barefoot

How about one million kittens or one human?

Side note: landing on this particular website was a hilariously bad experience.

The scrollable content area on my (modern and average sized) mobile device represented less than one third of the viewport.

The remaining two thirds are taken up by ads. The bottom ad drawer (1/3) contained extremely low value irrelevant ads with blatantly false claims.

The top third was taken up by an ad seemingly from the site itself to try to get me to sign up for a free “preparedness binder”. I’m assuming that later leads to some type of marketing drip campaign.

For the icing on the cake, the central tiny (less than 1/3) area with scrollable content is an ad disguised as a poll!

I give up. You’ll find me on Gemini.

CLRS = Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein - The authors of the famous book Introduction to Algorithms.

One of the challenges of (even modern) scuba diving is that failure conditions are at odds with normal reflexes.

For example, if you run out of air your first reflex as a non-diver might be to hold your breath and swim to the surface. As pointed out in the article, that’s a terrible idea at depth and can severely injure or kill you (instead, divers are trained to breath out during an emergency swimming ascent).

There are a number of other ways to die while diving and recorded mortality data proves that out. Each dive, on average, has a broadly similar risk profile (5, in micromorts) to a single jump while skydiving (8) or running a marathon (7) [1].

There’s seemingly room for technology to help make diving a bit more safe. It will be interesting to see if that does happen in the future.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort

Is limited supply reason enough to explain the high market prices or has there also been an increase in demand?

I agree that we’re practically in a recession and that our present recession was brought about from congress via the fed. However, that particular chain of events was set in motion in the 1970s with the public mandate set for the FOMC. It wasn’t a recent secretive reaction to tech companies.

Do you mind expanding on your statement that the current actions of the fed/congress are a reaction to technology companies?

I’ve had some luck with Remarkable. Remarkable has a reasonably good experience for getting a PDF to the device, working with it, and then getting it back to the source as a seemingly plain PDF.

I’d imagine it might be technically possible but not practical. The weight required for ballistic parachute systems is substantial. On small aircraft (such as Cirrus and Icon) it reduces the useful load, and thus range/payload, substantially. Range and payload are very important aspects of commercial passenger aircraft.

Further, commercial passenger aircraft are already very safe due to system redundancy not practical on smaller aircraft. Would a ballistic parachute system help with many accidents in this category? I would be willing to bet not. Ballistic parachute systems are not a magic bullet - they require substantial altitude/time to deploy (as much as 900 feet in a spin, for example). Many substantial aviation accidents happen during takeoff and landing below or near these altitudes.

Would you pay a multiple of your current airfare for an extremely small (practical) reduction in travel risk?

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (1946).

A close runner up might be Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis (1989).

I’ll bite, here are a few relevant observations.

I like honey bunches of oats cereal. It’s delicious. The variety I like is also ~200 calories _per cup_. That’s before adding milk of any kind. Add a little bit of milk and tip the box a bit more than usual (I imagine a lot of folks are not very precise when measuring breakfast cereal) and we’re easily sailing over 500 calories. I eat a modest 1700 calorie diet most days and I could easily crush 1,000 calories of this cereal without even feeling full.

Likewise for sandwiches. The best rated local sandwich shops near me offer a selection of (very likely) 1,000+ calorie sandwiches. They also do not list calories so my estimates are based on casually deconstructing them and plugging in constituent ingredients into MyFitnessPal ensembles with surprising results. It’s surprising because I’ve proven I can eat more than one without feeling full.

It doesn’t take a mad genius in an evil food lab somewhere underground to make food that’s guaranteed to derail a diet. The ingredients are cheap, easy, and abundant everywhere.

That’s the problem.

“James [the client CTO] mentioned multiple times that he wants a future-proof technology, and he is not in favor of Angular because it has a bad reputation after AngularJS got deprecated.”

Few things in our industry are future-proof (or even future-resistant) and the stated indictment against Angular over the v1 to v2 changes is unreasonable even at the time.

These decisions are important but it looks like the author lost (or maybe never had) significant influence over them. The ability to influence key stakeholders over critical design decisions using rational (and evidence based) arguments is an important precursor to a successful project. It’s still possible to ship large projects without it, but it makes for a very challenging environment.

Optimized headline aside, I appreciate this summary because it highlights some of the nontechnical challenges in building larger applications.

An important consideration is the number of lives are phthalates improving or saving, something that might be challenging to quantify but shouldn’t be ignored.

Mobile phone use leads to thousands (US) [0] of deaths per year but there are few calls to outright ban smartphones.

Similarly, automobiles lead to tens of thousands of deaths per year (US) [1] and yet only minor support to ban or minimize these death machines.

There are countless other examples of useful objects that provide first order - easy to reason about - benefits that come with steep prices that we are willing to pay.

[0] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving

[1] https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/

Upkoi | Senior Full Stack Engineer | Remote (US Timezones Strongly Preferred) | Full-time / Contract

More Details / Apply Here: https://apply.workable.com/upkoi-inc/j/D021B24D1E/

(Mention Hacker News in Application)

We’re hiring two more .NET developers to work with us on our C#/.NET team. We have a strong focus on prosocial projects and would love your help making the world a better place.

