StreakyCobra

For the curious there is an ongoing construction of such pumped-storage in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It is called Nant de Drance [1] and is located at the Emosson Dam, between the "Emosson Lake" and "Old Emosson Lake".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nant_de_Drance_Hydropower_Plan...

I tried the HP35s of a friend for a few days. It is globally a nice RPN calculator and not too expensive for starting. But I don't want to get one because this calculator have a quite long list of known bugs [1] that have been sitting there for more than 10 years now, and HP hasn't fixed anything yet!

If you are a grown-up children like me and just want a pretty expensive toy, I can recommend the SwissMicros DM42 [2] (I'm not related to them in any way, just a happy customer). The made an adaptation of the HP42s for the modern world: «34 decimal digits of precision, with exponents ranging from -6143 to +6144», based on the excellent Thomas Okken's Free42 [3], big and nice screen, USB connection for loading/saving programs, save and restore of the calculator state, and so on!

And being based on Free42 you can get the emulator on your phone and share the programs with the calculator. You then have the same "calculator" everytime with you, no need to get used to another program/interface on your phone.

[1] http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/articles.cg... [2] https://www.swissmicros.com/dm42.php [3] http://thomasokken.com/free42/

Switzerland is "kind of" a famous for his apprenticeship system. I myself went trough an apprenticeship, and that didn't prevented me to get a University Master's degree later on.

A random web search gave me this relatively recent article [1] presenting it. It says that 2/3 of students goes through apprenticeship:

«In Switzerland, two-thirds of students in the final stage of secondary education opt for vocational training, mostly in three or four year “dual” programmes combining classroom study with workplace training.»

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/98e06036-d99b-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b...

Yes, the article linked [1] also mentions it. But it also shows what have been removed, such as:

«“Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect.»

The fact they removed this (e.g. "providing our users unbiased access to information") and that they are now setting up a censored version of their search engine shows that everything that they have removed in there should now be considered as deprecated.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

«In May, Google quietly removed “Don’t be evil” from the text of its corporate code of conduct, deleting a catchphrase that had been associated with the company since 2000.»

So it is now official, Google can not longer be considered as "not Evil". And we know this thanks to this sentence that has finally served as a warrant canary.

This kind of visualization can be really useful for impaired people. I can guess that street steepness is an important concern for people in wheelchair, a few degrees more and it become impossible to move. And even if topographic contours may be considered as the gold standard, it is often barely readable for big cities: I consider myself good as reading map, but being able to see steepness of street in cities is hard and requires a lot of mental work. Providing this kind of easily readable map for tourists would then be useful for mentally impaired people, which is even more useful as mental and physical impairments frequently come together. I would go further and compare this with metro maps: if they are not represented on traditional topographic maps it is for a reason: readability. And the proposed method offers a good readability of steepness for people needing this information.

So yes, having this kind information available is nothing new. But no, it's not reinventing the wheel as other people may have suggested here.

«The Encyclopedia should be managed by a prestigious Editorial Board which appoints a hierarchy of editors to moderate articles. [...] Serving as a member of the Editorial Board could become a prestigious office for senior professionals to provide their experience and judgment»

Sounds a lot like the current peer-reviewing system and journal editors mafia. A bunch of old men with their hand on the system and doing the maximum so it does not change, for their own interest of keeping their position and dominance of the system.

In complement to the Nature's article: The FNS/SNF (Swiss national science foundation) explains on its website the reason for not signing it (yet): http://www.snf.ch/en/researchinFocus/newsroom/Pages/news-180...

I found the article that motivated me to switch to bépo back in the time. It also also suggests a method that I used to do the transition: https://ploum.net/216-le-bepo-sur-le-bout-des-doigts/ (in French)

Years is a little bit too much yes. I also did a full switch after 1 month of "klavaro" [1] training, but I think it took me nearly one year to be "fully" adapted. By "fully" I mean not thinking anymore about QWERTZ: not for french, nor for english, nor for coding and for beating my previous QWERTZ capabilities.

[1] http://klavaro.sourceforge.net/en/index.html

Anything other than [AQ]WERT[YZ] layout-based keyboard is already a big improvement for your fingers. The differences between Workman / Colemak / Dvorak and so on is mostly a matter of taste. One thing to note is that widely used layouts have more chances to be supported by software and by keyboard manufacturers (e.g. http://www.typematrix.com/). So it may be wiser to choose mainstream layouts that creating your own or using niche ones.

