chosen
int64 353
41.8M
| rejected
int64 287
41.8M
| chosen_rank
int64 1
2
| rejected_rank
int64 2
3
| top_level_parent
int64 189
41.8M
| split
large_stringclasses 1
value | chosen_prompt
large_stringlengths 236
19.5k
| rejected_prompt
large_stringlengths 209
18k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
13,833,472 | 13,831,565 | 1 | 2 | 13,831,275 | train | <story><title>Digital Privacy at the U.S Border: A New How-To Guide from EFF</title><url>https://www.eff.org/press/releases/digital-privacy-us-border-new-how-guide-eff</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lemming</author><text><i>The U.S. government reported a five-fold increase in the number of electronic media searches at the border in a single year, from 4,764 in 2015 to 23,877 in 2016.</i><p>It&#x27;s worth pointing out that this isn&#x27;t all Trump related, things have been heading in this direction for a while now. Trump has made the border crossing into the Stanford Prison Experiment, though.</text></comment> | <story><title>Digital Privacy at the U.S Border: A New How-To Guide from EFF</title><url>https://www.eff.org/press/releases/digital-privacy-us-border-new-how-guide-eff</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>df3</author><text>For US citizens, encrypting your device, backing up with cloud storage, and accepting that your device may be seized if you don&#x27;t provide passwords at the border sounds like the most usable (albeit imperfect) solution.<p>I&#x27;m not too concerned about my personal data at the moment. I interact with many non-citizens on a regular basis, and I am concerned that a misinterpreted Facebook message or email could land them in hot water.<p>It&#x27;s not just ourselves we&#x27;re protecting, but also our friends, family and colleagues.</text></comment> |
34,340,696 | 34,340,201 | 1 | 2 | 34,339,698 | train | <story><title>Why are there so many tech layoffs, and why should we be worried?</title><url>https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avgDev</author><text>This is coming from a &quot;Stanford scholar&quot;, yikes.<p><i>What explains why so many companies are laying large numbers of their workforce off? The answer is simple: copycat behavior, according to Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business</i><p>Since the answer is so simple I stopped reading the article. Obviously companies should not care about the their stock dropping massively in the last year, rates going up and consumer spending reducing. The layoffs is just copycat behavior.
&#x2F;s<p>Man, this guy must have predicted 50 of the last 2 recessions.<p>Edit: This is such a bad take I would expect to read it on r&#x2F;investing in a most downvoted comment. A &quot;scholar&quot; should know rarely things are black and white. There isn&#x27;t a simple to answer to literally anything in macroeconomics, or just in life in general really.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>roncesvalles</author><text>Really? I thought it was fairly obvious from the beginning that this is hysteric copycat behavior. To me the smoking gun was how suddenly in a brief period of time, every tech company CEO was making <i>absolutely certain</i> predictions about economic headwinds in 2023, up to 6 months before the end of 2022. Nothing qualifies them (or anybody for that matter) to assert that. It doesn&#x27;t even make sense to do layoffs today when you expect trouble 6-12 months later.<p>That and the panic from tech stock prices being decimated after 10+ years of growth. The layoffs felt like Boards and CEOs were smashing the controls until the numbers went back up again.</text></comment> | <story><title>Why are there so many tech layoffs, and why should we be worried?</title><url>https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avgDev</author><text>This is coming from a &quot;Stanford scholar&quot;, yikes.<p><i>What explains why so many companies are laying large numbers of their workforce off? The answer is simple: copycat behavior, according to Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business</i><p>Since the answer is so simple I stopped reading the article. Obviously companies should not care about the their stock dropping massively in the last year, rates going up and consumer spending reducing. The layoffs is just copycat behavior.
&#x2F;s<p>Man, this guy must have predicted 50 of the last 2 recessions.<p>Edit: This is such a bad take I would expect to read it on r&#x2F;investing in a most downvoted comment. A &quot;scholar&quot; should know rarely things are black and white. There isn&#x27;t a simple to answer to literally anything in macroeconomics, or just in life in general really.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sam0x17</author><text>Regarding the copy-cat behavior, the types of personalities that tend to be OK with working for FANG (external locus of control individuals who are likely to conform) aren&#x27;t going to put themselves out there and do what they think is best for the company when they can just copy what [other FANG] is doing. They view these situations as &quot;omg, amazon is doing X, how can I justify to my boss not also doing X&quot;</text></comment> |
22,546,281 | 22,545,747 | 1 | 3 | 22,545,597 | train | <story><title>Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus</title><url>https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/coronavirus-norwegian-cruise-line-leaked-emails-show-booking-strategy-11590056</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>program_whiz</author><text>Meta point: do we have to accept deception as a necessary part of sales? It seems strange that we accept deception and manipulation as necessary ingredients in the market, and that its on the buyer when they &quot;get duped&quot;.<p>But couldn&#x27;t we have a standard where literally anything anyone says to a customer must be true, or was not false to the knowledge of the person saying it? Scammy warranties, timeshares, and other &quot;gotcha&quot; products would be a thing of the past. To make money, providing honest value with a product that matches the expectation of the customer would be required.<p>In these situations, cruise lines will of course lose money in the short term. But the alternative is that we accept the risk to human life to people taking these cruises, all in the name of short-term capital gain. What if instead we had to either &quot;eat the loss&quot;, or invest in true safety (we can take 50% of normal passenger load, add these safety measures, these cleaning routines, etc).</text></comment> | <story><title>Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus</title><url>https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/coronavirus-norwegian-cruise-line-leaked-emails-show-booking-strategy-11590056</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>socialdemocrat</author><text>As a Norwegian I want to point out that there are no Norwegian owners of Norwegian Cruise Lines. It is to my knowledge fully American owned. It was Norwegian long time ago.<p>Sorry just don’t want to get us associated with such extremely unethical behavior.<p>Frankly it ought to be punishable in the justice system.</text></comment> |
35,591,818 | 35,592,058 | 1 | 2 | 35,591,460 | train | <story><title>Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)</title><url>https://m.post.naver.com/viewer/postView.nhn?volumeNo=8912179&memberNo=33582594</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>neom</author><text>Having spent the last 5 years learning Korean, I&#x27;ve grown to find it an incredibly efficient language.<p>맥주 한 잔 주세요
Beer one please<p>화장실은 어디에요?
Toilet where?<p>와이파이 있어요?
wifi is here?<p>You can process and even start answering someone before they&#x27;ve finished their sentence. By contrast in English, I&#x27;d say &quot;Could I have another beer please?&quot; - tell me what you need up front!</text></comment> | <story><title>Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)</title><url>https://m.post.naver.com/viewer/postView.nhn?volumeNo=8912179&memberNo=33582594</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wobby_sobby</author><text>This is going to make a great r&#x2F;badlinguistics post</text></comment> |
35,088,734 | 35,088,530 | 1 | 2 | 35,086,836 | train | <story><title>Bank run on Silicon Valley Bank</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/09/silicon-valley-banks-shares-are-tanking-as-a-mess-unfolds/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>boringg</author><text>Poor move by the CEO. It&#x27;s like he wanted to be honest with everyone but that wasn&#x27;t a strong signal.<p>Also out most of the banks - you would expect that the clients of SVB are a little more sophisticated than your retail bank demographic being start-up companies and all (big assumption).</text></item><item><author>rippercushions</author><text>From <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;03&#x2F;09&#x2F;silicon-valley-banks-shares-are-tanking-as-a-mess-unfolds&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;03&#x2F;09&#x2F;silicon-valley-banks-share...</a> :<p><i>Becker said the bank has “ample liquidity” to support its clients “with one exception: If everybody is telling each other that SVB is in trouble, that will be a challenge.”</i><p>Pro tip: if you&#x27;re CEO of a bank that&#x27;s facing a bank run, don&#x27;t tell the press that you&#x27;ll be in trouble if everybody takes their money out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fullsend</author><text>In the immortal words of Andrew Lahde who closed his hedge fund up 800% in 2008, “I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.”<p>Assuming these people have any level of sophistication is what gets us into these messes. It’s good to remember they are betting billions of dollars based on nothing but fomo and don’t know anything special at all.</text></comment> | <story><title>Bank run on Silicon Valley Bank</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/09/silicon-valley-banks-shares-are-tanking-as-a-mess-unfolds/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>boringg</author><text>Poor move by the CEO. It&#x27;s like he wanted to be honest with everyone but that wasn&#x27;t a strong signal.<p>Also out most of the banks - you would expect that the clients of SVB are a little more sophisticated than your retail bank demographic being start-up companies and all (big assumption).</text></item><item><author>rippercushions</author><text>From <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;03&#x2F;09&#x2F;silicon-valley-banks-shares-are-tanking-as-a-mess-unfolds&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;03&#x2F;09&#x2F;silicon-valley-banks-share...</a> :<p><i>Becker said the bank has “ample liquidity” to support its clients “with one exception: If everybody is telling each other that SVB is in trouble, that will be a challenge.”</i><p>Pro tip: if you&#x27;re CEO of a bank that&#x27;s facing a bank run, don&#x27;t tell the press that you&#x27;ll be in trouble if everybody takes their money out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tyre</author><text>They’re a public company with known exposure to startups. If he lies, that’s securities fraud and he could go to prison.<p>Is that worth it?</text></comment> |
6,568,094 | 6,568,060 | 1 | 2 | 6,566,817 | train | <story><title>IsoHunt to Shut Down as Part of Settlement With Studios</title><url>http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/isohunt-to-shut-down-as-part-of-settlement-with-studios-1200734509/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mcantelon</author><text>What are better sites for torrent search? I&#x27;ve actually had good luck with ISOhunt.</text></item><item><author>aroch</author><text>IsoHunt has been largely irrelevant in the US for the last several years since they started filtering US IPs[1] and even before then was a pretty poor selection of torrents with many displaying completely incorrect swarm data.<p>While I&#x27;m not personally bothered by this (from the point of view of someone who used IsoHunt) I do find this settlement quite annoying and Dodd to be completely abysmal as a person.<p>_____________<p>[1] <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/isohunt-redirects-us-visitors-to-lite-version-100406/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;torrentfreak.com&#x2F;isohunt-redirects-us-visitors-to-lit...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dmix</author><text>Kickasstorrents is the best atm in my opinion. TPB is good but their legal issues make them unreliable technically and I prefer non-magnet links for use with rtorrent.</text></comment> | <story><title>IsoHunt to Shut Down as Part of Settlement With Studios</title><url>http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/isohunt-to-shut-down-as-part-of-settlement-with-studios-1200734509/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mcantelon</author><text>What are better sites for torrent search? I&#x27;ve actually had good luck with ISOhunt.</text></item><item><author>aroch</author><text>IsoHunt has been largely irrelevant in the US for the last several years since they started filtering US IPs[1] and even before then was a pretty poor selection of torrents with many displaying completely incorrect swarm data.<p>While I&#x27;m not personally bothered by this (from the point of view of someone who used IsoHunt) I do find this settlement quite annoying and Dodd to be completely abysmal as a person.<p>_____________<p>[1] <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/isohunt-redirects-us-visitors-to-lite-version-100406/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;torrentfreak.com&#x2F;isohunt-redirects-us-visitors-to-lit...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Munksgaard</author><text>TPB works fine enough for me.</text></comment> |
40,000,598 | 40,000,380 | 1 | 2 | 39,998,849 | train | <story><title>AI-generated sad girl with piano performs the text of the MIT License</title><url>https://suno.com/song/da6d4a83-1001-4694-8c28-648a6e8bad0a/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>navane</author><text>These songs don&#x27;t have any hooks. Melodies don&#x27;t get repeated. They all just meander along.<p>I think as they get better at making these great middle of the road songs, edgy music will reemerge. Whatever AI will be good at, will immediately devalue, in the realm of arts. Just how photography gave way to non-realistic art and how drum machines made sloppy drums (or ridiculous apex twins) hip. Then, the artifacts we see now as flaws will create its own sub genre.<p>So I see three ways this flows: mediocrity will be even more available, which will make artists who make mediocare music even less succesfull, pushing all human music further in human direction, except those using the unwanted artifacts of this new tech to create new sub genres.<p>Music, art, fashion is in the end all about changes. What we make now mostly means something in relation to what was already there. It&#x27;s a big conversation, spanning millenia, and this isn&#x27;t the last word.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fps_doug</author><text>&gt; These songs don&#x27;t have any hooks. Melodies don&#x27;t get repeated. They all just meander along.<p>I&#x27;ve been playing around with it for a few days now. While I agree that it seems impossible to create songs with a more &quot;sophisticated structure&quot; (for lack of a better word off the top of my head), you still can get better results by fine-tuning, as is always the case.<p>If you just request &quot;rock music&quot; or &quot;jazz&quot;, you get very dull, generic variants of the requested style. But on a second thought, isn&#x27;t that exactly what should happen? You throw all the rock music on this planet in a blender, turn it on, and what you get is the most average rock music there is.<p>If you spend some time spicing up your prompt with flowery language or just a bunch of adjectives, you can get a sound that seems less bland. When you supply lyrics, using square brackets to denote verses, chorus and bridges can also result in a somewhat more structured song, but I found that the AI is pretty lackluster in that regard and you often need several attempts until it follows these inline orders.<p>So yes, in its current form it has mostly a novelty factor, this is Stable Diffusion for music, but I can easily see this being useful for a small indie gamedev who needs some BGM, or an alternative to the YouTube music library. Instrumental sounds fine, it&#x27;s mostly vocals that have this clear digital distortion if you pay attention. It&#x27;s surprisingly good, but still bad.</text></comment> | <story><title>AI-generated sad girl with piano performs the text of the MIT License</title><url>https://suno.com/song/da6d4a83-1001-4694-8c28-648a6e8bad0a/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>navane</author><text>These songs don&#x27;t have any hooks. Melodies don&#x27;t get repeated. They all just meander along.<p>I think as they get better at making these great middle of the road songs, edgy music will reemerge. Whatever AI will be good at, will immediately devalue, in the realm of arts. Just how photography gave way to non-realistic art and how drum machines made sloppy drums (or ridiculous apex twins) hip. Then, the artifacts we see now as flaws will create its own sub genre.<p>So I see three ways this flows: mediocrity will be even more available, which will make artists who make mediocare music even less succesfull, pushing all human music further in human direction, except those using the unwanted artifacts of this new tech to create new sub genres.<p>Music, art, fashion is in the end all about changes. What we make now mostly means something in relation to what was already there. It&#x27;s a big conversation, spanning millenia, and this isn&#x27;t the last word.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>amelius</author><text>Elevator music ...<p>Hmm, perhaps there is a business model there: an elevator that writes music about the people inside the elevator, and adapts as the situation changes.</text></comment> |
18,632,997 | 18,633,100 | 1 | 3 | 18,629,063 | train | <story><title>Facial recognition: It’s time for action</title><url>https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/12/06/facial-recognition-its-time-for-action/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JaRail</author><text>I&#x27;m not convinced the US will be passing much of anything in the next two-years. Passing pro-privacy regulation? Seems very unlikely to me. Microsoft should engage with Canada and the EU where technology&#x2F;privacy regulation is gaining traction.</text></item><item><author>benwerd</author><text>&gt; This stands in stark contrast to the meeting I attended on Tuesday with Amazon&#x27;s general counsel regarding their Rekognition service.<p>And I think that cuts to the core of this: this is an anti-Amazon move. Nonetheless, I do also think it&#x27;s a pro-consumer, pro-civil liberties stance. It&#x27;s also a recognition that the tide is turning with respect to consumers and privacy; here, Microsoft is getting ahead of this changing trend and establishing that they&#x27;re on the right side of it. Amazon is going to find itself hurting on several levels next year, as legislation likely finds its way onto the books and the consumer tide changes further.</text></item><item><author>geephroh</author><text>This is a laudable first step in advocacy for real regulation of a technology that already has huge impacts on privacy and civil society. I was in the room for one of the meetings with Microsoft&#x27;s senior leadership as a representative of a Seattle-based civil liberties group. While our coalition would like to see MS go further, it was quite clear that they take their commitment to corporate responsibility and ethics around the AI issue very seriously. In particular, they seemed to understand our concerns about how facial recognition technologies can magnify existing biases in our criminal justice system.<p>This stands in stark contrast to the meeting I attended on Tuesday with Amazon&#x27;s general counsel regarding their Rekognition service. There was a near complete rejection of the idea that mass deployment of surveillance technologies in today&#x27;s largely unregulated environment posed any danger to civil society. He also denied that Amazon had any responsibility for the negative impacts of their AI&#x2F;ML technologies, or role to play in industry efforts to self-regulate.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>akiselev</author><text>The incoming California legislature is over 3&#x2F;4ths Democratic so while the Federal gridlock may not make any progress, there could be some movement closer to home that at least gets the industry to prepare for the inevitable.</text></comment> | <story><title>Facial recognition: It’s time for action</title><url>https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/12/06/facial-recognition-its-time-for-action/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JaRail</author><text>I&#x27;m not convinced the US will be passing much of anything in the next two-years. Passing pro-privacy regulation? Seems very unlikely to me. Microsoft should engage with Canada and the EU where technology&#x2F;privacy regulation is gaining traction.</text></item><item><author>benwerd</author><text>&gt; This stands in stark contrast to the meeting I attended on Tuesday with Amazon&#x27;s general counsel regarding their Rekognition service.<p>And I think that cuts to the core of this: this is an anti-Amazon move. Nonetheless, I do also think it&#x27;s a pro-consumer, pro-civil liberties stance. It&#x27;s also a recognition that the tide is turning with respect to consumers and privacy; here, Microsoft is getting ahead of this changing trend and establishing that they&#x27;re on the right side of it. Amazon is going to find itself hurting on several levels next year, as legislation likely finds its way onto the books and the consumer tide changes further.</text></item><item><author>geephroh</author><text>This is a laudable first step in advocacy for real regulation of a technology that already has huge impacts on privacy and civil society. I was in the room for one of the meetings with Microsoft&#x27;s senior leadership as a representative of a Seattle-based civil liberties group. While our coalition would like to see MS go further, it was quite clear that they take their commitment to corporate responsibility and ethics around the AI issue very seriously. In particular, they seemed to understand our concerns about how facial recognition technologies can magnify existing biases in our criminal justice system.<p>This stands in stark contrast to the meeting I attended on Tuesday with Amazon&#x27;s general counsel regarding their Rekognition service. There was a near complete rejection of the idea that mass deployment of surveillance technologies in today&#x27;s largely unregulated environment posed any danger to civil society. He also denied that Amazon had any responsibility for the negative impacts of their AI&#x2F;ML technologies, or role to play in industry efforts to self-regulate.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jammygit</author><text>Could you elaborate on the privacy regulation that is gaining traction in Canada?</text></comment> |
