I thought it'd be fun to have a casual conversation about what we like to drink. If that's not appropriate for some reason please let me know.

I've switched from beer and whiskey to Tangeray and (diet) tonic and really feel less hangover when I drink (for whatever reason). What is your current go to on a Friday night?

Independent, investigative journalism in the public interest is becoming harder and harder to find. This is a shame because an informed public is critical for democracy to function effectively.

What news sources do you recommend for people trying to avoid the distraction of biased, sensationalist outlets like Fox News or CNN?

Thousands more fish found dead at Menindee as locals fear there will be 'none left'

Here's the previous story about the last mass death in the area: A million fish dead in 'distressing' outback algal bloom at Menindee (New South Wales)

This is now the third mass death of fish in that area in the past month.

The state government's response: Menindee fish deaths 'out of NSW Government's hands' says Regional Water Minister Niall Blair

I don't know what is the correct word in English, but I'll be one of those guys who will teach a "class" consisting on answering questions and guiding them through the exercises.

The content is very basic algorithms in C, so things like functions, pointers, and structs are off the scope. Here is the repo I made with the solutions for last semester. I'm starting in the second semester, so I have everything fresh in my memory.

I welcome anything you can give but I'm not necessarily seeking technical advice since the teachers have that covered. What I'd really like to know is what you consider to be some good examples, attitudes, and approaches for this particular position. Thanks.

There's one HN custom I really adore, and it's the random, interesting wikipedia articles that are posted and sometimes upvoted to the front page. cf: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wikipedia.org

This curated discovery of some obscure facets of humanity. Picking random articles from that list, for example, on the game Nomic; the Pineapple Express term in meteorology; or the British plan to build an aircraft carrier out of pykrete, which in case you didn't know is a mixture of paper and ice.

I was planning to try to help kickstart this here by posting articles with a special tag but I'd actually like to get people's thoughts on this, and if it's something others are interested in, suggest adding a ~wikipedia tildes to encourage this here more officially.

I've noticed, particularly on reddit but also elsewhere on the english-speaking internet, that thorium nuclear (MSR/LFTR) power is being hyped. And I can't help but feel suspicious. It seems too good to be true. "burns our nuclear waste", "infinite fuel", "Absolutely safe", "Proliferation is not an issue". Stuff like that. Not gonna provide much evidence for those claims existing here, but I'll say that you can usually find them in any big thread involving energy sources and there's a few TED talks too. Coal, conventional nuclear, renewables, any of those is apparently strictly inferior and we're complete morons for not switching already. Coal apparently causes more damage through radiation than nuclear, nuclear is dirty and renewables need something... anything.. to keep them company in case we can't get enough wind/sun. (Also, batteries and hydroelectric storage don't exist.)

German wikipedia has this to say about thorium hype: "Der MSR/LFTR als Teil einer Thoriumnutzung erhält etwa seit dem Jahr 2010 insbesondere im angelsächsischen Raum starke Unterstützung verschiedener Organisationen, während Nuklear- und Energieexperten eher zurückhaltend sind. Einige dieser Befürworter halten den LFTR sogar für die Lösung fast aller Energieprobleme.[2][3][4][5] Kritiker sprechen aus unterschiedlicher Motivation heraus vom MSR- oder Thorium-Hype[6] oder sogar von Astroturfing[7]." - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%BCssigsalzreaktor - paraphrased: MSR/LFTR received strong support in english-speaking areas by various orgs, while nuclear- and energy experts are mostly silent. Some supporters regard LFTR as solution to all energy problems. For various reasons, critics call thorium hyped or even astroturfed. [citations are mostly english, for the curious]

Meanwhile, there's major problems regarding practicality, we can't estimate just how secure it is (keep in mind modern reactor concepts are all "theoretically safe" as long as you keep the human out of the loop and maintain the facility properly.) Proliferation risks of thorium fueled reactors are immense due to U233 (232-contamination doesn't make the weapon less dangerous when used, just more dangerous to handle.). Also, no serious evidence for the capability to burn nuclear waste. And decommissioning a thorium plant seems, as of now, to be just as much of a shit job as a conventional nuclear plant - if not worse.

My main question with this is: How do you view thorium power / did you notice the same trends as I did? I'm just trying to form a conclusion between the hype and a maybe cynical pessimism.

God

put me at ease

deliver me to peace.

if you're above

deliver me to love.

there's not a sign

you're months without a call.

i begin to think

you never cared at all.

in winter breezes

hang me from the trees.

god i'm sick of

never feeling enough.

make me crease and

break me at my knees.

tarot prophet guide me

with your crystal ball.

.

read the names i've

written in my skin.

banish me to walk

alone in cold.

hit my face and tell me

this is it.

kill me, say you

never cared at all

.

screaming in your car

you said you'd call the cops

if i don't take my seatbelt off

on our way home and walk.

.

screaming in our home

you'd always slam the doors

and leave the silence ringing

in the halls

.

alone in dark i wailed

you didn't care.

as you sat there on your phone

and talked and talked.

.

always acting like

i wasn't there.

even asked me to pretend

that we were not.

.

remember back in college

when you made some friends

and tried to make me hide,

not show me off?

.

tried to tell them

i was just a friend.

and when i protested

god you told me off.

.

but when i made you mad

how mad you went.

and appeared inside my room

without consent.

.

i walked in and found you there

sat at my desk.

it should've ended there

but i regressed.

.

i said we would grow past it

never did.

always made me second guess

the life i live.

.

it's not my fault

that you stayed home alone.

why do i slash and cry and pray

that you'll pick up the phone.

.

tell me why i love you

when it's wrong.

.

.

.

tell me why i want you

when you're gone.

.

.

.

i want you to ignore me,

miss my calls.

.

.

.

if at least you'll speak

to me at all.

fuck you.

i'm sorry.

i love you.

fuck you.

fuck you too.

hey all!

i think this is my first ~talk post, 👀 nice place ye got here!

so, i got to thinking about social media sites a few days ago (whilst trying to brainstorm a sideproject that isn't a social media site) and i got to thinking about Voat.

it seemed like an interesting idea at first, a nearly literal copy-paste of old reddit meant a system that i was already used to, but i'd also be early enough to get whatever username i want, and they even have a cute little goat!

and then uhh

reddit got rid of a lot of hate-communities

and they all went to voat.

now - i guess that's fine. if they want to all exile themselves into their own corner of the internet, i can't stop em

but my question is like - what about the people behind Voat? obviously there's people running the site, there's investment money involved, and they have to know that their site is the front-yard above-ground pool with green water of the internet, right?

i tried looking for some interviews of the founder - but i couldn't find anything.

any of you lot know what's goin' on with voat? what are your thoughts on the site itself? its longevity?

Recently, Ian Lance Taylor, one of the most productive contributors to Go and, IIRC, the original author of gccgo, has written a very interesting comment on his view of the language:

(…) Go intentionally has a weak type system, and there are many restrictions that can be expressed in other languages but cannot be expressed in Go. Go in general encourages programming by writing code rather than programming by writing types. (…)

I found this distinction, writing code vs. writing types, very insightful. In my experience, in a language like Rust or (modern fancy) C++ the programmer is constantly forced to think about types, while when I program in Go or C, I almost never think about them. Types are, in fact, almost always obvious. It is also interesting that languages like Haskell and Idris explicitly expect the programmer to program with types.

What do you think?