skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's one of the things that drives me about the site. I just think it would be so fun to have some of the stories eventually "completed", and then I could get them printed. Even if they don't "sell" and are just vanity projects, it'd be fun to have a series of StorySprawl books on my shelf. I actually do have two of the stories completed so far, but they are both pretty lousy. :) But if I ever get some serious time off, I could see myself diving into a markdown/pandoc/latex/docbook thing to start auto-printing them.

It is really fun to make books - I've also read some lengthy popular fan-fiction works, and when they get popular enough, people pop up to make underground books out of them. My wife printed out the six-book "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" series for me from a github repo for Christmas. Looks nice on my shelf!
I've written similar thoughts before on computing's mutual recursion with the offline world, and the software engineer's place as code-reader and code-writer-hallucinator [0]. Computers, like any means of production in modernity, are only furthering inequality in the world (along the usual lines: wealth, race, geography, social standing, etc). Computing can make the world better, but right now it can't and it won't -- and that kind of sucks.

I really like the author's sentiment that "It's okay to invent useless things, create beautiful projects for their own sake, etc." and I think that's the first step to creating something that doesn't take computing as capital, as dead labor.

Computing can be alive, experimental, playful, and helpful to our communities. It doesn't have to scale, make big profits, or attract billions in VC bucks; in fact, all of those things just seem to bring us misery. And importantly, they are all orthogonal to the software itself. I'm inspired by Robin Sloan's "An app can be a home-cooked meal" [1] and initiatives like NYC Mesh [2]. It's okay if our software merely brings joy to our families and local communities.

[0] https://blog.jse.li/posts/software/

[1] https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

[2] https://www.nycmesh.net/
Yeah, but what if that teacher is not Human.

There is a lot of really short sighted thinking in this thread. AI will be better than us at everything within the next few hundred years.

It's kind of a flippant remark, and not very useful, but its true.

AI will be better than a human at making me happy, and it will be better at comforting me when I'm sad. It will be better at motivating me and it will be better at teaching me and my kids things.
> they didn't become head of MI5 or Prime Minister, for example

Many people believe that MI5 had serious worries that Harold Wilson was a soviet spy.
The ignorance around math is amazing to me. When I went to a public school in NYC in the 80s, I had 1960s textbooks and a pretty poor initial math literacy — I struggled into middle school.

When I look at the common core stuff with my young son, he gets what he’s doing in a more fundamental way. In first grade, he basically “discovered” division on his own and was incredibly happy about it. Not something I would have done for sure!
He makes the point that “the idea of having fun and doing good at the same time is incredibly seductive.” He’s right, of course, but I think the real problem is that (for most people) your work can be at most two of the following: fun, socially beneficial, and lucrative. In fact you’re lucky if it’s just one of those.

That may seem like a pithy observation, but I think it actually says a lot about whether technology is a force for good, because it seems like technology also follows that same two-out-of-three rule.
thanks! no plans for that yet, but may tackle that when I have time
Also, things like automated/safe refactoring, jump to definition, find all usages, etc.
"That's just like, your opinion, man." So sick of opinion in this industry. We should not accept such lazy arguments anymore. If you want to make an assertion, back it up. I will make my argument for why types are a good thing below:

I don't agree with you. I don't think that loose typing is based on opinion, and I do not think it is because people who start out in statically typed languages are unable to "grasp" loose typing. I think we are seeing a people abandon loose typing because the industry has observed that loose typing is harmful to even small, a few thousand lines, projects.

Static typing catches bugs. It makes your code easier to maintain. It makes your code safer to refactor. It checks your code to ensure correctness. It provides documentation about variables. It reduces the amount of code you have to read in order to understand a specific piece of code. These are empirically good things that you do not get in loosely typed languages.

An untyped value does not carry any information or explicit assertions about the variable. Take a URL for example: A "string" URL does not carry any information about weather or not the url string is a valid URL.

In an untyped environment, only by understanding ALL upstream code are we able to make assumptions about downstream code. We know that the "string URL" is a sequence of characters, and nothing more.

However, if we have a type, we can have a "URL" type. Since we have a type, we do not need to concern ourselves with all upstream code, only the code associated with the "URL" type. So, instead of potentially thousands of places to seek information about our "URL" variable, we have only one: The "URL" type. We look at the implementation of that type, and we know weather or not the URL has been validated.

Types dramatically reduce the amount of code you have to read in order to understand a given piece of your application. This makes your application more secure, more readable, and easier to maintain.
Most people will just home school their kids. I am in the US so that is what I was referring to. Not really worth the effort trying to argue the point - many people on this site went through the US educational system and would cite it as not preparing them for their adult lives, and in many cases caused immense harm to their growth as educated citizens.
Overdrive, which is what most libraries I know of use, supports Kindle, Adobe, and it's open format (which IIRC cannot be downloaded and must be viewed in the browser/app one page at a time).
Companies Pitch Shortwave Radio to Shave Milliseconds Off Trades
You mentioned color perception and its probable recent understanding. This makes me wonder if philosophers with unique perceptual differences might come to different conclusions than their neurotypical counterparts.

