is not rare at all. Did you read what I posted regarding fediblock?

A simple question, do you block fedi.absturztau.be by any chance?
The above technique is compliant with the license of Qt (LGPL). If Qt didn't want to allow it, they would have used a different license like the GPL.
Are there (even non-cross-platform) toolkits that provide better developer experience than Qt?
In most cases alternative is a web product. I hardly install new soft, only if reason is very strong.
They claim "the first report of detection of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage" but if I search Google News for 'covid wastewater' I find several reports of similar studies going back months.

That aside I wonder if there's already an infrastructure in place for mass testing of wastewater for all sorts of things. If it's useful for covid it might be useful for other diseases or health problems.

Then I start to wonder about the privacy implications of mass sewage collection. If it was localized I can imagine an authoritarian state using it to enforce anti-drug or anti-beef policies.
Look to the East.

I applied for some 3¾ thousand jobs between 2009 (age 42) and 2013. I averaged less than one interview per year and worked 2 months full-time in that period.

In 2014 I landed a role in the Czech Republic and have only voluntarily been out of work since. I am nearing the end of a 3 year contract, my 5th role over here.

The former Communist bloc seems to have far less ageism than in the West. Rates of pay are lower -- I make maybe ½ what in theory this kind of role would pay in London. On the other hand, the cost of living is about ¼ so it is very much worth it.
To take a recent example: when a company like TripleByte launches a new product - namely that key parts of all profiles will suddenly be public - they might have thought about this with different teams for a long time too, but commenters on the internet said they were wrong and eventually they admitted that they made a stupid mistake.

Netflix's plan paid off. TripleByte's didn't.

Apples and Oranges, I know, but how do you tell the two apart without hindsight?
Oh absolutely agree with reading speeds being different for different books (I actually had that line earlier, I shortened the post to just mention the principles though).

This post was not meant at all as a silly braggy post about speed reading, not that speed reading is anything to brag about in the first place.
Why I say these things changed my life is because, it doesn't matter whether I read 100 books or half a book. What matters is if I learnt just one single principle from it which I actually use. Some of the things mentioned in the post such as taking notes and writing a summary at the end truly helped with that.
Not the prettiest and somewhat older here's a Common Lisp REPL using QT: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.eql5.andro...

(I am NOT the author.)
This seems to be a quote taken out of context. Apple wasn't against third party frameworks as a rule — plenty of third party libraries and tools popped up, especially for allowing languages other than ObjC to be used effectively on iOS.

The message in Thoughts On Flash wasn't about third party libraries wholesale; it was refuting the expectation that Apple should special-case Flash, a technology that never ran acceptably on Android and was quickly deprecated, never mind on iOS.
Ethical Hacking and automated penetration testing
A good point about switching proxies and apps that don't support SOCKS natively.

I guess I've been dealing with those issues for so long they don't bother me anymore!

Also, I use a great extension for Firefox, so I can switch to/from the proxy in 2 clicks, "Proxy Switcher and Manager".
That comic is brilliant.
Disappointed how?
Yep, I've seen more than a few job postings over the years stating some version of "Must hold a degree from a Top 10 school." Who would want to work with a bunch of elitist jerks, anyway?
Same. Mid-40’s.

At a certain point, I just realized that no one seemed to want me anymore. I mean, I helped take three companies, with multiple complex software systems, to acquisitions. But, you know, that just doesn’t matter. At 39, I was hammered with job offers. But, now, I just get endless interviews.

Luckily, I saved a lot. So, I’m able to do something new. But, a lot of my colleagues are on a sad and downward path. I really hope you youngsters are saving.
Data.Array.Log256 (Safe, Idiomatic and ⊥)
Actually Qt was not always LGPL, it was first under the QPL, then the GPL, and now the LGPL. So it is quite an improvement from a license forbidding commercial uses to a permissive license.

There is also a legal framework to make sure Qt will remain open source forever: the KDE Free Qt Foundation.
Implying...?
The Task Scheduler can export and import tasks from XML. There's also SchTasks.exe command to manage the tasks from the command line.

The UI can be a bit complicated, but on the other hand the Task Scheduler itself provides quite much functionality. You can for example trigger tasks based on events which are generated by Windows or applications (the same events that are visible in Event Viewer).
Hacker Steals 31 SQL Databases (1.6 mln rows of data)
Ever thought about a management consulting company with a heavey it-focus? target audience: banks, insurance companies.
Maybe I am an old fart, but what’s wrong with the steps you mention? What would your ideal sequence of steps be?

