myegorov

Does anyone know why the React/Reason creators switched from SML to OCaml?

  Reason's creator also created ReactJS, whose first prototypes were written in SML, 
  a distant cousin of OCaml. We've transcribed ReactML into ReactJS for wide adoption.[0]

[0] https://reasonml.github.io/guide/what-and-why/

It is understood that there will be those who buy bottled water where public utilities provide clean drinking water for all. Roughly 10% of the UK population are contributing to private health plans (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/16/private-med...). Apparently, the % of population fully covered by such plans is lower still (at under 1%). While this is a huge waste, this is not what I was alluding to. I have no argument to make if everyone in the US had access to health care comparable to that provided by the NHS.

>That's not a healthy private health insurance market; that's an opaque, balkanized system.

"Healthy private health insurance market" sounds to me like an oxymoron. I certainly haven't heard of one. There should be no market for health insurance, or organ trade, or public transportation, or water supply/sanitation. These are costly (in a deregulated economy like in the US) and require heavy subsidies, not a for-profit race to the bottom.

Why would anyone unaffiliated with NSA be alarmed that its tools had been breached? What legitimacy does it have at this point? Serious question.

From what I observed (and learned from others), state sanctioned discrimination against Soviet Jews did not exist at the time of the last wave (say, 1989 onwards). Don't have an axe to grind as I came around that time to the US as a Jewish refugee myself.

PS: To put the OP in context (not to condone the practice in any way), the discrimination was directed not just against the Jews, but more generally against any graduates of a select few top specialized physics/math schools (most had over 50% Jewish students). From what I understand, the driving factors behind the discrimination were along the lines of: These schools at the time (70s through mid-80s) were viewed as disloyal; their graduates likely to emigrate to Israel/US post-graduation, overrepresented at top programs etc.

Pecunia non olet

yes, it was a card with a chip

An aside... I had a hard time using my (US issued) Mastercard in small town Sweden earlier this year. The cashiers would photocopy my passport before processing the payment.

The title of the review alludes to Joseph Brodsky's memorable essay -- originally, a Dartmouth commencement address that begins:

  A substantial part of what lies ahead of you is going to 
  be claimed by boredom. The reason I’d like to talk to you 
  about it today, on this lofty occasion, is that I believe 
  no liberal arts college prepares you for that eventuality...

https://relembramentos.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/in-praise-of...

I've learned not to ignore these signals (lack of motivation) but take them in stride. So I usually wiggle a little to put things in perspective and see if there's room for incremental change. If everything else fails, I don't hesitate to make drastic changes to my environment. This takes some intuition and guts. At one time or another, I've been a classics PhD student, a civil engineer, and software developer. So it helps being reflexive, opening yourself up and exposing yourself to life's forces beyond what bears on you at present, and sometimes putting yourself in a situation where there's no way but to try something new. If you're stuck in a local equilibrium, one way out may be to put some life's forces to bear on it.

Can you name an undergraduate program in an Engineering/computer science related field conducted entirely in English? At TU Darmstadt or any other public school? I very much suspect that this is not an option if your intent is to get a degree. This is only an option for US undergrads on a study abroad supported by their home schools or for Master's students.

A former civil (structural) engineer here. I'm not aware of any undergrad engineering programs at public universities in Germany run in English. Assuming you know German, I would definitely opt for a degree in Germany provided that you can cover the living expenses, which are slightly lower in Germany. You won't have access to US financial aid as an independent student in Germany. Not sure about other branches of engineering, but for Civil I wouldn't worry about accreditation, more on that below. Be aware that a diploma from a typical US high school is not sufficient to gain entry directly into a German university/technical school. I think high school + 1 year of college __is__ sufficient. That also lets you brush up on your German. Rules may be different for IB diploma etc.

A degree from Germany will not be ABET-accredited.[1] Licensure requirements for engineers differ by state. For CA, I believe it only affects the number of years of professional experience required before you can take the PE exam (1 year for ABET-accredited vs 4 years for non-accredited, or something like that).[2] I don't think accreditation matters for EIT.[3] In general, unless you intend to open your own practice asap, how quickly you become a licensed engineer is not the top priority. Everyone gets there, a bit sooner with an accredited Master's (typically 1 year degree), or later without one.

[1] http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx [2] http://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/applicants/flowchart_for_pe.pdf [3] http://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/applicants/eit_lsitapp.shtml

In my experience, common clothes moth[1] or its larvae is also capable of eating through a plastic bag enclosing dry foodstuffs or cereal. Not sure if they're actually digesting it or could survive on the polyethylene diet though.

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

The military and prisons to the rescue. Think Detroit.

Indeed, you can view prescriptive or customary adoption of secondary and tertiary education (for one demographic) and the penal system (for another) as the state of the art social contract a la workfare. To all appearances, the US has been steadily drifting away from the welfare state model, so workfare seems like wishful thinking to me.

In my book, tunnels, road construction, mining, oil & gas are quintessential examples of diehard reactionary industries making snail pace progress, with entrenched corruption and basically insurmountable barriers to entry.

I've stopped paying attention ever since he spoke of breaking into the tunnels business.