For example, would a color blind philosopher understand the world differently? How about a synaesthete? What about a philosopher diagnosed with sociopathy? Would their experience change their rational understanding of the world?
So you have no qualms with paying 30% more just for the convenience of doing it in-app? Would you feel ok finding out afterwards that you’d save $40 by not paying with Apple? It’s a shitty consumer experience either way (not having the option, or paying more).
I think it might be less confusing to say, how do you verify the feature? As in: how do engineers and product managers and designers know that the flagged behavior is correct and how do you verify that in production if all you do is ramp up? How do you make sure the interested parties are always bucketed into the on experiment?
Tragedy of the commons really. Makes the world worse over all while making the lives of people who know how to use computers better.
Apple repeatedly rejects Facebook Gaming app from App Store
> Someone who has spent the time wading through this stuff might consider that somewhat insulting

ok? If I have an entry-level offer in-hand 6 months from now and I’m behind a few textbooks, I think I can manage. Sorry to break it to you, but a lot can be done if you’re healthy and avoid distractions.
"Can a derivative work be created from it?"

Grey area, lived in it for a while and made some money there, but at the end of the day it depends on how the original creator feels about your derivative work - or you personally :)
But they give 5 projections, and they say that none of these are accurate estimations, they're only to be used for modelling, and that they will change as new information is found.
It used to not be like this, back when I had an iPhone 4 it would boot immediately. But then it would die as soon as it got to the locksreen, halfway through me putting my passcode in, or as soon as I unlocked the phone.

Having to wait a little bit tops the frustration from getting your routine interrupted by the phone dying at random points. I usually waited a few minutes anyways to avoid the random shutdowns.
I you were to OSS it I would definitely use it!
Mentorship is the future of education -- it's all about minimizing the teacher to student ratio. Video games are a creative way to present content, but also deprive students of other essential inputs for education. Saying that video games are the future of education is like saying in 1999 that MS Office is the future of education.

Maybe everyone will be consuming homework and lessons through video games, but no video game is going to completely replace real-life interaction. I'm not entirely sold on remote learning, especially for children (K-12). Getting taught remotely is like watching TV in black-and-white. It works, but it's just not the same.
Can you elaborate on what exactly you think is happening here?
The obvious solution to this is to make "lucrative" a non-goal for anything, including computing, so that we pick "fun & socially beneficial" every time. This will require some major societal restructuring. Are we up for it?
I can fully recommend reading the book "Sandworm" by Andy Greenberg. It explains NotPetya and all of the sorrounding investigation.
"Make it illegal to collect or store personal information on anyone you don't have a business relationship with."

Let's assume we are going to go ahead with this idea. (FWIW, I think targeting collection and storage it is the right starting point.)

Would it make more sense to make it a criminal offence, a civil one or both? The word "illegal" usually refers to criminal, not civil law. However the comment refers to "civil penalties". Should we think about who is going to enforce the law, who will pay the cost of that enforcement and how unauthorised collection and storage may be discovered. Who enforces criminal law? Who enforces civil law?
Got one myself but I've not used it for years. Maybe I'll dust it off and see if it boot loops like a fruit loop!
Coding Mistakes I Did When I Was Learning Python
My only argument against wires is the inevitable wear and tear. I don't know if this is just me or my poor choices regarding equipment, but I regularly have to replace USB, RJ-45 and 1/4 jack(guitar) cables because they simply die on me.

Same goes for sockets - recently I bought a certain laptop because, among other things, it can be charged also via USB-C (albeit slowly), giving me a fallback socket should the primary fail - had this happen to my previous device.
"co-exist and share resources on this planet"

Someone tell US leadership this. It is sad that China is rapidly addressing their GHG emissions via unprecendented EV and alternative energy programs.
That was just a nice light read. Loved it
The Covid19 lockdown and distancing measures would be much harder on society and on the economy without modern means of remote work and communication. So much so in fact, that they may otherwise have been impossible.

Therefore, computing may just have saved millions of lives.
The site is Squarespace - a few giveaways are the favicon, the <!-- This is Squarespace. --> comment in the head section, and the fact that hitting escape opens the Squarespace login.

This looks pretty different from the usual templates, so I would guess there's a lot of custom code for the visuals.
You're correct. The plantation owners were benefitting, and that made them wealthier. But that came at the expense of the rest of the economy. Those plantation owners, likewise, lost wealth when slavery ended. But the rest of the economy grew.

