skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd disagree with this assessment. In my own experience, I've found that competitive programming is useful in teaching a few skills. However, the apparent point of competitive programming--building up a good repertoire of advanced algorithms and data structures--is pretty close to useless. In my professional career, the most complex algorithm I've ever had to code myself is ... union-find (on like two occasions), with a custom BFS/DFS being the most common algorithm I reach for. Almost everything you will ever need is already implemented in a library for you to reuse, and even reaching for that library is pretty rare.

No, the most useful impacts of competitive programming has to do with actually teaching you how to program effectively. The most important advice I got for competitive programming was walk away from the computer. The biggest trap when programming is to write code before you know how to solve a problem, as this will tend to encourage you to spend all of your time making no progress towards actually getting a solution. The tale of the Sudoku solver [1] is salutatory here.

Another useful skill is how to debug algorithms. Debugging a competitive programming problem usually amounts to taking an input that fails and trying to understand where in the algorithm (as expressed in poorly written and commented code!) the mistake is. Doing so under the time pressures of a competition also requires being able to rapidly decide if the algorithm is wrong, or it is the implementation is wrong, as well as figuring out where the most likely places for errors are likely to creep in. This kind of experience translates very usefully into professional programming, and debugging is a skill that seems to be poorly acquired by most young programmers.

When competitive programming hits the tier where you need to memorize all of the advanced data structures and algorithms to do better, that's where further improvement in the leaderboards no longer translates to better programmers IMHO. But there's still a lot of skills that need to be acquired to move up competitive leaderboards before you reach that point.

[1] https://ravimohan.blogspot.com/2007/04/learning-from-sudoku-...
Feature toggling transient errors in load tests
Huh, I've never seen a moped that you could pedal like a bike even in a photo. Apparently the "ped" is from "pedal," not "pedestrian." I wonder if eBikes will follow the same path? I don't think they will, a gas motor is already disruptive enough that you may as well become a motorcycle.
We'll have to have some restrictions in place for the highest-risk activities. I really wouldn't want to give introductory lectures in a room that seats 250 people and has been in use all day and then find out, like the Reverend Jackson, that the vaccine protection has worn off.
Well that comparison might make sense if the masks were made of latex.
I'm both - I fucking love electron.

Do I like the 300mb download? No

Do I like the development language? No

Do I like the apps built with it? Depends entirely on the app.

Do I FUCKING LOVE BEYOND BELIEF that it means linux support is native and present at first release? You bet your ass I do.
> More mass means more force to impart at the same speed.

technically yes, but the effect of more mass in a vehicle-pedestrian collision is asymptotic. a small (3000 lbs) sedan is already 15-20x the mass of a typical human. the vehicle loses a very small fraction of its initial velocity to momentum transfer. it really doesn't make much difference if you double or triple the mass of the vehicle.

try playing around with a momentum calculator to see what I mean: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/conservation-of-momen...
Yes, with the Delta variant herd immunity seems out of reach according to experts, as vaccines can't completely stop transmission:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/10/delta-variant-...

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/02/herd-immu...
A reasonable explanation can, of course, be either of those things.
Buying a physical painting doesn’t give you any licenses to the artwork itself either. Just because you buy a modern painting at auction for $30 million doesn’t give you rights to start printing T-shirts of the art.
I reckon Tesla will eventually do this, and also eventually incorporate LIDAR. But they're attacking the hardest problem first (in the sense of "no one knows how to do this").
Surprisingly small drops.
The perception is that the pro-Electron group is made up of all the people writing the software being discussed and therefore getting most of the benefits of their choice, while the anti-Electron group is made up of all the people criticizing it for having to put up with all the drawbacks for the end-user (and setting aside the fact that the software may not exist at all if not for those pro-Electron benefits).

However, since lots of software is still being written in Electron and... essentially none of the criticisms and drawbacks of doing so have been addressed, the anti-Electron group feels like they're being ignored. Because they are. So when they make posts about feeling ignored or complaining about having to repeat the same criticisms over and over without any improvement, that's because that's what's happening.

The anti-Electron people are not saying that nobody agrees with them. They're complaining that their arguments are clearly falling on deaf ears.
CNN is fake news. Stop spreading misinformation.

