skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>> Anyway, the other day I was thinking about how this is an example of
machine learning.

I can see what the author means by this, of course- that the way that they
have learned to predict the behaviour of other cars on the road etc. is
_reminiscent of_ the way that statistical machine learning systems work. The author
clearly doesn't mean that learning by a human really _is_ machine learning,
because obviously a human is not a machine.

There is however a danger, in anything to do with artificial intelligence (the
broader discipline to which machine learning belongs) when extracting conclusions
from superficial similarities between the behaviours of AI systems and humans.
For example, it is easy to assume that, because a human mind can make
predictions about the behaviour of other road users and a machine learning
system (driving a car) can make predictions about the behaviour of other road
users, the human and the system are "doing the same thing", or, even more
egregiously, "doing it the same way". In particular when comparing statistical
machine learning with human learning it is easy to see that, beyond the
superficial similarities, there are significant differences that suggest each
system operates in a very different manner than the other. For one example, a
human who learns to predict the behaviour of other road users can also give
an account of this behaviour to a third party at a later point in time without
additional "training" on the task, while a machine learning system that can
drive a car cannot also generate text to explain its decisions, etc. Whatever
"models" humans build of the world, they are very different than statistical
machine learning models.

>> P.S. The above are my conjectures and loose thoughts. There could well be a
literature on all of this. If so, feel free to inform me about it in the
comments.

Indeed, there is. For an early introduction to the field of machine learning
research I would recommend to the author Tom Mitchell's textbook "Machine
Learning". Or, going even further back in time, Ryszard Michalski's "Machine
Learning: an Artificial Intelligence Approach". For a shorter introductory
read Tom Mitchell's "Generalisation as Search" paper is a good introduction to
some early ideas on the theoretical underpinnings of machine "learning".

These are old papers and textbooks, but I believe this is exactly the kind of
literature that should be brought to the attention of experts from other
disciplines who wish to understand the field. Machine learning looks very different
with the perspective of a body of literature going back to the early '70s,
than it does with the perspective of a few articles in the lay press waxing
lyrically about the progress achieved in the last few years.
This isn't true. Berkeley produced several real RISC-V ASICs and adjusted the encoding according to their findings before RISC-V got any wider attention. Also the team had a long history making real chips before RISC-V, dating back to the early 80s.
Since everybody is now using Zoom and not Skype, I would expect the NSA to try to get the same access to Zoom conversations as they have to Skype conversations. And I don't have the impression that Zoom would say no to billions of dollars to protect its users' privacy.
Genuine question from a fellow software engineer (throwaway because COVID is such a wedge issue. And for the record I'm currently in Australia and spent the early part of COVID pandemic in the US so have familiarity with both sides of the equation):

Does anyone have a plan to get the world out of COVID? Previous pandemics such as SARS/MERS were contained but had no vaccine, Spanish Flu wasn't contained but there were lasting antibodies (up to 90 years![0]). For COVID all we've been doing is "hoping for a vaccine" which by all accounts[1] will only be 70% effective and will likely require boosters. The world is on a roller coaster of going into and out of lockdown (see Europe this week instituting stay at home orders again) and all the while _there is no plan_ for the world to get past this.

So I ask again, does anyone have any kind of plan to get the world back to normal? In Melbourne, Australia, people are wearing masks and "buying time for a vaccine" but when it comes it won't help the at-risk portions of the population. In the US there seems to be no plan at all. Nowhere in the world has anyone come up with a pathway forward to return the human race to a way of life similar to where we were at in 2019.

So, given there are so many people in here skilled at decomposing problems and articulating effective solutions, and given there most likely won't be a >70% effective vaccine in the next 2-3 years, what is the way forward for the world? Or are we to be mired in an endless cycle of lockdown/open/lockdown for as far as the eye can see.

