skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
the "'affirmative action' solution" would allow the school to keep its rigorous entrance exam system in place, which is what Aaronson seems to actually care about, not some demographic percentages.
yup, I was joking around
Opium seems to be a good example of this, as it is of course used to make a large number of pharmaceuticals.
The power of extrapolation and context in the setting of language is pretty amazing.

We often derive a lot of meaning from very few words, like you described.
Mostly young women. The documentary is worth a watch.
Location data may be necessary for the simple reason of following the local laws for WiFi channels. Different countries allow different channels to be used at different strengths. If that’s the case, Sonos should make that more clear.
> I have 150/150Mbps which seems more than sufficient

Yes, that should be sufficient if you consistently get the advertised rates. Comcast (and all coaxial cable spectrum/cox/...) infrastructure, from what I understand is in a very poor condition due to neglect and even their "gigabit" is actually gigabit down / 30mbps up at best. and then there's over subscription. Try having everyone in your household on different video conference call.

My understanding is once you get fiber installed to the home, the difference in ongoing expense of 150Mbps vs gigabit is not that much. So might as well?
Who’s ‘we’? That’s certainly not Aaronson’s point of view.
There's no reason to have sidewalks in suburbs or rural areas where anything you'd reasonably want to walk to is miles away.
Thanks for the feedback. Is the photo too cheesy, not communicating the right message, or something else?
Principles of Data Oriented Programming
I got involved with Turing machine searching after reading Scott Aaronson's recent Busy Beaver survey [1]. This definition of normal form solves three problems.

1. One question about busy beavers is: is there a unique halting n-state TM of maximal runtime? The answer is obviously no, since every program can be modified by shuffling states, etc. So the question needs some caveat to exclude uninteresting variations. There doesn't seem to have been a good definition of that up to now, where "good" means "precise and reliable".

2. If you are searching for certain Turing machines, like busy beaver candidates, one strategy would be to generate all possible programs and then filter for certain properties. This definition makes for an easy filter. It might even be possible to define with a regexp.

3. Emailing. Yes, believe it or not, I personally have emailed Turing machine programs to other people in the past few months.

Of course, I'm not saying that these are particularly important problems to solve, but if you search for Turing machines, they're problems you might deal with. Check out this historical list of busy beaver candidate programs [2].

[1] https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4916

[2] http://www.logique.jussieu.fr/~michel/ha.html
The term "affirmative action" is generally used only to refer to the race bits. Every organization I'm familiar with that uses affirmative action also has outreach programs for poor people, generally called "nontraditional backgrounds" in business and "underserved communities" in academia.
It’s certainly a double edged sword, but as you grow it also makes the “reward” for moving higher.

“We can save $100k/yr if we do this large rewrite” is much less attractive than “We can save $10M/yr. Please give us a team of X people to do so”.

I also don’t think your rent-extraction hypothesis holds. Despite some obvious call outs (like App Engine realizing it should have been charging for time you were blocking on I/O, not just cpu cycles retired, in 2011 when it went from Preview to GA), prices are generally stable or decreasing. Mostly, this is a function of hardware trends and competition: the cost per thread or per byte goes down over time. So you aren’t likely to be drained out of business by decisions the providers make. It’s totally possible that your cost structure never worked out, but that isn’t “upping their rent-extraction”.
Fortran has already made its influence on several major languages, including C and Python. The nice concept of modules that you see in Python (that C++ has just decided to add to the language in year 2020), has existed in Fortran ever since free-format Fortran came to existence, decades ago.
This chapter is an attempt to illustrate what are the core principles of Data Oriented Programming as I understand them. It is highly influenced by my programming experience in Clojure, but I believe that those principles are language agnostic.
> "...everyone you meet..."

As the old joke goes "Don't anthropomorphize countries; they hate it when you do that." There is no guarantee of continuity in leadership or national policy because of periodic leadership turnover (elections, etc.) so exactly what would a country be extending trust to?
I'm furious at HTC and Samsung for ruining some of what would've been very precious photos I took with filters that they have on by default and don't tell you. There are some particular ones that were great moments that they absolutely destroyed, on purpose. Why would I want my phone's camera to deliberately change the shape of me and my friend's faces and replace our skin with porcelain?!
As someone that knows exactly what the “fancy lawyers and accountants” do, I think your argument is just far too simplistic and I think you could never get an effective public policy change because you don’t know whats really going on in the implementation, you react to the results.

To me the argument is “I’m mad we arent getting hosed equally” and rationalizing a phantom role of the state as if the state’s revenues would really improve and as if they would fund that infrastructure properly and that the infrastructure really had a meaningful effect on that wealthy person’s ability to do business reliably - or even keep the area safe and productive via improved social services. To which I would say thats all overestimated, and the state’s revenue sources should be reevaluated.
One of the weirdest things about that show. Who does that? Did they ask him for permission first?
It’s had 35 years of being an outlier, I don’t think that the mean is really in view quite yet.

