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CppCon 2018: Simplicity: Not Just For Beginners [video] | Simplicity and C++? Like speaking of rope in the house of the hanged, as we say in Italy... Congrats for the effort though. |
Upgrading GitHub from Rails 3.2 to 5.2 | There are several "we upgraded Rails, it was huge, risky, and took months to years" blog posts from medium to large companies. I personally take this as a warning against using Rails. Ruby is one of the most dangerous dynamic languages to refactor, I don't see how struggling to do it for over a year is a selling point of the framework. It also feels counter to Rails's mantra of delivering value fast with little effort, until you need to upgrade, then you have months of no business value delivery and need to bring in experts to help. |
New Standard Deal | Great that YC is simplifying their deal and making it more standard and easier for founders to understand. Also great that they're switching the standard SAFE to be a post-money SAFE, as this will eliminate a lot of confusion around dilution that resulted from the complicated math of the old standard SAFE.<p>Interestingly, unless I'm understanding this incorrectly, this change might mean a worse deal for founders going through YC. As the post mentions, when calculating the dilution taken from a post-money SAFE, all other money raised on convertible instruments before an equity raise are excluded.<p>Functionally, what this means is that while investors on standard SAFEs are diluted by other SAFE investors before an equity round (as are all common holders), investors on post-money SAFEs are not diluted by other investors on SAFEs before an equity round.<p>So unless I'm misunderstanding this, I believe this means that YC (which was previously a common holder like the founders) will no longer be diluted by the money founders raise on convertible notes or SAFEs before an equity round, whereas before they were diluted by that money.<p>To demonstrate this, I modeled out a scenario where a company goes through YC, raises $2m on a $10m cap pre-money SAFE after demo day, and then raises a $10m Series A equity round at a $30m pre-money valuation. Scenario A shows the old YC deal where YC has 7% common, and Scenario B shows the new YC deal where YC invests on a post-money SAFE<p>Scenario A: <a href="http://angelcalc.com/model?mod=802&dispShare=0e55666a4ad822e0e34299df3591d979" rel="nofollow">http://angelcalc.com/model?mod=802&dispShare=0e55666a4ad822e...</a><p>Scenario B: <a href="http://angelcalc.com/model?mod=803&dispShare=8a50bae297807da9e97722a0b3fd8f27" rel="nofollow">http://angelcalc.com/model?mod=803&dispShare=8a50bae297807da...</a><p>Note: click "Model" to see the results. In Scenario A, YC is listed as "YC" and in Scenario B YC is listed as "Post SAFE-0 (2.1mm)". As you can see YC ends up with 1.575% more equity in Scenario B.<p>The simplicity of this change is great but it's important that founders understand the downside as well. Team YC, if I'm misunderstanding this, please let me know. |
A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother | Churchill was a notorious scoundrel, constantly in debt and bailed out by unsavoury characters
<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/no-more-champagne-churchill-and-money-david-lough-review/" rel="nofollow">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/no-more-champ...</a><p>'...On his first day at school, Winston Churchill asked his mother for more cash. She groused: “You do get through it in the most rapid manner… and the more you have the more you want to spend.” He was 13, and already he was spending more than a family “of six or seven have to live upon”..... |
But don’t let that distract you; it was designed to kill people (2017) | I don't understand this guy at all. Two things confuse me:<p>First, the purpose of a military is to be able to break things and harm people as effectively as possible. Did he think his job would involve making the military less effective?<p>Second, why is it bad to work on software that's used to kill people? Killing isn't necessarily bad. If this software helped kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or Ayman al-Zawahiri, it would have a hugely positive impact upon the world.<p>To me, the post comes across as a bunch of meandering moral grandstanding. The core thesis is either utterly pedestrian ("Think about the consequences of what you’re building.") or totally fringe (that helping the US military is immoral). |
But don’t let that distract you; it was designed to kill people (2017) | I don't understand this guy at all. Two things confuse me:<p>First, the purpose of a military is to be able to break things and harm people as effectively as possible. Did he think his job would involve making the military less effective?<p>Second, why is it bad to work on software that's used to kill people? Killing isn't necessarily bad. If this software helped kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or Ayman al-Zawahiri, it would have a hugely positive impact upon the world.<p>To me, the post comes across as a bunch of meandering moral grandstanding. The core thesis is either utterly pedestrian ("Think about the consequences of what you’re building.") or totally fringe (that helping the US military is immoral). |
How counterfeits benefit Amazon | There’s a dive torch popular amongst newbie divers, the LED Lenser Frogman. I actually have one myself, they’re pretty neat, tho’ obv no substitute for my Light Monkeys. It should retail for £35-40 but you see knock offs on Amazon for <£7. Now this is potentially a piece of safety-critical equipment, and it’s totally unacceptable for Amazon to not police it better.<p>But commingling the stock so even genuine buyers get the knockoffs is plumbing new depths of sleaze. |
Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them? | Computer Science degree.<p>Sure, lots of us "learnt" programming in our bedrooms or whatever by doing our own thing and messing about in whatever language. I went into my compsci degree arrogantly thinking that I pretty much knew how to code already so please just give me the bit of paper saying I have the degree and I'll be on my way thanks very much.<p>I was very wrong.<p>Although I was pretty good at the coding (or at least I like to think so), I learnt so much more of the theory that is as relevant today as it was then, and as it was decades before that too. It stretched me in ways I did not even know I could be stretched - I dont think I would never have learnt the "hard" theory that transcends specific programming languages if I was just tinkering around on my own or reading a "How to program Python/Visual Basic 6/PHP/C#" books etc (aged myself there with VB6!).<p>More or less every day I still use those skills/knowledge I learnt on my degree, but not only that I came out beaming with confidence and the knowledge that I <i>knew my stuff</i>.<p>As a direct result of my degree I enjoy a pretty cushy, well-paid, well-perked, and secure job at a company that many people dream of working at, and have done for years. Sure it was 4 years and a few thousand GBP (at the time in the UK - more expensive now) but totally 100% worth it - I genuinely dont think I'd be where I am now if I had not done the degree. |
Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them? | Computer Science degree.<p>Sure, lots of us "learnt" programming in our bedrooms or whatever by doing our own thing and messing about in whatever language. I went into my compsci degree arrogantly thinking that I pretty much knew how to code already so please just give me the bit of paper saying I have the degree and I'll be on my way thanks very much.<p>I was very wrong.<p>Although I was pretty good at the coding (or at least I like to think so), I learnt so much more of the theory that is as relevant today as it was then, and as it was decades before that too. It stretched me in ways I did not even know I could be stretched - I dont think I would never have learnt the "hard" theory that transcends specific programming languages if I was just tinkering around on my own or reading a "How to program Python/Visual Basic 6/PHP/C#" books etc (aged myself there with VB6!).<p>More or less every day I still use those skills/knowledge I learnt on my degree, but not only that I came out beaming with confidence and the knowledge that I <i>knew my stuff</i>.<p>As a direct result of my degree I enjoy a pretty cushy, well-paid, well-perked, and secure job at a company that many people dream of working at, and have done for years. Sure it was 4 years and a few thousand GBP (at the time in the UK - more expensive now) but totally 100% worth it - I genuinely dont think I'd be where I am now if I had not done the degree. |
Ask HN: What things have richly rewarded the time invested in mastering them? | Computer Science degree.<p>Sure, lots of us "learnt" programming in our bedrooms or whatever by doing our own thing and messing about in whatever language. I went into my compsci degree arrogantly thinking that I pretty much knew how to code already so please just give me the bit of paper saying I have the degree and I'll be on my way thanks very much.<p>I was very wrong.<p>Although I was pretty good at the coding (or at least I like to think so), I learnt so much more of the theory that is as relevant today as it was then, and as it was decades before that too. It stretched me in ways I did not even know I could be stretched - I dont think I would never have learnt the "hard" theory that transcends specific programming languages if I was just tinkering around on my own or reading a "How to program Python/Visual Basic 6/PHP/C#" books etc (aged myself there with VB6!).<p>More or less every day I still use those skills/knowledge I learnt on my degree, but not only that I came out beaming with confidence and the knowledge that I <i>knew my stuff</i>.<p>As a direct result of my degree I enjoy a pretty cushy, well-paid, well-perked, and secure job at a company that many people dream of working at, and have done for years. Sure it was 4 years and a few thousand GBP (at the time in the UK - more expensive now) but totally 100% worth it - I genuinely dont think I'd be where I am now if I had not done the degree. |
Spice is throwing up problems not seen with other drugs | > drugs that hit the same brain receptors as cannabis but are more potent and addictive<p>Okay, why there are using cannabis as an example and not other substances that react with those receptors, like chocolate?
It is better as they abstained from using the term "synthetic marijuana", but you can still sense an agenda.
Things like this put me off from reading news pieces. If I see so much foul language and twisting things to put a certain angle on the topic - on the topic I am fairly knowledgeable, then how much propaganda is being served in the topic I know little about?
