skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's pretty lame to paste an image of the NY Time's 82% chance of Clinton winning the election in an article that calls out Nate by name. Nate gave Clinton like a 70% chance.

Can model building predict human behavior? It's fuzzier than the hard sciences, but not that much fuzzier. And if you do believe it's impossible to model human behavior, you have to throw out vast swaths of knowledge and areas of study: there goes sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, epidemiology...
Which Programming Language Should I Learn First?
I am a beginning programmer.
I am interested in web development.
I am interested in online services.
Protip: It can't be worth $10k quadrillion if the market demand doesn't exist.
The Condorcet method also rewards honest voting, and can be used with ranked ballots.
I think Python Arcade (https://github.com/pythonarcade/arcade) is/was a bit more active, right?

https://arcade.academy/pygame_comparison.html

When I checked PyGame, that was ages ago, and it looked a lot like a (higher-level) SDL wrapper to me, but more Pythonic. Although, coming from C++ and having used SDL before, I decided to use a more direct SDL wrapper instead. So I created my own simple ctypes-based wrapper (https://github.com/albertz/PySDL). But this is not really updated, and there are newer ones (e.g. https://github.com/marcusva/py-sdl2).

Anyway, I don't want to say these are better. It's great that PyGame is still active (again).

It's great to have such simple libraries to write games. Also for educational purpose, or just for fun. E.g. I wrote this (https://github.com/albertz/PyOverheadGame).
They invented safe-spaces for people like you, too. Find one and feel comforted. Have a nice day.
Maybe it's time to update that anti-fascist deck...
> The problem is that this agreement is expressly unconstitutional

I would disagree with that phrasing, and your final paragraph contradicts that statement. There is nothing unconstitutional about states entering into compacts. They merely require congressional consent to do so as the language of Article 1 Section 10 makes clear.

Additionally, even without congressional consent the supreme court has ruled multiple times since the late 1800s that as long as an a compact is not:

> "directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the States, which may encroach upon. . . . the just supremacy of the United States"

Then congressional consent is not required. [1][2][3]

The argument then is whether the NPVIC violates that rule and encroaches on federal supremacy or grants additional power to the states. However, the power in question here relates to how states appoint electors. This is a power explicitly granted to the states under article 2 section 1 clause 2 [4]:

> Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors

Therefore, in my opinion, any compact regarding the power to select electors does not pass the tests laid out by previous case law, and the compact does not require congressional approval. Of course our opinions don't count, only the supreme courts opinion matters, but there is no indication from any case law that this compact is "explicitly unconstitutional" or "in a certain way illegal". If anything it is borderline, but supported by current caselaw. The supreme court will most likely take up any suit involving the compact for clarification, but they would need a novel justification for deciding that states exercising a power explicitly granted to the states somehow increases the power of states.

Additionally, all of this is entirely moot if congress grants approval.

For further reading I would look at the NPVIC's own FAQ which has detailed citations and caselaw supporting their argument as well as detailing counter arguments [5]. For an independent review of interstate compact caselaw see [1], [6], or [7].

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/Interstate_compact

[2] https://ballotpedia.org/Virginia_v._Tennessee_(1893)

[3] https://ballotpedia.org/New_Hampshire_v._Maine_(1976)

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_Stat...

[5] https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/section_9.16#myth_9.16.5

[6] https://www.csg.org/knowledgecenter/docs/ncic/caselaw.pdf

[7]
https://ballotpedia.org/Congressional_consent
Great... are the issues getting fixed? The point I was making about I2P working so poorly that some people have given up trying to help--in addition to specifically noting that eclipse attacks do, in fact, affect the design of I2P--doesn't seem affected by "there exists people who still spend time demonstrating I2P doesn't work well" ;P.
I come from a country with a civil law system, so please excuse me if I'm misunderstanding things here, but isn't the legal precedent already established? How would something like this come to court again? Same with Roe v. Wade. There's already been a ruling by the Supreme Court, how can there be another one?
Swift Actors
Playdate October 2020 Update
I believe it is this xkcd https://xkcd.com/1425/
sorry research teams :D
Show HN: Pointfree FP-Interpreter with Combinators and Pure Functions
Amusingly, upthread you and I are talking about whether encouraging more people to vote leads to better outcomes, and this is an example where the answer is yes: a candidate can be both an extremist and receive 50% of the vote if, as in is true in the US, less than half the eligible electorate actually votes. The current president was elected on the backs of 25% of eligible voters; does that make him an extremist candidate even by the standards of the US electorate? If we had more data on account of more Americans asserting their preferences, then we could actually determine that.
Heyo! Happy to spitball this with you.

(Un-)fortunately, we started in a place where we already had plaintext-ish documentation (we never started with PDFs), so we were converting text to PDFs, not the other way around.