Raw mortality data at https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ show no discernible increase in mortality for children 0-14 in England (or anywhere else for that matter).
England's Crop Circle Controversy
couldn't their investors buy gold directly?
Better prepared I would say. There are plenty of kids that don't get the opportunity to show how smart they are. They grow up in the projects, have to work nights to help their family, some have to join gangs to survive. You swap they're upbringing with someone who's parents got to spend 100k on their high school education, provide them the things like a car, so they don't have to ride the bus a hour to and from school, and they'd be a lot different. It's really easy to be a lot smarter when you have a support system that nudges you along the way. Now agreed, there are some kids that really are smarter, but mostly it's about being prepared to handle that rigor.
Software as a Form of Art
How much drama do we make about other magnets?
Maybe forcing buildings to be created in such a way to minimize aircon and be more energy efficient would be helpful rather than relying on powered devices to fix the problem in place. I could deal with the 1 or 2 weeks a year it might be might to nice to have aircon where I live.

Building in excessively Dubai for example seems crazy to me.
Lawyers will be upset you published this - - now they cannot make money sueing a REALLY deep pocket.
The answer is in the sentence immediately before where you started copying

> ... and then it downloads the drivers/updates off of media.roccat. org using HTTP.
Seems to me like both the cell phone maker and the medical device maker want to pass the blame to each other. That said, medical devices should get more leeway here - they already come with warnings, just like medicines too (e.g. don't take with alcohol). When a device is implanted the doctors and the manufacturer pass on the warnings to the patient. However, they obviously can't pass on warnings about future tech that they didn't predict would exist and interfere with their device. In such cases, since Apple's new tech is the one causing the issues, I feel Apple (and other phone manufacturers) need to be more proactive and should publicise and caution the public that their mobile phone may interfere with implanted medical devices.
No-code tools at Lambda School
You don't need funding to start a software company, and for some companies it can be a kiss of death. How many products have been brought to market but rather than grow slowly and organically, they took far more cash than it necessary, and now rather than live with their good product, they have to turn it into yet another dark-pattern cancer of the internet to give their investors the return they expected?

Not everything needs to be some kind of social media for the world, just write a program that solves a niche problem that people will pay for. Bootstrap it with funds from contracting/consulting. You'll know when it's time to drop the side business and go all-in on the product.

THEN once you have a fully validated market, cashflow, all that good stuff, if you want to grow fast you can go seek funding from a much stronger position.
once you have power its hard to give it up
Not sure you can call it limiting the spread. We slow the spread. Which potentially prevents overrunning our hospital.

It seems like eventually everyone is going to get it. Slowing the spread also deepens the chain of infections and may lead to more mutation.
we know the new variants are more contagious than what we had last year, if the vaccines didn't limit growth we should see a steeper curve, I believe.
My whole point of posting this was to bring attention to the stupidity of this whole "add/subtract x minutes from your life".

Thats not unique to peanuts. Many foods have this potential contamination. The process of making peanut butter actually destroys most of the aflotoxin anyways.
1 - it is not just server software, but general purpose usage.

2 - personally I don't see why you'd want to use anything other than Typescript right now. It certainly feels like TypeScript has "won" and is now the defacto standard for anyone doing any kind of work in the JS-ecosystem. That of course may change in the future of course, but today it feels like TS is where its at.

3 - I've experienced a lot of annoyance shipping around huge node_modules/ directories, just to get a CLI app working. Sure these are not "problems", but it is a pain to have to compress up hundreds of thousands of files and then decompress again rather than just moving around one executable.

4 - deno is the "package manager", if you can call it that. You explicitly state the imports & versions you need in your code as import statements, and the deno runtiem handles sourcing the files for you transparently. So either from a cache, or at first run it will try and go out onto the network (internet or proxied IIRC) to get them for you.
Paying taxes as a customer, not as a citizen
I was thinking more that once you put the code in, it says that it is a valid call (or not) then you get the response code to give back - at that point they can continue as normal
My whole point of posting this was to bring attention to the stupidity of this whole "add/subtract x minutes from your life".
ReCo – Automatic Text Response Coder
I think a large part of the issue could be solved through taking a more "common sense" approach to product design. Imagine you offer a platform like Facebook and I registered a few hours ago. Is it really smart to allow me to start uploading dozens of images or livestream to potentially thousands of existing users? Surely a better approach would be for my account to have restrictions on what I can do and the number of times/period for which I can do it. Once I become trusted in the eyes of the platform those restrictions can start to be loosened.
I wonder if government provided personal domains that you could point to popular providers of services using a simple control panel might be a good idea (they could be on a separate tld).
Diamagnetic Levitation – Levitating a Living Frog (1997)
I myself am used to not being monitored. But a famous PCB factories in my country has famous policy that production line workers should always "run" to the toilet. Consequences if caught walking.

Also famous anecdote of Terry Guo: during breaks between meetings, top level executives including Guo might go to the toilets. If you were one of the executive and happen to pick a urinal right next to Guo, he would peek if your urine looked healthy. If it looks healthy, that means he can and will put more workload on you.
Maze, a New Framework for Applied Reinforcement Learning
Can't ship code that doesn't exist.
> Plus mandatory self-quarantine if you are pinged by the NHS app.