There is probably not a definitive answer for which one is better ("better" would have to be defined for this), so go ahead, read a bit about them and do your choice. Be aware though that once you have choose one, you will be stuck with it for a looong time, because switching layout is hard. You have to remap all your brain an muscle memory before being able to reach your previous efficiency. Spoiler alert: it takes months to years for this.

PS: For french speaking people, you may want to have a look at https://bepo.fr

I experimented with MIPS before, mainly for side projects, and I found them amazing for easily solving optimization problems. Reading this article, I felt the logic used for constructing the Sudoku solver is quite close to what I would have done for MIPS: one constraint for one number per row, one constraint for the columns, one constraint for the 3x3 boxes, etc…

I am wondering if MIPS and SAT relate together somehow?

This has been changed in Python 3.6 only, due to a change in dictionary implementation to make them more efficient. "Modern Dictionaries by Raymond Hettinger" [1] is a quite interesting and technical talk about these changes, explaining also the change in iteration order IIRC, worth a watch in my opinion!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p33CVV29OG8

Indeed, this has been implemented in G'MIC [1], which can be used as a plugin in gimp. I definitively recommend it! (based on the exact same paper :-)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsHgQY6025I

For interested people, there are also old maps of Switzerland available as "Journey through time" on the government website [1] They are ranging from 1844 to 2013. It's based on Dufour and Siegfried maps, which are presented there: [2, 3]. Time can be changed by clicking on the year number in red.

[1] https://map.geo.admin.ch/?layers=ch.swisstopo.zeitreihen&lay...

[2] https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/knowledge-facts/maps-and-m...

[3] https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/knowledge-facts/maps-and-m...

I discovered AOC this year, I clearly recommend it over ProjectEuler if you want programming challenges that requires less math knowledge to go through.

It is also a great platform to learn a new programming language. I'm using it as an opportunity to improve my (small) knowledge of rust.

[1] https://github.com/StreakyCobra/advent-of-code-2017

Indeed. For me this would already be a problem at the workplace though, not only from home.

True, being intrinsically motivated to solve problems doesn't mean people have discipline or desire to do so for work. Albeit it is not a sufficient condition, it is still helping to be a problem-solver I think. I may be wrong though.

This is one opinion.

I always see people criticizing all sort of tests because they are not good regarding to some criteria. Well, this is true for all of them. Those tests are trying to divide billions of people into few categories, you lose information anyway. There are 8 billions of personalities that should be split into 16 categories, some people will match exactly, other will lies in-between and will not match the characteristics.

I don't know these big-five or hexaco tests, but by the principle they also try to reduce the dimensionality of 8 billions people to n<100 categories, the same as MBTI. They may be better than MBTI, probably, but this does not mean the later may not bring useful information for our discussion.

I made some quick stats one of the HN pool (probably not statistically significant, but still a good indication), INTJ are 2.5% in the real population but 30% of HN, INTP 4% but 28.7% on HN, ENTP 6% but 10% on HN, and ENTJ 5.5% but 7.5% on HN. The four together represent ~80% of HN, but only ~20% of the real population. Those are also the four most represented categories on HN, and curiously belongs to the "Intellectual" class of personalities [1], as you would except to find on HN.

Maybe it's not the best test, maybe it has some problems, but it is still a tool that can give us some bases for thinking and discussions.

[1] https://mypersonality.info/personality-types/population-gend...

The fact that INTJ and INTP may usually be problem-solvers does not mean that other types may not be as well. A -> B doesn't mean than ¬A -> ¬B

I'm just saying that HN is really biased toward known problem-solving personalities, this should be taken into account in the context of this discussion :-)

Yes! And discussing this on HN is totally biasing our impression on the subject. HN is full [1-5] of INTJ, sometime refereed a "problem-solver", and INTP who I believe share, at least partially, the same love of solving problem.

Not all personality types are willing to solve problems (aka working) for their own intrinsic motivation.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204240

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675197

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7033047

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365294

Indeed. I recently looked for an MP3 player for trail running. My sister has an iPod nano that I liked for having tried it a few times, but when I saw the price it was a no go, especially when I saw that I can get the same functionality for 1/3 of the price.

I got an Sandisk Clip Sport Plus: 16Gb, Bluetooth, 3.5 Jack, FM tuner, micro-USB, ~20h battery, FLAC support, water-resistant.