[0]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080817223642.h...
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/health/covid-vaccines.htm...
Premature optimization is the root of all evil. If we were to use these instead of strings by default, we would probably end up referring to them as nooses rather than ropes.
Don’t Even Try Paying Cash in China
This approach is also great for testing. We use rust for parts of our mobile apps. If we were to do it again the rust part would be way larger.
Indeed. The conceptual model of a WordPerfect document is a single stream of text, interspersed with formatting instructions.

That meant, for example, that, after backspacing over a return, you could end up with a paragraph of text with, somewhere in the middle, a “set left margin to 3 cm” instruction, or with multiple conflicting instructions (I think neither was supposed to happen, but all software is buggy). I didn’t use WP, so I wouldn’t know what that meant for the paragraph being laid out. It might have been applied starting at entire paragraph that contained the instruction, at the next paragraph, or immediately.

The ‘raw view’ didn’t only allow you to see the (potential) mess of formatting instructions, but also to edit it.

So, if you knew your way around there, you could fix any problem with documents.

IMO, if WP were less buggy, it probably wouldn’t have needed that mode. I also think its existence put less pressure on WP to fix bugs.
You are so completely wrong.
Then you have to venture to the mythical underworld of Lower Lower Wacker to get it back.
Too often I see use of phrases like “black bodies” as perpetuating the dehumanization the speaker is arguing against. They should speak of the people as they see them not as the system that oppresses them sees them.

I think this article is different, the context is counting, where there is no humanity to strip away, so “bodies of incarcerated people” may be unexpected phrasing but accurate and without counterproductive effect.
Sure, but at that point it's not really "web" anymore. You're just writing to a WebGl or WGPU canvas, which you could do just as well from a "native" app.
I lean libertarian (although I hold some things things that are left and some right), so as you can imagine my views are not orthodox and would conflict with official statements by C-suite people. In this climate I absolutely express no political opinion no matter how well I could present the logic. I neither agree nor disagree with them so as not to give them a tell.
Western Europe says very little.

There are local building codes that may be very restrictive in the kind of structures/materials allowed, considerations about ratios between (external) volume and actual (internal) living space, local Laws providing incentives for some levels of energy efficiency goals, seismic/geological categorizations (only to provide a few examples).

Since you are a software developer you should be aware that "vague" requisites generally lead to "botched" results.

Unless you find the need to attempt to "disrupt" the building industry (AND also if you find it), you should be aware that - again generally speaking - the whatever construction techniques that are in use normally in your specific area is very likely to be the most efficient, cheap and fast. (not necessarily "green", or energy efficient, of course).

I am curious however of what kind of bricks you are talking about, 40 Euro bricks, are they gold plated?

4 Euro a compressed earth brick, is that rare earth brick?

A "normal" brick is something that ranges from 0.30 to 0.60 Euro each, a (much larger) concrete block something that may be 1.5 to 3.5 Euro.
I used and loved an Alphasmart. I created a web app to mimick it. ponder.joeldare.com
To be fair, DOS was new and exciting when A Game of Thrones was first published, and I don’t think anyone wants to have to reformat the extensive notes for ASOIAF every five to seven years.

When I need to write distraction free I open a fullscreen Vim terminal window. I copy the pages into a more shareable format after I draft them in plain text.
I used and loved an Alphasmart. I created a web app to mimick it. You can try it out over at https://ponder.joeldare.com
How many AGIs can dance on the head of a pin?
Sure, I can agree with that. And we can also be critical of Tesla for it. It does run somewhat counter to their environmental mission.
Indian doctor duped into buying 'Aladdin's lamp' after genie show
Anecdotally in my experience this has been local time machine snapshots occupying space.

Unrelated to APFS specifically - I also use Dropbox and it takes filling the disk for it to finally purge content I’ve marked as online only with smart sync.
So they achieved 0 infections without herd immunity via natural means or a vaccine?

Isn't that a temporary win?

Once a person enters the country with the virus its back on.

Are we pattong our selves on the back too soon for these kinds of wins?