If the answer is “just call an api to handle your data” sure that works for POCs/Small apps. But I’m a bit hesitant to put all my businesses data inside a proprietary data store that I don’t control and which isn’t collocated with my app (Ie every data store request makes a round trip to the google server hosting the firebase app... maybe not a huge deal if the app itself is in google cloud?)

Disclaimer: I’ve only used firebase tangentially, haven’t built an app from scratch with it.
Limited Generality of Air Pollution as Causal Determinants of Unethical Behavior
I’m a non-technical lurker of Hacker News - a community builder who comes here for credible, thought-provoking news with intelligent comments. First time commenter.

My biggest takeaway from the reaction to this letter is that people seemingly would have rather had this CEO’s sincere and heartfelt words filtered through a PR agency, who would have mangled the genuine sentiments to create sterile and thoroughly-filtered corporate bullshit. People would rather be spoon fed crap from a campaign team than listen to the earnest, well-intentioned, real voice of the person who wrote them. What kind of a world are you creating when you reward an honest, but imperfect, apology with derision and judgement?

I have no stakes in this game. I’ve never used TripleByte’s services to seek employment. I don’t know how to code. But I believe in merit-based hiring, and I would not be so eager to burn to the ground this company that I think is performing a valuable service (to individuals, but also in shifting trends of hiring practices as a whole) over an oversight that they owned up to after a night’s sleep to reprocess.

The world I want to live in is one in which people are hired based on their capabilities, and where people are willing to extend trust and forgiveness to people when they are being honest and owning up to their oversights. The flaws in this letter that commenters are tearing apart make it clear to me that this CEO is a rare example of someone not lying through the teeth of a campaign team. I value that much more than the facade of perfection.
Then you wouldn't be able to write BSD-licensed apps using Qt at all. Creative accounting is also legal per se. It doesn't make it right.
>The medical establishment doesn't think that eg marijuana is "alternative medicine" or without medical value: the DEA does.

Does the DEA and the FDA not play a role in what is considered a medicine or an alternative medicine?

>The fact that the medical establishment now accepts marijuana as a therapeutic tool is evidence of the quote: it was "alternative medicine" until there was sufficient evidence that it worked.

This is effectively making the claim that while there were problems in the past, the fixing of past problems can be taken as evidence that current problems do not exist. I'm arguing the opposite. That problems in the past, without fixing the systematic causes of those problems, is a reliable indicator that we are still at risk of those same problems.

Think of it like code. If your code had bugs but you fixed them, should you assume that A: my code had bugs but now they are gone and my code is bug free or B: the process by which I write code allows for bugs, and while I have fixed those bugs I haven't fundamentally changed how I write code so I am still at risk for having bugs. I find the latter the more reasonable approach.

>That's not same thing as saying that there isn't anything which is currently considered "alternative medicine" that works.

When people use that quote, I find that this is exactly what they are saying in the majority of cases. That if something is currently considered alternative medicine, it doesn't work because otherwise it would be considered medicine.

A claim that as our knowledge progresses alternative medicine that works becomes medicine is a much more reasonable claim, because it recognizes there is a timeline and since we aren't at the end of that timeline we allow for some alternative medicine actually work with the recognition in the future it will be refined into medicine.

And if someone wanted to make the claim that the majority of alternative medicine doesn't work, I would also fully agree. My issue is people taking a guideline that is generally true and applying it as if it is always true.
There is no "not playing the game". You can opt for different mini-games, but the game is eternal, beyond humans, beyond life even. Reading zen stories definitely helps you see this. Even denouncing the game is part of the game. Don't be afraid of playing it. If you don't enjoy in, you need to play it better on a higher level, by stepping back a bit.
The point is, they arehappy to invest in young ppl but not so-called “older” ones.

The OP didn't say that they are. He only said they're not willing to invest in him. Based on the limited data in what was posted companies aren't hiring him for roles he isn't qualified for, and they are hiring younger people. That's his evidence for ageism. Maybe he's right. Maybe the younger people just don't need that investment.

The point here is that the OP has literally said he's being rejected for roles he can't do. That changes what advice he should be getting considerably. He's trying to fix the problem he wants (being discriminated against) instead of the problem he has (applying for roles he's not going to get).

I have no doubt ageism is a huge problem. I'm 43, and I've experienced it. One company was quite open that I was rejected because I wouldn't be a good fit culturally despite being the most experienced candidate. I don't think that's the case here though.
It seems clear to me. Qt company considers that they might follow the legal agreement with the KDE Free Qt Foundation to the letter doe nothing extra.