On the other hand, look at what public education can actually do when it works. We need more of these schools, not fewer.
Note that the author is the same John Tromp as in the Tromp-Taylor rules for the game of go [0].

[0]: https://senseis.xmp.net/?TrompTaylorRules
Build a Serverless API in Seconds on Vercel with Node.js
Affirmative action means that the exam remains in place. You have to be interested in going to the school to get in. You can't casually be accepted by having a 3.5 GPA or over (which probably 20 or so percent of people have).
Its interesting that there is a naturally occurring TNF blocker, when big pharma's TNF blockers (Humira, Remicade, etc) cost tens of thousands of dollars.
I understand the motivation (or rather...demotivation) underlying this. But I'm wondering: is this becoming more common? And if so, what is it going to take to fix this warped incentive structure?
nice anecdote, thanks for sharing.
It's not that odd, when it's reasonable to imagine that an intelligence which creates life would communicate with that life. Genesis and the rest of Judeo-Christian scripture are a compelling candidate for an externally facilitated communiqué, because of their unlikely history, outstanding philology and uncanny foresight
2020: The Year of the Converging Crises
>when the real disaster is the local government

I think the “public vs private” take is a false dichotomy. I think there is a decent amount of evidence to show this short-term biases are a general human problem
There may well be subcellular problems that cause all kinds of bad-health, but not being well-mixed is not one of them.

Movement at the level of sports won't cause well-mixed cells - their fundamental frequencies are too different.
Out of curiosity, how big (in GBs/TBs) are the root files? If I setup a local DNS server (Raspberry or something more powerful) could I duplicate or cache the root file somehow?
IMHO the various ISPs should contribute to the cost and technical needs of the root servers or even better utilize blockchain, torrent or other distributed network concepts.
What These Cities of Bologna, Italy and Canindé, Brazil Have in Common?
I think they understand better than you think. Requiring a cloud connection just to set up a piece of hardware reprehensible.
Ah, I was wondering why the live site looked like an unreadable mess.
I was just curious because I keep hearing how younger people are committing suicides but nobody wants to explicitly break out the statistics.

As for the documentary, although friends have recommended I see it I am up to my neck in propaganda from every which way from news about this, a documentary about that, so-called expert said so-and-so, et cetera. Just the stupidity on HN is enough for me to call it a day sometimes. I'll sit this one out.
Right, but we should be able to calculate the impact of various factors. Industries could be using wrong types of filters or social media magnifies the filters in wrong ways.

For example, instagram algorithms specifically pick certain kind of body features and people to throw in your feed.

https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-skin-bias-in-instagram/

Algorithms could also be causing a significant cognitive dissonance by making people feel excluded. If I don't see enough people that shares some resemblance to locals (however beautiful or filtered they are), there is some stress.
It's interesting that so many of the responses mention the high costs of infrastructure upkeep is due to the density and complexity of the built environment in which is exists. The article however is pushing for denser development so there is less infrastructure to maintain. Interesting balance between the two opposing development patterns, both of which appear to lead to high maintenance costs.
I feel like whatever is happening here is more subtle than being "hellbent on disenfranchising high-achieving Asians". I think it's probably still in the category of 'racist', but works via a more complicated mechanism.

I can kinda imagine: it is ingrained in people's minds that a 'proper' institution ought to be mostly white, with some small percentages of each minority, and if things aren't working out that way the institution seems 'wrong' and becomes up for re-organization. The mindset is explicitly racist and is some sort of modern rendition of colonialism: that this country is still white society, foremost, and everyone else is here with white approval. But it's probably not that the individual bureaucrats (or whoever is in charge of this) is consciously bigoted -- it's that it's baked into society in a way that they can't see beyond.

This is an off-the-cuff unqualified theory. Would love to know if anyone with more familiarity of the situation has a more reality-based model.
I could not agree more. Replacing classism, racism, etc with an -apparent- meritocracy helped the middle class to swallow continuing inequality: instead of keeping the poor folks out - we kept the uneducated out - forgetting the two groups overlap heavily. The number of people my age who speak of their high-end expensive education as if it was entirely merit based (“you have no idea how hard we were worked to get our Degrees!”) always irks me. The worlds best philosophers probably never had a chance to learn to write, the worlds best leaders enough to eat, etc.