The modern news cycle is so short sighted that the media makes money off this kind of thing without reporting the full picture.
> I just want to have the same rights that someone from Murcia has in my region

So, am I understanding correctly that your answer to “what else do you need?” is that when you go to Murcia, you are expecting to be able to have access to galician/basque/catalan TV, justice, healthcare, public servants, etc., as when people from Murcia go elsewhere?
Kotlin Multiplatform looks really cool and limiting code sharing to non-UI code makes much more sense to me. However, I wonder if/when/to what extent the abstractions become leaky.

For me it makes perfect sense to e.g create an internal API client using this. You use platform specific frameworks for making the actual HTTP requests[1], but can write all higher level business logic in Kotlin and expose that. Adding a new REST route or change data validation would be done only once and be in sync on all platforms.

But I'm guessing that you have to pretty knowledgeable about the underlying platforms to know how (and if it's even possible) to create a good abstraction above the platform code. For something like audio/video playback or BLE, I'm guessing that there might be enough differences between Android and iOS that an abstraction that fit both is really unwieldy. And even if you create something resonable today, one of the platforms might introduce new features which destroys your abstraction.

[1]: I noticed that they even have some kind of built-in HTTP client abstraction: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/mobile/use-ktor-for-networking.h...
That's fair! I think I may have confused you with the OP that responded as such to the moderate point.

For what it's worth, I think you may be surprised how much you can discuss on this topic without crossing "the line" for most people. I think that if partisanship wasn't as divisive as it currently is than you'd be able to discover a lot more common ground with people.

.... though definitely not online.
Disclaimer that may invalidate the rest of my post: I tend to prefer scizzor-switch keyboards. For example, I adore the Apple Keyboards that shipped with iMacs up until ~2016, although I strongly dislike their newer “Magic Keyboard” (never mind the Butterfly Keyboard) which IMO has too little travel.

But now that you know my biases, let me say that I think the Alpasmart has a damn good keyboard! The keys are large, have more travel than most modern laptops, and feel quite satisfying to press. If you’re used to a mechanical keyboard and really set on that experience, you may be disappointed, but there’s still a lot to like.
It could also be both; not because someone recognized him, but still because of who he is (non-random). Maybe he was just said some neo-nazi shit to the wrong person.
LibreOffice has a full-screen mode. If you enable it and also disable Rulers and Text Boundaries then you see only the pages, the text, and a scroll bar at the edge of the screen (unless your GUI toolkit has vanishing scrollbars enabled, which is IMO more distracting). Run it on a laptop without Internet access and nothing else installed for minimal distraction.
I have it and I like it (Convergence edition on Mobian). My issue is MMS has been non-functional, and because of that, I can't use it as a daily driver.

Mobian has Anbox functional (though it is still experimental), so you can install apps on that. WhatsApp and Signal with without play services so that shouldn't be an issue.
Show HN: Decentralized Authentication Powered by Bitcoin Cryptography
The guy's a former CEO of a ~2 billion dollar company, that's actually fairly believable. The rest of the claims are more damning.
Yes and?

Whenever possible I choose not to give such companies my money. Obviously it's hard when virtually every major company in existence is unethical.

By redefining success to mean lots of money corporate standards are regressing and that's extremely concerning. This trend has cause caused immeasurableharm to society and most people are pretending like everything is fine.
> but we will have the answer Nov 4.

Things I've learnt in the last 2 months, Americans have real problems counting votes. I'm not talking about disputed votes (hanging chads), I'm talking about real actual undisputable votes. Also seem to be problems with the concept of free and fair voting - people having to queue for hours to vote is a sign of voter suppression, not of a healthy democracy.

In the UK, we vote either in person on the day (from 6AM until 10PM), or in advance by post (which has to arrive at the designated location by the time polls close, either by post, or by dropping into a voting station). If a charismatic person in a pub gets everyone to go voting you can get a rush just before the polls close as 300 people turn up, but an hour would be extreme.

Postal votes are opened daily in the run up to the election in front of observers from the various parties as they come in, verified, and stored in a sealed box.

