Hacker News Reader

wadkaron Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

I can assure you that I have seen 30+ year old graduate students giggle and try not to laugh in the Machine Learning Departments at CMU whenever that conference name was dropped in the office.

I mean, you would think people would grow up, right? I am glad our female colleagues don’t have to suppress their embarrassment while mentioning the conference anymore.

wadkaron Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main

I am happy to see this.

You say bullied into compliance but all I see is a community consciously putting efforts to become more inclusive.

It may not be that big of a deal for you but it is a big deal for those who don’t share the same worldview as you. Are your principals so low that you wouldn’t accommodate change of language and behavior to be more welcoming of others?

What do you think about people who curse like a sailors in their personal life but wouldn’t utter an F in office/professional settings - do they have no principals?

wadkaron 750M genetically modified mosquitoes to be released in Florida

Thanks for this. One of the reasons why I love HN. The points are not only interesting but provide useful information to the discussion.

wadkaron How to seriously read a scientific paper

Can you please share the link? I reached his homepage but no dice: http://adamruben.net/

wadkaron Scientist David Sinclair on why we age and why he thinks we don’t have to (2019)

Something along the lines of “the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you”

wadkaron Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

Curious, would you care to explain a bit more about your thoughts on these sort-of-developers?

How come you know so much about them? Do you often find yourself digging through medium articles?

wadkaron A Theory of Software Architecture

In a similar vein, I look forward to adding less lines and removing more in my git commits.

wadkaron PayPal to allow cryptocurrency buying, selling and shopping on its network

Technology isn't doing the centralization, it's the people who are building and managing systems centralizing them.

In that sense, we're doomed to give ourselves 1984 unless we consciously and continuously fight everyday to not slip into a dystopia.

wadkaron Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

Progress doesn’t end one day, it’s a process. So what matters is the rate at which we make progress.

wadkaron Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

To phrase it another way: form is different than function

wadkaron How Discord Won

Which bank is this? Are there others in this space?

wadkaron Chrome exempts Google sites from user site data settings

Can you please elaborate a bit more on the fungible interactions part? I am not sure I understand that bit.

Suppose Tesla tomorrow becomes the sole manufacturer of battery powered cars. However, the good (dirty?) old petroleum based cars are still out there and on the road (not a lot but still). However, everyone wants an electric car in future - will that make Tesla a monopoly?

How will it be different or same in this case of Twitter or Facebook?

wadkaron The Singularity is Near: How Kurzweil's Predictions Are Faring (2017)

I don’t think Moore’s law are laws in traditional scientific sense but more of a boardroom driven agenda that’s more of a self fulfilling prophecy

wadkaron Krita 4.4.0

While Nix is great - don't forget the venerable portage :-)

wadkaron Krita 4.4.0

I don't think so. It should be possible to install the older version in different prefix (e.g. `./configure --prefix=/opt`) but I don't think AUR supports multiple slots (like portage does) out of the box.

My cursory search on the interweb did not yield any promising results on the Arch wiki either. Happy to be corrected, of course.

wadkaron Dockerfile Security Best Practices

Aren’t they the same thing (sort of)? The ENV in Dockerfile (or .env if you’re doing docker-compose) will be available during the build as well as runtime.

wadkaron A city with a thousand eyes: mass surveillance in Belgrade

I would very much like to believe that GP was trying to picture a post-covid scenario and providing a rather personal recommendation to fellow travel enthusiasts.

Let’s try to at least imagine a world where we can get back to some sense of normality :-)

wadkaron On Being Bipolar

And here I was thinking I must be the only person who deletes their comments instead of submitting them!

Thank you. I cannot tell you how relieved I am feeling right now.

wadkaron The case for comments in code

What’s the warning equivalent for yaml/config?

wadkaron I asked an online tracking company for all of my data (2018)

Search for Better blocker app on iOS. I think it is _better_ than nothing :-)

wadkaron Nascent exascale supercomputers offer promise, present challenges

Okay article. I wish it had gone a bit in depth about the challenges though.

What’s prohibiting deployment and running of large scale distributed systems in Exascale scenarios that is not present in Petascale?

My understanding is that power/heat issues can be managed (see: Cloud vendors).

Are there any software/PL challenges?

wadkaron Cloudflare and the Wayback Machine, joining forces for a more reliable Web

I believe GP is referring to a setting that a cloudflare user has to flip for requiring visitors to enable JavaScript

wadkaron Apple: Apps should not require users to opt into tracking to access content

I am getting a feeling that that might be the reason for it’s existence

wadkaron Ask HN: What is your favorite motto?

Not exactly motto or phrase, but just a word to remind myself that

This too shall pass.

In its original form:

Anicca (impermanence)

wadkaron Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) Book

I disagree to an extent. Sure file system traversal is great motivating example (or any tree traversal example for that matter).

However, the Fibonacci sequence provides good end to end example of recursion, then tail recursion/dynamic programming.

wadkaron Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

> Trying to find an alternative to Android.

For privacy and security oriented folks, there’s Puri.sm Librem 5 phone that looks interesting. I wouldn’t mind buying one if the reviews are good.

I am particularly excited about the removable battery! Anyone has any hands on experience with the phone? Links/resources would be highly appreciated!

https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

wadkaron Fast.ai releases new deep learning course, libraries, and book

Correct, I meant part 2 of the course and not the version 2.

Thanks for correcting me a_bonobo.

As for revision of this part 2, based on my skimming of forums.fast.ai , I don’t think it will happen anytime soon. The second part is more about theory/maths which is not affected by the new library.

Edit: part-2 clarification

wadkaron Fast.ai releases new deep learning course, libraries, and book

Wow, I don’t know if I should apologize or feel embarrassed or perhaps both!

wadkaron Fast.ai releases new deep learning course, libraries, and book

exactly! This is the reason why I recommend this course to my friends and colleagues who ask me about how to get into AI/ML. I tell them to do this course first to get idea about what all is possible. The version 2 (which you do at your own pace) provides the theory/maths behind it.

While coursera/Andrew Ng course are(were?) classic and have great content - I personally prefer Jeremy's style and this code-first approach to Deep Learning (yes, DL != ML != AI but that's not the point).

wadkaron Fast.ai releases new deep learning course, libraries, and book

To be more specific, this will be the Version 4 of the course with a major upgrade to the `fastai` library (v2). There's an excellent talk by Jeremy (the creator behind the course) at Stanford that goes into the various layers that `fastai` library brings on top of `pytorch`:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TfI88uQNj8 (Please seek to around 30mins for the technical part)