fumblebee

I once debugged a case where the id had left sided zero padding so the whole id length was a fixed number of digits, for example `238974` might be represented as `00238974`.

In a process that joined two tables the match counts were off. Somehow, on one side of the join the id was being converted to an integer and then back to a string, which stripped the zero padding. Meaning that `00238974` was failing to match `238974`.

Sigh.

Last year I was working in Midtown, Manhattan. It was a normal day just like any other, except when I arrived at my desk there were tens of shocked colleagues looking down to the street below. It transpired that a piece of the facade on the old, brick walled building opposite had somehow dislodged, fell, and ended someone's life who was walking by. Her body remained there during the day because it was too dangerous to remove it. For obvious reasons, this was traumatic.

My instinct tells me NYC will not suffer from the mass abandonment that the article refers to, but it needs a tremendous investment to avoid further rot. Modern skyscrapers are a bandaid over the scores of ill fated and fragile buildings and infrastructure NYC is home to.

I feel naive; what's the incentive for Google to do this?

Courts check presidential power all the time. A blatant abuse of the authority to pardon should be met with swift checks to limit that power.

Can someone ELI5 as to the significance of this?

Much has been made of the 'Robinhood effect' this year, and how its large base of retail investors have contributed towards the inflated stock prices we see, especially for 'meme stocks'.

I'm curious, though, is there any data available on the ratio between retail and institutional capital flowing in the markets? Has anyone proven the effect these communities have on stock market inflation? How much of the boom is simply because we're in an era of low interest rates and big stimulus?

The idea of an always-on group audio chat is absolutely revolting to me.

The obvious issue here is that we're intrinsically bound to the services that the people you talk with are themselves locked into. The pressure of your local crowd is surely a stronger determinant of which IM app(s) you use over the ones you like the best.

So yeah, I don't like Facebook's malevolent dictatorship over WhatsApp, but there's zero chance I could - or even would bother to - convince all my friends and family to make the switch.

Does anyone have any insight on how much it would cost for OpenAI to host an online, interactive demo of a model like this? I'd expect a lot - even just for inference - based on the size of the model and the expected virality of the demo, but have no reference points for quantifying.

This is really beautiful, but then again my reference point is the overly bloated, always slow, and hideously designed site that is LinkedId.

Added bonus for HN readers, because it's only just been released you can probably bag a nice @username.

We’re fast moving away from physical cards being necessary. With the ubiquity of Apple / Google Pay, the TreeCard feels like a gimmick more than a solution.

Couldn't agree more. Though I've taken only a single night train in my life: from Beijing to Xi'an.

While slightly pricier than flying, I had a bed and could freely move around the cabin. To top it off - anecdotally, though intuitively it holds - those who travel by train are less stressed than those travelling by plane, and therefore friendlier and open to conversation.

A great experience overall. I hope to do more of this in Europe.

Another apt article: https://link.medium.com/hLkrmNzD9bb

There’s a great Wikipedia article which is apt here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect?wprov=sfti1

It’s perhaps best encapsulated by Douglas Hofstadter’s quip: “AI is whatever hasn't been done yet”.

The point being, AI is a moving target, and the threshold for reaching it migrates further which each new accomplishment in the field. If you showed the ML of today to someone in the sixties, you’d have a hard time convincing them it wasn’t AI.

But I don’t believe this is an issue reserved only for the press. At least anecdotally, practitioners don’t think of it this way either.

I had the same thought when I posted it. Probably not, is the answer.

Can we have a Museum of Bad Webpages? I'll kick us off.

http://www.peterserafinowicz.com/brian-butterfield/

The piece's latter stage thesis is that Citizen Kane is no longer considered the G(film)OAT, because in the more recent Sight & Sound polls it's been demoted from the its longstanding top spot position down to somewhere in the top five.

This seems to me an unimportant and un-insightful observation. To suggest it's indicative of an 'inevitable fall' in the film's standing and legacy is tenuous in the extreme, so much so that it's more likely the author's conclusion is tongue in cheek... I'd hope.

My main grumble was the distinct lack of choice; we were _made_ to use Microsoft products and services. I didn't pay however much money to be wrapped up in an MS marketing/recruiting campaign that I couldn't opt out of.

My CS department formed an "industry partnership" with Microsoft (circa 2015).

All of a sudden, we were made to spend time learning Azure, we were given Surface Tablets for building apps, there were guest lectures by Microsoft employees, we were prompted to apply for MS internships, etc.

What the department intended to be a harmless collaboration, turned out to be an aggressive marketing push by Microsoft for hearts and minds of the students.

Thankfully, a backlash from the student body prompted a dampening of the relationship, but the experience showed that barriers to entry for corporations pushing their own agenda into academia can be low.

Managed properly, these sorts of relationships can be win-win, but there's a clear limit and universities should be conscious and forthright of where the line is.

Graphs like these serve to suggest to people that there's a single, operative reason at their core instead of it being a complex, multivariate issue.

They also tend to cause people to over-attribute the effects of the story told in the graph(s) to the majority of the population instead of a minority with disproportionate impact.

Regardless, taken together the graphs are compelling. The real cause will likely remain forever elusive, but here's a few hypotheses. * The rise of globalisation and the outsourcing of low skilled jobs to other countries. * The abandonment of the gold standard. * The oil crisis. * The disarmament of labor union power. * The concentration of a highly educated 'creative class' in fewer urban areas. * Women entering the work force en masse.

Totally anecdotal, but in the early years of Airbnb, I was a staunch advocate of their mission and execution. Fast forward to now and several negative experiences with the firm (which have only really happened over the last couple of years) have left me wary of the company, especially having had great experiences with other services like Booking.com. That said, for the chief product that Airbnb mediates - rooms or apartments instead of hotels or hostels -, they're top dog. Alternative options in this space are mighty slim if you're looking beyond non-sketchy options, perhaps because barriers to entry, by way of building large-enough user and hosts bases, are _really_ difficult to build up.