I think you're poorly informed - it has never been mandatory to self-quarantine if pinged by the app.

And government mandated face masks on public transport went away on the 19th of July - but people are still encouraged and I think required by some individual institutions not by Her Majesty's Government.

And I don't think jet-setting around is 'daily life' so that's disingenuous.
The maas (mouse-as-a-service) requires that you install the companion app through which you can activate your mouse and conveniently renew. It does require access to contacts, media and location services though but you can trust them.
You should buy a standard mouse, no driver needed. A mouse and its protocol is prety simple, but now we achieved the state where a USB connected mouse reports itself as 5 mouse and 3 keyboard and some other HID capable device, good luck using them on legacy or alternative operating systems. (Hint: won't work).

>Bbbbuut what about my programable buttons, led and whatever?

I don't care about that, i care only about that i should be able to buy standard mouse which is always harder and harder task because you buy every piece of s with rgb leds so they will stop to produce non-manchild computer hardware. I wouldn't care at all if the hw would still provide the basic functionality without any special driver, but nooo, thats too much.

Proposal: send the hw back to their HQ and demand your money back.
It's the job of those imposing restrictions to define the risk.
Winemakers Tap Artificial Intelligence to Salvage Grapes as Wildfires Rage
Data please.
I have considered SQLite, mostly so that EmailEngine could be run locally, for example as an Electron app. So far haven't had the time for it though and it hasn't been a priority, so can't give any ETA's.
What other strong magnets do you keep in your pocket or come into contact with regularly, that can interfere with an implanted medical device that can cause an organ failure?
Apparently this is something so complex that the big brains here cannot wrap their heads around no matter how smart and informed they think they are.
I feel like I'm living in the joke timeline looking at that price.. here I am still fretting over csgo gun skins.. and this sprite with literally nothing interesting about it is trading for over 100000 bucks...
I use an Logitech MX Master 3 mouse on M1 and can't say I had much issues with it. That being said, Logitech has zero support for Linux. A +$100 mouse will turn into a cheap $5 mouse when you connect it to a Linux device, which is very frustrating since I would like to use my mouse across all my machines...
Yes. For loose definitions of the word 'better'.
I agree with you, but the global tendency is towards bigger and harder to heat/cool houses, spread apart (so again, no shared heating/cooling), whenever living standards improve.

People seem to be living in crowded cities just because they're forced (jobs are nearby, apartments are generally cheaper than apartments because they're generally smaller, etc).

Desert environment should definitely be super high density and possibly largely underground in my opinion. Things don't seem to be moving that way, though.
I followed Copenhagen in the early years, it seemed like the product was always in "beta". I was waiting to get one once it went into production, but that never came. My guess is something like what you said.

It seems like they have since pivoted to scooters.
Early this year it looked as if the virus was on the way out in Israel until they started opening up schools again. The risk to children is small, but it's a communicable disease - school is how it spreads between households.

When doing risk assessments I wish people started looking beyond their own immediate circle. Then again, Pharao let the Children of Israel go only after his own firstborn son died.
> In order to demonstrate the broad applicability of our system, we generate step-by-step building instructions and animations for LEGO models

Then perhaps the AI experts are on track for a successful prediction:

> The team also predicts that by the year 2023, a machine will be able to “physically assemble any Lego set given the pieces and instructions, using non-specialized robotics hardware.”

https://www.inverse.com/article/44660-lego-building-ai-robot...
The government decided recently that cashless payments are the future so they’ve been heavily incentivizing people to use transit cards and such for payments, as of recent almost all chains and many small stores accept them :)
SARS really seems like a bullet we should be lucky we have dodged
Show me where I can get one that can travel at 100mph for about an hour.
It can actually be much worse and void your insurance.

There are kits available to convert a low performance e-bike into a high performance one, which runs much faster and needs a registration and a number plate.

But cause an accident, which doesn't even needs to be your own fault with such a revamped bike and your insurance will tell you that you're shit out of luck and you will have to pay for the whole damage. Potentially ruining your life.
It is a utility, it’s largely recognized as such. The issue is what to do after that.

That conversation is where things get muddled up.
Mid-day yesterday, the word went out for neighbors NOT to come out to help; they had enough assistance for now. It sucks to see this happen anywhere, but it's a wonderful thing to see a community come together to assist when there's need like this.

This is gonna fuck up rail freight for a while too; it took out a big nest of rail lines near the river. That little notch in the hills was the place everything went through... including the water.
This sounds like something you can get with other languages which compile to native x86_64 or arm or whatever - specially the single executable concept is ages old and predates the entire internet. Why use js, which is slow?
It's interesting to me, I've never bought a single crypto thing of any type but I look at the speed it's developing and popularity and it reminds me of the internet circa early 2000's when things were moving fast.