15,291,796 | 15,291,535 | 1 | 2 | 15,291,377 | train | <story><title>Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far</title><url>https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phasecode</author><text>Why does it seem like more and more sites are requesting permissions to send notifications...makes it hard to consider this a &quot;trustworthy&quot; site when the first thing you&#x27;re trying to do is ask for permissions to send notifications.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>akvadrako</author><text>It was nice when it was used sparingly by things like chat apps, but it&#x27;s become too annoying; maybe the webmasters just don&#x27;t understand they aren&#x27;t the centre of their users&#x27; lives.<p>At least the latest version of Safari supports blocking all these requests.</text></comment> | <story><title>Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far</title><url>https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phasecode</author><text>Why does it seem like more and more sites are requesting permissions to send notifications...makes it hard to consider this a &quot;trustworthy&quot; site when the first thing you&#x27;re trying to do is ask for permissions to send notifications.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tobyhinloopen</author><text>Yeah I never accept that. Who would?</text></comment> |
38,113,002 | 38,111,659 | 1 | 3 | 38,108,873 | train | <story><title>Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-and-demis-hassabis-just-want-to-control-ai-2023-10</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zimpenfish</author><text>&gt; He&#x27;s pretty sure that human civilization will be extinct this century.<p>If they are, it&#x27;ll almost certainly[1] be climate change or nuclear war, it won&#x27;t be AI.<p>[1] leaving some wiggle room for pandemics, asteroids, etc.</text></item><item><author>concordDance</author><text>He actually doesn&#x27;t think it&#x27;s viable, but thinks its the only card left to play.<p>He&#x27;s pretty sure that human civilization will be extinct this century.</text></item><item><author>jeffparsons</author><text>My estimation of Eliezer Yudkowsky just dropped a notch — not because I don&#x27;t take the existential threat posed by AI seriously — but because he seems to think that global coordination and control is an even remotely possible strategy.</text></item><item><author>upupupandaway</author><text>The fact that anyone may be taking Eliezer Yudkowsky seriously on this topic is mind-blowing to me. Simply mind-blowing. To imagine that anybody, including the UN, would have any power to collective put a stop to the development of AI globally is a laughable idea. The UN cannot agree to release a letter on Israel-Hamas, imagine policing the ENTIRE WORLD and shutting down AI development when necessary.<p>We can&#x27;t stop countries from developing weapons that will destroy us all tomorrow morning and take billions of USD to develop, imagine thinking we can stop matrix multiplication globally. I don&#x27;t want to derail into an ad hominem, but frankly, it&#x27;s almost the only option left here.</text></item><item><author>JoshTriplett</author><text>&gt; seize power via regulatory capture<p>Not even a little bit. &quot;Stop&quot; is not regulatory capture. Some large AI companies are attempting to twist &quot;stop&quot; into &quot;be careful, as only we can&quot;. The actual way to stop the existential risk is to stop. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ESYudkowsky&#x2F;status&#x2F;1719777049576128542" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ESYudkowsky&#x2F;status&#x2F;1719777049576128542</a><p>&gt; the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements<p>&quot;Stop&quot; is not &quot;licensing and reporting requirements&quot;, it&#x27;s <i>stop</i>.</text></item><item><author>lazzlazzlazz</author><text>The way incumbents are attempting to seize power via regulatory capture, using &quot;X-Risk&quot; and fantastical claims of sudden human extinction is maybe one of the most cynical ploys in the history of tech so far.<p>Open source is one of our greatest gifts, and the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements (which will undoubtedly become more strict) is absurd.<p>The laws we have already cover malevolent and abusive uses of software applications.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>itsoktocry</author><text>&gt;<i>If they are, it&#x27;ll almost certainly[1] be climate change or nuclear war, it won&#x27;t be AI.</i><p>If we go extinct in the next 100 years, it&#x27;s not going to be from climate change. How would that even work?</text></comment> | <story><title>Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-and-demis-hassabis-just-want-to-control-ai-2023-10</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zimpenfish</author><text>&gt; He&#x27;s pretty sure that human civilization will be extinct this century.<p>If they are, it&#x27;ll almost certainly[1] be climate change or nuclear war, it won&#x27;t be AI.<p>[1] leaving some wiggle room for pandemics, asteroids, etc.</text></item><item><author>concordDance</author><text>He actually doesn&#x27;t think it&#x27;s viable, but thinks its the only card left to play.<p>He&#x27;s pretty sure that human civilization will be extinct this century.</text></item><item><author>jeffparsons</author><text>My estimation of Eliezer Yudkowsky just dropped a notch — not because I don&#x27;t take the existential threat posed by AI seriously — but because he seems to think that global coordination and control is an even remotely possible strategy.</text></item><item><author>upupupandaway</author><text>The fact that anyone may be taking Eliezer Yudkowsky seriously on this topic is mind-blowing to me. Simply mind-blowing. To imagine that anybody, including the UN, would have any power to collective put a stop to the development of AI globally is a laughable idea. The UN cannot agree to release a letter on Israel-Hamas, imagine policing the ENTIRE WORLD and shutting down AI development when necessary.<p>We can&#x27;t stop countries from developing weapons that will destroy us all tomorrow morning and take billions of USD to develop, imagine thinking we can stop matrix multiplication globally. I don&#x27;t want to derail into an ad hominem, but frankly, it&#x27;s almost the only option left here.</text></item><item><author>JoshTriplett</author><text>&gt; seize power via regulatory capture<p>Not even a little bit. &quot;Stop&quot; is not regulatory capture. Some large AI companies are attempting to twist &quot;stop&quot; into &quot;be careful, as only we can&quot;. The actual way to stop the existential risk is to stop. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ESYudkowsky&#x2F;status&#x2F;1719777049576128542" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ESYudkowsky&#x2F;status&#x2F;1719777049576128542</a><p>&gt; the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements<p>&quot;Stop&quot; is not &quot;licensing and reporting requirements&quot;, it&#x27;s <i>stop</i>.</text></item><item><author>lazzlazzlazz</author><text>The way incumbents are attempting to seize power via regulatory capture, using &quot;X-Risk&quot; and fantastical claims of sudden human extinction is maybe one of the most cynical ploys in the history of tech so far.<p>Open source is one of our greatest gifts, and the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements (which will undoubtedly become more strict) is absurd.<p>The laws we have already cover malevolent and abusive uses of software applications.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jefftk</author><text>AI can make a lot of other risks worse. For example, say someone asks GPT5 (or decensored Llama-5) how to kill everyone and it patiently and expertly walks them through how to create a global pandemic.</text></comment> |
25,151,621 | 25,148,397 | 1 | 3 | 25,147,970 | train | <story><title>Archive of Lisp Machine, Inc</title><url>https://github.com/jrm-code-project/LISP-Machine</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mjh21</author><text>Have to say this is why HN is great. My dad’s been very sick (Parkinson’s) for the last couple of years and we haven’t been able to talk much about his old work on Lisp. Pretty cool to be able to grep for holloway and see snippets of what he was up to a few decades ago. Thanks to whoever put this together and posted.</text></comment> | <story><title>Archive of Lisp Machine, Inc</title><url>https://github.com/jrm-code-project/LISP-Machine</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rjsw</author><text>There is an emulator to run this [1].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dseagrav&#x2F;ld" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dseagrav&#x2F;ld</a></text></comment> |
13,364,077 | 13,363,984 | 1 | 3 | 13,363,448 | train | <story><title>Aaron Swartz’s Theory on How to Save the World</title><url>https://backchannel.com/aaron-swartzs-theory-on-how-to-save-the-world-b3401bf79d99#.8tdx6ebw8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pieter1976</author><text>I have never understood the raising up of Aaron Swartz to demi-god status by this community. It is tragic that he took his own life and I fully expect to be downvoted here for expressing this opinion as it is a thing you can&#x27;t say here (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;say.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;say.html</a>).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>scrollaway</author><text>He was young, showed great promise, was clearly ahead of his age, everybody who knew him found him to be a genuinely nice and caring person...<p>Is it really <i>that</i> surprising that people are genuinely upset he took his own life after being harassed by the US government? This is a community that tends to dislike extreme prosecution, copyright laws and generally agrees with Aaron&#x27;s ideology.<p>And on another note: Can HN not care about a guy without people saying we&#x27;re &quot;raising him to demi-god status&quot;? With how often that accusation is thrown around, you&#x27;d think we have enough to sell our demi-god surplus to cults in need of more.<p>PS: The &quot;I&#x27;ll be downvoted for my contrarian idea but ...&quot; stuff is for reddit, not here, tbh.</text></comment> | <story><title>Aaron Swartz’s Theory on How to Save the World</title><url>https://backchannel.com/aaron-swartzs-theory-on-how-to-save-the-world-b3401bf79d99#.8tdx6ebw8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pieter1976</author><text>I have never understood the raising up of Aaron Swartz to demi-god status by this community. It is tragic that he took his own life and I fully expect to be downvoted here for expressing this opinion as it is a thing you can&#x27;t say here (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;say.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;say.html</a>).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lazzlazzlazz</author><text>I agree. His story is tragic, but why was he considered so profoundly enlightened? I have read almost everything published about him and failed to be grasped in the same way.</text></comment> |
20,761,419 | 20,761,316 | 1 | 2 | 20,761,153 | train | <story><title>My Apology Regarding Jeffrey Epstein</title><url>https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/my-apology-regarding-jeffrey-epstein/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whowhatwhy</author><text>&quot;I met Epstein in 2013 at a conference through a trusted business friend and, in my fundraising efforts for MIT Media Lab, I invited him to the Lab and visited several of his residences. I want you to know that in all of my interactions with Epstein, I was never involved in, never heard him talk about, and never saw any evidence of the horrific acts that he was accused of.<p>&quot;<p>&quot;
On June 30, 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge (one of two) of procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18
&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jmkni</author><text>I think a lot of people became aware of Epstein in 2011 when Charlie Brooker (Black Mirror creator) did this piece on Prince Andrew - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;yPyn7mu375I" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;yPyn7mu375I</a><p>I remember it going viral at the time, and since then a casual Google would have thrown it up pretty highly.</text></comment> | <story><title>My Apology Regarding Jeffrey Epstein</title><url>https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/my-apology-regarding-jeffrey-epstein/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whowhatwhy</author><text>&quot;I met Epstein in 2013 at a conference through a trusted business friend and, in my fundraising efforts for MIT Media Lab, I invited him to the Lab and visited several of his residences. I want you to know that in all of my interactions with Epstein, I was never involved in, never heard him talk about, and never saw any evidence of the horrific acts that he was accused of.<p>&quot;<p>&quot;
On June 30, 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge (one of two) of procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18
&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sithlord</author><text>Do you do a deep dive in the criminal history of every person you deal with? No? didn&#x27;t think so.</text></comment> |
2,132,926 | 2,132,744 | 1 | 3 | 2,132,669 | train | <story><title>Hacker Shows It Doesn’t Take $8 Million to Clone Qwiki</title><url>http://newsgrange.com/hacker-shows-it-doesnt-take-8-million-to-clone-qwiki-just-321-lines-of-html-will-do-the-trick/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>banksy</author><text>Qwiki won Runner up for "Best Technical Achievement" at the Crunchies the other night. Fqwiki is a statement meant to illustrate how ridiculously naive we have become with respect to "innovative technology". Neither Fqwiki nor Qwiki belong even remotely in the same league as Google's Self Driving Cars (which won for Best Technical Achievement).<p>Building a great company is about more than a hacked-up prototype built in six hours and, with luck, Qwiki might achieve this status. At the same time, however, Qwiki is being disingenuous in promoting a nonexistent technological breakthrough that falsely sets expectations for what "technical innovation" actually means.<p>Misinformed investors and entrepreneurs will only bring us closer to a bubble that may some day pop. Don't let the hype fool you.<p>Yours,<p>Banksy The Lucky Stiff</text></comment> | <story><title>Hacker Shows It Doesn’t Take $8 Million to Clone Qwiki</title><url>http://newsgrange.com/hacker-shows-it-doesnt-take-8-million-to-clone-qwiki-just-321-lines-of-html-will-do-the-trick/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>melvinram</author><text>I just saw Qwiki for the first time today and watched the Natalie Portman qwiki at <a href="http://www.qwiki.com/q/#Natalie_Portman" rel="nofollow">http://www.qwiki.com/q/#Natalie_Portman</a> and you can count me in as a fan.<p>The clone (viewable at <a href="http://banksytheluckystiff.github.com/fqwiki/" rel="nofollow">http://banksytheluckystiff.github.com/fqwiki/</a>) definitely does not compare. It's like comparing the first version of Yahoo to today's Google... and Qwiki hasn't even started to improve their product yet.<p>Obviously the author doesn't care for the qwiki format but they are being short sighted. It could be quiet useful, especially as it improves over time in areas of giving you options in how much depth you want, the voice synthesizer, etc, by providing just enough info in a pleasurable format.<p>What I do hate about qwiki is their name. It associates them with wiki's/wikipedia in my mind (without knowing what it is) and it personally is a major turn-off.</text></comment> |
15,711,176 | 15,711,151 | 1 | 2 | 15,711,002 | train | <story><title>Mozilla terminates its deal with Yahoo and makes Google the default in Firefox</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/mozilla-terminates-its-deal-with-yahoo-and-makes-google-the-default-in-firefox-again/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>shubhamjain</author><text>&gt; As Recode reported last year, there was a clause in the Mozilla deal that would have the potential Yahoo acquirer pay $375 million per year through 2019 if Mozilla didn’t want to work with the buyer. This clause also allowed Mozilla to walk away at its sole discretion. We don’t know if Mozilla invoked this clause to terminate the agreement, but it seems likely.<p>Am I understanding this correctly? Mozilla will get paid $374M by invoking a clause at their own discretion. Sounds like a horrible deal to ratify. Was Yahoo that desperate?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kenhwang</author><text>In 2014, Yahoo looked to be in much better shape than it it is today. Sweeten the deal with a scenario that you don&#x27;t think will happen and at the same time drop off a poison pill to defend against takeovers. Only problem was that Yahoo had to be better than Google at search. I&#x27;d say it was hubris, not desperation.</text></comment> | <story><title>Mozilla terminates its deal with Yahoo and makes Google the default in Firefox</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/mozilla-terminates-its-deal-with-yahoo-and-makes-google-the-default-in-firefox-again/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>shubhamjain</author><text>&gt; As Recode reported last year, there was a clause in the Mozilla deal that would have the potential Yahoo acquirer pay $375 million per year through 2019 if Mozilla didn’t want to work with the buyer. This clause also allowed Mozilla to walk away at its sole discretion. We don’t know if Mozilla invoked this clause to terminate the agreement, but it seems likely.<p>Am I understanding this correctly? Mozilla will get paid $374M by invoking a clause at their own discretion. Sounds like a horrible deal to ratify. Was Yahoo that desperate?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Vinnl</author><text>To be fair, it wasn&#x27;t like there was a whole lot of incentive for Mozilla to use Yahoo! as the default, given as many people prefer Google. And especially with Yahoo! not doing so well, they would certainly not risk being associated with the likes of Verizon, a company that appears to be almost antithetical to Mozilla&#x27;s mission.</text></comment> |
34,151,435 | 34,150,991 | 1 | 2 | 34,148,599 | train | <story><title>Artificial Intelligence Is Stupid and Causal Reasoning Will Not Fix It</title><url>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.513474/full</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kmeisthax</author><text>&gt;In other words, unless we are content to “bite the bullet” of panpsychism, then no machine, however complex, can ever realize phenomenal consciousness purely in virtue of the execution of a particular computer program.<p>Ok, but why are biological neurons exempted from this argument? I mean, aside from the obvious conflict of interest that the person who wrote this article is made out of them, and they would much rather not be ontologically dissolved into a soulless zombie.<p>I&#x27;m not sure you actually have to bite the panpsychism bullet either (or I&#x27;m misunderstanding what that word means). Adding a Putnam mapping to an FSA or giving you a book that maps Chinese characters to other Chinese characters doesn&#x27;t necessarily make the FSA conscious or you a literate Chinese reader. It just makes the sum total of those things conscious. Likewise, each individual neuron in your head does not need to be totally conscious. Consciousness is an emergent property of your whole body, not just something attributable to parts of it.</text></comment> | <story><title>Artificial Intelligence Is Stupid and Causal Reasoning Will Not Fix It</title><url>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.513474/full</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>abetusk</author><text>I&#x27;ve only skimmed but it seems like the general idea is sound, that neural networks are good at pattern matching and that shallow pattern matching is only one aspect of &quot;deep thought&quot;, logical reasoning being the other one.<p>I&#x27;m confused though, they give examples of Go and Chess but, as far as I understand, this is exactly what the author is saying doesn&#x27;t exist. AlphaGo, Deep Blue, etc, all use neural networks to weight how to traverse the minimax tree [0]. The minimax algorithm&#x2F;tree is precisely the &quot;logical reasoning&quot;. The neural network is &quot;just&quot; prioritizing the path to take.<p>Anyway, like I said, the reasoning is sound. I just read a paper specifically about this breakdown, called &quot;On the Paradox of Learning to Reason from Data&quot; by Zhang, et all [1] where they construct a synthetic data set based on some simple logical rules and then try to train a neural network to recapture the underlying logic (spoiler alter, it fails). From their paper:<p>&quot;&quot;&quot;
Our study provides an explanation for this paradox: instead of learning to emulate the correct reasoning function, BERT has, in fact, learned statistical features that inherently exist in logical reasoning problems. We also show that it is infeasible to jointly remove statistical features from data, illustrating the difficulty of learning to reason in general.