The essence of logic programming[0] is in enabling a particular kind of exchange. On the one hand, there's a knowlege base -- a specification of what is known in the form of facts/rules/relations. On the other, there's a quest to satisfy some goal. In particular, the query may filter the knowledge base for a particular representation of facts. The query is nothing but a problem statement. In the middle, there's an engine that deduces the answers to queries, however the implementation is hidden from the user. In the ideal world, the user does not concern herself about how the search could be performed at all. The engine would magically produce the answer. (For efficiency's sake, this is not always the case in practice.) GraphQL is built in this spirit. There's an opportunity for a more detailed blog post here. I'll see to it when I get a chance.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_programming

I like to think of GraphQL as an ORM that hides the complexity of SQL queries. It is a DSL from the logic family. That it happens to be used in web services is secondary to understanding how it works. Could be used in a different context entirely.

I wish GraphQL was discussed in the context of the declarative/logic programming paradigm (as in Prolog) where it belongs. Instead, it's always spinned as this "shiny new thing" and contrasted with REST, which does not add any insight imho.

Do you know of a single instance where CIA (not subcontractors) was held accountable for any action? Secret detention, targeted killing, lying under oath? I think this is huge from public interest standpoint, couldn't care less about corporate espionage.

Interesting. I was actually joking about HN. I can't think of an example where hangers-on or bots or engagée interest groups have ever been able to sway the popular opinion en masse. Not saying the special interest groups won't take bids from any interested takers or have negligible effect. Luckily for the rest of us, it takes more than a marketing campaign to bring Putin to power or turn the tide against Trump. From my observations, the NYT (and HN) comments are symptomatic of the US popular opinion as of today that looks favorably on mass spying in the face of ISIS or Russia or whatever it is they feel requires the military/special agents to intervene.

Have you noticed this trend on HN? Because I see essentially the same sentiment in this thread. Little if anything is effected purely by overt or tacit collusion.

Looks like the CIA is screwing the public by mutual consent. The public is demanding more of the same, just as long as it's directed at whoever is out their favor. Here're the two topmost comments on NYT at the moment[0]:

  karma2013 New Jersey 3 hours ago
  If anyone still has doubts that Wikileaks and the Russians   
  are working together to undermine and destabilize our    
  government institutions, erode public confidence in our 
  government, and generally wreak havoc in our country, this 
  latest document dump should erase all doubt. We are under 
  attack by an adversarial nation, with a President here at  
  the helm who seems not to take any of this seriously.
  Spy agencies spy, this should come as no shock -- this is 
  how they infiltrate potential terrorist plots against 
  America and keep us safe. We are less safe today thanks to 
  Wikileaks and Assange's unholy alliance with Putin..

  Thomas Marin County, CA 3 hours ago
  Where's the hacking of trump's taxes and his Russian 
  connections??
  This information is needed NOW!

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/world/europe/wikileaks-ci...

To haters: didn't mean to ruffle your feathers. This is a falsifiable statement. Tell me all about it!

I could never understand how anyone can find Nussbaum's writings as remotely interesting. "For those who like that sort of thing, that's the sort of thing they like."

I think @flootch has a point. The question is, are Uber's employees -- and not just the upper management -- complicit in a scheme (of knowingly exploiting their drivers) that blows the internal scandal out of the water? And if yes, would their participation compromise the merit of any claims for personal redress? Don't have an answer, not beating my breast...

A fellow structural engineer here. I think that there's little room for innovation in the "calc" area. The cost of doing calcs is a small fraction of the overall budget of a structural project. Modeling/drawings is where it's at. The analysis/design toolset of a structural engineer (the FEA/design programs) hasn't changed in essence since the 80's outside of drafting/modeling, and for good reason: the marginal cost of an engineer perfecting their analysis exceeds marginal revenue. There's a sweet spot where an experienced structural engineer knows to stop refining their calcs, with the rest of the effort is spent on detailing, which sets apart good structural design from mediocre.

Where I would invest (if I were Autodesk or their competitor) is in releasing CAD tools for free in exchange for a consent to use the designs/details internally for ML purposes. Would love to contribute if anyone is working on such a product.

I think this is an overoptimistic view of the size of the market. The field is highly fragmented. A large fraction of structural engineers are contractors or work for smaller firms (think wood design, rather than concrete/steel) and wouldn't be target customers for section analysis and concrete detailing software. An absolute majority of those that work for the larger firms don't require anything more than Excel spreadsheets. From my experience, a typical structural engineer is a rather savvy computer user, often times writing Excel macros or AutoLISP scripts to automate their tasks.

Pile foundations are impractical for much of San Francisco founded on bay mud (bedrock hundreds of feet below surface). There're other practical solutions - including soil improvement, micropiles and/or raft foundation - that have been proved capable of supporting highrises.

On a different note, a settlement (even differential) in excess of one foot is expected for a significant fraction of building stock in SF in the event of a "design-level" earthquake.

The tower is reportedly 6" out of plumb. Over its 600ft height, that's 0.08%. For perspective, it is generally accepted that construction tolerances will result in a building 1/500, or 0.2%, out of plumb at the time of erection.