This is a disgrace to journalism. Apologies for my rant. |
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017) | We have this weird fetish these last few years with asserting in broad language that people don't change their minds, don't respond to evidence, dig their heels in further when presented with evidence that contradicts their preconceived opinions, etc. It's all over pop psychology and the headlines.<p>Bugs the heck out of me, because if the language they use is literally true, then no one would ever be convinced to change their minds ever. And yet, we do.<p>It's true that perhaps <i>some</i> or <i>many</i> people never change their minds, or that all people might be <i>apt</i> to behave that way when they're not focusing their attention, but that's wildly different language then the headlines use.<p>This article is obviously guilty as well - "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds". Like, ever? The content of the article doesn't back up the headline, but the headline is what people remember.<p>Even some of the content is probably guilty. In the Stanford capital punishment study, is it really true that <i>each and every individual</i> in the study responded as they describe? Because that's how the article is written.<p>And the problem is it gives people more excuse to give up - to not engage with someone who is wrong, or to dismiss someone who is right (that they think is wrong). Because, studies!<p>The real lesson is the opposite - that we have to study and learn critical thinking, and practice, as a discipline, changing our minds when the evidence or reasoning warrants it. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible, and in fact the ability to do so is part of what makes us an evolved species - or more generally, our ability to surpass our instincts and evolved traits.<p>Show me some experiments that demonstrate what conditions need to be in place, in order for people to change their minds after they've proven to be resistant. (Hint: psychological safety and lack of time pressure.) That's what'll be valuable. I'm tired of all these other studies that just say we don't. |
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017) | We have this weird fetish these last few years with asserting in broad language that people don't change their minds, don't respond to evidence, dig their heels in further when presented with evidence that contradicts their preconceived opinions, etc. It's all over pop psychology and the headlines.<p>Bugs the heck out of me, because if the language they use is literally true, then no one would ever be convinced to change their minds ever. And yet, we do.<p>It's true that perhaps <i>some</i> or <i>many</i> people never change their minds, or that all people might be <i>apt</i> to behave that way when they're not focusing their attention, but that's wildly different language then the headlines use.<p>This article is obviously guilty as well - "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds". Like, ever? The content of the article doesn't back up the headline, but the headline is what people remember.<p>Even some of the content is probably guilty. In the Stanford capital punishment study, is it really true that <i>each and every individual</i> in the study responded as they describe? Because that's how the article is written.<p>And the problem is it gives people more excuse to give up - to not engage with someone who is wrong, or to dismiss someone who is right (that they think is wrong). Because, studies!<p>The real lesson is the opposite - that we have to study and learn critical thinking, and practice, as a discipline, changing our minds when the evidence or reasoning warrants it. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible, and in fact the ability to do so is part of what makes us an evolved species - or more generally, our ability to surpass our instincts and evolved traits.<p>Show me some experiments that demonstrate what conditions need to be in place, in order for people to change their minds after they've proven to be resistant. (Hint: psychological safety and lack of time pressure.) That's what'll be valuable. I'm tired of all these other studies that just say we don't. |
U.S. Congress Renews $5M Open Textbook Pilot for Second Year | I'm glad something is being done. But while the public continues to blame the lightning-rods instead of the actual source of the issue, the problem will continue.<p>What I mean is that book publishers take the blame, and LIKE to take the blame, because that takes heat off the actual bad guys in this story: college professors and their departments.<p>It is they that decide which books are used in what courses, and it is they that are given the public trust to protect student's education. Instead they value the kickbacks (in the form of offloaded workload, free materials, free automated testing, etc) over what's best for their students.<p>It is an inherent moral failing in US academia where the almighty dollar has yet again wrecked havoc.<p>Open textbooks won't succeed for the same reason that cheaper textbooks haven't, the gatekeeps, the ones that create the artificial monopoly for particular textbooks: professors/departments, will continue to act in a self-interested and immoral way, and the public will continue to blame publishers. |
Elon Musk Settles SEC Fraud Charges | As a fan (not shareholder, unfortunately) of Tesla, this is great news. When I think of Elon Musk I sometimes think of the movie version of Patton. Hopefully this gets him to settle down on a bit of the drama, and focus on making Tesla succeed and getting SpaceX to Mars... |
Marriage Costs in China Are Out of Control | <i>A good start would be a law that ensures a woman’s claim on marital property in the case of a divorce. Current Chinese law makes no such provision, and thus provides a strong disincentive to marry and a very powerful incentive to charge higher bride prices.</i><p>We have laws like this in Europe. Marriages keep happening later and TFRs keep plummeting. Why would it work any different in China.<p>Journalists always push their prefferred policies even when there's no proof they solve the very clearly stated problem. Subsidize kindergartens! Mandatory, paid maternal leaves! All while populations that implemented them keep collapsing. |
Chipforge opensource foundry [pdf] | I think the vision of creating an open set of processes and standard cells that every foundry could offer is a good one, but they aren't particularly motivated to sign up.<p>I am not confident it will motivate the foundry that this will get any additional customers or will (as a process) be able to fill extra capacity.<p>That said I tried briefly to get some folks together to buy the old Atmel Fab building as a working fab post Microchip acquisition (as I recall it was a 1u fab) but people were talking 10's of millions which wasn't what I was thinking especially since I believe the plan of record is (or was) to just scrap it anyway. |
Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that | We <i>do</i> have tech startups here in Germany, and quite a few of them. It's just that they tend to be funded differently, and with less of the wild valuation-speculation that goes on in the US. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.<p>As a corollary, the article cites European data protection law (in the context of not being able to collect usage data to improve the product) as a barrier to building startups which ... is also very wrong. You can (legally! Ethically! GDPR-compliantly!) collect all sorts of data with which to improve your product. I've seen it done, I've done it myself.<p>There are a lot of people here, German and non-German alike, trying to furiously recreate the SV way of doing things, as if that's the only way to build a strong tech industry. To me that's both uninteresting (why replicate the same model everywhere?) and bad business (not all markets are the same, and that's not a bad thing). Maybe people would be more successfully adapting to the local context. It's certainly working for a handful of startup incubators I know in Berlin. |
Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that | We <i>do</i> have tech startups here in Germany, and quite a few of them. It's just that they tend to be funded differently, and with less of the wild valuation-speculation that goes on in the US. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.<p>As a corollary, the article cites European data protection law (in the context of not being able to collect usage data to improve the product) as a barrier to building startups which ... is also very wrong. You can (legally! Ethically! GDPR-compliantly!) collect all sorts of data with which to improve your product. I've seen it done, I've done it myself.<p>There are a lot of people here, German and non-German alike, trying to furiously recreate the SV way of doing things, as if that's the only way to build a strong tech industry. To me that's both uninteresting (why replicate the same model everywhere?) and bad business (not all markets are the same, and that's not a bad thing). Maybe people would be more successfully adapting to the local context. It's certainly working for a handful of startup incubators I know in Berlin. |
Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that | The mindset in SV is to fail fast - yes, with all the consequences for the investors. That's why investing in startups is a high risk investment. And that's also why the cautious way of doing business in Europe doesn't help with the startup economy. Being too cautious prevents from taking high risks.<p>I interviewed several times with startups proud of not having any funding behind. Very nice. Still, my question is... Who cares? The main difference is that in the USA money is constantly being invested, there is a lot of debt but that's the way to innovate. In Europe on the other hand, if you fail, or if you make debts you better hide yourself. |
Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that | The mindset in SV is to fail fast - yes, with all the consequences for the investors. That's why investing in startups is a high risk investment. And that's also why the cautious way of doing business in Europe doesn't help with the startup economy. Being too cautious prevents from taking high risks.<p>I interviewed several times with startups proud of not having any funding behind. Very nice. Still, my question is... Who cares? The main difference is that in the USA money is constantly being invested, there is a lot of debt but that's the way to innovate. In Europe on the other hand, if you fail, or if you make debts you better hide yourself. |
Physicists investigate why matter and antimatter are not mirror images | I’ve always wondered about this, perhaps someone who understands this subject could explain.<p>Say matter and antimatter were created in roughly equal proportions then some collided to create energy. Couldn’t then this energy coalesce back to regular matter through the mass-energy equivalence? E=mc^2? Repeat this a bit and you’d end up with more matter than antimatter.<p>As I said, this is so simple there must be an easy argument against it but I’ve never heard the idea addressed. |
Ancient Viruses Are Buried in Our DNA (2017) | Here's a thought. Perhaps viruses are picking up DNA from host organisms and transmitting them to new hosts as they pass from one to the next. Viruses that transmit advantageous DNA will survive in our genome. Viral DNA can be particularly useful when it has an impact on the morphological development of an organism, i.e. as it is developing from an embryo. If this is true it is not surprising that we find a lot of activation of retro viruses during embryonic development.<p>This also provides us a clue about how cancer develops. These retro viruses are associated with the changing of form and function of the cell within which they are contained, since they impact this within the development of the embryo. When they are activated within adult cells they drive similar functional changes. Which might be why many cancers, seem, to me, to look like distinct entities, like the tissue has suddenly switched to a different functional mode. It's not just one characteristic of the tissue that has changed to make it dangerous, but a whole constellation of changes that together seem to form a unified whole. I.e. we are looking at groups of changes transported into the genome by a virus that has propagated because those changes are advantageous to the host organism. These changes do not suddenly arise within the body due selection pressures on the tissue, but are activated and mediated by the virus.<p>This kind of cross species transportation of DNA, could well be analogous to what we see at the microbial level, where horizontal gene transfer is an important driver of evolution. |
Kubernetes Is a Surprisingly Affordable Platform for Personal Projects | The list of things mentioned in the article to do and learn for a simple, personal project with k8s is absolutely staggering, in my opinion.<p>Having used it, there's a sizeable amount of further work needed which the article doesn't mention (e.g. learning how to use the pretty confusing google interface, finding the right logs and using their tools). So the overhead is really huge.<p>Furthermore, the whole system is slow. Want to run a SQL query against your postgres? You need to use a google cloud command that changes the firewall and ssh's you in on the machine... and this takes a couple of minutes, just enough to make me desist unless I _really_ need to run that query. Abysmal.<p>Finally, and this is a pet peeve against many advocacy blog posts, they just show you the happy path! Sure, _in the best of cases_ you just edit a file. In a more realistic case, you'll be stuck with a remote management system which is incredibly rich but also a really steep learning curve. Your setup is not performant? Good luck. Need to tweak or fine tune? Again, best of luck.<p>We've tried to adopt k8s 3-4 times at work and every single time productivity dropped significantly without having significant benefits over normal provisioning of machines. {Edit: this does not mean k8s is bad, but rather that we are probably not the right use case for it!}<p>...which in turn is usually significantly slower than building your own home server (but that's another story!) |