As a non-college graduate who’s career is going fairly well, I can only hurry to gather as much capital as I can before a real meritocracy emerges: I am not a genius, and there are enough poor geniuses with less opportunities than me to eclipse me many times over.
Thanks, this is a great read[1]. The incuriosity he sees as the reason why nothing is done is something I've seen a lot of, and have been thinking more and more about. As he notes, it's not just lack of interest in making things better, but refusing to believe better is possible even when presented with examples of better systems.

[1] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-american-c...
The PIN can be entered remotely, or indeed supplied by software independent of a human's presence. The tap, on the other hand, cannot be synthesised without a bunch of extra malarkey.

If your Yubikey had a PIN terminal, it could treat the entry on its own PIN terminal as presence indication, but it just discerns the PIN via CTAP from the host computer and that might be caused remotely.
Speaking as someone who actually went to the school in question (class of 2008), here's my thoughts:

TJHSST has been going downhill for a long while. Probably Lodal leaving as principal was a catalyzing factor, as she was much more adept at insulating TJHSST from school system politics than her successor was. The philosophy of treating the students as adults was under fire from parents of students at other schools for reasons I don't completely understand. (e.g., they forced the school to cancel all off-campus lunch privileges).

Another issue I saw was that the school generally trended away from a science & tech magnet to a more generic gifted & talented school. Instead of getting in because you were passionate about, say, programming or robotics, and the school's tech labs were a good fit for you; you are now going there because it's the best school in the country and you're top in the class, even if you don't much care for the enrichment activities that are provided.
A 3.5 GPA is what? The top 20%? It is crashing towards the mean.
Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is particularly important on inflammatory topics like this one where high emotion is already activated.
Original Blogpost: https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/digital-wellbeing/m...
Not sure if it counts as a 'project' as such but I did moonlight tutorial writing while working as head of tech at a startup. Now launching Ritza[0] and perusing writing full time.

In month 4 and already more profitable than old dayjob but obviously anything could happen still.

[0] https://ritza.co
Absolutely the comparison I was intending to convey! Biology is a messy and beautiful place filled with competition and cooperation. :)

As much as 8% of our DNA was laterally transferred from viruses! In a sense, some infections result in a symbiosis with a host.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus
To Surveil and Predict a Human Rights Analysis of Algorithmic Policing in Canada
Unless Finland had similar demographics to the US, which it does not, it's hard to try to transplant policy decisions from there to the US and expect similar outcomes. Maybe as Finland's non-Finnish population grows significantly in the coming decades, the two countries can compare notes more easily.
You don't need to worry. There is no such thing as a generic native speaker of English, since one can only learn a local form natively. Every speaker of English is offending some native speaker of English somewhere.

Generally speaking, native speakers need to get over themselves. English has become the global language (which no-one got to vote on) so native speakers should accept local forms and foreign influences and invasions, especially since English has been doing that since its inception.
Not technically a valid email, although you could try "';DROP TABLE USERS;--"@gmail.com

Weirdly enough it's the semicolon that isn't allowed, not the single quote.
Industry doesn't follow the publish an perish but industry research labs also publish a lot of garbage for the sake of publishing. And there are a lot of BS incentives in the industry too.
I found it interesting because they were interviewing former managers and engineers of google, facebook, twitter etc. They were not saying "This is the cause because X and Y.". Often they were not even able to formulate the "problem" with social media. Because it is not that black and white.
I honestly never saw this coming. It's the craziest dystopia nobody talked about. Cameras aren't even cameras anymore! Are there some phones with camera-filters on, without the option for you to turn them off? Cameraphones need to make a comeback; you know, phones with cameras and not some sci-fi CGI BS.

I don't trust anything coming from a smartphone camera now. Even my own phones.

Maybe related: I've noticed on iPhones and Samsungs that I cannot get a picture to match reality. I feel like it was easier to get a picture with colors that closely matched reality YEARS ago. Why have cameras gone downhill? Or is it my imagination?

When I take a photo of the grass and sky with any modern smartphone it never looks right. I try and try and try to adjust the settings and I can just never get a good photo anymore.

Edit: Example: I couldn't take a picture of the smoke on the West coast recently. The dark grey and orange skies would all come out looking blue or something. It's like the 'camera' is telling me I'm f'ing crazy for taking a picture of smoky skies, and surely I want to pretend the smoke isn't there at all! That's why I'm taking a picture right? So I can pretend that reality isn't real. I have no photos that match the smoke. I have only my memory and other people's photos. WTF.
Not an example from France, but I've experienced captive portals elsewhere that give temporary access for 10-30 minutes which gets extended when you click on a verification link they email you. I don't expect bar owners to develop such a system, but if too many people do fake info, the government might lean on the providers of the off-the-shelf solution to which the bar owners subscribe to add that functionality.
One global industry having as much output as one of the tiniest countries in the world? Not even a tech heavy or very dense tiny country?