&quot;&quot;&quot;<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Minimax" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Minimax</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;2205.11502" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;2205.11502</a></text></comment> |
18,457,671 | 18,457,522 | 1 | 3 | 18,442,097 | train | <story><title>Snapshots of Tokyo’s vivid street life</title><url>https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/tokyo-street-photographer-mikiko-hara/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rococode</author><text>Somewhat related:<p>One of my favorite Youtube channels is Rambalac. It&#x27;s just videos of walking through various places in Japan, from crowded streets to peaceful natural areas. No voiceover or explanations - almost every video is as if a video camera were moving around on its own and recording everything it saw (occasionally he interacts with things). Super relaxing to have on in the background, and really cool to watch to get a glimpse of everyday life there.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;Rambalac" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;Rambalac</a><p>Here&#x27;s some of the videos, there&#x27;s a huge variety:<p>Shibuya at night: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=6qGiXY1SB68" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=6qGiXY1SB68</a><p>Shinjuku evening walk: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vHr4qSQ-5XU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vHr4qSQ-5XU</a><p>Kyoto&#x27;s Kiyomizudera in the morning: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=rAeN7TdGq4o" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=rAeN7TdGq4o</a><p>Cat island (Tashirojima): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NnfzALzLNgY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NnfzALzLNgY</a><p>Playing with deer at Nara: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Pu4GJwCpX2w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Pu4GJwCpX2w</a><p>Shibuya Halloween: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=jkm522cTpzE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=jkm522cTpzE</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Snapshots of Tokyo’s vivid street life</title><url>https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/tokyo-street-photographer-mikiko-hara/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tzfld</author><text>I can&#x27;t see anything &quot;vivid&quot; on those pictures, honestly.</text></comment> |
34,493,235 | 34,490,922 | 1 | 2 | 34,487,944 | train | <story><title>An intutive counterexample to the axiom of choice</title><url>http://blog.rongarret.info/2023/01/an-intutive-counterexample-to-axiom-of.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ketzu</author><text>I wonder if the set of undescribable numbers is well defined at all. It seems to run into the same problem as the &quot;minimum un-interesting number is interesting&quot; as a function chosing a number from that set would be a finite description of that number, removing it from the set. (This already happens if you could select a finite subset of those numbers, as finite numbers could be ordered and you could just select the minimum.)<p>edit: Hm... thinking about it. The finitely-many-symbols argument also only holds if you consider finitely many interpretations of those symbols and if there actually are only finitely many symbols.</text></item><item><author>boole1854</author><text>The argument here seems to rely on a natural language intuition, or perhaps even a physical or computational intuition, about what it mean to &quot;choose&quot; something from a collection.<p>However, remember that the axiom of choice is technically a statement about the <i>existence of certain functions</i>, specifically functions that map from any set of non-empty sets to elements of those sets. Whether or not the existence of those functions says something about the possibility of &quot;choosing&quot; is more of a terminological question about how to connect informal natural language to mathematics than it is a substantive mathematical question.<p>Turning to the mathematical question itself, it seems to me that the author&#x27;s intuitions fare poorly. The author argues that we apparently cannot &quot;choose&quot; an element from a set that contains only numbers that are not finitely describable. But the mathematical question is about the existence of a mapping function, and it seems that whether or not the numbers in each set are finitely describable is irrelevant to this question:<p>Consider the function <i>f(x) = x + 1</i>. This function is defined for all real numbers <i>x</i>. It maps each real number to another real number. Note that the domain of the function includes even those real numbers that are not finitely describable. The meaning of the function itself is nevertheless clear and the function is easy to write down. The fact that the domain of the function includes indescribable numbers is not relevant to the question of whether such a function exists mathematically.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>librexpr</author><text>I think if we take &quot;description of a number&quot; to mean &quot;ZF formula that uniquely picks out that number&quot;, then that cannot be defined, because a formula picks out a number when it is true for that number and false for all others, but by Tarski[0], the truth predicate cannot be defined inside the logic itself. So &quot;the set of all numbers which cannot be described&quot; cannot be talked about using ZF.<p>However, there is a way around it, by taking as axiom that ZF is consistent, choosing some model M of ZF, and then talking about the set S of numbers inside M that cannot be described.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tarski%27s_undefinability_theorem" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tarski%27s_undefinability_theo...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>An intutive counterexample to the axiom of choice</title><url>http://blog.rongarret.info/2023/01/an-intutive-counterexample-to-axiom-of.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ketzu</author><text>I wonder if the set of undescribable numbers is well defined at all. It seems to run into the same problem as the &quot;minimum un-interesting number is interesting&quot; as a function chosing a number from that set would be a finite description of that number, removing it from the set. (This already happens if you could select a finite subset of those numbers, as finite numbers could be ordered and you could just select the minimum.)<p>edit: Hm... thinking about it. The finitely-many-symbols argument also only holds if you consider finitely many interpretations of those symbols and if there actually are only finitely many symbols.</text></item><item><author>boole1854</author><text>The argument here seems to rely on a natural language intuition, or perhaps even a physical or computational intuition, about what it mean to &quot;choose&quot; something from a collection.<p>However, remember that the axiom of choice is technically a statement about the <i>existence of certain functions</i>, specifically functions that map from any set of non-empty sets to elements of those sets. Whether or not the existence of those functions says something about the possibility of &quot;choosing&quot; is more of a terminological question about how to connect informal natural language to mathematics than it is a substantive mathematical question.<p>Turning to the mathematical question itself, it seems to me that the author&#x27;s intuitions fare poorly. The author argues that we apparently cannot &quot;choose&quot; an element from a set that contains only numbers that are not finitely describable. But the mathematical question is about the existence of a mapping function, and it seems that whether or not the numbers in each set are finitely describable is irrelevant to this question:<p>Consider the function <i>f(x) = x + 1</i>. This function is defined for all real numbers <i>x</i>. It maps each real number to another real number. Note that the domain of the function includes even those real numbers that are not finitely describable. The meaning of the function itself is nevertheless clear and the function is easy to write down. The fact that the domain of the function includes indescribable numbers is not relevant to the question of whether such a function exists mathematically.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>LegionMammal978</author><text>It&#x27;s not too mind-boggling: we can describe the set as a whole without any issues, we just can&#x27;t <i>uniquely</i> describe any particular number in the set. That doesn&#x27;t stop us from generalizing over all numbers in the set, or even over all numbers in a describable subset, such as &quot;the set of all undescribable primes&quot;.</text></comment> |
9,992,765 | 9,992,555 | 1 | 2 | 9,991,538 | train | <story><title>More Dirty Coding Tricks from Game Developers (2010)</title><url>http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/249475/More_dirty_coding_tricks_from_game_developers.php</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ketralnis</author><text>A couple of those are cited like this:<p>&gt; - Anonymous (sourced from Reddit replies to the original 2009 Dirty Coding Tricks article)<p>So not anonymous at all then. reddit comments have usernames attached to them, URLs that can be linked to, and even an on-site messaging system that can can be used to ask the author for permission to use the content. Heck, every comment has an &quot;embed&quot; link below it to conveniently embed the properly cited comment right on your page.<p>Is this a thing that&#x27;s okay to do? Take someone else&#x27;s content from someone else&#x27;s website, copy-paste it into your article, and claim it was &quot;anonymous&quot;?<p>Would this author be okay with it if I copy-pasted their articles to my blog? What about if I stole all of the comments posted to their articles to make my site look more active?</text></comment> | <story><title>More Dirty Coding Tricks from Game Developers (2010)</title><url>http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/249475/More_dirty_coding_tricks_from_game_developers.php</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Negitivefrags</author><text>I have a story kind of similar to the one called &quot;...Or is it over here!?&quot;<p>A friend of mine was having crashes with a program. When debugging it he found that a bunch of his local variables had weird values. He suspected that there might be a buffer overflow elsewhere that was trampling over the memory.<p>The fix? Just add &quot;char buffer[ 1000 ];&quot; to the function to absorb the damage. It fixed the crash and it shipped like that.</text></comment> |
31,638,099 | 31,637,279 | 1 | 2 | 31,636,812 | train | <story><title>Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)</title><url>https://monicalent.com/blog/2019/06/03/absolute-truths-unlearned-as-junior-developer/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jehlakj</author><text>For me, it was that I thought that being a good programmer was that I write clean code with enough abstraction and indirection to make it future proof.<p>Boy I was wrong. Unless you’re doing the same thing you’ve done for years, you can’t tell the future. And just when your unnecessary abstraction is wrong, this the reason why we’re talking about tech debt in the first place. Because nobody wants to touch it.<p>Unfortunately, I didn’t have anyone to tell me this for the longest time. It wasn’t until I had to fix a bug for something I wrote in the past, and I couldn’t figure out just what I wrote.<p>Now I try to write dumb and simple (yet sensible) code until there’s a good reason for abstractions. I have nothing to prove at this point in my career.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wruza</author><text>Probably unpopular&#x2F;heretic sub-opinion: if given a chance to change the past, I’d rather NOT read books like TAOUP and other books on the same shelf. Or at least wouldn’t take them close to the heart. Because instead of collecting my own experience and fitting it to my projects, I’ve invested heavily in these patterns and rules and “gems” and built something in me that I now have to destroy with advanced therapy (not kidding). Last few weeks I said screw it (as a self-forced experiment, because I get anxious without structure, abstractions, etc) and began to write “just code” without any pre-principles, only using programming methodics as an extreme measure. It’s like I’ve never felt better than that. Like walking new streets after you’ve been paralyzed for years. I write f--king code like I’m 15, it is easy and simple, time to deploy &#x2F; market &#x2F; test ideas is several times less. My boss gets happily confused being not sure what’s left for the next week, I hear it in his voice. I still have huge respect to Fathers like ESR, but… just make sure this knowledge makes <i>you</i> any good, okay?<p>I don’t think I’ll stop this experiment any soon. Maybe will reassess everything in a year or so.</text></comment> | <story><title>Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)</title><url>https://monicalent.com/blog/2019/06/03/absolute-truths-unlearned-as-junior-developer/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jehlakj</author><text>For me, it was that I thought that being a good programmer was that I write clean code with enough abstraction and indirection to make it future proof.<p>Boy I was wrong. Unless you’re doing the same thing you’ve done for years, you can’t tell the future. And just when your unnecessary abstraction is wrong, this the reason why we’re talking about tech debt in the first place. Because nobody wants to touch it.<p>Unfortunately, I didn’t have anyone to tell me this for the longest time. It wasn’t until I had to fix a bug for something I wrote in the past, and I couldn’t figure out just what I wrote.<p>Now I try to write dumb and simple (yet sensible) code until there’s a good reason for abstractions. I have nothing to prove at this point in my career.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>didibus</author><text>There&#x27;s a level beyond that where you actually figure out how to write good abstractions. It&#x27;s likely you thought you were making good abstractions and useful indirections, but you weren&#x27;t, hence the problem. Concrete code with little indirection will be better than badly thought out abstractions that are incorrectly designed with unnecessary layers and indirections. That said, good ones, that are well done and thought out are worth their salt and can result in huge force multipliers for future runway.</text></comment> |
13,670,244 | 13,669,658 | 1 | 2 | 13,668,746 | train | <story><title>Why We Choose Profit</title><url>https://m.signalvnoise.com/why-we-choose-profit-e511efc4dcb9#.2ywqscd9u</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xwowsersx</author><text>I know this going to sound grumpy, but...<p>I agree with a lot of this and enjoyed reading their book in which they outline their philosophy on business and management.<p>But how many times are they going to scream and blog about this? It gets old. I get it, you&#x27;re profitable and you think it&#x27;s a good thing. But they&#x27;ve repeated this over and over and they sometimes go overboard in trying to pit themselves against VCs and the perceived waste of the SV tech culture.. Some of it is fair. Some of it just feels like marketing on their part...a way to write more blog posts by pitting themselves against an enemy.<p>Companies that are profitable and doing well don&#x27;t need to constantly blog about their profitability. Just my two cents.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hawkice</author><text>And yet companies losing barrels of money get their &quot;I&#x27;m even more in debt now&quot; VC posts upvoted as news.<p>The current situation creates an asymmetry, and that distorts how people think business is done, which in turn distorts how people think business _should_ be done.<p>I think it&#x27;s fair to have posts about businesses that don&#x27;t have to burn through their own lifeblood to try and change enough to finally make some money. That&#x27;s _way_ more normal.</text></comment> | <story><title>Why We Choose Profit</title><url>https://m.signalvnoise.com/why-we-choose-profit-e511efc4dcb9#.2ywqscd9u</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xwowsersx</author><text>I know this going to sound grumpy, but...<p>I agree with a lot of this and enjoyed reading their book in which they outline their philosophy on business and management.<p>But how many times are they going to scream and blog about this? It gets old. I get it, you&#x27;re profitable and you think it&#x27;s a good thing. But they&#x27;ve repeated this over and over and they sometimes go overboard in trying to pit themselves against VCs and the perceived waste of the SV tech culture.. Some of it is fair. Some of it just feels like marketing on their part...a way to write more blog posts by pitting themselves against an enemy.<p>Companies that are profitable and doing well don&#x27;t need to constantly blog about their profitability. Just my two cents.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simplehuman</author><text>It&#x27;s called content marketing. How do you think they have remained profitable?</text></comment> |
3,170,691 | 3,169,654 | 1 | 2 | 3,168,212 | train | <story><title>Mass-scale Cold Fusion either becomes reality or proved a scam today</title><url>http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/28/cold-fusion</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ck2</author><text>update: "customer satisfied" <a href="http://www.ecatnews.net/2011/10/28/e-cat-plant-shutting-down-customer-satisfied-peswiki-via-twitter/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ecatnews.net/2011/10/28/e-cat-plant-shutting-down...</a><p><a href="http://twitter.com/#!/PESNetwork" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/#!/PESNetwork</a><p>wiki updates <a href="http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of_the_One_Megawatt_E-Cat#Updates_and_News_Regarding_October_28_Test" rel="nofollow">http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of...</a><p>photos from earlier this month <a href="http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of_the_One_Megawatt_E-Cat#Photos" rel="nofollow">http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of...</a><p>maillist discussion <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mechanical_fish</author><text>Very good. Sounds like the dog-and-pony show was a success! The client has invited the team to the bar for another round of grants!<p>Wake me up when I can buy Mr. Fusion at my local Wal-Mart. ;)</text></comment> | <story><title>Mass-scale Cold Fusion either becomes reality or proved a scam today</title><url>http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/28/cold-fusion</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ck2</author><text>update: "customer satisfied" <a href="http://www.ecatnews.net/2011/10/28/e-cat-plant-shutting-down-customer-satisfied-peswiki-via-twitter/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ecatnews.net/2011/10/28/e-cat-plant-shutting-down...</a><p><a href="http://twitter.com/#!/PESNetwork" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/#!/PESNetwork</a><p>wiki updates <a href="http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of_the_One_Megawatt_E-Cat#Updates_and_News_Regarding_October_28_Test" rel="nofollow">http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of...</a><p>photos from earlier this month <a href="http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of_the_One_Megawatt_E-Cat#Photos" rel="nofollow">http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of...</a><p>maillist discussion <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>james33</author><text>All they give is a tweet? Seems sort of fishy...</text></comment> |
