skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Tips for a 30 year old trying to switch to IT/software development?
Long time lurker here. Just quit my job and thinking about how I should go about it.

Background: I have a degree in business administration, so not stem related at all. I have some money on side to live on for a around a year (more if I move back to my home 3rd world country). I consider myself tech-savvy (running Ubuntu then fedora for the last 10 years, build my own desktop).

The goal: finding a REMOTE job in IT/software development as fast as possible. It does not have to pay much ($21k+ a year and I would sign), getting experience is the priority. Aiming for FAANG someday.

What I do know: Harvard CS50 10-15h a day. After that I will probably follow a Reddit thread suggesting CS61A/CS61B/CS61C from University of California, Berkeley. And finally Full Stack Open 2021 by University of Helsinki (gives certification).

As a hiring manager, would you hire me after all this if I have a mid-sized project matching your business?

Is there a database somewhere with a case study of digital startups? Wanting to create my own someday and that could really be handy.

Any advice would be appreciated, success or failure story also.

PS: If I have to go back to university, I will but prefer not to (cost is the real problem).
French is definitely weird in that it introduces multiplication, but the addition operands are still in descending order as with English.

> I wonder how much of those kinds of complications lead to higher IQ and higher education test scoring

Probably not much. I doubt francophones are doing multiplication when they think of the number 80 any more than anglophones do addition when we think of the number 14. Rather, speakers presumably both memorize the names of each number and move on with life.
This looks amazing! Are you considering open-sourcing it? Would love to see how it fits as a background for https://2000.shodan.io

There are probably a lot of outrun-style websites/ projects that could use this.
Well I somewhat disagree. The big number small number combination is not trivial to remember. Sometimes many of them don't even have any relation to previous numbers. Even to this day 40yrs on, I have to think hard before uttering any number. Eg: try remembering Unasi (79) and navasi (89), sarsath (67), etc.
i opened an account. miss forums very much.
Pretty decent rant. I share some of the pain as laid out in the article.

As a long time troll myself, I think the whe LaTeX is just a vehicle.
One country left the EU and was made an example. Britain is worse off for it and didn't gain anything. The entire world had the pendulum swing to conservative governments, including the US which had even less refugees at the border.

I don't appease bigots. We are going to see many more refugees within our lifetime and the "1st world" cannot ignore the problem forever by sending them to different poor countries.

It's not the number of refugees that the EU can't handle, it's the fact that they're not white, english-speaking christians. We can bullshit around that, but statistically refugees commit fewer crimes and attain higher education in larger numbers than native-born citizens.

Germany, to give an example I can speak to, has a fertility rate around 1.5. Quite frankly most of the EU could really use the new blood if they could only get over the fact that those people weren't born on magical "EU soil"
Coming from a 2014 MBP the trackpad is a HUGE downgrade (not nearly as responsive), macOS is for sure getting worse on each generation too. Other than these are pretty good.

A side note: I've been wanting to move to linux, the only thing stopping me is the local music management & mobile syncing workflow, if anyone have any recommendation
While reading this and really doing nothing compared to a work
day have:

- 24 Chrome tabs open with news

- 17 of Firefox

- Waiting for VMWare Workstation to finish
an install of the new Fedora 35

- Intellij is compiling a Rust program

- Have Ableton live running in the background
listening to a mix of last week

- A presentation on PowerPoint for next week that
looks like it would use half the resources
of AWS us-west-1

- CLion while trying to see why a C++ example
does not compile and Visual Studio Code to cleanup
a Cloudformation template....
Pools in the US use 14 billion kwh it's hard to imagine it being even global orders of magnitude more than Bitcoin.

It's also hard to see how push button Armageddon has possibly made us more safe than nobody having nukes. We are only more safe than if only our enemies had them. The same could even be said of armies.
I agree with everything but the latex part. Something like HTML 3.2 is a better fit for hypertext documents. There's no need to re-invent anything, only remove the feature creep and cancerous bullshit.

That's easier said than done though, with everyone so invested in this modern game of "emperor's new clothes" that is the modern web.
Yep exactly part of the problem, if such a thing occurred you'd be weighing off a short term apparent gain with a very real risk of it leading to more problems down the line.
Reasoning from purely a physical system perspective, I'm confident that a travel "ban" will slow its spread, especially the earlier you enforce it.

But agreed it will never be 100% effective.

The question remains is the slowing worth the ban? Bans are painful, but any slowing will buy professionals more time to study it and begin targetted mitigations, and while the total infected is smaller than otherwise.

Trade-offs...
The internet is a network of nodes, none of which are secure. The addition of commerce to that network brought in a profit motive, which will always find new ways to exploit the insecurity of the nodes, the routes, and the end users, for profit.