While our immediate term work includes consulting on non-profit projects, the long-term goal of our organization is to build and support artificial general intelligence. Your work on our .NET team will not require (or likely directly use) machine learning experience but it is helpful to have, especially if you would like to transition to our other projects.

You may have met us at NeurIPS, MLConf, or the Montreal AI Ethics Meetup.

Me.

For some background, I’m a longtime hardware and (more frequently) software developer. I also do quite a bit of ML consulting.

I was gifted a MacBook Air many years ago. I was an avid Ubuntu (and, to a much lesser extent, Windows) user and developer at the time so I didn’t know what to make of it. I certainly didn’t expect to be blown away and switch to all Apple devices.

Eight years later and I’m solidly in the Apple ecosystem. I have an open mind about switching but I love the reliability and consistency of the user experience. I can count on the core apps that I frequently reach for to just work. And if they don’t work there’s almost always an obvious, low-time, solution to fix them. I still do a great deal of development in Windows, but it’s exclusively in a Parallels VM on a MacBook and I’ve long since abandoned my desktop for development.

The Apple ecosystem has built up enough trust with me that I also use it when flying (Foreflight on an iPad). You couldn’t pay me to switch to an android tablet as an alternative for that use case.

My largest complaint is python development is not great on OS X out of the box. But that’s easy enough to work around.

This was one of my favorite museums in the world.

My wife and I have many good memories playing checkmo against a beautifully maintained PDP-8 At the museum. She just yelled out a genuine “No!” when I relayed the closure.

At one point they kept a binder of photos of victorious players.

We never made that binder and I guess we never will.

There are similar (but more basic) systems built into some retractable gear aircraft. They generally provide an audible alert if the plane appears about to land but the gear is still up.

Pilots still land gear up, even with the alarm sounding. There is (or at least was) even a public (YouTube) video of this happening from a passenger filming.

Landing a plane is not difficult (source: I’m a pilot) but there’s a lot going on. This is clearly a UI/UX issue but innovation is relatively slow in the certified market.

You may be an outlier. Personally, I’ve tried a number of different brands and haven’t found one that’s consistent enough for me to get through even a half day of work let alone an hour without at least one occurrence of both contacts rotating out of place at once.

I think I’m not alone because the handful of folks I know with contacts for astigmatism have reported similar issues. Additionally, Reddit is full of similar complaints.

It’s possible that these are all unusual cases. I’ll try to track down a more objective way to review contact lens satisfaction for users with astigmatism later when I get a chance.

Another great resource is NAND to Tetris (currently auditable on Coursera for free):

https://www.coursera.org/learn/nand2tetris2

Contacts for astigmatism that can automatically adjust orientation through an active (powered) mechanism would be game changing for the afflicted. Current passive orientating contacts for astigmatism are severely limited.

Equipment used is part of it, but smaller than you’d imagine.

Well maintained single engine aircraft (in the certified category) are generally reliable. The majority of incidents in these planes come down to avoidable pilot error. Looking at the forces behind pilots making mistakes will provide a lot of insight. General aviation is not forgiving to mistakes and tired, under-trained, overconfident or briefly otherwise human behavior can (and does routinely) cause issues. These factors are more carefully compensated for on the commercial side.

Of course, the counter argument here is the missing safety features that should exist to compensate for mistakes.

I like these standard definitions, thanks for sharing.

A senior software developer can be given a vague contradictory notion of a a whole application (or part of one) and turn it into a scalable, performant, cost-effective beautiful product using the best set of tools and technologies to fit the job. They will deliver exactly what you had in mind within the estimated range provided before they even started.

In addition, they will do it while abstracting away all of the pain and complexity as part of that process, communicating only to provide accurate updates on progress and asking thoughtful probing questions. They make all of their work seem effortless in the process.

It's a challenging habit to start but not as difficult as you'd imagine to maintain. That said, I've met a number of other professionals that sustain similar schedules. I have an array of hobbies including flying, rock climbing, tennis, and traveling. I've never been diagnosed with any behavior or personality disorder and organize social time primarily around the weekends. I also hit the gym every day which helps a lot. I completely credit any success I've had to working out frequently.

I don't cast any judgement over developers not choosing to reinvest. I also think it's critical to know your limits and stay within them. I've been burned out several times throughout my career and know where my limits are.

I am however very certain that this industry rewards continued learning and with the right mindset it's very rewarding both in the short and long term.

I agree outside of software development. However, the only constant in our industry is change and that change demands continuous reinvestment. The only other way to grow is to focus on complementary skills with longer relevancy and that takes real time.

Your proposed alternative solutions to switch jobs or apply current skills at work (I'm assuming new skills or understanding) are common solutions used by many developers but ultimately have significant detrimental effects on companies both from very high industry churn rates as well as unnecessary application of new technologies by unskilled and inexperienced practitioners. These are as ubiquitous as they are bad and from a principled perspective I refuse to use them.

I would argue that I'm current on the machine learning and practical software development side and minimally current on the others and improving.