On the actual day the in person boxes are sealed at 10pm (or slightly later if people are still queueing) and transported to a central counting location.

These counting locations tend to count 50,000 at a time, and in my experience 50-100 people do the counting (in front of observers from the parties), the counts start almost straight away, and the first results come in after an hour or so. Most results are in after about 6 hours, and unless there are transport problems (storms preventing votes from islands getting where they need to go) everywhere has declared within about 10 hours.

Now the US has more than the 32 million votes cast in the UK's December election, but this method scales easily enough.

So why does it take days for votes to be counted?
How to pick a web framework in Python
So, a scientist tried to replicate an experiment and failed, then kept trying until he succeeded by changing one factor of the experiment - the stimulus.

To Fix the Reproducibility Crisis, Rethink How We Do Experiments

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/to-fix-the...
Rocks'n'Diamonds 25th Anniversary
You're asking the wrong question. Unless your program is very small or the property you wish to check is very simple, nothing can fully "validate" it. The question should be, is TLA+ more beneficial than just testing in improving program correctness?

Humanity currently lacks the means to verify "deep" properties of code at any reasonable scale. Any tool that works at the code level either focuses on very simple properties (memory safety), complex but local properties of a small code-unit (Ada SPARK, Java's OpenJML), or deep properties of tiny programs (like seL4 and CompCert). These can be very important, but none truly offer the ability to "verify code" with some repeatable process at a generally-interesting scale. TLA+ could be used to do the same -- e.g. there is a C to TLA+ compiler -- but then it suffers from the same scale/depth/cost limitation of all code-level tools.

So given that we can't just choose to verify a program, the question we want to answer is a different one: what is a good way, in a cost/benefit sense to achieve the correctness we want. Then you can ask whether TLA+ can offer such a way that is "better" in that sense than what you do now, which is likely testing. Those who have tried it, including myself, have come to the conclusion that in cases where the algorithm/design is sufficiently interesting or subtle, the answer is absolutely yes. The way TLA+ achieves it better than code level tools is that it allows you to describe your system at the level appropriate for answering your most important questions about it, and that level can be a much higher one than the code.

So, to answer your question, the mere act of precisely expressing your system and correctness criteria in some chosen level of detail using very simple mathematics (high-school or first-year-college level), and then model-checking some interesting instances, is a good way (in the cost/benefit sense) to find bugs and make your program more correct. You compare it to the code by inspection. No, it does not give you 100% guarantees, but nothing else can, either. It is still worthwhile to do in addition to testing, as overall it can easier and cheaper in many cases to detect certain rare-yet-catstrophic bugs.

Having said that, there are various techniques being explored that can check whether your program matches the TLA+ specification more mechanically than just by inspection, that might not be sound (i.e. give a 100% guarantee) but increase confidence while being cheap.
I don't think this is an absurd edge case at all, and your initial paragraph doesn't make sense to me.

Let's say I have an object that represents an object in the DB, and one of the properties on that object represents an relationship to another entity which may not always be there. Then setting null on the object would mean set the corresponding DB column to null. How is that a discrepancy?

The problem with JS isn't that it doesn't really need null, it's that it doesn't really need undefined, but now that undefined is there it's impossible to rip it out. Most other languages that have null also have a separate concept of "doesn't exist": accessing a non-existent property would throw an exception, not return null, and for example you could tell the difference between whether a Map has a value at all vs has a null value by calling the equivalent of map.containsKey. Point is it is often necessary to tell the difference between "object doesn't have a property" vs. "property is null", and for better or worse (I think mostly worse) JS uses undefined to distinguish between those cases.
There is a 3rd typo on the landing page. Should read:

Reliable execution

Ready for the cloud

This cloud thing is nice, let's get into it.
A popular mnemonic for remembering the formulae of the basic units of Sanskrit metre is probably the first ever recorded example of De Bruijn Sequence. The phrase "Ya-Maa-Taa-Raa-Ja-Bhaa-Na-Sa-La-Gam" encodes all 8 possible combinations of syllables of length 3.