People edit the files in markdown and "publish" them in pdfs.

Generally, we do comments in a combination of google docs views of the PDFs (not-preferred, because they die with the document version) and our code review system (preferred, because they live forever, but unfortunately exclusive to engineers).

I actually don't know to what extent pandoc supports the conversion of existing PDFs with comments to markdown, but that sounds like a really hard problem!

The way I'd move from your situation to mine, is to say "no more comments in pdfs", convert the manuals to plaintext at once, make a comment-less PR of the plaintext manual to the repo, and then hack the comments in as comments on the PR, in a way that depends on your code revision tool.

This might be very hard depending on your CR tool.
Let me know if you have any more specific questions, though, I'm happy to help.

I'll also add contact info to my profile. :)
Have you tried laravel?

One thing I hate about rails is devise.

laravel new app --jetstream

gets me an app with admin area, profile page, teams, my choice of livewire (like phoenix liveview), or vue + inertiajs (spa w/out vue-router i.e. using laravel's native router), I also get 2 factor built into the auth layer.

Might be 8 hours of work just to get rails to have all that laravel brings from the scaffold command for a new project.
ci vis pacem...
I'm the founder, but you can use sysrev.com to review pdfs, json, text, etc. and assign labels / do annotations. You can see https://blog.sysrev.com/simple-ner/ for how to build something like a gene named entity recognizer in text. We have mechanical turk like compensation tools too, but you'll need to ping me (tom@insilica.co) for access.

There are other options for this too, I think spacy.io has an annotation app.
I would love to see a video of that!
Well if you are interested in web development,

For frontend : HTML, CSS, Javascript(first language), React/Angular/Vue.js

For backend: python - Django / Nodejs
The Scientists Take Over: George Orwell Reviews “That Hideous Strength” (1945)
That's exactly why I enjoy having conversations with people with differing view points. If they are compelling and it's something I was unsure of anyways, I'm willing to accept that my current view may be flawed. OR if at the end of the conversation the other persons arguments were uncompelling or even disproven during the conversation, then I feel better about my current view of the topic.

If someone doesn't want that conversation, then it doesn't happen. I don't strap someone to a chair with toothpicks under their eyelids. I reserve that when getting people to watch my short films!

Edit: Conversations about differing/opposing view points isn't always about changing minds. It just helps to get to know someone. If someone tells me they are vegetarian, I don't launch into why I'm not. However, I will make the mental note to not ask them to join me for dinner at the local steak house. If I want to have dinner with them, it helps me plan an appropriate place that they would be okay with as well.
I think the point he is trying to make is that this tool seems to make it easier to the point he is willing to put in the effort/time.
I really like how the website is done. Visually and content-wise. It transports the message pretty well into my brain.
Concise, not overloaded, good font sizes and looks good on mobile and desktop.
I'm still annoyed they don't support facebook groups :/
Watch Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta’s Performance
Ask HN: How was YC S20 for you?
YC S20 was remote! Wondering how it went for the different founders from different locales.

How was demo day?

How effective were the office hours?

Would you recommend this?

What did you do differently that helped?
My first thought was The Simpsons
>>> Lyrics parody swaps one set of words that accompany a melody with a new set of words, preserving the number of syllables per line and the rhyme scheme

This is halfway like the Max Martin trick for songwriting. The apocryphal story is that this Swede who wanted to write pop songs in English didn't worry too much about the words and paid more attention to how they fit the melody. That's why the lyric to "I Want It That Way" parse a little funny. I know he's very intentional about syllables, but I'm not sure how much I believe the story--his English is actually really good.

Or you could say it's the Paul McCartney "Scrambled Eggs" approach. "Yesterday" might be the greatest parody ever.
In my mental model the internal structure of the black hole, composed of all the material that fell into it, is always preserved from some frame of reference.

As you fall into a black hole the event horizon shrinks away below you and from your own POV you never cross it. Thats true of every particle or photon it traps. Of course they get twisted and distorted by the extreme gravitational forces, but in principle there is always structure. I suppose from the internal perspective, Hawking Radiation manifests as a rain of negative energy.

I'm sure I'm wildly off the mark, but it's the best I can do.
Maybe not. From the article: "But the new calculations, though inspired by string theory, stand on their own, with nary a string in sight. Information gets out through the workings of gravity itself — just ordinary gravity with a single layer of quantum effects...Over the past two years, physicists have shown that the entanglement entropy of black holes really does follow the Page curve, indicating that information gets out. They did the analysis in stages. First, they showed how it would work using insights from string theory. Then, in papers published last fall, researchers cut the tether to string theory altogether."