Kubernetes Is a Surprisingly Affordable Platform for Personal Projects | The list of things mentioned in the article to do and learn for a simple, personal project with k8s is absolutely staggering, in my opinion.<p>Having used it, there's a sizeable amount of further work needed which the article doesn't mention (e.g. learning how to use the pretty confusing google interface, finding the right logs and using their tools). So the overhead is really huge.<p>Furthermore, the whole system is slow. Want to run a SQL query against your postgres? You need to use a google cloud command that changes the firewall and ssh's you in on the machine... and this takes a couple of minutes, just enough to make me desist unless I _really_ need to run that query. Abysmal.<p>Finally, and this is a pet peeve against many advocacy blog posts, they just show you the happy path! Sure, _in the best of cases_ you just edit a file. In a more realistic case, you'll be stuck with a remote management system which is incredibly rich but also a really steep learning curve. Your setup is not performant? Good luck. Need to tweak or fine tune? Again, best of luck.<p>We've tried to adopt k8s 3-4 times at work and every single time productivity dropped significantly without having significant benefits over normal provisioning of machines. {Edit: this does not mean k8s is bad, but rather that we are probably not the right use case for it!}<p>...which in turn is usually significantly slower than building your own home server (but that's another story!) |
Kubernetes Is a Surprisingly Affordable Platform for Personal Projects | The list of things mentioned in the article to do and learn for a simple, personal project with k8s is absolutely staggering, in my opinion.<p>Having used it, there's a sizeable amount of further work needed which the article doesn't mention (e.g. learning how to use the pretty confusing google interface, finding the right logs and using their tools). So the overhead is really huge.<p>Furthermore, the whole system is slow. Want to run a SQL query against your postgres? You need to use a google cloud command that changes the firewall and ssh's you in on the machine... and this takes a couple of minutes, just enough to make me desist unless I _really_ need to run that query. Abysmal.<p>Finally, and this is a pet peeve against many advocacy blog posts, they just show you the happy path! Sure, _in the best of cases_ you just edit a file. In a more realistic case, you'll be stuck with a remote management system which is incredibly rich but also a really steep learning curve. Your setup is not performant? Good luck. Need to tweak or fine tune? Again, best of luck.<p>We've tried to adopt k8s 3-4 times at work and every single time productivity dropped significantly without having significant benefits over normal provisioning of machines. {Edit: this does not mean k8s is bad, but rather that we are probably not the right use case for it!}<p>...which in turn is usually significantly slower than building your own home server (but that's another story!) |
DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf] | Virginia went back to paper ballots and optical ballot scanning several years ago. I think the only drawback to this approach is storing the ballots for X years after an election (takes up space). But, it's far more secure and easy for everyone to do. Just like taking a high school test... pencil in the circle.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_scan_voting_system" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_scan_voting_system</a> |
DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf] | From the "Next Steps" section in the report:<p>>Congress Must Fund Election Security: National defense is not the role of state and local
government. Further, no state or local government will ever be able to raise enough capital to
defend itself from a determined nation state. Thus, having codified the basic security standards
developed by local election officials above, Congress must finance the implementation of these
security standards.<p>Well. We tried: <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republicans-block-bid-to-extend-election-security-grants" rel="nofollow">https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republicans-block-bid-...</a> |
M.B.A. Applications Decline at Harvard, Wharton, Other Elite Schools | In engineering circles (coworkers), there is a general theme I notice of looking down on people with MBAs. I dismiss it as “us vs. them” or “technical vs managerial” fight. But, could someone who has a MBA shed some light with an objective view of MBA? Why shouldn’t I get one? Why should I get one? |
What Made Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem Hard to Prove | What made the theorem hard is not the details, which are simple, it's the conceptual leap to thinking about mathematical statements as mathematical objects - something that is much easier for us than for mathematicians of Godel's time because we are familiar with programs and computers. Much of the text is taken up with proving things that were surprising to mathematicians of the era, but are now commonplace: e.g. that we can treat numbers as encoding mathematical propositions so that for every proposition P expressible in some formal logic L, there is a number #P which encodes P in some unambiguous way - as long as L is expressive enough to formalize some basic arithmetic. Then we can start making trouble by asking if we can construct a proposition Q so that Q(#P) is true iff the proposition #P encodes, P, is provable in our system. If so, we should be able to prove Q(#P) or NOT Q(#P) if L is complete, but things don't work out well because it's possible to encode paradoxical statements. In short. |
What Made Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem Hard to Prove | What made the theorem hard is not the details, which are simple, it's the conceptual leap to thinking about mathematical statements as mathematical objects - something that is much easier for us than for mathematicians of Godel's time because we are familiar with programs and computers. Much of the text is taken up with proving things that were surprising to mathematicians of the era, but are now commonplace: e.g. that we can treat numbers as encoding mathematical propositions so that for every proposition P expressible in some formal logic L, there is a number #P which encodes P in some unambiguous way - as long as L is expressive enough to formalize some basic arithmetic. Then we can start making trouble by asking if we can construct a proposition Q so that Q(#P) is true iff the proposition #P encodes, P, is provable in our system. If so, we should be able to prove Q(#P) or NOT Q(#P) if L is complete, but things don't work out well because it's possible to encode paradoxical statements. In short. |
What Made Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem Hard to Prove | What made the theorem hard is not the details, which are simple, it's the conceptual leap to thinking about mathematical statements as mathematical objects - something that is much easier for us than for mathematicians of Godel's time because we are familiar with programs and computers. Much of the text is taken up with proving things that were surprising to mathematicians of the era, but are now commonplace: e.g. that we can treat numbers as encoding mathematical propositions so that for every proposition P expressible in some formal logic L, there is a number #P which encodes P in some unambiguous way - as long as L is expressive enough to formalize some basic arithmetic. Then we can start making trouble by asking if we can construct a proposition Q so that Q(#P) is true iff the proposition #P encodes, P, is provable in our system. If so, we should be able to prove Q(#P) or NOT Q(#P) if L is complete, but things don't work out well because it's possible to encode paradoxical statements. In short. |
Unpublished and Untenured, a Philosopher Inspired a Cult Following | "It is raining, but I don't believe it is raining" is certainly valid if I propose it as one possible thing happening in the world, and yet if I make that statement with the added context of "[I am asserting that right now] it is raining..." then it is clearly contradictory. Stripping away context makes the statement naturally ambiguous, and yet some decision is being made about what kind of context is "correct" or "logical"? Am I missing something here? |
Sourcegraph is now open source | I'm especially interested in open source/free software businesses and business models. Are you planning to do an open core kind of thing, or maintain full on open source while charging for hosting and/or other services? I realise that might be a difficult question to answer as you might want to keep your options open, so I'm not asking for a commitment :-) I'm just curious about your plans.<p>Also do you ever think you might add (for want of a better phrase) custom development services if you aren't already? For example, allowing people to pay a fee to get specific features added to Sourcegraph. What are the kinds of benefits and risks you might see from going in that kind of direction?<p>I've noticed that a lot of open core businesses tend to avoid offering customer development services -- and if they do it's often perceived as a cost centre rather than a profit centre. It's something that is provided out of necessity of having to provide custom solutions for a few big customers, but the services team often appears to be at odds with the core development team. As you have obviously gone through the thought process of how to make money when your software is out in the open, I wonder what kinds of thoughts you have on that topic.<p>It's really nice to see this kinds of stuff happening and I wish you the best luck possible in your endeavours! |
Introducing Haskell to a Company | I like haskell. It reads like a math proof more than a cooking recipe. very elegant. I'm a math guy and i'd love to get back to it in my free time.<p>But i don't think i could recommend it for the enterprise. not honestly. I tried to do a professional project in Haskell once. it was a good fit, since it was about parsing and generating configuration. However I was still new to it. the bottom line: it's just not that great for newbies. since most people are going to be newbies at it, i could not recommend it at all. sometimes i think the language even goes over my head, and I'm supposed to be a pretty smart cookie.<p>OP makes 'they are not going to be productive for months' sound like an obstacle to overcome. But if I tell management the honest story in advance and they will obviously not give me the greenlight.<p>But i suppose it is a language that's a reasonably easy sell to management if you hype up the reliability stemming from the type system and skip over the downsides. managers dont know much about programming, but they hate incidents even more than developers. if you are honest, you have to tell them that in practise operational problems become more likely. I mean: ever tried to install ghc on a centos server behind a firewall?<p>If i have to recommend something now it would be python. because it's easy and because i started using it for my personal stuff. i know lots of languages and that's what i end up coming back to if i need to do stuff quickly.<p>OP doesn't even mention the real advantage to introducing Haskell. Few colleagues will end up being good at this, so if a piece of critical software is written in Haskell and you are the only one who is a great Haskell engineer, it increases your negotiating power in the company. people won't be able to get around you and it will be hard to deny a request for increased compensation. |
The Costs of Programming Language Fragmentation | I also disagree with the premise of this article, and I do not think the argument presented here is compelling at all. The motivations that spur people to do work are complex and diverse, and this article seems to pretend otherwise. For example:<p>> but it's common for new languages to trigger reimplementation of, e.g., container data structures, HTTP clients, and random number generators. If the new language did not exist, that effort could have been spent on improving existing libraries or some other useful endeavour.<p>Yes, it <i>could</i> have, but would it? Speaking as someone who has done some of this reimplementation work in a newer language, I can unequivocally say that it would not in my case. I'm just one data point, but I don't think I'm unusual. There is an aspect of greenfield development that is appealing to me. It is a somewhat unique opportunity to execute a vision with a lot of freedom. There is also the benefit of new forms of expression that new tools give you. I'm painting with broad strokes here, but I'm generally a believer in the idea that tools themselves can both limit and empower the expression of ideas.<p>If it weren't for the new language, I surely would have done something else with my time. I don't know what it would be, but I know it would not be trying to expend the social capital required to make small incremental improvements to existing software using tools that I find too limited. As another commenter mentioned, I might have just watched more Netflix. |