> they are thinking about restricting ALL Qt releases to paid license holders for the first 12 months. They are aware that this would mean the end of contributions via Open Governance in practice.

This is the minimum they can do, and they can't do legally anything less. If they don't release free edition within 12 months...

https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

> Should The Qt Company discontinue the development of the Qt Free Edition under the required licenses, then the Foundation has the right to release Qt under a BSD-style license or under other open source licenses. The agreements stay valid in case of a buy-out, a merger or bankruptcy.

KDE releasing Qt under BSD is IMHO credible threat.
I’m about your age and also didn’t get off the dev ops career path. I have found, however that it’s not all bad news. I switched to contracting about 6 years ago and have had a better year every year since. Presumably you have a lot of experience and expertise in some area and that is what you should target if you want to go that route.

For me, I know myself well enough to realize that I like small disorganized businesses that need help getting tooling and process in place. Once that happens I lose a lot of interest quickly. That is often when get things done mentality and trust the people you hire is replaced by process and politics. Usually this takes 6-18 months and I know it’s time to move on. I also do project work for enterprise software which has about the same life cycle.

The common thread of both types of work is that it’s temporary and I can bill a pretty high hourly rate. I don’t have to deal with most employment bs and my experience is generally respected and appreciated vs just being the old dev in a team of fresh college grads. I don’t know what the contractor experience is in the EU, but I’ve had colleagues do this in Germany and the UK so I know it happens.
Trump threatens to close down Social Media Platforms
> I try to work the absolute minimum I have to that allows me my lifestyle which I'm comfortable with. If that means I never get rich, I'm fine with that.

But what makes you think this kind of behavior is smart? For example, how do you plan on being able to keep it up when your cognitive abilities are no longer at their peak, or when your current job loses its present value?

Some people work hard early on precisely because they prefer to be able to do what they want without any work for most of their lives.
If you've built your business so it is dependent on someone else's pricing model the problem is of your own making.
That’s not true at all. TV, and newspapers before that have inspired outrage when they expose wrongdoing for a very long time now. No, it’s not constant like social media, but it’s still been a powerful force. There’s a reason the printing press is regarded as such an important invention!
And it's hard to deny one advantage of combustible against batteries.

The weight of combustible tank goes down as it become empty, while a battery weight remains constant.

This must have a huge decisional impact when manufacturing aircrafts.
Baking in a software testing in an already tight 4 year AI/ML focused undergrad seems misplaced. Maybe in a masters, but most masters have Scientific methodology baked in to them so I'd still say it is redundant. CS undergrad should definitely do some level of testing though.
I'm 50, living in the EU and have switched jobs three times during the last 5 years. My extra years of working experience were seen as an advantage by most companies where I interviewed. I didn't interview at any FAANG though, maybe those are different.

One tip: make sure you are good at what you do and what you will be interviewed for. Because at our age, the roles that you will be hired for will be senior roles, and the bar lies a bit higher there.
Thanks for the reply.
So what did you do? How did you move on and out?
You were never flying, right? No travel insurance covers this.
I am glad you are talking about trillions of dollars in savings but against compensating tickets lost which is often a big personal issue.
As a matter of fact, all the Linux distribution distribute Qt and I don't remember creating an Qt Account for downloading the KDE/Qt applications I use and Plasma from my distro.
I never claimed I retain 90%+ I said Bill Gates does according to that documentary :)
What I aim to retain is one single principle or thought from a whole book. Which is why I suggested writing a summary at the end.
It's a bit odd to label doing the thing that differentiates the LGPL as a "dick move".
>Can someone explain why non car companies are buying self driving car tech?

Because warehouses and the freight terminal (truck terminal in the consumer goods case) that necessarily surrounds them have a need for things that can roll around autonomously while not colliding with things.

There are existing solutions for this but they're far behind the state of the art for self driving vehicles that aim to eventually be used on public roads and they have several weak points that make them less competitive in very dynamic warehouses (variable contents and throughput, as opposed to a warehouse that feeds a manufacturing operation which will have more fixed contents and less variable output) that mostly handle lightweight goods (which is part of why amazon uses so much human labor in its warehouses). I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon was trying to scoop up Zoox on the cheap for their own internal use. They already bought a warehouse automation company. The probably have a list of things they want to automate and figure that buying a company that already has competence in the space (even if they're not a front runner) is the best way to meet their needs.

Of course the delivery network serving the area surrounding the warehouse facility can also make use of self driving tech but self driving on public roads is a much harder and farther off problem and I don't think solving it is their primary goal for this purchase.
Delivery is a huge portion of Amazon's costs, and most of that cost is the last mile of the delivery. What are the biggest costs of last-mile delivery? Human labor costs and fuel. What's Amazon putting money into? Self-driving vehicles (less human labor time) and electric vans.