Most people seem to think that computers, the nodes of the internet, can't ever be made secure. I believe they're wrong, but still have to wait a decade or so before the basic design defect in most operating systems is corrected.

Most computers "on" the internet aren't fully privileged nodes, but rather second class citizens with "access" to "content", instead of being a fully functional computing peer. I'm not sure if this will ever be corrected.

Humans are always going to fall for scams, but that's not specific to the internet, so we can ignore that in the judgement of the nature of the internet. It speeds, and widens, communications between people, when done properly.

I think things will get better in the next few decades, if we don't fall victim to our knowledge of physics (nuclear weapons) or biology (gain of function research).

[Edit/Append] It's extremely important that we don't lose free access to general purpose computing, if we want to maintain our freedoms in general. With general purpose computing, you can build a sneakernet, or your own internet.
Yeah, I got recruited that way too, only the trouble is that having had the device a few days now my takeaway is I should really have done more research first and ideally spent that money elsewhere. Presented by an excited aficionado, the thing looks amazing, but when you go to actually use it the way you use a notebook, the software just isn't there to help you do that.

Oh, well. I guess if nothing else it's a valuable refresher on the correct weighting to apply when evaluating early adopter opinions.
It's unfortunate it can't drive an 8K display, but good that it can do 6K.
I’ve had the 16” M1 MBP for a month and have yet to hear the fans. With my 16” i9 MBP the fans were a very regular thing for the same workload.

Fast, responsive, silent and incredible battery life make it easy to call it the best machine I’ve owned.
More than the DS_Store files what fascinates me is that when you delete something on a USB stick it doesn't go away, making the life of the stick limited to one write. This, unless you format it, but how many regular users understand it?
The champions in usability...
A fair coin.

It is important because if you flip a coin 20 times and get 20 tails, there is probably something fishy with that coin and you probably should bet tails. If it is 100 out of 100 (or even 95 out of 100), there is effectively zero chance that the coin is fair.

This can be modeled using Bayesian statistics. You start by assuming with a reasonably high probability that the coin is fair, then you revise your assumptions as you get more and more data.

The general idea is: if a coin flip lands on tails for too many times, you should probably bet on tails. You shouldn't try that in casinos: games are seriously checked for fairness (of course, the rules make it so that the house has an edge). But in an informal setting, it can get you a small advantage.
Look to the inventors of Object Orientation to learn what it is about. They won a Turing award for it after all. Hint: It wasn't Alan Kay.
Fully agree. And nowadays the HTML -> Print workflow is also used for generation of PDF or ebooks and it is extremely hacky. There should be more standard way to do it.
Life as We Made It by Beth Shapiro asks: is “natural” always best?
No they are not. For mining a block of BTC a miner gets a reward of 6.25 BTC. Transaction fees, by looking at the past few blocks, don't go much beyond 0.05 BTC. That is not even close.
Having struggled with ADHD and ASD for my professional life, I strongly identify with this.

I'll go further and say I tried using "show them how smart you are" as a substitute for trust.

Even when I got over my arrogance and did this in a compassionate way to build others up instead of tearing them down, it never quite worked. I always had to put in at least 3x the effort of anyone else to keep the relationship stable.

I did learn to trust people too, but I was always explicit, never implicitly.

I think I "get it" now (about to turn 41), and I can start to allow myself to be implicitly vulnerable around people and begin to trust them implicitly, but I only learned this, this week so time will tell.
> I should note that in theory there is a gesture I saw referenced in the onboarding materials to go to the "next" page, but I never could figure out how to make it happen

Either the author or their device has a big problem, because it's the ubiquitous “swipe to the side” gesture.

Now I understand that the R2 is not necessarily the best thing since sliced bread and that it does not fit well in all workflows, but the author criticism is rather low quality.
The human mind is the most complex and entropy-reducing machine the Universe has ever produced (to our knowledge).

If you look around the rest of the Universe you may find thing of interest and beauty, but those concepts of "interesting" and "beautiful" are entirely constructs of that human mind. The only way anything in the Universe is "beautiful" or "interesting" is because minds exist which can appreciate other parts of the Universe as such.

Protecting humanity isn't about protecting individuals or anything specific, it's about preserving a process that can make new and interesting things happen in the Universe.

One of the most interesting things that humans can do is conceptualize something like "purpose", just like "beauty" one could make the case that the Universe has no purpose without an intelligence embedded inside which can articulate one and that we are in the process of deciding a Purpose for the Universe through our philosophical/theological discussions.
I think what the parent referring to is the DAO hack (from 2016) and how Ethereum’s response was to renege on “Code is Law” (and the integrity of the blockchain) in order to void those transactions (smartcontract exploits), which is a case of centralization resurfacing because VB could subvert the proof of work system when his own money was at risk.

Ethereum Classic is the fork that refused to rewrite the blockchain to void the hack, and the linked tweet is VB affirming that he’s only working on the main (reneging) Ethereum fork (which goes by ETH), not Classic (goes by ETC).