The basic unit of Sanskrit metre is called Gana and is composed of 3 syllables. Since a syllable can be either short (I) or long (U), we have 2^3 = 8 Ganas in total corresponding to UUU, UUI, UIU etc. To know the composition of a specific Gana say for example Ja Gana, one has to find the index of "Ja" in the aforementioned phrase and extract the next two syllables as well so Ja Gana equals Ja-Bhaa-Na => IUI (because Ja is short, Bhaa is long and Na is short again).

Code in Python if my explanation wasn't clear

mnemonic = "Ya-Maa-Taa-Raa-Ja-Bhaa-Na-Sa-La-Gaam"

def symbol(syllable):
if syllable.count("a") == 1:
return "I"
else:
return "U"

def ganaSymbol(ganaName):
mnerray = mnemonic.split("-")
ganaIndex = mnerray.index(ganaName)
return "".join([symbol(syllable) for syllable in mnerray[ganaIndex : ganaIndex + 3]])

Metres are then defined in terms of Ganas and the number of lines in a stanza, for example Utpala Mala metre can be defined simply as Na-Ja-Bhaa-Ja-Ja-Ja-Raa, 4 which means a stanza in that meter should comprise of 4 lines, with each line having 21 syllables corresponding to Na-Ja-Bhaa-Ja-Ja-Ja-Raa sequence

utpalaMala = "Na-Ja-Bhaa-Ja-Ja-Ja-Raa"

def printMetre(metreGanas, numLines):
print("\n".join(["".join([ganaSymbol(ganaName) for ganaName in metreGanas.split("-")])]*numLines))

Edits: Formatting
Didn't catch - who updated it and how?
In the past it was one of the ways to distinguish between arguments to function that were not passed in by the caller.
Upgrade legacy codebase to use PHP 8.0 features using Rector
Chrome unlikely to support XPath 3.1
Ok but another way to think of it is I've been using IntelliJ 30+ hours a week for years and don't want to throw away those skills because my new job wants me to use a different OS. I'm sure power users of, e.g., Excel or Emacs or vi have similar feelings.
Yes, with global css, which is literally one file for every single application, extension, gnome shell, terminal and ui windows on your whole system.

That is why so many apps don't work bug free with other themes. There's no way to predict how your app will behave on another system with another theme.

So personally I think the mess of overused dummy css classes in the GTK ecosystem is really a bad design. They could've gone with custom, namespaced, ui elements instead of that box.something.something shit.

They reinvented divitis. Quite literally.
Land borders can be closed except for a few checkpoints, which serve as the equivalent of international airports (and seaports, don't forget about those). I don't know much about Australian geography, so I had to check on a map, but it looks like it's possible to travel from Melbourne to other parts of Australia over land. Apparently some measures were taken to prevent the virus from spreading along that route.

Driving case counts down to zero isn't useless since any outbreaks that flare up again due to gaps in border security will be localized and can be kept in check with localized lockdowns instead of shutting down the whole country.
I have few laptops lying around. I wonder if there is some kind of Linux distribution or some other way to transform laptop into a digital typewriter. No internet, no applications, only a decent text editor (Emacs perhaps).
Maybe everyone but a few kooks simply recognizes certain obvious realities. Being contrarian in and of itself doesn’t say anything about truth or rationality. There are tons of crazy contrarians who are just crazy. Being contrarian and right is much harder than being mainstream and right.

Biden is not a good candidate, but Trump is unfit for office. If Biden is awful we get another chance to vote in 4 years, and meanwhile we will not endure another 4 years of having a delusional con man as President.

BTW while I don't agree with Pence on very many things, he is fit for office and would be better than Trump. Kamala Harris is also a much better candidate than Biden. For some reason we seem to have better VP candidates than POTUS candidates recently. I am trying to avoid taking a swipe at boomers, and just failed.