Brendan Eich Writes to the US Senate: We Need a GDPR for the United States | The practical effect of GDPR seems to me that I have to click away about half a dozen consent popups every day. Sometimes a cookie warning in addition to that.<p>If I use Private Browsing (to protect my privacy) I am punished with more popups. If I open a website within a browser shell on mobile that doesn't have my cookies (some kind of webview of an app), I am punished with more popups.<p>Am I expected to look at every one of those dialogs and figure out what I have to click to "customize" my tracking?<p>Then there are the technical problems; one of those consent "solutions" that you see around actually shows a spinner while your "preferences are being saved". Sometimes it never closes.<p>I am frankly already so tired of this that I don't even care to look which of the buttons says "Agree" and which one says "Refuse". I just click on whatever I see. I know for certain that for less experienced users (my parents), every additional button to click is just another hindrance to achieving what they need to do. The thought "what if I click the wrong thing" is a permanent companion of their computer use.<p>These are very real, very concrete negative effects of GDPR. Is there something that we gained to make me feel better next time I am annoyed with all the popups? |
Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees | There's been similar moves in the past. Most famous of which is Ford's $5 / day. <a href="http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-perspective/ford-doubles-minimum-wage.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-per...</a><p>Ford's quote from the time is relevant today:
“The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers. One’s own employees ought to be one’s own best customers.” |
Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees | There's been similar moves in the past. Most famous of which is Ford's $5 / day. <a href="http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-perspective/ford-doubles-minimum-wage.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-per...</a><p>Ford's quote from the time is relevant today:
“The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers. One’s own employees ought to be one’s own best customers.” |
Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees | Opponents of the minimum wage argue that it reduces employment by creating an artificial floor on wages, that jobs are lost because employers can't afford to pay the minimum. But if you can't pay the minimum, then you didn't really have a job to offer in the first place!<p>By extension of this logic, employers could argue that they are losing jobs because they can only afford to pay someone who will work 12 hours a day, or can only afford to pay child workers, or can only afford to hire if they get a huge payroll tax cut. Granted, in the job market there are people who would take sub-minimum wage pay for a variety of reasons -- desperation, lack of education, lack of options near their home, felony record, undocumented status, etc. But it is disingenuous to suggest that just because there are people who would take such jobs, that our economy should allow employers to get away with it.<p>If you can't pay a basic living wage, for fair hours, in safe conditions, with necessary medical benefits, then you don't have a job to offer. |
Coders Automating Their Own Job | You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years.<p>I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is there inherent nobility in work itself?" seems to be just as much a political divide as any of the current popular hot-button issues. Your gut reaction says a lot about the regional values of where you grew up, whether you'd ever support a basic income, and whether you believe that someone's refusal to work should condemn them to destitution.<p>The closest comparison is the attitude people have if they find a wallet. In Japan, you will get your wallet back with cash intact. Yet in the west, there exists a large contingent of people who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it, that the person who lost it should have been more careful, that they are just having a lucky day. Unless God shows up and declares one side to be ethically correct, it will remain a toss-up.<p>One thing I find fascinating about the article is that it's assumed the cleverness was the code written to automate. This is incorrect; the cleverness is in noticing when a task can be automated. Typically, the code itself is trivial.<p>Anyhow: automation is surely one of the best reasons every person should learn a little bit of programming. And even with that task accomplished, I suspect that the rate of people seeing the opportunity to automate will stay roughly flat. |
Coders Automating Their Own Job | You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years.<p>I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is there inherent nobility in work itself?" seems to be just as much a political divide as any of the current popular hot-button issues. Your gut reaction says a lot about the regional values of where you grew up, whether you'd ever support a basic income, and whether you believe that someone's refusal to work should condemn them to destitution.<p>The closest comparison is the attitude people have if they find a wallet. In Japan, you will get your wallet back with cash intact. Yet in the west, there exists a large contingent of people who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it, that the person who lost it should have been more careful, that they are just having a lucky day. Unless God shows up and declares one side to be ethically correct, it will remain a toss-up.<p>One thing I find fascinating about the article is that it's assumed the cleverness was the code written to automate. This is incorrect; the cleverness is in noticing when a task can be automated. Typically, the code itself is trivial.<p>Anyhow: automation is surely one of the best reasons every person should learn a little bit of programming. And even with that task accomplished, I suspect that the rate of people seeing the opportunity to automate will stay roughly flat. |
Coders Automating Their Own Job | You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years.<p>I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is there inherent nobility in work itself?" seems to be just as much a political divide as any of the current popular hot-button issues. Your gut reaction says a lot about the regional values of where you grew up, whether you'd ever support a basic income, and whether you believe that someone's refusal to work should condemn them to destitution.<p>The closest comparison is the attitude people have if they find a wallet. In Japan, you will get your wallet back with cash intact. Yet in the west, there exists a large contingent of people who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it, that the person who lost it should have been more careful, that they are just having a lucky day. Unless God shows up and declares one side to be ethically correct, it will remain a toss-up.<p>One thing I find fascinating about the article is that it's assumed the cleverness was the code written to automate. This is incorrect; the cleverness is in noticing when a task can be automated. Typically, the code itself is trivial.<p>Anyhow: automation is surely one of the best reasons every person should learn a little bit of programming. And even with that task accomplished, I suspect that the rate of people seeing the opportunity to automate will stay roughly flat. |
Coders Automating Their Own Job | You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years.<p>I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is there inherent nobility in work itself?" seems to be just as much a political divide as any of the current popular hot-button issues. Your gut reaction says a lot about the regional values of where you grew up, whether you'd ever support a basic income, and whether you believe that someone's refusal to work should condemn them to destitution.<p>The closest comparison is the attitude people have if they find a wallet. In Japan, you will get your wallet back with cash intact. Yet in the west, there exists a large contingent of people who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it, that the person who lost it should have been more careful, that they are just having a lucky day. Unless God shows up and declares one side to be ethically correct, it will remain a toss-up.<p>One thing I find fascinating about the article is that it's assumed the cleverness was the code written to automate. This is incorrect; the cleverness is in noticing when a task can be automated. Typically, the code itself is trivial.<p>Anyhow: automation is surely one of the best reasons every person should learn a little bit of programming. And even with that task accomplished, I suspect that the rate of people seeing the opportunity to automate will stay roughly flat. |
Coders Automating Their Own Job | You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years.<p>I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is there inherent nobility in work itself?" seems to be just as much a political divide as any of the current popular hot-button issues. Your gut reaction says a lot about the regional values of where you grew up, whether you'd ever support a basic income, and whether you believe that someone's refusal to work should condemn them to destitution.<p>The closest comparison is the attitude people have if they find a wallet. In Japan, you will get your wallet back with cash intact. Yet in the west, there exists a large contingent of people who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it, that the person who lost it should have been more careful, that they are just having a lucky day. Unless God shows up and declares one side to be ethically correct, it will remain a toss-up.<p>One thing I find fascinating about the article is that it's assumed the cleverness was the code written to automate. This is incorrect; the cleverness is in noticing when a task can be automated. Typically, the code itself is trivial.<p>Anyhow: automation is surely one of the best reasons every person should learn a little bit of programming. And even with that task accomplished, I suspect that the rate of people seeing the opportunity to automate will stay roughly flat. |
Coders Automating Their Own Job | You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years.<p>I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is there inherent nobility in work itself?" seems to be just as much a political divide as any of the current popular hot-button issues. Your gut reaction says a lot about the regional values of where you grew up, whether you'd ever support a basic income, and whether you believe that someone's refusal to work should condemn them to destitution.<p>The closest comparison is the attitude people have if they find a wallet. In Japan, you will get your wallet back with cash intact. Yet in the west, there exists a large contingent of people who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it, that the person who lost it should have been more careful, that they are just having a lucky day. Unless God shows up and declares one side to be ethically correct, it will remain a toss-up.<p>One thing I find fascinating about the article is that it's assumed the cleverness was the code written to automate. This is incorrect; the cleverness is in noticing when a task can be automated. Typically, the code itself is trivial.<p>Anyhow: automation is surely one of the best reasons every person should learn a little bit of programming. And even with that task accomplished, I suspect that the rate of people seeing the opportunity to automate will stay roughly flat. |
Why Are Enterprises So Slow? | For me the #1 reason why they are slow is because everything requires consensus or maybe another way of putting it it's hard for people to make a decision on their own.<p>Let's say I want to change some part of the UI of some app. If I'm by myself I just change it. If I'm on a team first I have to convince whoever has the power to decide to change it to allow it to be changed, that might even be a whole committee. Then several people will be involved, likely a UX designer, possible a separate UI designer, all of which will have to discuss the feature and all of which also have other responsibilities.<p>The larger the company the worse this usually gets. Maybe the change has to be run by the security team to make sure the new UI is not a security issue. Maybe it has to run by the privacy team to make sure it's not going to leak data. Maybe it has to be run by an inclusivity team to make sure it's not offensive in some culture I'm not familiar with. Maybe it has to be run by a localization team to make sure it will work in every language.<p>All of those things add time. Maybe they are all required and good, especially at a large company with a global marketplace but they certainly add to the time taken to do something that a tiny team wouldn't do. |
Should you learn C to “learn how the computer works”? | I find this article to be disingenuous. Yes, C isnt "how a computer really works". Neither is assembly. The way a computer works is based off of transistors and some concepts built on top of that (ALUs for example). However, there is no need to know about any of that because you're presented with an abstraction (assembly). And thats really what people mean when they say C is closer to how a computer actually works: its a language with fewer abstractions than many others (most notably, its lack of garbage collection, object oriented behaviors, and a small runtime). That lack of abstraction means that you have to implement those concepts if you want to use them which will give you an understanding of how those abstractions work in the language that has them built in. |
Black holes ruled out as universe’s missing dark matter | Does this mean that black holes possibly might not even exist? Aren't there examples of them being directly observed? |
Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla: Fight the S.E.C., or I Quit | These articles about Elon are interesting to me because Tesla could not have become such a valuable car company in such a short time if it wasn't for Elon, and that includes his personality.<p>Yet, many couch investors would prefer to have a CEO who is stable, boring and predictable. People want to put their money in for steady long-term returns, and not worry. Tesla is doing wild things which are causing crazy growth, but also crazy panic.<p>It seems the market really wants Tesla to slow down so they can sell more stock to an average risk-averse consumer, but Elon wants to keep running light-speed, regardless of the short-term worry that it might create. Neither is wrong, they just have different priorities. |
Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship | I'm not a big fan of this article at all. Firstly, if you want to try and actually persuade people of a point don't preface your entire discussion by deciding to use an epithet to describe what you're discussing. How can I take seriously someone who goes straight in and goes "This is grievance studies"? It seems kind of funky how meta it is to adopt that epithet and then go on to make the accusation that the people you are talking about are acting in bad faith.<p>Reading through the methodology I'm really struggling to see what the actual value of what they're doing is. For example - the Dog Park study:<p>>What if we write a paper saying we should train men like we do dogs—to prevent rape culture? Hence came the “Dog Park” paper.<p>If you want to assert that this is a nutty idea - please back up that claim. Because I feel fairly comfortable arguing that we can learn a lot about social constructs by studying how they differ in other species. There's nothing wrong with that concept. Maybe there's something glaringly wrong in that particular paper, but these authors do nothing to actually demonstrate that.<p>Later on that go into detail with this. That paper is meant to have implausible statistics. Ok, what is peer review meant to do? Reject studies that have implausible findings? We have a word for that - Bias. The correct response to a paper with implausible findings is to publish it and let people follow up and do their own studies. That is the system working correctly.<p>As for advocating for outlandish actions as a result of the study. Well authors are welcome to suggest anything that like as a result of their research. Publishing it doesn't imply endorsement. It implies "This is a real study".<p>So let's talk science. I have a confounding variable - bad studies got published because it's better to publish lots and let the academic community decide the merits of the study than to censor what you think is either implausible or has troubling parts. That explains all the results of this study without the wildly insulting and vaguely conspiracy theorist assertion that these papers get published because of an agenda on the part of academics. |
Kubernetes for personal projects? No thanks | Oh man, the original article went way over the author's head. The point of the original article was that even though Kubernetes is <i>primarily</i> useful for tackling the challenges involved with running many workloads at enterprise scale, it <i>can</i> also be used to run small hobbyist workloads at a price point acceptable for hobbyist projects.<p>Does that mean that Kubernetes should now be used for <i>all</i> hobbyist projects? No. If I'm thinking of playing around with a Raspberry Pi or other SBC, do I need to install Kubernetes on the SBC first? If I'm thinking of playing around with IoT or serverless, should I dump AWS- or GCE-proprietary tools because nobody will ever run anything that that can't run on Kubernetes ever again? If I'm going to play around with React or React Native, should I write up a backend just so I can have something that I can run in a Kubernetes cluster, because all hobbyist projects must run Kubernetes now, because it's cheap enough for hobbyist projects? If I'm going to play around with machine learning at home, buy a machine with a heavy GPU, figure out how to get Kubernetes to schedule my machine learning workload correctly instead of just running it directly on that machine, because uhhh maybe someday I'll have three such machines with powerful GPUs plus other home servers for all my other hobbyist projects?<p>No, no, no, no, no. Clearly.<p>But maybe I envision my side project turning into full-time startup some day. Maybe I see all the news about Kubernetes and think it would be cool to be more familiar with it. Nah, probably too expensive. Oh wait, I can get something running for $5? Hey, that's pretty neat!<p>Different people will use different solutions for different project requirements. |
Kubernetes for personal projects? No thanks | Oh man, the original article went way over the author's head. The point of the original article was that even though Kubernetes is <i>primarily</i> useful for tackling the challenges involved with running many workloads at enterprise scale, it <i>can</i> also be used to run small hobbyist workloads at a price point acceptable for hobbyist projects.<p>Does that mean that Kubernetes should now be used for <i>all</i> hobbyist projects? No. If I'm thinking of playing around with a Raspberry Pi or other SBC, do I need to install Kubernetes on the SBC first? If I'm thinking of playing around with IoT or serverless, should I dump AWS- or GCE-proprietary tools because nobody will ever run anything that that can't run on Kubernetes ever again? If I'm going to play around with React or React Native, should I write up a backend just so I can have something that I can run in a Kubernetes cluster, because all hobbyist projects must run Kubernetes now, because it's cheap enough for hobbyist projects? If I'm going to play around with machine learning at home, buy a machine with a heavy GPU, figure out how to get Kubernetes to schedule my machine learning workload correctly instead of just running it directly on that machine, because uhhh maybe someday I'll have three such machines with powerful GPUs plus other home servers for all my other hobbyist projects?<p>No, no, no, no, no. Clearly.<p>But maybe I envision my side project turning into full-time startup some day. Maybe I see all the news about Kubernetes and think it would be cool to be more familiar with it. Nah, probably too expensive. Oh wait, I can get something running for $5? Hey, that's pretty neat!<p>Different people will use different solutions for different project requirements. |
Kubernetes for personal projects? No thanks | Oh man, the original article went way over the author's head. The point of the original article was that even though Kubernetes is <i>primarily</i> useful for tackling the challenges involved with running many workloads at enterprise scale, it <i>can</i> also be used to run small hobbyist workloads at a price point acceptable for hobbyist projects.<p>Does that mean that Kubernetes should now be used for <i>all</i> hobbyist projects? No. If I'm thinking of playing around with a Raspberry Pi or other SBC, do I need to install Kubernetes on the SBC first? If I'm thinking of playing around with IoT or serverless, should I dump AWS- or GCE-proprietary tools because nobody will ever run anything that that can't run on Kubernetes ever again? If I'm going to play around with React or React Native, should I write up a backend just so I can have something that I can run in a Kubernetes cluster, because all hobbyist projects must run Kubernetes now, because it's cheap enough for hobbyist projects? If I'm going to play around with machine learning at home, buy a machine with a heavy GPU, figure out how to get Kubernetes to schedule my machine learning workload correctly instead of just running it directly on that machine, because uhhh maybe someday I'll have three such machines with powerful GPUs plus other home servers for all my other hobbyist projects?<p>No, no, no, no, no. Clearly.<p>But maybe I envision my side project turning into full-time startup some day. Maybe I see all the news about Kubernetes and think it would be cool to be more familiar with it. Nah, probably too expensive. Oh wait, I can get something running for $5? Hey, that's pretty neat!<p>Different people will use different solutions for different project requirements. |
Kubernetes for personal projects? No thanks | Oh man, the original article went way over the author's head. The point of the original article was that even though Kubernetes is <i>primarily</i> useful for tackling the challenges involved with running many workloads at enterprise scale, it <i>can</i> also be used to run small hobbyist workloads at a price point acceptable for hobbyist projects.<p>Does that mean that Kubernetes should now be used for <i>all</i> hobbyist projects? No. If I'm thinking of playing around with a Raspberry Pi or other SBC, do I need to install Kubernetes on the SBC first? If I'm thinking of playing around with IoT or serverless, should I dump AWS- or GCE-proprietary tools because nobody will ever run anything that that can't run on Kubernetes ever again? If I'm going to play around with React or React Native, should I write up a backend just so I can have something that I can run in a Kubernetes cluster, because all hobbyist projects must run Kubernetes now, because it's cheap enough for hobbyist projects? If I'm going to play around with machine learning at home, buy a machine with a heavy GPU, figure out how to get Kubernetes to schedule my machine learning workload correctly instead of just running it directly on that machine, because uhhh maybe someday I'll have three such machines with powerful GPUs plus other home servers for all my other hobbyist projects?<p>No, no, no, no, no. Clearly.<p>But maybe I envision my side project turning into full-time startup some day. Maybe I see all the news about Kubernetes and think it would be cool to be more familiar with it. Nah, probably too expensive. Oh wait, I can get something running for $5? Hey, that's pretty neat!<p>Different people will use different solutions for different project requirements. |
Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software developer? | Read at least HackerNews and possibly some other tech news site regularly. And then make sure to not get too caught up in the hype for new stuff.<p>As someone working in technology, you are going to be learning new stuff continually (or your usefulness is going to diminish over time). By keeping up to date with tech news, you get a lot of context for what people are using, what's coming down the pipe etc. You may end up experimenting with stuff and then you'll be ahead of all your colleagues. It broadens your knowledge, and if you have to deal with clients it means you will usually know what they're talking about.<p>There's a few pitfalls to watch out for though. HN is great, but it is still an echochamber that can be focused on web and related tech. I was mostly an embedded software engineer for years and found comments like 'does anyone even use C anymore' hilarious (yes, see Linux kernel, device drivers, and your washing machine for details). It can also be very easy to end up wanting to push for the 'shiny new thing' too early. I tinkered with Rust from very early on, but it's only in the last 6 months or so that I'd suggest it is ready for use in most companies (depending on application area). Javascript frameworks suffer this problem particularly badly. Mature beats shiny 9 times out of 10 - running into a problem that 100 people have met before and posted about on StackOverflow and your tool caters for, is much better than being the first person to encounter said problem. |
Open-source crypto is no better than closed-source crypto | The titular thesis of this article is that Linus' Law doesn't really apply to cryptographic security vulnerabilities.<p>To lend some authority to that (probably controversial) claim: the author of this article is JP Aumasson, a well known cryptography researcher and engineer. There aren't many cryptographers who work in both theory and application the way Aumasson does. He recently wrote <i>Serious Cryptography</i> and has done professional cryptanalysis since 2012. He is also a co- or primary author for several cryptographic algorithms; including BLAKE/BLAKE2, NORX, SipHash, and Gravity SPHINCS.<p>In the course of establishing his argument he groups cryptographic vulnerabilities into four main categories. The basic idea is that vulnerabilities in cryptography require a different set of skills to find than "regular" security vulnerabilities do. They also have different requirements for exploitation. Aumasson's overall point is that the higher difficulty of finding bugs in cryptography for each category means there won't be a meaningful difference in security between open and closed source code.<p>And for what it's worth he's only talking about open versus closed source <i>implementation</i> here. He's not talking about Schneier's Law or closed source designs. |
The Super-Rich Are Stockpiling Wealth in Black-Box Charities | For a great book on how these 'charities' are corrupting American politics, and the specific tax loophole that enables them; check out the book 'Dark Money' by Jane Meyer<p>Reforming this law would cause outrage among the non-profit and charity sector, because it would instantly dry up alot of US philanthropy. It still seems like a necessary reform however. |