Not sure why the parent linked that tweet, maybe Twitter just makes it too hard it identify what tweet you actually want.
Sometimes it's so hard it seems almost impossible. People are still debating whether there is casual relationship between lead and violence.
No, they are not. I know at least one Kiwi who worked remotely for Github from New Zealand.
Ask HN: What's the best way to secure your workstation?
Here's a very plausible threat: Some developer with a left-pad package, some dependency-of-a-dependency, injects malware into their library. A developer (who is broadly trustworthy) updates their package's dependencies without auditing them properly, and the malware ends up in a VSCode plugin that you use. You open VSCode, your system is infected.

We know this sort of malware is making its way onto package repositories [1]. We know people are falling for these attacks. How do we protect ourselves against this family of threats?

[1]: https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/21/npm_malware_password/

We could trust nothing beyond our base system and our browser, and refuse to use any code we don't fully audit, but this would be an impossibly austere way to live. I expect most of us, when pressed, would admit that we're trusting much more code than we would like to.

The alternative is sandboxing, using a lightweight option like firejail (which I use) or a totalizing system like QubesOS. But these systems are awkward to use, and have their own drawbacks.

What's the bar for reasonable security, in your opinion? How do you secure your workstation without living like a monk?
Is it so hard to believe? Sure, all the same people are running the show and there haven't been any major structural changes, and if you looked closely at the day-to-day things they are indistinguishable pre/post Meta, but it's a different name! It may point to all of the same things, but Meta is not Facebook.

Just like when Philip Morris changed its name to Altria-- you could hardly claim Altria had done all of those bad things, it didn't even exist at the time!

(Also: joking)
It would've been a lot less suspicious if that explanation was provided. I don't think he's allowed to even say that.
There are many countries where people cannot trust a central authority like a government to keep their savings remotely safe and stable in value.
> The basic problem with the Remarkable is that it's useless without the $8/month "cloud" plan because that's the only plan that enables its primary feature: handwriting recognition.

Are you saying the key feature for the remarkable is handwriting recognition?

I have a remarkable 2 and I love it, but the whole appeal is to replace the endless paper notebooks and loose sheets that I use. It is great for that. Since I've bought it they've added a bunch of new stuff and the subscription stuff as well. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but then again I have no need for those features. It sounds like most people want a general purpose e-ink tablet whereas the remarkable is basically e-ink paper.
“That’s all you need to know” is not the best way to put it… “It’s one of the best hacks out there” would be better. It’s kind of “take the stairs instead of the elevator” on steroids… you’re modifying something you have to do anyway, creating a new habit that will work in your favour… and in this case it also has environmental benefits and is likely cheaper then other forms of transport. But like any hack, there are scenarios where it won’t work, that’s clear.
We transformed a London borough into a game to get less people travelling by car
> Cryptography is math and you can't beat math

But you can beat badly written software.
It's been many years, but wasn't that a key that allowed you to change input fields, just like TAB does it with web pages? IIRC that key was managed purely client-side.
> Therefore, if you're not a pubescent male

Rippetoe, the author of the book, is 65 years old:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rippetoe

It's a book for beginners and anyone can use the linear progression method. Once you've progressed beyond just a beginner, The Barbell Prescription takes the Starting Strength idea and adapts for for people 40 and older:

* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34823846-the-barbell-...

One of the co-authors (an MD) runs the GreySteel YT channel (and he's no spring chicken):

* https://www.youtube.com/c/GreySteel/about
Nope - just like about every other protein the key is to not overcook it.

I personally thing spatchcocking the turkey is the way to go. The cavity is your enemy for an evenly cooked bird. With that big cavity you have trapped cold air on the inside and hot air on the inside making it hard to get the inside and outside cooked at the same time. Stuffing the cavity only makes that worse.

By spatchcock you eliminate the air pocket - it cooks more evenly and in about half the time.
No. But this appears to now be the most important online shopping week of the year in all of Europe as well. Shops are abnormally sensitive to outages. You'd expect all kinds of service providers to be extremely conservative with code and config pushes this week due to that. Maybe GitHub is far enough removed from the actual consumers that they don't feel the pressure, but it does seem surprising.
I partly think it is cultural - India doesn't have a consumerist culture yet, and predominant Hindu / Buddhist philosphy teach to eschew material possessions. That's why many of us don't really know how to deal with our new found wealth. Especially if we were also raised with middle-class values of "watch what you spend", avoid debt, save as much money as possible etc.
Naxsi – Nginx Anti XSS and SQL Injection Module
> It's just so amazing to have an undo for stuff you write on paper.