There are simply stronger arguments to lean into...
> The initial motivation in changing the school was (at least partially) to increase specific nonwhite minority student representation.

I.e. even though white students were under-represented, improving their representation was never a goal, and when it happens as a side-effect, it's presented as a negative.
I don't believe in Google being interested in our mental health. Can this be because "filtered" photos make our faces harder to recognise by their AI and produce higher false positive?
GTX 660 on Win10 here while running Elite Dangerous parallel to it: no issues at all.
Will this type of move inevitably trickle down to the best public CS undergrad programs? Berkeley and UCLA CS are almost entirely Asian (east and south) with a sprinkling of mostly Jewish Americans who fill the "white" category. That reflects in part California's demographics but even less heavy Asian American places like UT Austin, UW Seattle, and UIUC are 50%+ Asian in undergrad CS.
Sorry. Fixed. Could you please reverse whatever mechanism artificially pushed this down the comment page now?
Geometric Cryptography: cryptography with a ruler and compass [pdf]
The Net (British TV series) (1994)
An interesting conundrum: if some apps automatically apply beauty filters and others don't, over time the ones that do could outcompete those that don't, even if it's to society's collective detriment. "The default camera on the Pixel is so bad, I always look so ugly in it!"
> Short of resolving the NIMBY problem that prevents higher-density construction in fire-safe areas

No, the NIMBY problem must be faced head-on. No more avoidance.
People in Russia and China put their money in the West for it to be safe from their own corrupt regime, otherwise, they don't want transparency.

And Dubai, definitely, is the place to keep dirty money.

If it can be cleaned, and someone has legit cover for their money, they can keep it in the West.
Show HN: Package Outdated – reads and returns the outdated NPM packages
> According to the RPi Foundation, over 35 million have been sold, with 44% of these sold into industry
Sonos packages practicality, ease of use and WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). They're not the best in pure sound quality, flexibility or, it appears, privacy.
It's an undergrad class, and they sailed right past the expectations of the rubric and fit in with the culture of taking their project a bit further than what's required (but in a different direction than most.

Perhaps at some point one would expect students to invent something new, but it's generally after the OS/arch classes where you do things like implement toy OSes or toy CPUs. :P
A review of metadata fields associated with podcast RSS feed
It seems counterintuitive to conclude "we can't afford to build this bridge in the first place, because it would be too expensive to temporarily close it". But based on your sibling's post, maybe you're right?
Eh, kinda. There's a lot of stuff hidden in there that I would violently disagree with, for instance:

>[synthetic fertilizers are] needed for for agricultural productivity, because all soil loses its fertility naturally over time if it is not deliberately replenished

No it doesn't, it only does when you do agriculture the way current industrial society practices it, it's not in any way "needed" for food production as such.

>[synthetic pesticides are needed to protect] from pests [...] will ravage entire fields if given a chance

Sure they will, because monocultures are terrible! And synthetic pesticides doubly so. But this is also not a requirement for scalable food production.

>hauling water from the well for drinking

Water supply is not a twentieth-century invention, nor an industrial one.

>cooking every meal from scratch

This is blatantly false, both because cities have offered public dining for much longer than industrial civilization, and cooking a meal from scratch does not require industrial civilization either.

>That plastics are produced in enormous quantities because, for so many purposes—from food containers to electrical wire coatings to children’s toys—we need a material that is cheap, light, flexible, waterproof, and insulating, and that can easily be made in any shape and color (including transparent!)

Conveniently, all these plastic products aren't single purpose, which constitutes the biggest chunk of all current plastic production; not because we couldn't do without it, but because it's cheaper than the alternatives.

>That automobiles are a lifeline to people who live in rural areas (almost 20% in the US alone), and who were deeply isolated in the era before the car and the telephone.

As others have pointed out, this is also self-fulfilling; the automobile allowed people to live that remotely in the first place, it's not a solution to a problem, it's what allowed the problem to emerge at all.

And so on and so on; the current techno-economical system is presented solely, and in the author's own words, as "a set of solutions to problems". This is simply incorrect, and it necessarily presupposes that these problems exist somehow independently, waiting for a technology to solve it. This is why I see it making similar claims as do "naive-libertarianis" (whom I should note, I think of as separate from libertarianism in general), in that it looks at the way incentive systems are set up at present, but instead takes it as the starting point, failing to reflect on what the system doesn't take into account because it literally doesn't "see" it (e.g. every "social cost", or environmental costs). In other words, yes, industrial civilization is absolutely needed to support, well, industrial civilization. But I don't think it's necessary for the "modern standard of living".
I think you've gotten faulty information. Finland's high schools are explicitly tracked, as is common in Europe; about half of students attend vocational schools that don't offer college preparatory education.