The distinction is relevant to the political debate around why all this matters. Labor was expropriated from slaves, and that enriched plantation owners, there is no doubt about that. But some people want to go a step further, and say that America owes its overall prosperity to slavery. Except insofar as you can trace wealth to certain slaveholder plantation fortunes, that assertion probably isn't true.
Life Sciences Observations #15
as someone with a degree in CS, they're subject matters out there like logic, philosophy, algebra & writing. that will definitely help you out in CS. because first and foremost you need to be good at abstract thinking, then cs will click. and once abstract concepts click, you'll see the nonsense that the current software engineering industry is.
In a geographical note, if you can get a chance to work/contract in Denmark, absolutely do so! I have been working in Copenhagen in 2014-2015 and I only have great memories of the country and the capital.
> if PermissionController.get().get(MyPerm.class): doA() else: doB().

oh, but if a behavior changes when a feature flag is active, there's a very strong case for it to be pluggable behavior strategy, so I like these so much better as an unconditional call to `self.getThingStrategy().execute()`
> Does computing make the world better?

- Define computing

- Define make

- Define world

- Define better
Amazing work! How did you do the 3d scanning?
> These days, American politicians focus anger on Mexicans and Muslims, but it's the same story playing out as before.

And other politicians focus anger on people who have concerns about, for example, the effect of immigration on the economy at the micro level.

All of this is as you say: playing on ignorance. But I disagree that it's just that (although I doubt you intended strong emphasis on that word)...what's actually going on is a whole bunch of things, some of which humanity and science has knowledge of (but largely ignores, depending on the topic of conversation, for complicated reasons), and a whole bunch of other stuff that we do not have knowledge of.

In an abstract conversation, most everyone can agree that we have very little understanding of how humans work, but when the discussion is of a specific, object level idea, we seem to lose access to that abstract knowledge.
I think over time computing actually reprograms minds in not so great ways and no one knows for certain how long-term this plays out
Reverse Engineering the Comtech AHA363 PCIe Gzip Accelerator Board
Good point, while I don't need this clarification others might. I shouldn't have implied that they are the same for square matrices implicitly, hence my failed attempt at using "similar".

However, they're still an extension in the sense that singular values do correspond to (square of the) eigenvalues of the square matrix A A^T and A^T A.
If China is overly militaristic, then Japan will arm itself.

China may hate Japan historically for the atrocities in WW2, but they also fear them for the same reasons.
The same when you play a videogame with a heavy “view bobbing”. Someone decided that it would be more realistic if your camera shook by 15 degrees both axis at every move (looking at you, cod:mw), but it only makes a scene feel sick and you can’t turn it off.
In the same genre, I recommend "Countdown to Zero Day" which looks at Stuxnet and Flame and the events surrounding their creation, deployment and aftermath.
I didn’t know they did their own navigation, I assumed they would use one of the map services
This is the same thing Luke Smith was fleshing out in this video on LBRY. So many of us are net-consumers of the Internet instead of producing more.
https://open.lbry.com/@Luke:7/get-a-website-now-don-t-be-a-w...

That's why I've set out to learn the trio of HTML, CSS, and Javascript to be able to build my own website/virtual apartment from scratch.

Learning C programming language will give me the foundation to get into development.

Learning linux sys admin in Debian and modifying my config files in XMonad window manager allows me to take back control of my computer. Once I master my computer I can help empower others to start doing the same! Great article btw
Latency is only an issue if it is not accounted for. I am not sure if this is the case for video on android
You do- sort of. The problem I ran into is that a lot of what we know comes from educational “gurus”- not science. So if you have software that disagrees with what the teacher thinks is the right way to teach, they won’t budge even if all the data show that you’re giving them a better way.

I don’t hold it against them though. Nobody was going to tell me how to teach physics.

Fun fact(?): Back when I was teacher my friend Eddie (math teacher) decided we could teach pretty sophisticated ideas to our community college students if we used this fancy program called “Mathematica.” We wrote a grant and got a good price from Wolfram and after that they introduced a pricing for community colleges. This was way back in the ‘90s- but I don’t remember the year.

The point is, nobody sold me software. I decided what my problem was and set about solving it. I suspect most teachers either (a) do that too or (b) want an accepted solution.
Help HN: Laid off from healthcare as SWE, family to care for
Hello HN!

A few days ago I was laid off from a healthcare technology company due to market losses from COVID-19. I have about a month of runway, so I am eager to find another role.

I have 5 years of professional development experience. I am adept with React and the Frontend — I spent the last 8 months migrating an aging Angular app to modern React with hooks, context etc. I am also very proficient with Typescript, Node and JS in general and backend microservices, Postgres, Golang. As well I have healthcare domain knowledge — working with EHR integrations, protocols, data formats etc.