Bias note: I work for Amazon, but not in that department.
Yeah, this is/was a real problem, and I don’t know if there’s a perfect solution. Anecdotally, @dang and friends do a very good job “editing” hn. They’re presumably paid well for their job, and seem to be passionate about their roles (thank you!).

I feel like the key to good curation might be good moderation. In other words, allow people to submit links to be on the list, but there must be humans to control for SEO and marketing spam (like there is on HN). Making those humans incorruptible is hard but maybe not impossible, if they’re well compensated and hired thoughtfully.

That being said, I’m doubtful that such a strategy of moderation would scale to hundreds of thousands (or tens of millions, shudder) of active voters and submitters. At some point, it would need to federate, with different mods owning different lists, and it would be difficult to avoid a devolution into Reddit.
I disagree with the soccer fan analogy. Often in soccer the team manager publicly reveals key perspectives and strategies that always guide their decisions. They also reveal patterns of player selection that link to their perspectives and strategies, often over many years across multiple teams.

If Jose Mourinho comes to coach your team, you know right away the player recruitment and selection will be rooted in a very calculated defensive approach, conservative possession-oriented play style.

He has done this at several clubs where it was universally understood to be a bad strategic idea given the talents of the specific players he would be inheriting, even from his first day on the job.

Even casual fans could see that, despite the coach spending hours and hours observing player training, talking to players and studying game film, he was biased to impose his preferred strategy onto the team no matter what, even if all the evidence said it was unjustified.

Considering the Premier League further, this effect just gets worse the less skilled the manager is. Many mid or bottom table teams have blunderously bad managers that combine both being low skilled with being hyper committed to a fixed strategy regardless of the characteristics of their players. Once they have dug their heels in on the strategy, they can’t go back on it or appear to buckle under fan pressure, or else they seem like a pushover / non-expert with no special knowledge worth millions of dollars, and it becomes entirely political (making the strategic weakness even more apparent).

I would say it’s a case where “the wisdom of crowds” really is wisdom and the consensus criticisms about player selection are usually very valid and well-supported and the connection to the coach’s strategic weaknesses is obvious.
>> I helped take three companies, with multiple complex software systems, to acquisitions

Firstly, congrats on that accomplishment. Curious why you arent specifically looking for companies who need this very valuable experience (or are you?) If I had a company in this stage, i'd want to specifically find experience such as yours.
The Qt company owns the copyright to the Qt source code so they can sell (L)GPL exceptions. Bundling LGPL code in a binary, as mobile may require, instead of loading as dynamic library, requires you to get an LGPL exception from the copyright holder (or provide an object file for the user to relink). Other licenses, like Apache and the EPL, do not have this issue.

Companies can do this for open source projects. They require you to sign a contributor agreement handing over over copyright or require you license the code to them under the MIT. For the most part, differs based on region and IANAL.

Edit: corrected in () that you can comply with the LGPL with static binaries with providing an object file to the user to relink with.
Some US states also allow this, there is a list on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_insurance_in_the_Unite...

If I recall correctly many US trucking companies opt to a deposit instead of insuring their trucks. That deposit is higher than for cars.
Weird ways to make your next JavaScript project even cooler
Indeed.

I wonder what the cell phone generation would think of our pulp paper fake Necronomicons from the 1970s? There was also a book of spells at my local library in the very-white very-evangelical suburbs of Little Rock, AR when I was a kid, too. I liked the one about how to become a werewolf a lot, but didn't really get to the point of going and murdering a dog and painting myself with its blood and boiled fat.

The pearl-clutching about social media is because power has been taken away. Media executives can no longer fancy themselves in control of people's minds, because they no longer have a monopoly on eyeballs via print and TV information.

Worse yet (for them), the user customizable nature of social media feeds mean that they can't even know what people really see.

If people use the internet to make themselves worse that's a failure of people not the internet.
How does that help prevent podcasts going Spotify-exclusive and ceasing to be podcasts?
Honestly surprised (and disappointed) about all the climate change denial on this site.
I love this one: simple, light, good Python bindings, decent cross plateform support and not hard to install.

But show an app made with it to anybody below 30 and they will call you an ancient fossil.

If something doesn't have transition and gesture nowaday, you better market it to accountants because the general public won't want it.
If you are serious, pick an institution and view any of their ABET accredited programs. Look for Computer Science or Computer Engineering and then go to the University to view the curriculum: https://www.abet.org/