Denmark to ban petrol and diesel car sales by 2030 | At the start, I thought these announcements and laws (eg Scotland) to ban ICE vehicles by 20XX were cheap politics. A promise Someone Else will deliver later, with credit due to you now.<p>I've come around though. I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. The idea of a neutral, "market decides" policy is a myth. These things are complex, and that compmexity is an opportunity for regulatory capture.<p>For example, most European vehicle tax codes have been altered to reflect emissions.<p>The upshot is that (1) new vehicles are 20% ish more efficient (2) older vehicles become uneconomical faster (3) people who drive older vehicles clear pay more tax. (4) Switching from a 10yr old ICE hatchback to a new one can easily save you $500 pa. Going from a new "efficient" ICE to an electric will save you a fraction of that.<p>New car buyers pay less tax, old cars pay more. Vehicles hit junkyards faster. Manufacturers sell more cars. Over a decade we'll see a minor (maybe 20% at best) decrease in carbon emissions.<p>Very little environmental juice for a lot of poor and middle class squeeze. A nice little sales boost for VW.<p>There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of an outright ban. Ban ICEs. Ban commercial fishing. It worked for CFCs and market hunting. In retrospect, no one wishes we had split hairs with a complicated policy. |
Denmark to ban petrol and diesel car sales by 2030 | At the start, I thought these announcements and laws (eg Scotland) to ban ICE vehicles by 20XX were cheap politics. A promise Someone Else will deliver later, with credit due to you now.<p>I've come around though. I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. The idea of a neutral, "market decides" policy is a myth. These things are complex, and that compmexity is an opportunity for regulatory capture.<p>For example, most European vehicle tax codes have been altered to reflect emissions.<p>The upshot is that (1) new vehicles are 20% ish more efficient (2) older vehicles become uneconomical faster (3) people who drive older vehicles clear pay more tax. (4) Switching from a 10yr old ICE hatchback to a new one can easily save you $500 pa. Going from a new "efficient" ICE to an electric will save you a fraction of that.<p>New car buyers pay less tax, old cars pay more. Vehicles hit junkyards faster. Manufacturers sell more cars. Over a decade we'll see a minor (maybe 20% at best) decrease in carbon emissions.<p>Very little environmental juice for a lot of poor and middle class squeeze. A nice little sales boost for VW.<p>There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of an outright ban. Ban ICEs. Ban commercial fishing. It worked for CFCs and market hunting. In retrospect, no one wishes we had split hairs with a complicated policy. |
Denmark to ban petrol and diesel car sales by 2030 | As an idealist I'm glad to see the world transition away from fossil fuels in any capacity.<p>As a "Car Guy" however, there is a small sadness that I won't really get to experience much of the internal combustion engine. I feel like I was born a decade too late and a lot too poor. Similar to some techies who feel the missed the early internet. |
New autonomous farm wants to produce food without human workers | <a href="https://youtu.be/xxAaKpRMOTw" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/xxAaKpRMOTw</a> : this is outdoor baby spring mix operation in California. I know whose this is...the grower, packer and distributor..they have perfected it to an art form. When I see social media photos of a young person leaning over a baby plant grown hydroponically with a pair of baby scissors, I have to wonder if they have a clue about the scale and economies of growing outdoors by the established growers.<p>Having said that, my position has always been that lettuce(and strawberries) should be moved indoors because they are ground huggers. Lettuce has been easy to automate indoors but strawberries have continuous fruit production and a canopy and keeps on going for a longer season. So it has proved to be meow difficult. Also needs a lot of targeted lighting because it has to fruit and flower.<p>Automation is a beautiful thing. It comes from a keen study of the repetitive movements that goes into the task at hand. But machines can never replace humans everywhere and for every crop, but it can certainly make farming better.<p>When I attended TechCrunch this year, in one of the panels, (robotics investment by VC) the moderator asked if replacing strawberry pickers with ‘roombas’ is unethical because the strawberry pickers won’t have jobs.<p>I was very upset and am pretty sure she hasn’t picked strawberries bent over or even seen the workers do this for hours and being paid by the clamshells and not by the hour. It is also this kind of thinking that is holding back technology and innovation.<p>Let’s find them other jobs. Better jobs. Make education accessible. Who knows..the strawberry picker could be a genius or a musician or just someone who wants a simpler less back breaking job. Who are these tech people and moderators and VCs go try and ‘save’ farmers and farm workers who desperately need tech to help them.<p>Instead these are the kind of concerns I heard at TechCrunch. It was very disheartening. I am not very hopeful. They are all throwing $$ down the drain and america’s crutch is cheap labour. Europe is far ahead because they don’t have cheap labour. Japan, Middle East and even down under, they are innovating because their pain points are ageing population, water availability in deserts and in Oz.nz, labour. China is making great strides and surpassing EU with their farm tech innovation and especially with robotics.<p>We are being left behind because we are allowing something so essential as food production, distribution to become fodder for politically correct faff talk.<p>I was thinking to myself..that it makes no sense. If you break down some of the concerns ‘tech folk’ who want to ‘help’ farming into words and meanings, it was just dead words...killed by the sword of ignorance and hubris. Unethical to replace strawberry pickers with robots? It was very painful to hear that kind of talk. |
Cities will sue FCC to stop $2B giveaway to wireless carrier | This article is off the reservation. 5G is the best hope for actual competition in broadband. By dramatically decreasing deployment costs (compared to wireline), it will enable several competing providers in places that have <i>de facto</i> monopolies today. Putting up red tape is not the way to go about fostering competition.<p>There are differing views on the appropriate level of regulation for uncompetitive markets and natural monopolies. But almost nobody sane would prefer a regulated market to an actually competitive one. Deregulation of industries like trucking, air freight, and airlines, where there are several competing providers, has proven to be a massively positive thing compared to how things were in the 1930s-1960s. 5G offers that possibility here--the possibility to abandon hairy questions about <i>how</i> to regulate because competitive obviates <i>the need</i> to regulate. Opposing that is madness. |
Psychedelic Mushrooms Are Closer to Medicinal Use | Psychedelic mushrooms are powerful medicine. They have a psychoactive effect which alters brain chemistry and helps neurological disorder. We can see that in the paper. But then so do anti-depressants.<p>I believe the key difference between plant medicines like mushrooms, Peyote, Ayahuasca and others and clinical mood altering medicine is within the ecstatic experience. It is one to thing to have a pill lead you to an empirically more "healthy" brain. It is quite another to embark on a deep, introspective vision which provides a narrative to match the chemical benefit.<p>I volunteer as a guide within Ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru. Many turn to Ayahuasca as a last resort for depression, PTSD, sexual trauma, and much more. I have seen people in ceremony live through what they interpret as a hellish exorcism, an active exploration of their lineage, or a direct confrontation and resolution of their deepest emotional and spiritual trauma. These people often undergo significant positive transformation after the experiences.<p>These profoundly "real" experiences appear to be essential to the healing process.<p>We are creatures of story and psychedelics can help write a _most radical_ chapter of recovery. |
Car crashes killed 37,133 people in the US in 2017 | To all self-driving companies testing on public road, even Waymo, which is the current leader: [1]<p>Why don’t you develop/deploy a face and eye tracking system to detect if the test driver is dozing off or otherwise not paying enough attention and act accordingly? (Warn first, and if needed, take the car to a safe spot and stop.)<p>The system should be useful in real deployment with passenger/driver on board as well, since the self-driving car needs to know if it should obey human’s manual command, which should also depend on the person’s state of attention at the moment.<p>[1] Waymo’s self-driving car crashed because its human driver fell asleep at the wheel <a href="https://qz.com/1410928/waymos-self-driving-car-crashed-because-its-human-driver-fell-asleep/" rel="nofollow">https://qz.com/1410928/waymos-self-driving-car-crashed-becau...</a><p>[2] In addition, we all heard about the case which the test driver was watching a movie and a pedestrian was killed. |
Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans | > Tesla’s competitors are feeling it. Sales of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, the best-selling luxury sedan in the U.S., plunged 24 percent last month and are down 28 percent for the year through September.<p>> And it’s doing so at a higher price than other mass-market cars. The most expensive versions of the Model 3 are currently the most popular, with an average selling price approaching $60,000.<p>It would be very interesting if Tesla's surge in ranking would be caused more by fleeing luxury customers (from brands like the referenced Mercedes) versus gaining new customers. |
The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple | I have worked in card payment industry. We would be getting products from China with added boards to beam credit card information. This wasn't state-sponsored attack. Devices were modified while on production line (most likely by bribed employees) as once they were closed they would have anti-tampering mechanism activated so that later it would not be possible to open the device without setting the tamper flag.<p>Once this was noticed we started weighing the terminals because we could not open the devices (once opened they become useless).<p>They have learned of this so they started scraping non-essential plastic from inside the device to offset the weight of the added board.<p>We have ended up measuring angular momentum on a special fixture. There are very expensive laboratory tables to measure angular momentum. I have created a fixture where the device could be placed in two separate positions. The theory is that if the weight and all possible angular momentums match then the devices have to be identical. We could not measure all possible angular momentums but it was possible to measure one or two that would not be known to the attacker. |
The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple | I have worked in card payment industry. We would be getting products from China with added boards to beam credit card information. This wasn't state-sponsored attack. Devices were modified while on production line (most likely by bribed employees) as once they were closed they would have anti-tampering mechanism activated so that later it would not be possible to open the device without setting the tamper flag.<p>Once this was noticed we started weighing the terminals because we could not open the devices (once opened they become useless).<p>They have learned of this so they started scraping non-essential plastic from inside the device to offset the weight of the added board.<p>We have ended up measuring angular momentum on a special fixture. There are very expensive laboratory tables to measure angular momentum. I have created a fixture where the device could be placed in two separate positions. The theory is that if the weight and all possible angular momentums match then the devices have to be identical. We could not measure all possible angular momentums but it was possible to measure one or two that would not be known to the attacker. |
IQ Matters Less Than You Think | I wonder how many IQ test misclassify intelligence? Feynman had a score of 125 and many people here have a high score than that. I bet no one here with a higher score of 125 are actually smarter than Feynman though. I think this is just one of many possible such examples where IQ test miss the purported people they were suppose to capture. Feynman’s score wouldn’t even qualify him for MENSA.<p>I wonder how many IQ exams misclassify the intelligence of smart people with disabilities of some sort or high functioning autism. Not saying any of this applies to Feynman, he is just an example of where the test didn’t accurately capture his intellect. |
The Big Hack: Statements From Amazon, Apple, Supermicro, Chinese Government | Apple and Amazon probably have a small set of TS/SCI cleared employees who dealt with this mess. It’s likely 99.99% of the employees at those firms had no idea what was going on. The switching out of thousands of compromised servers was probably made to look like routine maintenance or upgrades and the whole affair was kept secret. That is, until some high level government employees intentionally leaked it to the media, probably under direction of the White House to garner support for a more aggressive stance on China - the trade war in particular. Read between the lines. |