Don't expect the same product quality as the nano though (plastic case, no touchscreen, smaller screen, etc…) but at least for sport you don't need this anyway.

> This package lets you run your code directly in Atom using any Jupyter kernels you have installed.

FYI you can do the same with the jupyter VSCode extension [1]

[1] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=donjayam...

PS: There are a few differences in the way they work, but I posted this to give pointers for people who may want such extensions in VSCode.

As always, the best solution is probably in-between the two extremes, i.e. keep issues open because they are useful for discussions and non-technical people bug reports, but don't be afraid to close PR and issues [1] to avoid the problems like burnout.

[1] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/why-i-close-prs-oss-p...

(edit: I know the link talks about PR, but for me it applies to issues asking for features or weird bugs as well)

Yes, it is why I said "Maybe" :-) I'm actually working in research and I'm going to conferences, but the limit of ~4 hours kind of forces me to focus on talks instead of coding all day long.

I mean, during the conference day I'm kind of depressed of not having battery any more, but with cold head I tell myself it is better for me.

I got mine for the equivalent of 1028 USD: SP4 i5, 256G, 8GO pen and type cover (this was a special offer though). This was one month ago. So when the new model will go out, the prices of SP4 will probably drop.

So far the only drawback of the SP4 is the battery life, so except if they improved it a lot I don't see the point of paying the 500-600$ more. They say it's possible to watch 13.5 hours of videos, but manufacturers tests are not trustable anyway. It would probably be more like 7-8 hours of real-world usage. Are the extra 3 hours worth the difference? Maybe, but for my usage no.

I ask myself the same question.

> manage their Inboxes from anywhere in their browsers

I don't need this feature, I have a pinned tab with Google Inbox and it's one click away like your extension, and usually I deal with mails only when I want to, so it's a focused task that would be fullscreen anyway. You say «Email notifications can sometimes ruin your focus and hamper your creativity», but I would say the best way to stay focused is to consult mails only when decided.

> 1. Which Emails are important and need a reply

Google Inbox is really smart and knows how to classify mails by category without any training (Travel, Shopping, Finance, Social Network, Notifications, Forums, Promotion), and for each category you can choose if A) you want to get notifications when you receive them, and B) If they should be shown grouped in the inbox. Nowadays, if I get a notification for a mail, it means that the mail is of interest. I don't receive anymore notifications for forums answers, promotions mails or notifications, neither on my computer nor my phone.

> 2. Which sent Emails require follow ups and what is the best time for a follow up.

Google Inbox let you use your inbox as a TODO list, where you can mark mails (or groups, as above) as done, which has the same effect has archiving it. Aside the "mark as done" feature, there is also a "snooze until" feature that let you in one click snooze the mail (hide it from inbox) until Tomorrow, This weekend, Next week, a given date, or even a place (looks awesome, I never saw it actually). You can also "pin" mails so they stay on top of your inbox.

> 3. Which contacts are important to you and which ones are drifting away and need to be reconnected with

I don't need this feature from my inbox, but maybe some people do.

So for me Google Inbox mostly solves the same problems, except it is free and you get all bonus points from using Google: Automatically detecting flights and travels mails, showing these info directly in the inbox, easy visualization of mail attachments, Android application of Google Inbox, etc. I don't know if you already tried Google Inbox, but if not you should, it is important to know your main concurrent.

My goal is not to be rude, I'm trying to help you by showing that Google Inbox solves already most of your problems, and people using it will notice that, whatever ways you turn your arguments. Maybe you should direct your arguments more on the «same features as Google, but without Google» side? Some people have concern about Google having all their data, it may be working, but this is just some thoughts that may be helping you. I wish you good luck for your project, I hope you will make it succeed :-)

> The problem with a fixed / structured filesystem is that it's largely inflexible. The next option would be to have some sort of hybrid -- a persistent data store plus, say, hardlinks or symlinks onto that store based on other elements, could work, but would be somewhat annoying to maintain (though not impossible, and a tools-based approach might well work).

What your are describing here is called a semantic file system, and there are some implementations of this, like for instance https://www.tagsistant.net/

> would also be nice if the data could be stored in a human readable structure in a normal filesystem, so your ability to use the data isn't dependent on your ability to run the tool.

This is really important yes!

> Overall I think it is an interesting project but the commercial potential is limited.

Indeed. This kind of tool is mostly limited to hackers, and it is not a big enough market to create a business model I suppose.

This would have to be done for the love of open-source :-)