7,400,508 | 7,400,353 | 1 | 3 | 7,399,861 | train | <story><title>Google gives UK government “super flagger” status for YouTube?</title><url>http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2334027/google-gives-uk-government-super-flagger-status-for-youtube</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>r00fus</author><text>&quot;Google told the FT that while the Home Office had been given these new permissions, the company still retained the right to decide whether they ought to be removed or not. Google&#x27;s own user policy on YouTube forbids content that incites hatred or violence.&quot;<p>So what does this really mean? So Google ultimately decides, but the UK can &quot;recommend&quot;? Without seeing the process in practice, it&#x27;s hard to say if this actually changes anything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ColinDabritz</author><text>It definitely sounds from the article that all this allows is that given their special &quot;super flagger&quot; status, is that videos they flag, whether one or &quot;swaths&quot;, simply jump to the top of the &quot;to be reviewed&quot; queue. Presumably the same queue that normal individuals flagging videos use, and ultimately approved or rejected through the same mechanism.<p>So in a purely practical sense, basically &quot;nothing changed&quot; in terms of video accessibility, but the fact that it&#x27;s special status alone might cause behavior to change just because they know a &quot;super flagger&quot; flagged the video.<p>Ideally for biggest &quot;do no evil&quot; effect, Google would hide the fact that a super flagger was the one that flagged this particular video from the reviewer, to allow an unbiased review.<p>I think it makes a certain amount of sense for government representatives, especially police, to get &quot;direct service&quot; for reviewing things that could be dangerous, or illegal. Perhaps a video on YouTube accidentally reveals the name&#x2F;address of some in witness protection. I think it&#x27;s fair for that to be immediately reviewed and addressed by Google. The question is, what other abuses of this privilege might it lead to? Might this open the door for not only fast review, but influencing the result of reviews?<p>Interesting ethical questions for sure.</text></comment> | <story><title>Google gives UK government “super flagger” status for YouTube?</title><url>http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2334027/google-gives-uk-government-super-flagger-status-for-youtube</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>r00fus</author><text>&quot;Google told the FT that while the Home Office had been given these new permissions, the company still retained the right to decide whether they ought to be removed or not. Google&#x27;s own user policy on YouTube forbids content that incites hatred or violence.&quot;<p>So what does this really mean? So Google ultimately decides, but the UK can &quot;recommend&quot;? Without seeing the process in practice, it&#x27;s hard to say if this actually changes anything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lazyjones</author><text>Sounds like the RIAA &#x2F; various large publishers are still more powerful than the Home Office and fighting copyright infringement is still more important than fighting terrorism, since they can reportedly take down videos directly (and have often done so).</text></comment> |
25,016,322 | 25,016,314 | 1 | 2 | 25,013,003 | train | <story><title>Severe brain injury and paralysis temporarily reversed with a sleeping pill</title><url>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945220303130</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cobolcowboy</author><text>To the people in this thread advocating antipsychotic medication for anything other than treating psychosis and as an adjunct for severe depression, don&#x27;t. These medications are serious things for serious situations and can have unexpected effects on you mentally.<p>I went on them in my early twenties due to a nervous breakdown, and while they stopped the endless loops of thought and insomnia (I ended up sleeping ten hours a night without breaking a sweat), they reduced my libido, made me gain weight, and worst of all, robbed me of my natural sharpness and creativity. It was as if my brain had been wrapped in a layer of bubble wrap, and my ability to come up with those sparks of inspiration that you need to do intellectual work was almost extinguished. I&#x27;m 100% now, fully recovered, but it took me about 3-4 years to get back where I was before it all happened. If your doctor thinks you&#x27;re right for them, go for it, but only as a last resort.<p>They do work, but they&#x27;re the last tool in the box that you only want to use when everything else has failed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>intricatedetail</author><text>Here where I live doctors prescribe anti-depressants like candies. They robbed me of two years of my life. The worst for me was derealisation and strong hallucinations. I started strongly believing that life isn&#x27;t real, that what I am seeing is just a dream or that other humans are just objects that happen to move and speak. Hallucinations were crazy scary, like I saw things as if atoms of objects got magnified hundreds of times or everything was constructed of polygons (like you would switch wire frame rendering). Absolutely crazy thoughts like I was convinced that if I cut myself with a knife it will give me pleasure like scratching an itch. I had a couple of suicidal episodes and ended up in hospital. Somehow nobody connected that this could be anti depressants. I then stopped them on my own and few weeks later started CBT therapy. That fortunately was the most I needed to &quot;repair&quot; my thought processes. I am okay, but I sometimes have the flashbacks of what happened. It&#x27;s just a reminder to stay away from these things. I understand this may help other people but it didn&#x27;t help me. When I talked about hallucinations with the doctor he just prescribed a different one. Every 4-6 months I had a different one.</text></comment> | <story><title>Severe brain injury and paralysis temporarily reversed with a sleeping pill</title><url>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945220303130</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cobolcowboy</author><text>To the people in this thread advocating antipsychotic medication for anything other than treating psychosis and as an adjunct for severe depression, don&#x27;t. These medications are serious things for serious situations and can have unexpected effects on you mentally.<p>I went on them in my early twenties due to a nervous breakdown, and while they stopped the endless loops of thought and insomnia (I ended up sleeping ten hours a night without breaking a sweat), they reduced my libido, made me gain weight, and worst of all, robbed me of my natural sharpness and creativity. It was as if my brain had been wrapped in a layer of bubble wrap, and my ability to come up with those sparks of inspiration that you need to do intellectual work was almost extinguished. I&#x27;m 100% now, fully recovered, but it took me about 3-4 years to get back where I was before it all happened. If your doctor thinks you&#x27;re right for them, go for it, but only as a last resort.<p>They do work, but they&#x27;re the last tool in the box that you only want to use when everything else has failed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>milankragujevic</author><text>Sadly, in a lot of places, antipsychotics from the 50s (i.e. Chlorpromazine) are the FIRST kind of therapy given, even to adolescent patients with &quot;generic&quot; depression, alongside SSRIs.<p>No consent given or asked for, let alone informed consent. You are told &quot;take this&quot;.<p>This is not in circumstances of hospitalization, let alone involuntary hospitalization, but regular outpatient treatment.<p>People who are in a bad place generally don&#x27;t research meds, and if they are not extremely uncooperative, or paranoid, will take them and the doctors&#x27; words at face value.<p>Consequences are severe and long-lasting.<p>Absolutely shameful and despicable. These doctors should be shamed by the scientific community for [almost] using prehistoric notions of &quot;hysteria&quot; to mistreat ilness by basically showing &quot;see, he&#x27;s not crying anymore! PROGRESS!&quot; while pointing to a barely awake, sedated patient.<p>Any and all progress is usually SSRIs and psychotherapy, if available. Why do they give these antiquated meds that are not appropriate for the situation (i.e. CPZ) is beyond me. These are not psychoses, this is <i>Episodium depressivum, gradus moderati</i> .<p>Sorry, had to get that out. This is from personal experience.</text></comment> |
2,211,691 | 2,211,389 | 1 | 3 | 2,211,098 | train | <story><title>Stackoverflow: Are there any famous one-man-army programmers?</title><url>http://stackoverflow.com/q/529757/47846</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sriramk</author><text>Dave Cutler.<p>It's a bit of a shame that the world at large doesn't get to see his code in NT. It is by far the most gorgeous C code I've seen. In fact, in the beginning, there have been times when I used to look up his code just to feel inspired (think of it as 'code inspiration').<p>Getting to meet him and work in the same team as him for the last few years has definitely been the highlight of my Microsoft career.<p>Also, my wife (HN username:arithmetic) will tell you that getting a autographed copy of Showstopper was one of the best gifts I've gotten her :)</text></comment> | <story><title>Stackoverflow: Are there any famous one-man-army programmers?</title><url>http://stackoverflow.com/q/529757/47846</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>olalonde</author><text>&#62; Chris Sawyer [...] RollerCoaster Tycoon [...] entire game was written in assembly language.<p>That is quite humbling to say the least.</text></comment> |
40,557,215 | 40,545,892 | 1 | 3 | 40,543,535 | train | <story><title>Re-Evaluating GPT-4's Bar Exam Performance</title><url>https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10506-024-09396-9</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fnordpiglet</author><text>Scoring 96 percentile among humans taking the exam without moving goal posts would have been science fiction two years ago. Now it’s suddenly not good enough and the fact a computer program can score decent among passing lawyers and first time test takers is something to sneer at.<p>The fact I can talk to the computer and it responds to me idiomatically and understands my semantic intent well enough to be nearly indistinguishable from a human being is breath taking. Anyone who views it as anything less in 2024 and asserts with a straight face they wouldn’t have said the same thing in 2020 is lying.<p>I do however find the paper really useful in contextualizing the scoring with a much finer grain. Personally I didn’t take the 96 percentile score to be anything other than “among the mass who take the test,” and have enough experience with professional licensing exams to know a huge percentage of test takers fail and are repeat test takers. Placing the goal posts quantitatively for the next levels of achievement is a useful exercise. But the profusion of jaded nerds makes me sad.</text></comment> | <story><title>Re-Evaluating GPT-4's Bar Exam Performance</title><url>https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10506-024-09396-9</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>radford-neal</author><text>A basic problem with evaluations like these is that the test is designed to discriminate between <i>humans</i> who would make good lawyers and humans who would not make good lawyers. The test is not necessarily any good at telling whether a non-human would make a good lawyer, since it will not test anything that pretty much all humans know, but non-humans may not.<p>For example, I doubt that it asks whether, for a person of average wealth and income, a $1000 fine is a more or less severe punishment than a month in jail.</text></comment> |
11,344,154 | 11,344,025 | 1 | 3 | 11,343,400 | train | <story><title>That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people</title><url>https://www.techinasia.com/awkward-moment-apple-mocked-good-hardware-poor-people</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vbezhenar</author><text>I can&#x27;t imagine how I would replace my laptop with iPad. Some tasks are definitely doable: Web browsing, Mail processing, Music listening, Skype (though chatting on iPad is terrible because you have to switch around all the time, losing your focus, may be split apps might help, can&#x27;t experience it, because my iPad have RAM like 15-year old PC).<p>Generally speaking for power user every activity on iPad is strictly worse. I can&#x27;t easily download ZIP, unzip it, open some text file, edit it, send it via Mail. Probably I can do it with right apps, but it would require much more clicks or taps.<p>What I can&#x27;t even imagine doing on iPad: using Intellij Idea, using XCode, using Google Chrome to debug and develop web apps, using image editors like Sketch and Pixelmator (I know that I can get some kind of image editing, but I don&#x27;t think that I can do what I&#x27;m doing on PC).<p>Now things I could theoretically do but probably can&#x27;t, because of walled garden: using Terminal to embrace full Unix power, downloading files with BitTorrent, using BitCoin. Probably possible with Jailbreaking, I&#x27;m not sure. Also I&#x27;m not sure whether I could download some huge 20GB file and watch it using another app without duplicating (does iOS copy file when I open it with other app or just hardlink?).<p>And, of course, keyboard is necessary. Mouse would be useful too, but iPad doesn&#x27;t support mouse, AFAIK.<p>So probably the only users who can easily migrate from PC to iPad are very casual users, who use their devices to browse web, chat and play simple games. There could be some professionals who work with iPads, it&#x27;s theoretically possible, but I can&#x27;t imagine anyone.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zamalek</author><text>&gt; [From the article] I don’t need a wholesale upgrade.<p>The newest component in my desktop PC is likely 3-4 years old. The entire machine is, obviously, a good deal more powerful than an iPad - it can drive the DK2 just fine, and Oculus have specifically called Apple out on performance.[1] You don&#x27;t even need to participate in frequent piecewise upgrades to match or exceed the iPad.<p>What Schiller might be missing is that people are using their PC <i>in addition to</i> an iPad. This is an strikingly obvious conclusion but doesn&#x27;t fit the typical Apple marketing rhetoric.<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;3&#x2F;4&#x2F;11159700&#x2F;oculus-rift-mac-support-apple" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;3&#x2F;4&#x2F;11159700&#x2F;oculus-rift-mac-su...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people</title><url>https://www.techinasia.com/awkward-moment-apple-mocked-good-hardware-poor-people</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vbezhenar</author><text>I can&#x27;t imagine how I would replace my laptop with iPad. Some tasks are definitely doable: Web browsing, Mail processing, Music listening, Skype (though chatting on iPad is terrible because you have to switch around all the time, losing your focus, may be split apps might help, can&#x27;t experience it, because my iPad have RAM like 15-year old PC).<p>Generally speaking for power user every activity on iPad is strictly worse. I can&#x27;t easily download ZIP, unzip it, open some text file, edit it, send it via Mail. Probably I can do it with right apps, but it would require much more clicks or taps.<p>What I can&#x27;t even imagine doing on iPad: using Intellij Idea, using XCode, using Google Chrome to debug and develop web apps, using image editors like Sketch and Pixelmator (I know that I can get some kind of image editing, but I don&#x27;t think that I can do what I&#x27;m doing on PC).<p>Now things I could theoretically do but probably can&#x27;t, because of walled garden: using Terminal to embrace full Unix power, downloading files with BitTorrent, using BitCoin. Probably possible with Jailbreaking, I&#x27;m not sure. Also I&#x27;m not sure whether I could download some huge 20GB file and watch it using another app without duplicating (does iOS copy file when I open it with other app or just hardlink?).<p>And, of course, keyboard is necessary. Mouse would be useful too, but iPad doesn&#x27;t support mouse, AFAIK.<p>So probably the only users who can easily migrate from PC to iPad are very casual users, who use their devices to browse web, chat and play simple games. There could be some professionals who work with iPads, it&#x27;s theoretically possible, but I can&#x27;t imagine anyone.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>umanwizard</author><text>I think you have a really skewed picture of what most people use computers for.<p>The iPad isn&#x27;t meant to replace a laptop for people like you, which is why Apple is still selling the mbp.</text></comment> |
20,259,054 | 20,257,460 | 1 | 2 | 20,255,919 | train | <story><title>DIY Amps: A Roadmap for Beginners (2017)</title><url>https://audioprimate.blog/2017/06/17/diy-a-roadmap-for-beginners/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kpgraham</author><text>I&#x27;ve built a half dozen Fender Bassmans and a few Fender Super amps over the years. I thought the article would be about this kind of amp building, but evidently not many hacker news readers play blues harp through a tube amp.<p>Low tech tube amps are quite easy to build, although they cost a few hundred because the transformers, chassis and tubes can be pricey and the cabs and speakers aren&#x27;t cheap. The results are great, though, and I&#x27;d say go for it if you are thinking about trying.<p>Get everything you need from Tubes and More dot com or eBay.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kakwa_</author><text>The nice thing about these old tube amps is that the schematics are freely available (Fender ships a copy of the schematic with their amps). There are also quite simple in term of number of components.<p>However, there are dangerous, with 400&#x2F;500V DC for the tubes. Definitely not something you should try without being extremely cautious and without previous experience.<p>On the topic of music hardware, another fun thing to build is effect pedals, these are much much safer, and permit to gain valuable experience with a soldering iron.<p>There are also a few kits available out there, either for effect pedals and tube amps.<p>For people in Europe, I can recommend <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.musikding.de" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.musikding.de</a><p>* Tube amps: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.musikding.de&#x2F;guitar-amp-kit-tube-amp-kit-valve-guitar-kit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.musikding.de&#x2F;guitar-amp-kit-tube-amp-kit-valve-g...</a> (I&#x27;ve built the A15 kit in the past, the components are a bit cheap, specially the power transformer, but it sounds quite nice, and makes for a great 15 Watts dual channels amp).<p>* They also sell a lot of pedal kits: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.musikding.de&#x2F;guitar-effect-kits" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.musikding.de&#x2F;guitar-effect-kits</a><p>They also sell parts (specially those a bit harder to find at a good price like footswitches, sockets, a wide variety of knobs etc).<p>Another shop I can recommend for components: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.banzaimusic.com&#x2F;home.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.banzaimusic.com&#x2F;home.php</a></text></comment> | <story><title>DIY Amps: A Roadmap for Beginners (2017)</title><url>https://audioprimate.blog/2017/06/17/diy-a-roadmap-for-beginners/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kpgraham</author><text>I&#x27;ve built a half dozen Fender Bassmans and a few Fender Super amps over the years. I thought the article would be about this kind of amp building, but evidently not many hacker news readers play blues harp through a tube amp.<p>Low tech tube amps are quite easy to build, although they cost a few hundred because the transformers, chassis and tubes can be pricey and the cabs and speakers aren&#x27;t cheap. The results are great, though, and I&#x27;d say go for it if you are thinking about trying.<p>Get everything you need from Tubes and More dot com or eBay.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dejv</author><text>Tube amps are also much more dangerous than 9V battery operated headphone amps. For people that are just starting out those cmoy style projects are awesome. btw there is also 1W guitar amp in style of cmoy.</text></comment> |