To offer some background, on the machine learning side I've built and deployed over one hundred models using nearly every major machine learning technique available today. To stay sharp I actively compete in Kaggle and other competitions (and have won a few small competitions) and have attended over six large ML conferences over the past two years. I actively read through every major published book on machine learning and nearly an entire bookshelf dedicated to the practice. These books, as well as MOOCs contribute to the majority of my reinvestment time on this side. I turn around and directly apply this information to competitions and paid projects to help it stick. I also read through as many ML papers as I can budget time for. Arxiv Sanity Preserver is a great resource here (http://www.arxiv-sanity.com/).

On the software development side I've built and deployed over a hundred websites products and services in half a dozen languages over the last twenty years for clients or my own business. I subscribe to a litany of aggregators over python, c#, and javascript news and use that information to identify trends to focus on for the practical side. Outside of side projects to gain practice these skills I also use pluralsight, developer conferences, and (less frequently now) books to stay current on this side - which contribute to time against this daily.

On the computer science side I have a large collection of classic books I'm working through and rereading. Everything from the Intro to Algorithms to SICP. I'm currently on my second pass through MIT's 6.006 and 6.851. Much love for Erik Demaine. I own a collection of CS puzzle books including Cracking the Coding Interview and my wife tortures me weekly with dynamic programming puzzles on a whiteboard we have to keep sharp. Similarly, I also tackle LC and HR puzzles on a weekly basis.

On the marketing side I've managed a significant of marketing spend for clients and my own projects through every major marketing platform except facebook. Through this I've developed a skillset around split and multivariate testing. I've also run literally hundreds of marketing experiments to gain experience and understanding. I actively manage paid and organic marketing efforts for an array of projects which provides an additional impetus to stay current. To that end, I subscribe to a number of marketing news aggregators and I'm reading through every major marketing classic I can find. I've had more trouble finding good information on this side compared to other areas.

On the design side I'm currently taking courses through Kadenze and own every a large collection of design classics that I've been reading through. Everything from universal principles of design (strongly recommend) to the design of everyday things. Beyond thoughtful practical application of these skills in hundreds of websites and apps I've also exhibited artwork.

It's a similar story for the remaining areas. Mostly paid courses, conferences, and classic textbooks (I budget about 20k a year for these resources). I also use Anki for remembering important concepts.

I've been at this (reinvesting continuously in all of these areas) for over ten years and averaging 15-20 hours per week of dedicated reinvestment with nearly no breaks for at least the past three years.

See the first six slides here: https://media.neurips.cc/Conferences/NIPS2018/Slides/Olukotu...

This is not my phrasing but as someone that's deployed several models in production that have replaced existing conventionally written and maintained areas of code I believe it.

The significance is the ability for machine learning to displace traditional software development is small but growing and there's no real practical limit.

Everyone has a separate set of trigger words or phrases, I don't take offense.

As a side note, the phrase that machine learning is eating conventional software development might sound cringeworthy given how ML/AI is commonly portrayed by the media but it's the same description provided by Kunle Olukotun at NeurIPS (I was there when he delivered that talk).

Excellent point. I would also like to point out that the instruction manual jobs that you mentioned are being automated away and the pace of automation over this type of job is likely to increase.

I personally study a thoughtful blend of the a number of subjects, including:

1. Machine Learning 2. Practical Software Development Tools and Techniques 3. Computer Science Fundamentals 4. Design 5. Marketing 6. Business Fundamentals 7. Strategy 8. Communication

I believe all of these are elemental to being a successful software developer in 2019. Machine learning is eating conventional software development from the inside out and conventional software development will eventually be mostly obsolete. Like many developers, I'm transitioning to this field to stay ahead of these upcoming changes.

Our jobs as software developers (and increasingly machine learning engineers and data scientists) demand superior communication skills and reasoning. Since the ultimate goal of most software today is to be sold for a profit an impactful area of study is business and marketing. Understanding how to structure software to best serve business goals means understanding the ecosystem that the creation lives in. Finally, the ultimate consumers of software and machine learning models are rarely technical and solid design skills are a good complement to a solid technical foundation.

Staying current and moving ahead in all of these areas of study takes at least four hours a day.

After you collapse on the sofa for a few minutes you then get back to work keeping yourself current, right?

A reasonable measure of what it takes to stay current and relevant in this industry is twenty hours of dedicated reinvestment per week. Often times this reinvestment time is not afforded at work and as much as employers want to provide this as a benefit to developers, few offer the resources or time to allow developers to get anywhere close at work alone. Therefore, that time is likely your sole responsibility at home.

If you're like most developers you should be budgeting four hours each day M-F (or three if you include the weekend). I know many that push for even more.

Since our jobs tend to be sedentary and it's probably helpful to budget at least an hour for the gym a day to help mitigate the severe health effects of working a desk job, don't forget to factor time at the gym in your scheduling. Also, if you're like many developers I know you're likely on call and answering e-mails at home as well which is easy to forget about when calculating available time.

This then quickly becomes a challenging schedule even for eight hour days. Those selecting ten hour days are probably not reinvesting as much as they should and will potentially burn out or become irrelevant in the long term. I've attempted a sustained schedule of 12 hour work days with 4 hour reinvestment and an hour at the gym and found it unworkable in the long term.