Sounds like there is no dependency on string theory.
That's an interesting perspective. I think it's still a bit of both. Yes, GOP has been shifting away from small-government, balanced budgets, and free trade, leaving the Libertarian platform to pick up those staunch proponents. However, the socially liberal aspects of the Libertarian party, like drug decriminalization, criminal justice reform, and gay marriage have been cornerstones of Libertarianism and Republicans would still be crossing over on those issues that haven't been a part of the historical Republican base.
Another interesting difference is that the current Libertarian nominee's environmental platform is based on Nuclear, solar, and other renewables[0], in contrast to Republicans' usual Oil and Gas position.

[0]https://jo20.com/issues/environment/
You’re right. The right of passage for most US computer science PhD programs is publications in the “right” journals and conferences. If you don’t publish you will rarely get past your thesis proposal. I think there are very few, very select professors in the US that prohibit publishing prior to graduating. But their count is likely in the single digits.

Also, by some miracle you manage to graduate by minimal publishing or no publications you will find all doors to getting research funding shut. This means that you are basically unemployable as a tenure track professor (universities prefer their newly minted assistant professors to come with funding).
That's also true of every election in recent history, and yet polls still historically have had predictive power.

Even shy Tory stories are perennial fixtures in the poll criticism genre; perhaps it could exist as a stronger effect this year, but as yet there's no evidence that it is.
No, it works for any pair of numbers, as long as they are not both zero. I am only using the recursive relation of the Fibonacci sequence, not the starting terms.
This looks really similar to Google AutoML! I wonder if there are any advantages to switching.

More info on AutoML: https://cloud.google.com/automl
Also OS X, it's worth saying.
Okay, but isn't the point that there's no objective way to evaluate those results? If you're limiting people's voting rights in order to get the results you want, then of course you will think less voting is better. It's the political equivalent of begging the question.

The point of democracy is to trust people to be able to make those decisions, and give them the tools to hold their leaders accountable.
You are taking an extremely theoretical point of view.

There is also no theoretical limit in the number of cars we can produce, for example. I would even say that it is easier to produce a new car than a great idea.
That's a great question where there's not an easy answer, to be honest. Choice of law (the question of which state's law apply) is a complex field with each state having its own rules as to how it decides. It's also a separate question from where you can sue for a particular thing. So it's difficult analyze either question in the abstract.
A novel synthetic DNA vaccine against Powassan virus
Agreed. I started using node-red, but then I realized that it was much easier for me (a software developer) do what I wanted with code, instead of in node-red.

The only downside to plain, old code is that there isn't a pretty UI for it.
what are you doing about images? all these generators seen to leave you in the dark about optimizing images.
I hadn't read the paper, just the article. Which is primarily what I was commenting on. When I read "now researchers have identified cells in the human brain that make this sort of memory possible", I was lead to believe that NPR was suggesting that there weren't plausible mechanisms of timekeeping for episodic memory before now. Especially since they don't mention any other mechanisms, and Buzsáki (not a study author) and NPR together imply that people with hippocampal lesions who can't order events correctly are simply missing their time cells.

Anyhow, I've now read much more of the two linked papers, and some related papers.

In the 2011 paper linked from the NPR article, under "Neuronal Ensembles Signal Time, as well as Location and Behavior, during the Delay Period" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662731...)
"time cells" are defined under their relation to "place cells". As far as I can tell, this paper coined the term. Now, in this paper, they aren't sure if the time cells are scalar time (Gibbon) or non-linear time (Staddon and Higa) or some combination of the two. Well, Gibbon's scalar expectancy theory for timing (SET) uses pacemaker cells in the theory. Now other papers do want to move away from pacemaker cells: Staddon and Higa point out that the "Weber law" that SET depends on doesn't scale well, so they have other theories. However, I could still imagine that pacemaker and timestamping neural circuits would work together, no?

This review article of timing in the brain seems helpful, though I don't have time to read it fully today: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662731...
It covers oscillators (pacemaker-accumulator/SET), ramping, and population clocks ("time cells" and other names). I find it problematic that the NPR article only focuses on one name for one possible explanation of the observed behavior. It makes for a nice article, and the metaphor of time cells and place cells are attractive. It doesn't leave

Time cells seem to invoke a chain of neurons firing, to encode events along the chain. I can believe that this orders events on the order of tens of seconds (the literature surveys from milliseconds to tens of seconds). But the NPR article suggests that the ordering of an entire tour of UCSD is also encoded in time cells. I doubt that there was one unending chain of ordering for that entire tour. Personally, I find that I have to reason about time on longer time scales, or I might mix up a recollection of how a story goes. (Once I tell a story a few times, I've learned a new skill--how to tell the story--so it becomes easier to recall a sequence I've chosen to highlight.)
Exactly this. It's abuse (both of people, and of "the system"), pure and simple. This is exactly why each passing day brings me a little bit more hatred of this entire "SJW" mentality and the people who support it. Can't go even one full day anymore without seeing some instance in the news of someone abusing these exact sorta "rules" to straight-up harass people. It's just the latest form of socially acceptable bullying is all it is...
Sextant – Build application charts that generate type-safe code
Why Are Lines at Polling Places So Long? Math,It’s Also Racism
> We're not comfortable relying on pure intuition in science