22,509,542 | 22,509,543 | 1 | 3 | 22,508,921 | train | <story><title>eBay bans sales of face masks and hand sanitizers to combat price gouging</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/ebay-bans-sales-of-all-face-masks-and-hand-sanitizers.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lend000</author><text>eBay is a somewhat unique case, because the goods are often resale items. However, the reaction of many social-economics-warrior types suggests they have failed to realize that this kind of behavior is exactly why there is such a shortage of masks in the first place, despite somewhat recent scares with SARS and Ebola.<p>Letting prices rise is one way to increase production in a hurry. If the mask producers only get to make the same profit margin regardless of demand, why bother fronting the money to increase stock or investing in extra storage space, if there is no guarantee they will be able to recoup those costs during black swans?</text></comment> | <story><title>eBay bans sales of face masks and hand sanitizers to combat price gouging</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/ebay-bans-sales-of-all-face-masks-and-hand-sanitizers.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>joshvm</author><text>The panic buying has also trickled over to isopropanol&#x2F;IPA. I needed to buy some anyway and I picked up a litre earlier this week for about £6. At the time Amazon had a lot for sale, now they&#x27;re all out.<p>Given that <i>consumer</i> hand gel is basically just IPA diluted down to 60% (see edit), I also bought a few tubes of aloe vera to mix it with... I suspect a lot of other people had the same idea.<p>It looks like there&#x27;s a lot still available on eBay, so if you really want to by sanitiser, you might as well make your own. Just remember to dilute it a little, 99% won&#x27;t do too much damage, but it&#x27;s not particularly kind to your hands if you rub it in on purpose. It&#x27;s also extremely flammable!<p>EDIT:<p>The WHO has published guidelines on making your own gel: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;gpsc&#x2F;5may&#x2F;Guide_to_Local_Production.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;gpsc&#x2F;5may&#x2F;Guide_to_Local_Production.pdf</a><p>Interestingly Wikipedia seems to suggest that you should use at least 90% alcohol to kill flu. And that lower concentration formulations are potentially ineffective because they evaporate before killing stuff off. Hospitals use 70-95%. Obviously the higher you go, the more flammable things get.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hand_sanitizer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hand_sanitizer</a><p>This article tested a number of gels vs rinses:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thelancet.com&#x2F;journals&#x2F;lancet&#x2F;article&#x2F;PIIS0140-6736(02)08426-X&#x2F;fulltext" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thelancet.com&#x2F;journals&#x2F;lancet&#x2F;article&#x2F;PIIS0140-6...</a><p>&gt; Based on our efficacy data, we do not consider any of the tested alcohol-based hand gels to be suitable for hand antisepsis in the health-care setting because their antimicrobial efficacy may be insufficient to prevent the spread of pathogens. Future ethanol-based hand gels used in hospitals should contain at least 80% (v&#x2F;v) ethanol as the active ingredient and should be as effective as the EN 1500 reference alcohol within 30 s.</text></comment> |
35,037,172 | 35,036,431 | 1 | 2 | 35,035,297 | train | <story><title>Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?</title><url>https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/03/05/can-the-wests-perplexing-employment-miracle-continue</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>flkiwi</author><text>Historians in 500 years will stare in wonder at the stunning evidence we did not, in fact, build ALL the infrastructure, physical and otherwise, during the last ~25 years of absurdly cheap money.</text></item><item><author>bluGill</author><text>This isn&#x27;t a high interest rate ecconomy, this is normal interest rates. Rates have been absurdily low for a while so you may not remember it, but history provides a record.</text></item><item><author>mkl95</author><text>We have gone from a zero interest rate economy to a high interest one within months. Whoever claims to accurately predict what&#x27;s going to happen in the next few years is talking out of their ass. We know inflation should start decreasing within a year or so, but you cannot predict how millions of people will react to suddenly not being able to afford stuff.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>umeshunni</author><text>Most of the world&#x27;s infrastructure was, indeed, built in the last 25 years.
It&#x27;s just that it wasn&#x27;t in the West.</text></comment> | <story><title>Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?</title><url>https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/03/05/can-the-wests-perplexing-employment-miracle-continue</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>flkiwi</author><text>Historians in 500 years will stare in wonder at the stunning evidence we did not, in fact, build ALL the infrastructure, physical and otherwise, during the last ~25 years of absurdly cheap money.</text></item><item><author>bluGill</author><text>This isn&#x27;t a high interest rate ecconomy, this is normal interest rates. Rates have been absurdily low for a while so you may not remember it, but history provides a record.</text></item><item><author>mkl95</author><text>We have gone from a zero interest rate economy to a high interest one within months. Whoever claims to accurately predict what&#x27;s going to happen in the next few years is talking out of their ass. We know inflation should start decreasing within a year or so, but you cannot predict how millions of people will react to suddenly not being able to afford stuff.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>marcosdumay</author><text>Well, maybe in 500 years people will have an explanation for why people don&#x27;t create fundamental things in low-interest times. Lasting investment seems to be very strongly and positively correlated with rates.</text></comment> |
24,263,679 | 24,263,993 | 1 | 3 | 24,262,757 | train | <story><title>Docker to rate limit image pulls</title><url>https://www.docker.com/blog/scaling-docker-to-serve-millions-more-developers-network-egress/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsamuels</author><text>There is very little reason for a build node to need to pull 200 images in 6 hours, and here is why:<p>When a machine issues a ``docker build`` command, the program reads the relevant dockerfile to check for any base images that need to be pulled (a la &quot;FROM:&quot;)<p>These base images are identified based on the image repository, image name, and image tag. The first thing docker does is it checks its local registry and tries to find a match for the base image the docker build is requesting. If a matching image is located in the local registry, it uses that one in lieu of downloading the image.<p>This is significant - if your organization only uses a few dozen base images from DockerHub, those images will only be downloaded by each build node _once_, then never again.<p>Many docker users erroneously believe that if their Dockerfile requests a &quot;latest&quot; tagged image, docker build will always download the newest version of the image.
However, the &quot;latest&quot; tag is literally just a tag, it doesn&#x27;t have any special functionality built in. If the docker build command finds an image tagged &quot;latest&quot; in the local registry, it stops there.<p>The only way to get docker build to always use the &quot;actual latest&quot; version of the base image is to add the &quot;--pull&quot; parameter to the docker build command. This arg will tell docker build to check the repository remote to see if the SHA hash of the image tagged &quot;latest&quot; has changed, and if so, re-download and use it. In the absolute worst case, this means each build node will pull 1 copy of each base image when the base image is updated. So unless you use 200 different base images that all have updates deployed to Dockerhub each and every day, you are fine.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nrmitchi</author><text>I don&#x27;t disagree with what you are saying, _but_:<p>&gt; Docker defines pull rate limits as the number of manifest requests to Docker Hub.<p>&gt; For example, if you already have the image, the Docker Engine client will issue a manifest request, realize it has all of the referenced layers based on the returned manifest, and stop. ... &lt;excluded&gt; ... So an image pull is actually one or two manifest requests,<p>This still implies that even if you are appropriately re-using layers on your machine, with a free plan you can only do maximum 200 builds (since docker still needs to verify it has the image) per 6 hours?<p>This change also seems to imply that builds steps which previously did not handle&#x2F;require authentication against Docker hub (it was only pulling public images, and pushing elsewhere) will now be required to auth against docker hub in order to double the number of pulls&#x2F;checks&#x2F;builds it is allowed?</text></comment> | <story><title>Docker to rate limit image pulls</title><url>https://www.docker.com/blog/scaling-docker-to-serve-millions-more-developers-network-egress/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsamuels</author><text>There is very little reason for a build node to need to pull 200 images in 6 hours, and here is why:<p>When a machine issues a ``docker build`` command, the program reads the relevant dockerfile to check for any base images that need to be pulled (a la &quot;FROM:&quot;)<p>These base images are identified based on the image repository, image name, and image tag. The first thing docker does is it checks its local registry and tries to find a match for the base image the docker build is requesting. If a matching image is located in the local registry, it uses that one in lieu of downloading the image.<p>This is significant - if your organization only uses a few dozen base images from DockerHub, those images will only be downloaded by each build node _once_, then never again.<p>Many docker users erroneously believe that if their Dockerfile requests a &quot;latest&quot; tagged image, docker build will always download the newest version of the image.
However, the &quot;latest&quot; tag is literally just a tag, it doesn&#x27;t have any special functionality built in. If the docker build command finds an image tagged &quot;latest&quot; in the local registry, it stops there.<p>The only way to get docker build to always use the &quot;actual latest&quot; version of the base image is to add the &quot;--pull&quot; parameter to the docker build command. This arg will tell docker build to check the repository remote to see if the SHA hash of the image tagged &quot;latest&quot; has changed, and if so, re-download and use it. In the absolute worst case, this means each build node will pull 1 copy of each base image when the base image is updated. So unless you use 200 different base images that all have updates deployed to Dockerhub each and every day, you are fine.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>solatic</author><text>&gt; This is significant - if your organization only uses a few dozen base images from DockerHub, those images will only be downloaded by each build node _once_, then never again.<p>You&#x27;re assuming that the set of build nodes is relatively static.<p>Plenty of architectures set up autoscaling for the underlying nodes, that terminate servers that aren&#x27;t being used and relatively soon enough (tens of minutes, hours) spin up new servers to replace them as needed.<p>Rarely do the machine images used to spin up new servers include the base images of the containers that will be spun up to replace them. Much more often, the base machine image is a base OS image, and container images are downloaded on-the-fly as needed. Essentially, the engineering cost of making image-launching more efficient was externalized onto an external provider willing to pay the price.</text></comment> |
27,231,677 | 27,230,821 | 1 | 2 | 27,213,882 | train | <story><title>First-Time Buyer Lorenz Curves (2020)</title><url>https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/blog/2020/09/28/first-time-buyer-lorenz-curves/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>reedf1</author><text>As a young person on the horizon of starting a family the only reason I want to buy in my country (UK) is due to how renters are treated. I&#x27;ve had a total of five landlords in my young life - and they have all (and I understand this is anecdotal and not everybody&#x27;s experience) been different shades of exploitative&#x2F;incompetent. I don&#x27;t want to have to live with the boot heel of some lucky idiot on my neck. I don&#x27;t want to have to have my day-to-day life beholden to the bizarre whims of a random who doesn&#x27;t need to prove that they are sane, competent, or empathic enough to be a landlord.<p>Renting is not a functioning market in the UK, the quality of the landlord is now my biggest concern and this information is kept completely hidden. If I was a policy maker I would implement a landlord license and setup an independent review site for those landlords so that tenants can leave reviews of their tenancy.</text></comment> | <story><title>First-Time Buyer Lorenz Curves (2020)</title><url>https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/blog/2020/09/28/first-time-buyer-lorenz-curves/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>turbinerneiter</author><text>I&#x27;m in the top 30% income bracket in the country I live in. I would need to spend 2&#x2F;3 of my monthly income for 30 years on a mortgage to buy a 3-room flat (for a small family) in the city I live in. But first I need another ~3 years to save enough for the down payment.<p>It feels monumental and I think I will rather move to the countryside (grew up there anyway) and try to find another job there. I can build a big house there for half the price of a 3 room flat here.<p>I honestly don&#x27;t know that to tell the lower 50% of the income bracket. They have no chance in this game. They will perpetually have to pay rent, distributing 1&#x2F;3 of their income to someone richer than themselves.</text></comment> |
24,139,198 | 24,138,992 | 1 | 2 | 24,136,895 | train | <story><title>Thank You MDN</title><url>https://www.ilovemdn.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paulirish</author><text>MDN statement a few hours ago: &quot;MDN as a website isn&#x27;t going anywhere right now. The team is smaller, but the site exists and isn&#x27;t going away. We will be working with partners and community members to find the right ways to move it forward given our new structure at Mozilla.&quot; [0]<p>There are tech writers from Google and Microsoft that contribute full-time to MDN. (And it&#x27;s a wiki, after all, anyone can edit it!)<p>But yes, very sadly, the Mozilla tech writers that maintain the docs, maintain them, and keep those browser compat tables running so smooth... were part of the layoffs.<p>You can be sure that the site will find a new home if Mozilla defunds it further. It certainly won&#x27;t drop off the web.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MozDevNet&#x2F;status&#x2F;1293647529268006912" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MozDevNet&#x2F;status&#x2F;1293647529268006912</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>goldenManatee</author><text>This is mind blowing. Those docs are the gold standard for creating so much of the web. Does their management understand the gravitas (that word is warranted here) of what it means to lay-off parts of the team in charge of setting, keeping, and raising the bar for creating so much of the internet? This is truly alarming and saddening that some MBA exec who’s in the role because they’re “a people person” and “get tech” is deciding the fate of creating for the internet.</text></comment> | <story><title>Thank You MDN</title><url>https://www.ilovemdn.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paulirish</author><text>MDN statement a few hours ago: &quot;MDN as a website isn&#x27;t going anywhere right now. The team is smaller, but the site exists and isn&#x27;t going away. We will be working with partners and community members to find the right ways to move it forward given our new structure at Mozilla.&quot; [0]<p>There are tech writers from Google and Microsoft that contribute full-time to MDN. (And it&#x27;s a wiki, after all, anyone can edit it!)<p>But yes, very sadly, the Mozilla tech writers that maintain the docs, maintain them, and keep those browser compat tables running so smooth... were part of the layoffs.<p>You can be sure that the site will find a new home if Mozilla defunds it further. It certainly won&#x27;t drop off the web.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MozDevNet&#x2F;status&#x2F;1293647529268006912" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MozDevNet&#x2F;status&#x2F;1293647529268006912</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>benatkin</author><text>&gt; MDN as a website isn&#x27;t going anywhere right now. The team is s̶m̶a̶l̶l̶e̶r̶gone, but the site exists and isn&#x27;t going away. We will be working with partners and community members to find the right ways to move it forward given our new structure at Mozilla.<p>Fixed it.<p>Edit: Dug up the tweet, the author of it posted an update, doesn&#x27;t acknowledge the statement about the team being &quot;smaller&quot;. I suspect it&#x27;s not exactly a team anymore. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;jasnell&#x2F;status&#x2F;1293524408628203523" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;jasnell&#x2F;status&#x2F;1293524408628203523</a></text></comment> |