Sometimes. When drawing, absolutely. When writing, absolutely not. Nothing else in my entire life has improved my handwriting so much as using a pen to do it, because without an eraser there are no options left but to get better or give up, and it's also amazing how much an eraser slows you down.
One thing I hate is having like 20 different Python repos for one small company. At most places I've worked at, you have basically one thing you do business-wise, but it's split into what I believe are arbitrary repo delineations. This causes trouble with dependency resolution in your build systems and IDEs and increases cognitive load and merge complexity for changes across repos.

Just put the whole folder structure into one repo! This would reduce build complexity, and you can set up the configs for your tools and CI one time rather than 20. You can still have several services out of one repo, if you want to, but it's easier to reason about and easier to change those service delineations later, where in 20 repos you're having to "clone and cut code" to separate things. In one repo, you just move code around as you split or merge services.

I routinely create a "super repo" for myself at these companies using submodules, so that I can actually work with the code more easily, but that still requires me to check in maybe 5 or more PRs for one feature, so it's not ideal. This only solves the developer's problems with local tools and still requires more complex debugging since the services are not actually in one repo under one config for deployment.
I'd expect we get more and more of these pieces as Ethereum gets closer to moving to proof of stake. The current estimate is that it'll transition 2022Q1
I invested (way, way, way below the line) in a show which opened off–Broadway a few weeks ago. Had rave reviews when it ran outside NYC and was supposed to open in April 2020. For some odd reason they had to delay the opening to November 2021. It opened, the audience seemed to love it, but one review in the home town paper of record tanked it, I expect it to close this week or next.

Off-off Broadway to Off–Broadway is doable, but the economics of adding that extra seat (499 to 500) and becoming a “Broadway” show are just unrealistic for a lot of shows. Different union requirements, plus the theatres impose different costs, and you have to raise a lot more money to open a Broadway show, regardless of where it’s coming from (out of town, off/off-off, local workshop, etc).

The only "off off" Broadway show I can think of that made it on Broadway in recent times was Hedwig (started in the Jane hotel bar IIRC), and that took a detour through being turned into a movie.

If anything, investing in startups feels easier, I could have spread the same amount of money across multiple startups, figure on losing 33-50%, breaking even a bit, and having one or two return everything. In contrast in a musical or play you’re gambling that the combination of director, cast, band, theatre, mood of the reviewers, mood of the audience will combine just the right way.
I've had pretty good outcomes with Tesseract, but it's command line only and it's not even a small fraction as simple and straightforward and plain useful as the built in tools on Mac OS X.

https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract
> German here... I hate how we say numbers

We have three German+English bilingual kids and maths homework can get a bit soul-destroying when you can see your child knows the numerical answer to a problem and yet instead of saying "64" says "46" (or vice versa).

Our six year old even asked me - just last week - [in English] "Daddy, why do we say the numbers backwards in German?". Me: "Umm...."
> A website without an AAAA can only be used over IPv4.

Nit: if IPv6 is still enabled server-side, it can be used over IPv6 but you can't rely on public DNS for discovery and may have to set Host headers manually.
The intro explaining the weirdness he was exposed to as a result of the channel was eye-opening and shocking to me. Some weirdness is to be expected, but the level of stalking resulting from even such a non-controversial channel is not something I would have thought of.

Edit: Didn't think of the "locksmiths hate it" aspect that probably explains at least some of the crazy (e.g. trackers).
I live near this site (well, 120 miles away, which in Montana is "near"). They scare the birds away because in the past a ton of birds have died after landing on the water. I don't know the mechanism but it's a real thing.
> MS STL at around 64bytes.

Citation? Are you sure it isn't 64 size-independent elements?
I basically agree. There is a point where lines get "too long" but it's more than 80 (or 72) characters on modern systems.

But if I'm working in a code base where all the lines are broken at <80 characters, it makes sense to stick with that rather than introduce inconsistent formatting.

Bottom line, your brain will adapt to either style without a lot of fuss, and consistency helps.
My grandmother would often use that form of words in regular speech.
> Project Oberon: The design of an operating system and compiler - Wirth’s magnum opus is the quintessential example of Computer Science alternative-history world-building.

hilarious
Nit: A, not AA records.
Are you sure the target audience doesn't also find it cringey now? I noticed Hamilton seemed to drop out of the zeitgeist almost overnight at some point. It wasn't as precipitous as Game of Thrones's fall, perhaps, but it was fast. Can you imagine the Obamas saying Hamilton is the “best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life” (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/theater/hamilton-takes-a-...) today? Seems unlikely.
Must watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4dYwEyjZcY

The problem with HTML is the dom and all the clutter around it. It's not really readable, and require browsers to take decisions for ambiguous markup, which involves bloat.
Last year people argued that property rights don't matter and lives are more important. It seems the SFPD is following that practice.
If you disregard that last part, does my comment still feel extremist?
How is it for reading PDF books and research papers?