I stated that we should come to a consensus on topics - not rely on intuition. Science is a great example of a field that relies on critical thinking and debunking theories, but also in our ability to build consensus about how the world works. Disagreeing with the consensus should be encouraged, but it needs to be done with the facts (experimental results) - not just stating that something is unknown (a statement that can be applied to 99.9% of science if taken at face value).

> Yes, but as it, perspectives are often misperceived as facts

Agreed.

> You can still make decisions, just be honest about the fact that they are based on speculation

In complicated topics, this should be a given. But agreed in general.

> There is a plausible theory that QAnon is actually a state sponsored psy op

I have heard that, but my point was that QAnon is not a "typical" political group. Regardless of its founders (foreign actors, bored kids, whatever), there should be a heavy dose of skepticism when looking at their theories, especially when many of their theories have been debunked but are continued to be peddled.

> The QAnon phenomenon is also being used as a justification for censorship

It is, and that is a bad thing. Unfortunately, we need to do something to correct the amplification problem of social media. Now we can disagree on the extent of the role that private companies should play in this policing, but it should be illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theory - even virtually.

> I'm disturbed by the percentage of the population that is more concerned about conspiracy theories ... about children, than they are about the possibility that children are actually being sexually abused

The beauty of "save the children" is that it is impossible to call it out as coordinated propaganda without being accused of not caring about children. Of course I care about children. But I am also concerned that the upswell of social media was not natural.

> don't forget that you are guessing at what the right thing to so is

I am, but we as a society have always faced these dilemmas. Before social media, there were libel and slander laws that discouraged outright lies. With social media, however, there is almost nothing to gain from going after someone who posts slander. There is a fundamental problem when any random person can write whatever they dream of as fact and then amplify it to millions of people through social media.

I don't have all the right answers. But I think we need to agree that something should be done to prevent this amplification of propaganda. And then let's figure out how to fix it together.

> These are complicated topics, and I certainly don't have all the answers.

Same. This site is one of the only places where these topics can still be discussed without devolving into flame wars. So thank you for that.
They are more valuable alive than dead.

> You don't know how shepherd dogs work

Sorry but the facts speak loudly.

Last month I had personally visited the area of Europe with a biggest density of wolves (excepting maybe Chernobyl). We tried, and failed, to see a single wolf. There were cows munching all around. There was deer scattered all around the valley. I walked the oak forest alone without any problem.

In this area a single human with a few dogs manages routinely 300 sheep without losing a single one by wolves. Not a single attack reported in the entire year. Humanity has being doing the same for 4000 years. Is perfectly possible.
Rewriting Africa's Narrative
Why does this contain an implementation of sha256 instead of using the standard library's crypto/sha256?
My only beef against Dijkstra is that I applied for a fairly crappy job I was eminently qualified for in terms of experience and someone told me to code Dijkstra's shunting yard algorithm on a whiteboard (well not in so many words, but that was the solution). It's a good algorithm but way beyond the scope of what you should ask in a whiteboard interview. I didn't get the job.
Are they anything like Facebook?
Nate Silver and 538 gave Trump a 28% chance of winning on Election night in 2016. Nobody else gave him even close to that kind of probability. Sam Wang, considered another very good polling expert said he would eat a bug if Trump won, giving him less than 1% of a chance (and he DID[0]).

And here is the New Atlantic saying not to trust Nate Silver? Give me a break.

Statistical models give probabilities, not certainties.

[0]https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/12/politics/pollster-eats-bug-af...
I love the public sharing link, this is something I’m often looking for and wishing for and it seems like lots of the knowledge management solutions skip over it
>It would make more sense to me if black holes had no internals, so the matter exists on the surface of the horizon.

That may still be the case, but for that we need a theory of quantum gravity.
Of course it's possible for us to be "real" and still be part of a simulation. If we go deeper into philosophy and explore the concept of "free will", another question arises: Are we "real" if all of our choices and actions are preordained?

Of course this is way off topic, so I'll try to steer us back.

The NSA has a choice between improving domestic security by helping to improve standards and protocols, or choosing to deliberately weaken them so they can collect more. (As an aside, it is nonsensical to collect any more since they cannot even process what they are collecting now.) NSA has chosen to support and encourage the weakening of information security, and that has had serious consequences for both national and global security. One good example of the consequences is the Shadow Brokers dump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Brokers