29,724,571 | 29,724,491 | 1 | 2 | 29,723,925 | train | <story><title>Hong Kong pro-democracy Stand News shuts down after police raid, arrests</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/hong-kong-police-arrest-6-current-or-former-staff-online-media-outlet-2021-12-28/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>baybal2</author><text>UK has all means to successfully use force, and secure its gains - that&#x27;s the military reality on the ground.<p>It has an amphibious force to land a division, more with requisitioned civilian vessels, and it has thermonuclear weapons to threaten chokepoints — more than enough to get the peninsula.<p>UK is not a small military. With mobilised territorials, and first line conscripts, it will be as much as 10-12 divisions ready on short order.</text></item><item><author>throwawayHK</author><text>The big loophole is the provision for China&#x27;s intervention in matters of &quot;National Security&quot;.<p>This is exactly what has been used to craft very vague language that basically allows authorities to treat anything that goes counter to China&#x27;s official line as a &quot;threat to National Security&quot;.<p>It&#x27;s so vague that self-censorship is now omnipresent in what was, just a few years ago, a bastion of freedom of speech in Asia. Newspaper and political figures are afraid of being targetted for their perceived dissent, and there is no real recourse, with pressure on judges to fall in line.<p>It is a farce of course, but there will be no international action. The British have no recourse to enforce the treaty. China will invade HK with tanks before they release their tightening grip on it, and the world will watch and do nothing of course.<p>It&#x27;s not just democracy that is under threat in HK. There never was any to start with. It&#x27;s plain freedom of speech that is under threat.</text></item><item><author>octopoc</author><text>This is yet another violation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the treaty between China and the U.K. defining how Hong Kong will be handed over to China[1]:<p>&gt; Hong Kong would maintain its existing governing and economic systems separate from that of mainland China under the principle of &quot;one country, two systems&quot;.<p>The West needs to realize: China does not uphold its own treaties.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sino-British_Joint_Declaration" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sino-British_Joint_Declaration</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacquesm</author><text>During the Yugoslavian war there was a stand-off between the Russians and some American troops around the Pristina airfield.<p>&quot;The following morning, Sunday 13 June, Clark arrived at Jackson&#x27;s HQ in Skopje. It was pointed out to Clark that the Russians were isolated and could not be reinforced by air and that Russian support had been a vital part of getting a peace agreement; antagonising them would only be counterproductive. Clark refused to accept this and continued to order that the runway be blocked, claiming to be supported by the NATO Secretary-General.[2] Jackson refused to enforce Clark&#x27;s orders, reportedly telling him &quot;I&#x27;m not going to start the Third World War for you.&quot;[5] When again directly ordered to block the runway, Jackson suggested that British tanks and armoured cars would be more suitable, in the knowledge that this would almost certainly be vetoed by the British government. Clark agreed.&quot;<p>What you are suggesting here is that the British would start World War III of their own accord and that Nato would follow them if they did so.<p>Not a chance.</text></comment> | <story><title>Hong Kong pro-democracy Stand News shuts down after police raid, arrests</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/hong-kong-police-arrest-6-current-or-former-staff-online-media-outlet-2021-12-28/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>baybal2</author><text>UK has all means to successfully use force, and secure its gains - that&#x27;s the military reality on the ground.<p>It has an amphibious force to land a division, more with requisitioned civilian vessels, and it has thermonuclear weapons to threaten chokepoints — more than enough to get the peninsula.<p>UK is not a small military. With mobilised territorials, and first line conscripts, it will be as much as 10-12 divisions ready on short order.</text></item><item><author>throwawayHK</author><text>The big loophole is the provision for China&#x27;s intervention in matters of &quot;National Security&quot;.<p>This is exactly what has been used to craft very vague language that basically allows authorities to treat anything that goes counter to China&#x27;s official line as a &quot;threat to National Security&quot;.<p>It&#x27;s so vague that self-censorship is now omnipresent in what was, just a few years ago, a bastion of freedom of speech in Asia. Newspaper and political figures are afraid of being targetted for their perceived dissent, and there is no real recourse, with pressure on judges to fall in line.<p>It is a farce of course, but there will be no international action. The British have no recourse to enforce the treaty. China will invade HK with tanks before they release their tightening grip on it, and the world will watch and do nothing of course.<p>It&#x27;s not just democracy that is under threat in HK. There never was any to start with. It&#x27;s plain freedom of speech that is under threat.</text></item><item><author>octopoc</author><text>This is yet another violation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the treaty between China and the U.K. defining how Hong Kong will be handed over to China[1]:<p>&gt; Hong Kong would maintain its existing governing and economic systems separate from that of mainland China under the principle of &quot;one country, two systems&quot;.<p>The West needs to realize: China does not uphold its own treaties.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sino-British_Joint_Declaration" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sino-British_Joint_Declaration</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mrpopo</author><text>This would be the worst course of action. The Chinese population is propagandized enough and won&#x27;t hesitate to go to war head-on against the West.</text></comment> |
40,012,864 | 40,012,992 | 1 | 2 | 40,011,111 | train | <story><title>Why I recommend Renovate over any other dependency update tools</title><url>https://www.jvt.me/posts/2024/04/12/use-renovate/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gbrindisi</author><text>I don&#x27;t understand why Github does not invest more into Dependabot. Everyone need something like this, and Github is positioned to offer the best sca tool there is. And yet... stuff like grouping has only been recently added.<p>Anyhow, this is useful to rollout dependabot.yaml config at scale: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;github&#x2F;evergreen">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;github&#x2F;evergreen</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Why I recommend Renovate over any other dependency update tools</title><url>https://www.jvt.me/posts/2024/04/12/use-renovate/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>vlovich123</author><text>Cloudflare adopted Renovate when I worked there. Not sure if it was the config wasn’t good (we did try to wrangle with it a bit by customizing), but I found it to be a lot more pain that it was worth. PRs that wouldn’t build would be opened, trivial dependency updates that weren’t worth the PR time would be proposed, etc.<p>There’s also the security aspect of supply chain attacks of “button press” updates.<p>I think having reports sent to repo owners that they can review with the team on a periodic basis instead of click-through maintenance might be a better model but I also understand the desire for mindless automation of what seems like a chore.</text></comment> |
3,568,502 | 3,568,521 | 1 | 3 | 3,568,183 | train | <story><title>We are sorry</title><url>http://blog.path.com/post/17274932484/we-are-sorry</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phillco</author><text>I would bold it if I were them. It's a nicely written message, but it reads like a lot of other PR apologies and it's easy to skim over it, deep in its position in the 5th paragraph.<p>Sometimes you need to <i>make</i> actions speak louder than words. :)</text></item><item><author>hexis</author><text>Key paragraph: "We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path."<p>Great save for a bad mistake.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gorgonville</author><text>&#62;We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts<p>Better would have been 'we are sorry we misused your phone contacts', rather than trying to make the users responsible by invoking their feelings.<p>Aside: interesting how the concept of theft seems meaningless when applied to copyrighted material, but meaningful when applied to private data.</text></comment> | <story><title>We are sorry</title><url>http://blog.path.com/post/17274932484/we-are-sorry</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phillco</author><text>I would bold it if I were them. It's a nicely written message, but it reads like a lot of other PR apologies and it's easy to skim over it, deep in its position in the 5th paragraph.<p>Sometimes you need to <i>make</i> actions speak louder than words. :)</text></item><item><author>hexis</author><text>Key paragraph: "We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path."<p>Great save for a bad mistake.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dmbass</author><text>I think you mean "make your words as bold as your actions." :)</text></comment> |
35,340,391 | 35,338,485 | 1 | 2 | 35,337,798 | train | <story><title>Push notifications are now supported cross-browser</title><url>https://web.dev/push-notifications-in-all-modern-browsers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kevin_thibedeau</author><text>This is a Windows problem. I can cold boot and have Firefox up in 30 seconds in Linux.</text></item><item><author>noirscape</author><text>Annoying fact is that every major browser silently installs itself into the startup process when you enable any browser push notification on Windows (with Edge being enabled for this by default iirc).<p>If you&#x27;re wondering why your only 2-year old Laptop is slowing down when you boot it up - this is why. Chances are that Edge, Firefox and&#x2F;or Chrome all three decided that they should have the right to run a full instance of themselves when you boot up your PC because you enabled a notification for a site that doesn&#x27;t ever send any to begin with.<p>Browsers are heavy things to boot up (not to mention that in potato RAM environments, they eat through RAM like there&#x27;s no tomorrow). To be clear, browsers being heavy applications is fine, it&#x27;s one application where people tolerate it because of how versatile the browser is, but it is <i>extremely</i> frustrating when it results in the computer taking 5 minutes to sign in, when all they needed to do was quickly revise a Word document.<p>The result is that people end up writing off perfectly serviceable laptops for something that is easily disabled in the task manager.<p>This sorta thing really should get a big warning popup that if you enable it, it probably will end up slowing down your PC. I can&#x27;t exactly celebrate the fact that all three major browser engines now pester users into slowing down their PCs.<p>Otherwise, if your relatives&#x2F;friends are complaining their laptop is slow (and you&#x27;re the designated IT person), enjoy the free advice.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>explaininjs</author><text>An HTML renderer, in only 90,000,000,000 clock cycles? Verily I say, technology has come a long way.</text></comment> | <story><title>Push notifications are now supported cross-browser</title><url>https://web.dev/push-notifications-in-all-modern-browsers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kevin_thibedeau</author><text>This is a Windows problem. I can cold boot and have Firefox up in 30 seconds in Linux.</text></item><item><author>noirscape</author><text>Annoying fact is that every major browser silently installs itself into the startup process when you enable any browser push notification on Windows (with Edge being enabled for this by default iirc).<p>If you&#x27;re wondering why your only 2-year old Laptop is slowing down when you boot it up - this is why. Chances are that Edge, Firefox and&#x2F;or Chrome all three decided that they should have the right to run a full instance of themselves when you boot up your PC because you enabled a notification for a site that doesn&#x27;t ever send any to begin with.<p>Browsers are heavy things to boot up (not to mention that in potato RAM environments, they eat through RAM like there&#x27;s no tomorrow). To be clear, browsers being heavy applications is fine, it&#x27;s one application where people tolerate it because of how versatile the browser is, but it is <i>extremely</i> frustrating when it results in the computer taking 5 minutes to sign in, when all they needed to do was quickly revise a Word document.<p>The result is that people end up writing off perfectly serviceable laptops for something that is easily disabled in the task manager.<p>This sorta thing really should get a big warning popup that if you enable it, it probably will end up slowing down your PC. I can&#x27;t exactly celebrate the fact that all three major browser engines now pester users into slowing down their PCs.<p>Otherwise, if your relatives&#x2F;friends are complaining their laptop is slow (and you&#x27;re the designated IT person), enjoy the free advice.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>noirscape</author><text>They don&#x27;t do this on Linux because there&#x27;s no unified way to do it on Linux. It also happens on macOS if memory serves me right, but macOS makes it aggravating enough for people to usually disable it because of that (you can&#x27;t do a silent application launch when logging in on macOS from what I can tell - sole exception being iTunesHelper on older versions - so any browser that sends push notifications opens a new window when you login to the computer, making it obvious and annoying).</text></comment> |
36,210,045 | 36,209,558 | 1 | 3 | 36,208,568 | train | <story><title>Why SQLite is so great for the edge</title><url>https://blog.turso.tech/why-sqlite-is-so-great-for-the-edge-ee00a3a9a55f</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jgrahamc</author><text>This no need to compile SQLite into your Cloudflare Worker. We provide it native on our platform as D1. And it gives you replication. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.cloudflare.com&#x2F;d1-turning-it-up-to-11&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.cloudflare.com&#x2F;d1-turning-it-up-to-11&#x2F;</a><p>Also, I think the idea of “edge” doesn’t make a ton of sense. What we really need is code and data that move around as needed for the best performance. See: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.cloudflare.com&#x2F;announcing-workers-smart-placement&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.cloudflare.com&#x2F;announcing-workers-smart-placeme...</a><p>What people call “edge” is a single optimization bringing code near the user. I think we should go far beyond that. Sure, use something like Cloudflare Workers for your “edge” needs (ie bringing your React app close to the end user&#x2F;doing server side rendering). But don’t stop there because where data resides, what APIs you call are all going to matter.<p>That&#x27;s the vision of something I called the &quot;Supercloud&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.cloudflare.com&#x2F;welcome-to-the-supercloud-and-developer-week-2022&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.cloudflare.com&#x2F;welcome-to-the-supercloud-and-de...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Why SQLite is so great for the edge</title><url>https://blog.turso.tech/why-sqlite-is-so-great-for-the-edge-ee00a3a9a55f</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>samwillis</author><text>For a tenanted SAAS app SQLite at the edge is a really compelling architecture. You have a single DB per customer&#x2F;company&#x2F;group with all their users woking against that. It can operate at the edge, closest to where the majority of the customers users are.<p>SQLite could scale to even quite large customers with this.<p>Another really compelling architecture is a DB per user, with partial&#x2F;selective sync between the nodes. If you then couple this with a &quot;local first&quot; design, the &quot;edge&quot; just becomes an other local deployment that the users db can sync against. Collaborative apps, where the users have their own documents but can also share&#x2F;fork them would align well with this.<p>I believe starting with &quot;local first&quot; and using the edge for sync and &quot;online only&quot; modes is going to become the default for a significant number of apps moving forward. SQLite with CRDT based syncing and merge conflict resolution is the way to do this. There are a couple of exciting projects working on this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electric-sql.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electric-sql.com&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vlcn.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vlcn.io&#x2F;</a></text></comment> |
33,473,923 | 33,473,426 | 1 | 2 | 33,471,733 | train | <story><title>RStudio is now Posit</title><url>https://posit.co/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bscphil</author><text>&gt; acknowledges the shitshow that is the python library&#x2F;package&#x2F;environment management<p>I&#x27;m puzzled by this and wonder if you can provide some examples. The scientists I know tend to have incredibly disorganized R code, with a bunch of hard-coded paths and a single global environment in their home directory that all their R packages get installed to. Even stuff that seems critically important like reproducible science can be much harder than you&#x27;d expect in a lot of fields because questions like &quot;what version of the libraries did you use&quot; has to be answered (if it can be answered at all) by looking at the references in the paper.<p>Whereas in Python, I don&#x27;t know how things could be any simpler. Creating an individualized environment for your project is one command. Installing packages that only live inside that environment is one `pip install` away. Most scientific work is not &quot;distributed&quot; in the sense of having users, but if you do ship a product to users, Python gives you the option of either relying on distribution provided packages (my preferred approach most of the time) or shipping a single binary created with something like PyInstaller.</text></item><item><author>toddm</author><text>From Hadley&#x27;s video blurb, the ringer is when he states &quot;things just work&quot; in the R environment vis-à-vis python (where he tactfully yet implicitly acknowledges the shitshow that is the python library&#x2F;package&#x2F;environment management).<p>Kudos to the R community and supporters for providing a great and useful platform!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Lyngbakr</author><text>I&#x27;ve also seen my fair share of garbage R code and I think Gordon Shotwell&#x27;s comment that &quot;There really are no production languages – only production engineers&quot; speaks to this.[0] A big problem in the scientific community is that scientists aren&#x27;t trained to write code like production engineers. I don&#x27;t see it necessarily as being an issue that is endemic to R, though.<p>Packrat[1] — an RStudio package — can be used to easily avoid the library versioning issues you describe. The problem isn&#x27;t that the tooling isn&#x27;t there or that it isn&#x27;t easy to use. It&#x27;s that some folks simply don&#x27;t use it and are perhaps oblivious as to &#x2F;why&#x2F; they should even use it, anyway.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shotwell.ca&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2019-12-30-why-i-use-r&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shotwell.ca&#x2F;posts&#x2F;2019-12-30-why-i-use-r&#x2F;</a>
[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rstudio.github.io&#x2F;packrat&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rstudio.github.io&#x2F;packrat&#x2F;</a></text></comment> | <story><title>RStudio is now Posit</title><url>https://posit.co/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bscphil</author><text>&gt; acknowledges the shitshow that is the python library&#x2F;package&#x2F;environment management<p>I&#x27;m puzzled by this and wonder if you can provide some examples. The scientists I know tend to have incredibly disorganized R code, with a bunch of hard-coded paths and a single global environment in their home directory that all their R packages get installed to. Even stuff that seems critically important like reproducible science can be much harder than you&#x27;d expect in a lot of fields because questions like &quot;what version of the libraries did you use&quot; has to be answered (if it can be answered at all) by looking at the references in the paper.<p>Whereas in Python, I don&#x27;t know how things could be any simpler. Creating an individualized environment for your project is one command. Installing packages that only live inside that environment is one `pip install` away. Most scientific work is not &quot;distributed&quot; in the sense of having users, but if you do ship a product to users, Python gives you the option of either relying on distribution provided packages (my preferred approach most of the time) or shipping a single binary created with something like PyInstaller.</text></item><item><author>toddm</author><text>From Hadley&#x27;s video blurb, the ringer is when he states &quot;things just work&quot; in the R environment vis-à-vis python (where he tactfully yet implicitly acknowledges the shitshow that is the python library&#x2F;package&#x2F;environment management).<p>Kudos to the R community and supporters for providing a great and useful platform!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>goosedragons</author><text>I think that has more to do with the fact that most scientists are not trained programmers! Plus a lot of data analysis work doesn&#x27;t lend itself to the same style of programming IMO.<p>While there could be more effort in getting things like library versions out there a lot of journals don&#x27;t care so there&#x27;s no pressure on scientists to provide it.</text></comment> |