The internet nowadays is a bit stale by comparison, crypto seems to be where the action and energy is.
Confirming that I was using conductor to mean heat transfer instead of electrical transform.

You could theoretically build a power plant by building a pipe through the pavement (does this reduce the structural integrity of the pavement?) or directly underneath and touching (surface area and high heat transfer would be the desired quality of the pipe). Inside the pipe is a liquid and a set of conditions such that as the liquid heats up next to the pavement it will turn into a gas. You could then capture the extra pressure generated by the gas via a turbine. There would be a condensing section of pipe (typically above the boiling section so gravity can move the cool liquid back down) so it’s a closed system. The primary problems with this setup are:

1. You’d have to change the liquid or change the pressure inside of the tube to adjust for the difference in temperature. Imagine a place like Houston where the pavement might be 150F or it might be 50F. The conditions of the power plant vary.

2. The material cost is stupid high for the amount of power it would generate. It would probably be a better use of materials to capture the heat waste of kitchens boiling water.

3. The labor cost is stupid high for the amount of power it would generate.

4. I’m really concerned about how this will change fundamental goal of pavement (to provide a solid, long living, smooth material for roads and building foundations.). It’s actually possible that reducing the size of the heat fluctuations will make the material more stable. I think it’s just as likely that adding complexity to the system will make the pavement less stable, but if you are going for the 2% of doubt a reduction in maintenance cost would be able to modify the $/Watt function you’d be fighting wind/solar/hydro for.

I’d really like to stress than 2 and 3 will combine to make Wind 10x-1000x cheaper.
1 year ago the hive mind was buzzing about protecting the "elderly/infirm" with the warp drive wunder drugs. So it shouldn't be surprising that "full vaccination" might be calculated with "elderly/infirm" pop in the denominator.
Yeah my team will meet in the office for an hour once a week otherwise WFH.

I suspect once the bean counters discover that the office is only used for an hour once a week also after corona there will be pressure to remove a lot of the seats.

The only one really resisting at my company is the "office manager" for some reason ;)
It gets better. There is no way to appeal these decisions. There is no way to talk to an actual human being at $megacorp. You can't even rely on the legal system, because $megacorp has terms of use which you probably agreed to. Even if there were a way to go for a legal appeal, even defining something as simple as the appropriate court (even country!) would be an uphill battle.
"Segregation Academies", still highly prevalent across the south.

But most of these schools remain overwhelmingly white institutions, both because of their founding ethos and because tuition fees are a barrier to entry. In communities where many or most white students are sent to these private schools, the percentages of African-American students in tuition-free public schools are correspondingly elevated. For example, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, as of 2010, 92% of the students at Lee Academy were white, while 92% of the students at Clarksdale High School were black.[4] The effects of this de facto racial segregation are compounded by the unequal quality of education produced in communities where whites served by former segregation academies seek to minimize tax levies for public schools.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy

The evangelical movement was central to the formation, promotion, and organisation of the segregation academy movement.

https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/handle/1803/10763
Except that in this case, the collateral needs to be actual money. While in real life you can give someone a physical thing, you can't give it in the virtual world (and NFTs do not matter here: if I have the NFT title to your house but I can't evict you from it and sell it, it's useless).

These DeFi loans are less useful than pawn shops. That's the point they're at right now.
I need something for Monday mornings that shows me the content of the OG tags on articles so my lizard brain has an easier time.
If you use a hammer to drive a nail, and the nail goes in exactly as intended, but then the carpenter rips out the nail, how is that a failure of the hammer?
How the hell was “view” available as an HN username til 47 days ago!?

On topic, you could try attaching a domain specific word to the end until you’re big enough to take over the generic one, ala Flock Freight, Cured Health, Glow Credit etc. Lot of those lately.
> Every time something is proven wrong in the Bible, someone always pipes up with "THAT was metaphorical!"

The one I always hear is "but you just have to have faith!"
No deno native MS SQL support
This is an obvious and observable fact. An MIT trained programmer is probably smarter than a CS grad from a big state school. To deny this is to deny the obvious difference between an elite CS education and a run-of-the-mill state school education.

Of course one is better than the other.

As someone who went to a state school this does not bother me at all. CS education is not locked behind some door in a secret location - its open to anyone with internet access.

What makes one programmer better than the next is the extent to which he invests in educating himself.
Nitpick: You probably meant to write "endless scroll" or "infinite scroll". "Doom scrolling" is a verb for obsessively browsing bad news.