I am in GMT -0700 (Hawaii) and seeking a remote full time position, but I'd be open to learning about contract opportunities as well. I am most excited about ag tech and products that benefit the world.

My email is in my profile, thanks for any help you can offer!
Happy to see there are at least some new players introduced to the adventure genre by Thimbleweed Park - I honestly wasn't sure it would be enjoyable without the "nostalgia factor". I can only agree with the other posters: if you enjoyed Thimbleweed Park, you'll probably enjoy the original LucasArts games even more! My personal favourites are Monkey Island 1/2 and the Indiana Jones adventures (Last Crusade & The Fate of Atlantis). As for Thimbleweed Park, I'm sorry to say I never finished it - at some point, it seems to lose focus with lots of locations you can go to, several characters to play and not really a clear sense of what you should do next...
>high-quality grading of high school English/History essays is not possible.

I didn't mean to imply we could do it now, but somebody will eventually spends hundred of millions of dollars on this and we'll get there.

Machine Learning is not what I mean when I say AI. We need AI's that actually understand text in the same way we do.

All jobs will go to machines eventually.
thank you. My risk profile is also higher than most. Do you mind sharing your story? I’m an undergrad looking to sell my youth. Would like to work at a non-profit once I can be financially independent with my family.
It is atypical. Cpan install just works and has been like that at least 15 last years. Also major package managers have automated converters which are mature, so one-step install and convert is also a thing.

Python's pip+virtualenv is often much worse, so many of the packages need `wheel` but don't depend on it and failed builds are treated as successful, so it's not as smooth as could be, but much is improved since Python 3.5+.
https://intelnews.org/tag/operation-pimlico/

PIMLICO was an emergency exfiltration operation that had been put in place by MI6 long before Gordievsky requested its activation in May of 1985.

Every Tuesday, shortly after 7:00, a British MI6 officer would take a morning stroll at the Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow. He would pass outside a designated bakery at exactly 7:24 a.m. local time. If he saw Gordievsky standing outside the bakery holding a grocery bag, it meant that the double agent was requesting to be exfiltrated as a matter of urgency. Gordievsky would then have to wait outside the bakery until a second MI6 officer appeared, carrying a bag from the Harrods luxury department store in London. The man would also be carrying a Mars bar (a popular British candy bar) and would bite into it while passing right in front of Gordievsky. That would be a message to him that his request to be exfiltrated had been received.

Four days later, Gordievsky used his skills in evading surveillance and shook off (or dry-cleaned, in espionage tradecraft lingo) the KGB officers trailing him. He was then picked up by MI6 officers and smuggled out of the country in the trunk of a British diplomatic car that drove to the Finnish border. Gordievsky told The Times that Soviet customs officers stopped the car at the Finnish border and surrounded it with sniffer dogs. At that moment, a British diplomat’s wife, who was aware that Gordievsky was hiding in the car, came out of the vehicle and proceeded to change her baby’s diaper on the trunk, thus safeguarding Gordievsky’s hiding place and masking his scent with her baby’s used diaper. If it hadn’t been for the diplomat’s wife, Gordievsky told The Times that he might have been caught.
I mean the FBI thought it would be a good idea to persuade MLK to kill himself over his adultery. Moral quandaries aside, that is a remarkably stupid plan if you’re looking to cripple the civil rights movement. Best case scenario, he does it and everyone immediately suspects the FBI/CIA forever.
OpenBSD has historically been eager to add new security mitigations without explaining their intended threat model.

Here's an excellent talk (in website form) on the subject: https://isopenbsdsecu.re/about/
I never really got into mapillary, but the uploads I have done have been with the mindset that they will be useful for a while and it's fine if exactly how long is hard to predict and so on.

It'd be nice if there was an alternative where it was reasonable to think of the upload as a digital artifact. But there isn't, and street level photos are really useful for improving OSM.
The entire comment did not mention testing so it sounds like you never have to continue working on a codebase and eventually face the challenges of refactoring something that you didn't write or remember writing. How about self-documnted code how often do you work with others?
Agree - rules engines are legion in commercial envs and a decent language or accessible non Java reit engine is something on my shopping list too.
And Antonio Radić (Agadmator). I started watching him first, then found Nakamura about a year ago. It's amazing to see how popular it has evolved to become over the last 12 months.
Behaviors for Healthy Weight Loss
If surveillance was oriented towards the right things, like corruption, the world could be a better place.

Unfortunately in some societies it is now oriented towards augmenting evil. Like the Chinese Social score system.
My PhD thesis was on this very topic!
https://eprints.utas.edu.au/31437/

I created a reading comprehension game/platform for 10-12 year olds. It was not easy designing the game to be fun and educational, but found stat significance for student's reading comprehension scores playing my games compared to the control.
It's possible!