10,152,694 | 10,151,811 | 1 | 2 | 10,151,632 | train | <story><title>PGStrom: GPU-accelerated PostgreSQL</title><url>https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PGStrom</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>headgasket</author><text>It actually works with openCL. I had to do a few changes to make it work on MacOSX, but I beleive the language barrier and the fact that his project is in a flux and I came out of the blue caused these few lines to not merge. Please see my fork of his dev branch, that works with 9.5dev: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;pg-strom&#x2F;devel&#x2F;pull&#x2F;144" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;pg-strom&#x2F;devel&#x2F;pull&#x2F;144</a><p>correction: those changes to compile on macox did get pulled so <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;pg-strom&#x2F;devel" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;pg-strom&#x2F;devel</a> should build with openCL on your mac to link with 9.5dev.</text></comment> | <story><title>PGStrom: GPU-accelerated PostgreSQL</title><url>https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PGStrom</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tsuru</author><text>Here are a couple more resources where the lead gives a bit more description:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;on-demand.gputechconf.com&#x2F;gtc&#x2F;2015&#x2F;presentation&#x2F;S5276-Kohei-KaiGai.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;on-demand.gputechconf.com&#x2F;gtc&#x2F;2015&#x2F;presentation&#x2F;S5276...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slideshare.net&#x2F;kaigai&#x2F;gpgpu-accelerates-postgresql" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slideshare.net&#x2F;kaigai&#x2F;gpgpu-accelerates-postgresq...</a><p>edit:
His slideshare page <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slideshare.net&#x2F;kaigai" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slideshare.net&#x2F;kaigai</a> has even more recent presentations. I&#x27;ve only had time to skim much of slides, but it seems he&#x27;s flip-flopped a couple of times between OpenCL and CUDA</text></comment> |
7,189,759 | 7,189,192 | 1 | 3 | 7,188,789 | train | <story><title>How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go</title><url>http://zenhabits.net/leggo/?utm_content=buffer5f9b3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jun8</author><text>You may want to not waste time reading this but instead use that time to read pg&#x27;s essay on similar ideas, &quot;How to Do What You Love&quot; (<a href="http://paulgraham.com/love.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;love.html</a>), which, if I had the power, I would have millions of copies printed and have every kid in the world read it. It explains (at least) two simple ideas very effectively:<p>1. The work versus fun dichotomy is taught very early:<p>&quot;The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn&#x27;t—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.&quot;<p>2. To compare two activities, you have to compare the area under their utility&#x2F;fun vs. time curves.<p>&quot;But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn&#x27;t mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.<p>Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vidarh</author><text>&gt; Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.&quot;<p>Nonsense. This in itself is a result of falling prey to what Leo Baubata (the author of the linked article) writes about: Inability to &quot;let go&quot;.<p>There may certainly be things you&#x27;d find more fulfilling. But if you <i>need</i> to do stuff to be happy, you are letting yourself suffer from attachments to things that more the most part are relatively inconsequential.<p>PG&#x27;s essay suffers from this assumption that happiness is tied to achievements.<p>I used to think that too. The problem with that line of thinking is that it often leads to putting the shutters on and focusing on getting stuff done to get your happiness from it eventually, while ignoring all the sources of happiness around you. Further, that makes procrastination worse, in my experience: It creates guilt that you&#x27;re picking the short term pleasures instead of doing the stuff you&#x27;re sure will make you fabulously happy later, once you&#x27;ve just achieved something.<p>These days, I still get stuff done - more than ever, in fact -, but I might suddenly stop during my commute and look up at the clouds and enjoy the sight, or just close my eyes for 10 seconds and enjoy the calm, and I&#x27;m happy whether or not I&#x27;m doing anything. The two are not related. If you can&#x27;t be happy even while doing the dishes, or fighting your way onto a commuter train, or carrying out some mind-numbingly boring menial work, you&#x27;re missing out.</text></comment> | <story><title>How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go</title><url>http://zenhabits.net/leggo/?utm_content=buffer5f9b3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jun8</author><text>You may want to not waste time reading this but instead use that time to read pg&#x27;s essay on similar ideas, &quot;How to Do What You Love&quot; (<a href="http://paulgraham.com/love.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;love.html</a>), which, if I had the power, I would have millions of copies printed and have every kid in the world read it. It explains (at least) two simple ideas very effectively:<p>1. The work versus fun dichotomy is taught very early:<p>&quot;The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn&#x27;t—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.&quot;<p>2. To compare two activities, you have to compare the area under their utility&#x2F;fun vs. time curves.<p>&quot;But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn&#x27;t mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.<p>Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crististm</author><text>Actually, reading any article about conquering procrastination is better than doing actual work :)<p>(but this article is good and short and it reminded me that your focus should be not on the immediate but on the long term)</text></comment> |
38,725,363 | 38,725,356 | 1 | 2 | 38,724,591 | train | <story><title>Google Makes over $92B per Year by Owning Android</title><url>https://interestingcontent.substack.com/p/google-makes-over-92-billion-per</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>amadeuspagel</author><text>This ridiculous outraged tone describing how a company makes money with an open source project. If you like open source, shouldn&#x27;t you be glad that companies are able to make money with it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>soperj</author><text>Apple makes tons of money off of open source. Their operating system kernels are all derivatives of Mach -- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mach_(kernel)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mach_(kernel)</a> -- I don&#x27;t think anyone is celebrating it.</text></comment> | <story><title>Google Makes over $92B per Year by Owning Android</title><url>https://interestingcontent.substack.com/p/google-makes-over-92-billion-per</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>amadeuspagel</author><text>This ridiculous outraged tone describing how a company makes money with an open source project. If you like open source, shouldn&#x27;t you be glad that companies are able to make money with it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ensignavenger</author><text>Maybe I&#x27;m not reading the article in the same tone as you? I am not reading &quot;outrage&quot; in it, more a sort of casual &quot;did you know&quot; - &quot;look how smart I am&quot; ish tone. Cool thing about writing, one can read it in any tone they want, I suppose :)</text></comment> |
6,626,837 | 6,625,605 | 1 | 2 | 6,625,473 | train | <story><title>Cash to the poor: Giving money directly works surprisingly well</title><url>http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-money-directly-poor-people-works-surprisingly-well-it-cannot-deal</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wahsd</author><text>Those who have for centuries fooled the rest of humanity into believing that their unearned, illegitimate, and unwarranted elevated status is justified know the findings of this painfully obvious fact to be true. Which is why they pull out all and every stop to prevent the majority from realizing it by vilifying anyone and anything that could spread that realization.</text></comment> | <story><title>Cash to the poor: Giving money directly works surprisingly well</title><url>http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-money-directly-poor-people-works-surprisingly-well-it-cannot-deal</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>frank_boyd</author><text>As a matter of fact, society has <i>not a single valid</i> reason to allow concentration of excessive wealth on some kind of restricted group or &quot;elite&quot; (as, by the way, also promoted erroneously by the idea of the &quot;American Dream&quot;). Here are a few facts to explain that this concept is not sane at all:<p>- Excessive wealth is usually hoarded (in bank accounts), not used: But if you want the economy to work the most (creating jobs, etc.), you need to make money circulate as much as possible (which is not what rich people usually do).<p>- Excessive wealth ends up being used for corruption (famous example: the Koch brothers), simply because <i>it can</i>. You can not get rid of corruption without getting rid of excessive wealth concentration.<p>- Excessive wealth could &quot;morally&quot;&#x2F;&quot;ethically&quot; only be justified by the existence of &quot;really free will&quot; (a concept which we can never reasonably take as a basis, given the fact that this concept is of religious nature, not rational thinking): Free will -&gt; free decision -&gt; merit of the better decision -&gt; excessive wealth. As noted, this is how society excuses the existence of excessively rich people, and it&#x27;s completely flawed and wrong.<p>- Excessive wealth will always has the tendency to become even more excessive: it gives its holder an &quot;unfair&quot; advantage.<p>- A part of excessive wealth will always be used to protect the &quot;unfair advantage&quot;, thus eliminating equality even more.</text></comment> |
38,113,002 | 38,111,568 | 1 | 2 | 38,108,873 | train | <story><title>Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-and-demis-hassabis-just-want-to-control-ai-2023-10</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zimpenfish</author><text>&gt; He&#x27;s pretty sure that human civilization will be extinct this century.<p>If they are, it&#x27;ll almost certainly[1] be climate change or nuclear war, it won&#x27;t be AI.<p>[1] leaving some wiggle room for pandemics, asteroids, etc.</text></item><item><author>concordDance</author><text>He actually doesn&#x27;t think it&#x27;s viable, but thinks its the only card left to play.<p>He&#x27;s pretty sure that human civilization will be extinct this century.</text></item><item><author>jeffparsons</author><text>My estimation of Eliezer Yudkowsky just dropped a notch — not because I don&#x27;t take the existential threat posed by AI seriously — but because he seems to think that global coordination and control is an even remotely possible strategy.</text></item><item><author>upupupandaway</author><text>The fact that anyone may be taking Eliezer Yudkowsky seriously on this topic is mind-blowing to me. Simply mind-blowing. To imagine that anybody, including the UN, would have any power to collective put a stop to the development of AI globally is a laughable idea. The UN cannot agree to release a letter on Israel-Hamas, imagine policing the ENTIRE WORLD and shutting down AI development when necessary.<p>We can&#x27;t stop countries from developing weapons that will destroy us all tomorrow morning and take billions of USD to develop, imagine thinking we can stop matrix multiplication globally. I don&#x27;t want to derail into an ad hominem, but frankly, it&#x27;s almost the only option left here.</text></item><item><author>JoshTriplett</author><text>&gt; seize power via regulatory capture<p>Not even a little bit. &quot;Stop&quot; is not regulatory capture. Some large AI companies are attempting to twist &quot;stop&quot; into &quot;be careful, as only we can&quot;. The actual way to stop the existential risk is to stop. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ESYudkowsky&#x2F;status&#x2F;1719777049576128542" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ESYudkowsky&#x2F;status&#x2F;1719777049576128542</a><p>&gt; the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements<p>&quot;Stop&quot; is not &quot;licensing and reporting requirements&quot;, it&#x27;s <i>stop</i>.</text></item><item><author>lazzlazzlazz</author><text>The way incumbents are attempting to seize power via regulatory capture, using &quot;X-Risk&quot; and fantastical claims of sudden human extinction is maybe one of the most cynical ploys in the history of tech so far.<p>Open source is one of our greatest gifts, and the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements (which will undoubtedly become more strict) is absurd.<p>The laws we have already cover malevolent and abusive uses of software applications.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>itsoktocry</author><text>&gt;<i>If they are, it&#x27;ll almost certainly[1] be climate change or nuclear war, it won&#x27;t be AI.</i><p>If we go extinct in the next 100 years, it&#x27;s not going to be from climate change. How would that even work?</text></comment> | <story><title>Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-and-demis-hassabis-just-want-to-control-ai-2023-10</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zimpenfish</author><text>&gt; He&#x27;s pretty sure that human civilization will be extinct this century.<p>If they are, it&#x27;ll almost certainly[1] be climate change or nuclear war, it won&#x27;t be AI.<p>[1] leaving some wiggle room for pandemics, asteroids, etc.</text></item><item><author>concordDance</author><text>He actually doesn&#x27;t think it&#x27;s viable, but thinks its the only card left to play.<p>He&#x27;s pretty sure that human civilization will be extinct this century.</text></item><item><author>jeffparsons</author><text>My estimation of Eliezer Yudkowsky just dropped a notch — not because I don&#x27;t take the existential threat posed by AI seriously — but because he seems to think that global coordination and control is an even remotely possible strategy.</text></item><item><author>upupupandaway</author><text>The fact that anyone may be taking Eliezer Yudkowsky seriously on this topic is mind-blowing to me. Simply mind-blowing. To imagine that anybody, including the UN, would have any power to collective put a stop to the development of AI globally is a laughable idea. The UN cannot agree to release a letter on Israel-Hamas, imagine policing the ENTIRE WORLD and shutting down AI development when necessary.<p>We can&#x27;t stop countries from developing weapons that will destroy us all tomorrow morning and take billions of USD to develop, imagine thinking we can stop matrix multiplication globally. I don&#x27;t want to derail into an ad hominem, but frankly, it&#x27;s almost the only option left here.</text></item><item><author>JoshTriplett</author><text>&gt; seize power via regulatory capture<p>Not even a little bit. &quot;Stop&quot; is not regulatory capture. Some large AI companies are attempting to twist &quot;stop&quot; into &quot;be careful, as only we can&quot;. The actual way to stop the existential risk is to stop. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ESYudkowsky&#x2F;status&#x2F;1719777049576128542" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ESYudkowsky&#x2F;status&#x2F;1719777049576128542</a><p>&gt; the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements<p>&quot;Stop&quot; is not &quot;licensing and reporting requirements&quot;, it&#x27;s <i>stop</i>.</text></item><item><author>lazzlazzlazz</author><text>The way incumbents are attempting to seize power via regulatory capture, using &quot;X-Risk&quot; and fantastical claims of sudden human extinction is maybe one of the most cynical ploys in the history of tech so far.<p>Open source is one of our greatest gifts, and the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements (which will undoubtedly become more strict) is absurd.<p>The laws we have already cover malevolent and abusive uses of software applications.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lampington</author><text>&gt; If they are<p>Am I the only one slightly disturbed by the use of &quot;they&quot; in that sentence? I know that the HN commentariat is broad-based, but I didn&#x27;t realise we already had non-human members ;-)</text></comment> |