Go hits the concurrency nail on the head | Go concurrency <i>is</i> just threads. It's a particularly idiosyncratic userland implementation of them.<p>There are two claims here I'd like to unpack further:<p>1. "I've measured goroutine switching time to be ~170 ns on my machine, 10x faster than thread switching time." This is because of the lack of switchto support in the Linux kernel, not because of any fundamental difference between threads and goroutines. A Google engineer had a patch [1] that unfortunately never landed to add this support in 2013. Windows already has this functionality, via UMS. I would like to see Linux push further on this, because kernel support seems like the right way to improve context switching performance.<p>2. "Goroutines also have small stacks that can grow at run-time (something thread stacks cannot do)." This is a frequent myth. Thread stacks can do this too, with appropriate runtime support: after all, if they couldn't, then Go couldn't implement stack growth, since Go's runtime is built in userland on top of kernel threads. Stack growth is a feature of the <i>garbage collection infrastructure</i>, not of the concurrency support. You could have stack growth in a 1:1 thread system as well, as long as that system kept the information needed to relocate pointers into the stack.<p>Goroutines <i>are</i> threads. So the idea the "Go has eliminated the distinction between synchronous and asynchronous code" is only vacuously true, because in Go, everything is synchronous.<p>Finally, Go doesn't do anything to prevent data races, which are the biggest problem facing concurrent code. It actually makes data races <i>easier</i> than in languages like C++, because it has no concept of const, even as a lint. Race detectors have long existed in C++ as well, at least as far back as Helgrind.<p>[1]: <a href="https://blog.linuxplumbersconf.org/2013/ocw/system/presentations/1653/original/LPC - User Threading.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://blog.linuxplumbersconf.org/2013/ocw/system/presentat...</a> |
Dream launches online VR collaboration and productivity tool | We're super excited to get this out after nearly 3 years of work by our team - we've put together some further thoughts here: <a href="https://medium.com/@idanbeck/announcing-dream-754c0f374da0" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@idanbeck/announcing-dream-754c0f374da0</a><p>Dream is now available in early access on the Oculus store, so we'd really appreciate any feedback and thoughts people have. We truly believe that immersive technologies like virtual reality can make remote work and collaboration better than existing 2D form factors - especially as the new standalone VR headsets like Quest come to fruition in the coming year.<p>Dream has been built entirely from scratch, so we got to rethink a lot of the stack. We prioritized certain things, like networking and UI, and we're really proud of the outcome. Doing so also meant it took us a lot longer to bring a product to release, since there was a lot more to do - but it allowed us to integrate WebRTC at the native level as well as chromium (by way of CEF) so we can do things like bring up our keyboard when a user hits a text field.<p>Hope people like it, and want to say thanks to everyone that made it possible! |
Apple's Proprietary Software Locks Kill Independent Repair on New MacBook Pros | This is a shame and another setback for Macbooks / Macs. I'd agree with "planned obselescense" over security being the motive as the article pointed out. This will also not hurt Apple in the slightest, only their consumers who are blinded by their unwavering loyalty to the brand.<p>Sent from my iPhone |
Apple's Proprietary Software Locks Kill Independent Repair on New MacBook Pros | This is an excellent step for protecting MacBook Pro users against hardware invasions (such as US and China border authorities). If you trust the user to replace hardware, you permit the user’s hardware to be altered by malicious actors. By restricting final approval of hardware replacement to a vetted subset of all humanity, you ensure that it’s vastly more difficult for the vast majority of malicious humanity.<p>Yes, in a theoretical world, you could set up your own crypto authority and sign your own device repairs, assuming Apple were to build support for this. But if you brick your CA you’d brick your laptop if it ever needed repairs someday, which would leave you thousands of dollars poorer and in need of a laptop.<p>I trust Apple to run this CA and gate access to it _far_ more than I trust my personal self to do so. This security improvement will make me safer, as well as my non-engineer coworkers, and my mom. |
Zuckerberg Faces Anger Over Facebook Executive’s Kavanaugh Support | Why is there so much political activism inside tech companies? Shouldn't this person actually do something wrong at his job before the mob goes after him? How long before you can't be an executive if you hunt, or eat meat? |
What Businessweek got wrong about Apple | Both Apple and Amazon have released VERY STRONG denial statements that bring the whole Bloomberg narrative into question. It's also convenient that no one has yet been able to verify or find any of these mysterious Chinese chips on any of the Supermicro servers in the wild.<p>So what is the real story here? Did Bloomberg reporters deliberately deceive everyone or were they deceived by the US IC ("intelligence community") as a way to scare technology companies from doing business in China?<p>Someone at the SEC should scrutinize SMCI shorts at the very least. |
Technology led a hospital to give a patient 38 times his dosage | This horribly written series of articles should be titled "How technology could not prevent a hospital from giving a patient 38 times his dosage".<p>- The system's dosage caps were disabled<p>- The dosage was never double checked since "technology is so accurate", ignoring people still make mistakes when using it<p>- Vast swaths of alerts are regularly ignored rather than fixed resulting in them being ignored<p>But more than anything already listed... the nurse didn't question giving someone 38 pills beyond "must be dilluted" yet the article pushes the focus to how technology led to the error? I just can't see how this title was chosen beyond clickbait considering it has statistics included showing how this system has been more reliable than the classic solution. |
Amazon private label brands are quietly taking over Amazon.com | I don't mind it at all. I've been relatively impressed with the price to quality ratio and I usually seek the Amazon label brand where I can and the price is right—just like any other store brand.<p>- It started with batteries, which are awesome for the price<p>- I bought a throwaway comforter + sheets to use for couch-sharing with the dog and they're my favorite set now. Better than my Ikea set which cost 2x as much.<p>I could go on but for random items the Amazon brand is often pretty decent. |
Amazon private label brands are quietly taking over Amazon.com | I don't mind it at all. I've been relatively impressed with the price to quality ratio and I usually seek the Amazon label brand where I can and the price is right—just like any other store brand.<p>- It started with batteries, which are awesome for the price<p>- I bought a throwaway comforter + sheets to use for couch-sharing with the dog and they're my favorite set now. Better than my Ikea set which cost 2x as much.<p>I could go on but for random items the Amazon brand is often pretty decent. |
Amazon private label brands are quietly taking over Amazon.com | I don't mind it at all. I've been relatively impressed with the price to quality ratio and I usually seek the Amazon label brand where I can and the price is right—just like any other store brand.<p>- It started with batteries, which are awesome for the price<p>- I bought a throwaway comforter + sheets to use for couch-sharing with the dog and they're my favorite set now. Better than my Ikea set which cost 2x as much.<p>I could go on but for random items the Amazon brand is often pretty decent. |
Don't shoot, I'm disabled | "I have to make sure I go home to my family at night,"<p>Well, in that case- maybe don't become a <i>police officer</i>?<p>I mean, I don't know that I've ever heard a fireman, or a doctor, a rescuer, a
lifeguard, etc, say that sort of thing - "my first priority is to go home
safely tonight". That doesn't mean that they're expect to <i>sacrifice</i> their
lives in the line of duty, it means they're expected to <i>risk</i> their lives, to
save someone else's (the doctor, if you were wondering, because they can
easily catch something nasty).<p>The police officer who made the comment shot a szhizophrenic woman who was
holding a knife (that's all we're told about that case). So presumably he shot
her because he was afraid she'd stab him. Presumably, also, that was part of his training.<p>That is very dangerous. Giving someone a gun and telling them that when
their live's in danger their priority is to come out of it alive, is dangerous
for everyone around the person with the gun. Because the easiest way to make
sure you "go back to your family" when you have a gun and the crazy lady is
holding a knife is to shoot her dead. I mean, duh.<p>I should also probably point out that I think this is a peculiarly US thing.
I doubt that anywhere else in the developed world police officers are
adviced to shoot first and ask questions later, or in any case,
as a first line of defense. |
The down side to wind power | >To estimate the impacts of wind power, Keith and Miller established a baseline for the 2012‒2014 U.S. climate using a standard weather-forecasting model. Then, they covered one-third of the continental U.S. with enough wind turbines to meet present-day U.S. electricity demand. The researchers found this scenario would warm the surface temperature of the continental U.S. by 0.24 degrees Celsius, with the largest changes occurring at night when surface temperatures increased by up to 1.5 degrees. This warming is the result of wind turbines actively mixing the atmosphere near the ground and aloft while simultaneously extracting from the atmosphere’s motion.<p>I am confused: How does the warming work exactly and is this actually a global climate effect? Because this part of the article makes it sound to me as if it's just a very localised change of temperature caused by the exchange of different air layers, which can't be right? Because you couldn't really compare that to climate change on a global scale. |
The Awful German Language (1880) | English grammar is far simpler than German grammar. Eliminating noun genders, declensions, and cases (as English does) is a great simplification over German. I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information.<p>That said, German pronunciation is more regular than English pronunciation. Every letter combination is in most cases pronounced exactly the same in every word.<p>Take, for example, the vowel combination "ie." No matter where you see it in a German word, it will be pronounced "ee".<p>Likewise, the combination "ei" will always be pronounced "eye."<p>Contrast this with the scattershot pronunciations English has for the same combinations:<p>"Neighbor" uses "ay".<p>"Albeit" and "Atheist" uses "ee-i".<p>"Caffeine" uses "ee".<p>And so on. |
The Awful German Language (1880) | English grammar is far simpler than German grammar. Eliminating noun genders, declensions, and cases (as English does) is a great simplification over German. I've never understood the need for noun genders and I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information.<p>That said, German pronunciation is more regular than English pronunciation. Every letter combination is in most cases pronounced exactly the same in every word.<p>Take, for example, the vowel combination "ie." No matter where you see it in a German word, it will be pronounced "ee".<p>Likewise, the combination "ei" will always be pronounced "eye."<p>Contrast this with the scattershot pronunciations English has for the same combinations:<p>"Neighbor" uses "ay".<p>"Albeit" and "Atheist" uses "ee-i".<p>"Caffeine" uses "ee".<p>And so on. |
The iPhone XS and XS Max Review: Unveiling the Silicon Secrets | Crazy how far ahead the iPhone is over every single Android phone. I moved over years ago because of the horrible hardware, lower-quality apps, and lack of support. Seems like this trend will continue. |
Don’t sign a CLA | It's a great point to be aware of, but the title and the tone implies that you as a contributor should be a FOSS maximalist.<p>As they say, not all open source is FOSS. And some people are OK with that. Let them contribute, as long as they are aware of the implications.<p>When I discover bugs in open-source projects during my day job (which is on a closed-source project), I will be much happier having those fixes merged upstream than having to maintain our own private fork.<p>> Free and open source software licenses grant explicit freedoms to three groups: the maintainers, the users, and the contributors.<p>This is not the case of all open source licenses. And that is fine. Don't assume all my work has to be part of your crusade. I will save that for the parts of my life where it makes sense - I am all-for the FOSS movement but there is no need to go full Stallman and say that everything but GPL is evil. If I believed that, I wouldn't be working on a closed-source project in the first place and then this piece would be fully relevant.<p>A much better title would be "Why I don't sign CLAs" or "The dangers of signing CLAs". |
Don’t sign a CLA | It's a great point to be aware of, but the title and the tone implies that you as a contributor should be a FOSS maximalist.<p>As they say, not all open source is FOSS. And some people are OK with that. Let them contribute, as long as they are aware of the implications.<p>When I discover bugs in open-source projects during my day job (which is on a closed-source project), I will be much happier having those fixes merged upstream than having to maintain our own private fork.<p>> Free and open source software licenses grant explicit freedoms to three groups: the maintainers, the users, and the contributors.<p>This is not the case of all open source licenses. And that is fine. Don't assume all my work has to be part of your crusade. I will save that for the parts of my life where it makes sense - I am all-for the FOSS movement but there is no need to go full Stallman and say that everything but GPL is evil. If I believed that, I wouldn't be working on a closed-source project in the first place and then this piece would be fully relevant.<p>A much better title would be "Why I don't sign CLAs" or "The dangers of signing CLAs". |
Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival | They had a working thing and then ruined it. I’m not sure how they managed to do that with a product change. Didn’t they have a way to release changes and measure impact before just forcing it on their entire user base?<p>Once a company gets to this level, they need to recognize the role that luck played into their original product and design. They hit a resonance with people, and it was probably more luck and timing than anything else. Changes to that core product need to be treated as an experiment and conducted as such. Show some discipline.<p>You can still innovate but those ideas should be made to stand on their own, grow on their own. Just because you have control over a platform with millions of users and can make changes doesn’t automatically mean you can do no wrong at this point. It just means you will have more time and resources before those mistakes take you out of the game completely.<p>He should be punished for his mistakes by the board installing some experienced adult supervision for a while until he shows he can fix his current mess (reverse negative growth) and innovate in at least an additional major product category tangential to Snap. If he can’t do that in the next 24 months, he should step down for the good of the company. |
Deliverr raises $7M to help e-commerce businesses compete with Amazon Prime | Any company who uses Deliverr is going to quickly figure out that they have placed their most important business process in the hands of a third party, and that they have very little control over it.<p>eBay, Wal-Mart, and Shopify are in the business of delivering products. They don't make the products, they make them available to the consumer. Delivery is like 90% of that. This is why amazon runs their own fulfillment centers, it's the most important part of their process.<p>It would be better for eBay, Wal-Mart and Shopify to merge and compete against amazon as one, rather than fighting over the table scraps that amazon leaves them. |
An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s | Not referring to this specific exhibit but other pieces by a similar artist. Thousands of people can create this kind of paintings for cheap. That it still sells for more than what many people can make in a decade or a career means a stratospheric concentration of wealth in society or a bubble in the commercial art world.<p>If there is real scarcity because of climate change or other widespread disaster, how much can a piece of this ‘quality’ be sold for? A loaf of bread, or less?<p>That millions of children still starve but a piece of simplistic art is worth more than the value of food a whole village consumes in a decade is a sorry effect of the financial system we use or the way our society assigns ‘coolness’ score to people and activity. |
The Python Unicode Mess | As far as I can tell this is a long-form “I used to be able to ignore encoding issues and now it’s a ‘mess’ because the language is forcing me to be correct”. Each of the examples cited is something which was a source of latent bugs which he thought was working because they were ignored.<p>Only his third bit of advice isn’t wrong and treating it as something unusual shows the problem: the only safe way to handle text has always been to decode bytes as soon as you get them, work with Unicode, and then encode it when you send them out. Anything else is extremely hard to get right, even if many English-native programmers were used to being able to delay learning why for long periods of time. |
The Python Unicode Mess | I'm not so sure other languages do that any better (nodejs doesn't even support non-unicode filenames at all for instance). Modern python does a pretty good job at supporting unicode, very far away from being a "Mess" that's just very much not true at all. People always like to hate on python but then other languages supposedly designed by actually capable people do mess up other stuff all the time. Look at how the great Haskell represents strings for instance and what a clusterfuck[1] that is.<p>[1] <a href="https://mmhaskell.com/blog/2017/5/15/untangling-haskells-strings" rel="nofollow">https://mmhaskell.com/blog/2017/5/15/untangling-haskells-str...</a> |
The Python Unicode Mess | Getting Unicode right, especially with various file systems and cross-platform implementations is hard, for sure. But, I think this quote:<p>"And, whatever you do, don’t accidentally write if filetype == "file" — that will silently always evaluate to False, because "file" tests different than b"file". Not that I, uhm, wrote that and didn’t notice it at first…"<p>shows a behavior that, to me, is inexcusable. The encoding of a string should never cause a comparison to fail when the two strings are equivalent <i>except for the encoding</i>. For example, in Delphi/FreePascal, if you compare an AnsiString or UTF-8-encoded string with a Unicode string that is equivalent, you get the correct answer: they are equal. |
The Dutch Reach: A No-Tech Way to Save Bicyclists’ Lives | The Dutch Reach is a reach to ask for, IMO. I write this as a cyclist living in Vancouver (one city named in the article) who has been doored and nearly doored. IME, shoulder checks <i>while actually driving</i> seem to be a dying art form. So asking for a while-parked check like the Dutch Reach ... seems optimistic. But no harm in trying. The illustration is great. I applaud all efforts to make this technique more known.<p>Fellow cyclists, you already know this, but please watch sideview mirrors of parked vehicles and all other signs of people and passengers and assume the worst.<p>Infrastructure should, IMO, allow an extra foot or two in lane designs especially when they are adjacent to different users (i.e. motorist, cyclist, pedestrian). This allows for swervy cyclists, swervy motorists, bad parkers, and people "not from here" a safety buffer. The latter group is one you're just not going to ever reach with urban education like the article, yet they are a significant vehicular presence in a many popular cities, whether they're driving their own vehicles, an unfamiliar rental, or getting out of a taxi cab.<p>I'll give an example. All infrastructure design decisions have pros and cons. Here's a style of bike lane on the "passenger" side that catches motorists off guard (when they park too far to the right, near the lane) and passengers off guard because neither expect to find a cyclist on their right.<p><a href="https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.2790648,-123.1195244,3a,75y,214.64h,71.34t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7rZLbmXvAV0-H9ApXRwRcg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.2790648,-123.1195244,3a,75y,2...</a><p>How about some opening-door-tech that alerts you quickly and loudly when an object approaches your door as you begin to swing it open? Good for passing traffic, bicycles, etc.<p>BTW, I appreciate that cycling news shows up on HN from time to time. It's truly a civilized activity and IMO has an important role in the future of cities. Keep pedalling. :-) |
The Dutch Reach: A No-Tech Way to Save Bicyclists’ Lives | The Dutch Reach is a reach to ask for, IMO. I write this as a cyclist living in Vancouver (one city named in the article) who has been doored and nearly doored. IME, shoulder checks <i>while actually driving</i> seem to be a dying art form. So asking for a while-parked check like the Dutch Reach ... seems optimistic. But no harm in trying. The illustration is great. I applaud all efforts to make this technique more known.<p>Fellow cyclists, you already know this, but please watch sideview mirrors of parked vehicles and all other signs of people and passengers and assume the worst.<p>Infrastructure should, IMO, allow an extra foot or two in lane designs especially when they are adjacent to different users (i.e. motorist, cyclist, pedestrian). This allows for swervy cyclists, swervy motorists, bad parkers, and people "not from here" a safety buffer. The latter group is one you're just not going to ever reach with urban education like the article, yet they are a significant vehicular presence in a many popular cities, whether they're driving their own vehicles, an unfamiliar rental, or getting out of a taxi cab.<p>I'll give an example. All infrastructure design decisions have pros and cons. Here's a style of bike lane on the "passenger" side that catches motorists off guard (when they park too far to the right, near the lane) and passengers off guard because neither expect to find a cyclist on their right.<p><a href="https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.2790648,-123.1195244,3a,75y,214.64h,71.34t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7rZLbmXvAV0-H9ApXRwRcg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.2790648,-123.1195244,3a,75y,2...</a><p>How about some opening-door-tech that alerts you quickly and loudly when an object approaches your door as you begin to swing it open? Good for passing traffic, bicycles, etc.<p>BTW, I appreciate that cycling news shows up on HN from time to time. It's truly a civilized activity and IMO has an important role in the future of cities. Keep pedalling. :-) |
Facebook’s Zuckerberg Tells Employees to Respect Diverse Views of Colleagues | <i>Ms. Sandberg has previously posted an internal message calling Mr. Kaplan’s appearance at the hearing “a mistake.”</i><p>So if this is the stance Zuckerberg and Sandberg are taking, has that internal message been retracted? I'm in no position to demand or even suggest that some sort of consistency in conviction is warranted here-Sandberg is free to comment or not as she pleases, but it sure would be nice to see for once in these strange and heated times.<p>Seems to me you either respect Kaplan's decision to be present for his friend, redact statements that his personal political decisions were a 'mistake', or fire him as VP of Global Public Policy and admit it was because his appearance at the SJC hearings made for bad optics, and saving face matters more than consistent convictions and that this appeal to employees is proof.<p>Or do nothing and let people infer everything in between. |
Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants | The only thing that seems to be universally true about mental health is that we’re all different, and someone else’s experiences rarely apply perfectly to your own.<p>I put off getting on the meds for at least 15 years longer than I should have done because of stories like this. They have been life changing lot positive for me with almost no downsides.<p>In addition, I’ve read more than one story like this where the person eventually decides it’s time to get back on the SSRIs after a year or two off.<p>Experiment, find what works for you, but these articles that are angry at big pharma and describe pills as primarily bad need to be seen very much as just localised experiences. |
Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts | For all their flaws, Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Everybody has something they hate about Wikipedia, but the general gist is that they're more or less credible. Alternative encyclopedic efforts are totally fringe and/or money-making scams like Everipedia.<p>With this in mind, perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputation and flag articles from sources like InfoWars and Breitbart with a banner that reads: "Wikipedia doesn't accept this site as a valid source."<p>That would let Facebook and Twitter off the hook from having to make these calls themselves, and would provide readers with valuable context. |
Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts | For all their flaws, Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Everybody has something they hate about Wikipedia, but the general gist is that they're more or less credible. Alternative encyclopedic efforts are totally fringe and/or money-making scams like Everipedia.<p>With this in mind, perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputation and flag articles from sources like InfoWars and Breitbart with a banner that reads: "Wikipedia doesn't accept this site as a valid source."<p>That would let Facebook and Twitter off the hook from having to make these calls themselves, and would provide readers with valuable context. |
How Does an Intel Processor Boot? | This part is a bit of a mess:<p>"16-bit Real Mode with insruction pointer pointing to address 0xffff.fff0, the reset vector. In this initial mode, the processor has first 12 address lines asserted, so any address looks like 0xfffx.xxxx. This fact combined with how addressing using segment selector (SS) register works, allows the CPU to access instruction at reset vector address 0xffff.fff0"<p>SS is the Stack Segment register. CS is for code.<p>In real mode, the instruction pointer is only 16-bit and can not hold a value in excess of 0xffff.<p>Ignoring those issues, the explanation still doesn't match what I've seen before in the documentation. If things have changed, when did that happen? The old explanation:<p>The CS base is set to something like -16, that is with all but the lower 4 bits set. This covers all of physical address space, with any higher bits just being ignored. The instruction pointer is set to 0. The result is execution that starts 16 bytes below the first address that is beyond the end of the physical address space. For example, with 44-bit physical addresses this would be at 0x00000ffffffffff0. |
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