40,874,045 | 40,873,798 | 1 | 2 | 40,845,628 | train | <story><title>Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/shipt</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>febeling</author><text>I had similar thoughts. But let&#x27;s not overlook the information asymmetry, which contributed to the dissatisfaction. I don&#x27;t want to live in a world which is controlled unilaterally, and intransparently by a group of people who assume they have a full picture of the situation and assume they understand moral completely, and also don&#x27;t think it necessary to explain how they think so highly of themselves.</text></item><item><author>or_am_i</author><text>I am not defending Shipt and there is no doubt gig workers are in a very vulnerable position. However, the data analysis results as presented in the article do not support the article&#x27;s main point. &quot;40% are getting paid at least 10% less&quot; is not unnatural to expect whenever pay is redistributed, especially since some 30+% are getting at least 10% more. Imagine a _hypothetical_ situation where Shipt is 100% on point and driving a fairer version of the algorithm patch removing a way for workers to &quot;optimize&quot; for short, well paid trips, resulting in pay cuts to those who had learnt how to do it, while not changing&#x2F;increasing pay for everyone else. We would see the same kind of result: some portion of workers would get paid 10% less, some 10% more. This does show that workers are paid differently for the same work they have been doing, but does not prove the change is unfair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mft_</author><text>It&#x27;s an interesting question, as we have a spectrum from &#x27;little to no transparency&#x27; through to &#x27;full transparency&#x27; (which is pretty rare), and in the middle sits the usual approach of &#x27;communications-team-led messaged quasi-transparency&#x27;. Difficult to know (without more info) where Shipt would have appeared on this spectrum, but given the issue, they&#x27;re probably somewhere towards the &#x27;insufficient transparency&#x27; end.<p>What&#x27;s silly in this case is that (as others have pointed out) the new algorithm <i>seems</i> to have been reasonably equitable, with a genuine redistribution of payments, rather than just a cut overall. Shipt could have avoided this whole situation with a straightforward explanation of the changes, together with a few examples of the cases&#x2F;jobs in which people would earn more or less.</text></comment> | <story><title>Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/shipt</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>febeling</author><text>I had similar thoughts. But let&#x27;s not overlook the information asymmetry, which contributed to the dissatisfaction. I don&#x27;t want to live in a world which is controlled unilaterally, and intransparently by a group of people who assume they have a full picture of the situation and assume they understand moral completely, and also don&#x27;t think it necessary to explain how they think so highly of themselves.</text></item><item><author>or_am_i</author><text>I am not defending Shipt and there is no doubt gig workers are in a very vulnerable position. However, the data analysis results as presented in the article do not support the article&#x27;s main point. &quot;40% are getting paid at least 10% less&quot; is not unnatural to expect whenever pay is redistributed, especially since some 30+% are getting at least 10% more. Imagine a _hypothetical_ situation where Shipt is 100% on point and driving a fairer version of the algorithm patch removing a way for workers to &quot;optimize&quot; for short, well paid trips, resulting in pay cuts to those who had learnt how to do it, while not changing&#x2F;increasing pay for everyone else. We would see the same kind of result: some portion of workers would get paid 10% less, some 10% more. This does show that workers are paid differently for the same work they have been doing, but does not prove the change is unfair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>braza</author><text>&gt; I don&#x27;t want to live in a world which is controlled unilaterally, and intransparently by a group of people who assume they have a full picture of the situation and assume they understand moral completely<p>I have thought about this topic for a while at the time that I worked with Law data (e.g. Family Law and Military Law), and I just came to the conclusion that several societal institutions and it&#x27;s agents are inherently intransparent, even in situations where some &quot;illusionist transparency&quot; (there&#x27;s transparency, but the magician deviates your attention to another side) is given (e.g. judiciary system, under-the-table political agreements, etc.).<p>That&#x27;s one of the reasons I would like to have a more algorithmic society with human in the loop calling the final shots and placing the rationale on top. An algorithm will have human and institutional biases but in some sort, you can explain part of it and fine-tune it; a human making the final call on top of a given option would need to explain and rationally explain its decision. At best a human actor will use logic and make the right call, at worst it will transparently expose the biases of the individual.</text></comment> |
17,473,456 | 17,473,485 | 1 | 2 | 17,472,296 | train | <story><title>Firefox Pioneer</title><url>https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-firefox-pioneer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joombaga</author><text>&gt; The data you submit is encrypted in Firefox and not decrypted until it is on a server that is not connected to the wider internet.<p>Okay, stupid question: How does it get there? Sneakernet?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>scrollaway</author><text>User&#x27;s computer =&gt; Encrypted =&gt; Sent over the internet =&gt; Mozilla&#x27;s public servers =&gt; Mozilla intranet gateway =&gt; Mozilla non-internet-facing server =&gt; Decrypted here<p>It doesn&#x27;t say the server is completely offline. It can be connected to through a server which can connect to both that server <i>and</i> the wider internet, but the machine in question cannot.</text></comment> | <story><title>Firefox Pioneer</title><url>https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-firefox-pioneer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joombaga</author><text>&gt; The data you submit is encrypted in Firefox and not decrypted until it is on a server that is not connected to the wider internet.<p>Okay, stupid question: How does it get there? Sneakernet?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CubicsRube</author><text>You will send your data to publicly available server, which will forward it to other server available only through local network, hidden from the prying eyes, secured by firewall, routers, and&#x2F;or some network configuration.</text></comment> |
10,440,154 | 10,439,829 | 1 | 3 | 10,438,494 | train | <story><title>Xkcd and Bill Gates on Polio Eradication</title><url>http://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/XKCD-Marks-the-Spot</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>beaker52</author><text>It&#x27;s not a case of just carrying on as we were.<p>Here are the pockets of Polio:
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;voices.nationalgeographic.com&#x2F;files&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;gitn_1204_polio.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;voices.nationalgeographic.com&#x2F;files&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;gitn_1204...</a><p>Why?<p>1) Vaccinators can&#x27;t access some regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan because of violent resistance to Western aid.<p>2) Western vaccines are resisted by Muslim Nigerians who fear Polio vaccines are a Western plot to sterilise Muslims.<p>3) Hajj is a great opportunity for the disease to spread between members of these regions.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.irinnews.org&#x2F;report&#x2F;48667&#x2F;nigeria-muslim-suspicion-of-polio-vaccine-lingers-on" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.irinnews.org&#x2F;report&#x2F;48667&#x2F;nigeria-muslim-suspicio...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.nationalgeographic.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;03&#x2F;150303-polio-pakistan-islamic-state-refugees-vaccination-health&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.nationalgeographic.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;03&#x2F;150303-polio-paki...</a><p>Hearts and minds need to be won or brute force needs to be used, if decades of effort are going to pay off. Until it&#x27;s eradicated in these regions, we&#x27;re stuck vaccinating our children to avoid re-establishment of the disease.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yongjik</author><text>1) Vaccinators can&#x27;t access some regions of California because of violent resistance to vaccination.<p>2) Western vaccines are resisted by hippie Californians who fear Measles vaccines are a Western pharmaceutical plot to spread autism.<p>3) Disneyland is a great opportunity for the disease to spread between members of these regions.<p>Let&#x27;s see if Jenny McCarthy is forcefully vaccinated. Until then, it will be hard for me to take your &quot;They aren&#x27;t the same people as us, so let&#x27;s use brute force, for <i>humanity</i>&quot; attitude seriously.</text></comment> | <story><title>Xkcd and Bill Gates on Polio Eradication</title><url>http://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/XKCD-Marks-the-Spot</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>beaker52</author><text>It&#x27;s not a case of just carrying on as we were.<p>Here are the pockets of Polio:
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;voices.nationalgeographic.com&#x2F;files&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;gitn_1204_polio.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;voices.nationalgeographic.com&#x2F;files&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;gitn_1204...</a><p>Why?<p>1) Vaccinators can&#x27;t access some regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan because of violent resistance to Western aid.<p>2) Western vaccines are resisted by Muslim Nigerians who fear Polio vaccines are a Western plot to sterilise Muslims.<p>3) Hajj is a great opportunity for the disease to spread between members of these regions.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.irinnews.org&#x2F;report&#x2F;48667&#x2F;nigeria-muslim-suspicion-of-polio-vaccine-lingers-on" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.irinnews.org&#x2F;report&#x2F;48667&#x2F;nigeria-muslim-suspicio...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.nationalgeographic.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;03&#x2F;150303-polio-pakistan-islamic-state-refugees-vaccination-health&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.nationalgeographic.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;03&#x2F;150303-polio-paki...</a><p>Hearts and minds need to be won or brute force needs to be used, if decades of effort are going to pay off. Until it&#x27;s eradicated in these regions, we&#x27;re stuck vaccinating our children to avoid re-establishment of the disease.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Natsu</author><text>If Saudi Arabia were on board, maybe the Hajj could be a good opportunity to get vaccinations to some of those groups of immigrants?<p>Imagine if they made it a visa requirement and they were the ones doing the vaccination rather than the US.</text></comment> |
39,184,782 | 39,184,568 | 1 | 2 | 39,183,063 | train | <story><title>Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure</title><url>https://www.statnews.com/2024/01/29/first-transmitted-alzheimers-disease-cases-growth-hormone-cadavers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>caycep</author><text>There is a line of research into the &quot;transmissible&#x27; phenomena of a lot of these neurodegen dz. Epidemiologically, it&#x27;s probably not infectious from one person to another bc we don&#x27;t see spouses getting PD or AD often. But there&#x27;s interesting phenomena - i.e. one of the Parkinson&#x27;s stem cell implantation trials got a lot of press after the trial (which failed, didn&#x27;t show benefit) bc after subjects passed several years later and got autopsied, they found clumps of parkinsonian proteins (lewy bodies) on the histology slides of the implanted stem cells.<p>Similarly, there&#x27;s some papers w&#x2F; mice w&#x2F; knockout Parkinsonian genes getting parkinsonian features and lewy bodies when injected w&#x2F; abnormal misfolded synuclein from another mouse.<p>What exactly to do w&#x2F; this, no one is entirely sure yet.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dimask</author><text>&gt; we don&#x27;t see spouses getting PD or AD often<p>Actually it may seem so [1], though still there is not any conclusive evidence to support a transmission hypothesis really as all this could be due to increased stress and such factors. Also, brain surgeons&#x27; increased risk of AD and more reports of associated risks with regard to contamination from brain operations [2] (similar to the article&#x27;s ones) provide more indications that such a hypothesis is not completely implausible. Though also far from strongly supporting it or anything, as there is no proper experiment design with control groups etc to make better conclusions.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC2945313&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC2945313&#x2F;</a>
[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.medicaldesignandoutsourcing.com&#x2F;report-suggests-brain-surgeons-could-catch-alzheimers-disease&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.medicaldesignandoutsourcing.com&#x2F;report-suggests-...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Alzheimer’s cases tied to no-longer-used medical procedure</title><url>https://www.statnews.com/2024/01/29/first-transmitted-alzheimers-disease-cases-growth-hormone-cadavers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>caycep</author><text>There is a line of research into the &quot;transmissible&#x27; phenomena of a lot of these neurodegen dz. Epidemiologically, it&#x27;s probably not infectious from one person to another bc we don&#x27;t see spouses getting PD or AD often. But there&#x27;s interesting phenomena - i.e. one of the Parkinson&#x27;s stem cell implantation trials got a lot of press after the trial (which failed, didn&#x27;t show benefit) bc after subjects passed several years later and got autopsied, they found clumps of parkinsonian proteins (lewy bodies) on the histology slides of the implanted stem cells.<p>Similarly, there&#x27;s some papers w&#x2F; mice w&#x2F; knockout Parkinsonian genes getting parkinsonian features and lewy bodies when injected w&#x2F; abnormal misfolded synuclein from another mouse.<p>What exactly to do w&#x2F; this, no one is entirely sure yet.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>foota</author><text>I guess if your brain proteins are mixing with someone elses you normally have a bigger issue.</text></comment> |
38,382,704 | 38,378,146 | 1 | 2 | 38,373,191 | train | <story><title>FTC authorizes compulsory process for AI-related products and services</title><url>https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/11/ftc-authorizes-compulsory-process-ai-related-products-services</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nameless912</author><text>AI has already hurt plenty of people though; we already have examples of biased &quot;AI policing&quot;, artists and writers are getting their work stolen left and right, and I&#x27;ve heard tell of several instances of seriously vulnerable code making it to production and revealing folks&#x27; private information due to bugs introduced by AI assistants.<p>This regulation is almost certainly too far reaching and written by bureaucrats rather than experts, but the need for regulation is already there.</text></item><item><author>chii</author><text>And those regulations only happened _after_ the dangers and harms were shown to be true and actually happens.<p>I would be wary of pre-emptive regulations.</text></item><item><author>andylynch</author><text>But every functioning government regulates electrical networks and devices in some way. People think it’s mostly reasonable since they don’t like being electrocuted or having things explode and catch on fire?</text></item><item><author>RecycledEle</author><text>&gt; &quot;products and services that use or claim to be produced using artificial intelligence (AI)...&quot;<p>Imagine a government agency that has oversight over &quot;products and services that use or claim to be produced using electricity...&quot; This may become the largest power grab in US history.</text></item><item><author>rossdavidh</author><text>&quot;products and services that use or claim to be produced using artificial intelligence (AI)...&quot;<p>Interesting test of whether we suddenly see a decline in the number of products claiming to have or be produced using AI. Probably not until&#x2F;unless the FTC actually starts using these powers in a significant way.<p>By the way, I don&#x27;t mean cases where AI was used, lying about it, I mean cases where nothing meriting the term &quot;artificial intelligence&quot; was used, but they have been stretching the term so they can use the latest buzzword in advertising.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>RecycledEle</author><text>&gt; the need for regulation is already there.<p>We need regulation that holds people accountable. I see too many 1%ers claiming they were not responsible for something their algorithm did.<p>In old sci-fi, a computer was the legal agent of its operator&#x2F;owner and anything that computer did was 100% the fault of its owner&#x2F;operator.<p>If we simply say &quot;you are responsible for what your AI does,&quot; then the problem is solved.<p>We could solve the problem if not being able to bring corporations to justice at the same time. Forxe them to beck e proprietorships. Every owner&#x2F;partner is culpable for crimes committed by that proprietorship.<p>Did a cop arrest an obviously innocent person? It&#x27;s the cop&#x27;s fault.<p>Did my web site plagiarize a painting? Then it&#x27;s my fault.<p>Did a startup release venerable software? Then the crook that exploited the bug is responsible but so it the entity that released the software.<p>If we get back to common sense and stop blaming the Twinkie for the murder, things get a lot simpler.
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Twinkie_defense" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Twinkie_defense</a></text></comment> | <story><title>FTC authorizes compulsory process for AI-related products and services</title><url>https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/11/ftc-authorizes-compulsory-process-ai-related-products-services</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nameless912</author><text>AI has already hurt plenty of people though; we already have examples of biased &quot;AI policing&quot;, artists and writers are getting their work stolen left and right, and I&#x27;ve heard tell of several instances of seriously vulnerable code making it to production and revealing folks&#x27; private information due to bugs introduced by AI assistants.<p>This regulation is almost certainly too far reaching and written by bureaucrats rather than experts, but the need for regulation is already there.</text></item><item><author>chii</author><text>And those regulations only happened _after_ the dangers and harms were shown to be true and actually happens.<p>I would be wary of pre-emptive regulations.</text></item><item><author>andylynch</author><text>But every functioning government regulates electrical networks and devices in some way. People think it’s mostly reasonable since they don’t like being electrocuted or having things explode and catch on fire?</text></item><item><author>RecycledEle</author><text>&gt; &quot;products and services that use or claim to be produced using artificial intelligence (AI)...&quot;<p>Imagine a government agency that has oversight over &quot;products and services that use or claim to be produced using electricity...&quot; This may become the largest power grab in US history.</text></item><item><author>rossdavidh</author><text>&quot;products and services that use or claim to be produced using artificial intelligence (AI)...&quot;<p>Interesting test of whether we suddenly see a decline in the number of products claiming to have or be produced using AI. Probably not until&#x2F;unless the FTC actually starts using these powers in a significant way.<p>By the way, I don&#x27;t mean cases where AI was used, lying about it, I mean cases where nothing meriting the term &quot;artificial intelligence&quot; was used, but they have been stretching the term so they can use the latest buzzword in advertising.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chii</author><text>Bad code making into production has nothing to do with ai, and everything to do with the incompetence of the coder.<p>As for &quot;stolen&quot; work, i am still not convinced that ai produced works are a derivative of the training data.<p>And AI policing is just as bad as human policing - the regulation isn&#x27;t with AI, but with policing.</text></comment> |
35,004,692 | 35,004,707 | 1 | 3 | 34,985,786 | train | <story><title>Non-linear career paths are the future</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2023/02/26/why-non-linear-career-paths-are-the-future/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mabbo</author><text>For a decade at Amazon, nearly everyone I worked with was following the linear, expected path. High school, university, degree, FAANG job. Amazon basically didn&#x27;t interview SDE1s unless they were new grads. For a number of years that policy was explicit from our Director because &quot;we find that works out best&quot;.<p>Now I&#x27;m at Shopify, where it feels like a complete 180. More than half my team took non-traditional paths- former dietician, government clerk, logger (like with a chainsaw). My team doesn&#x27;t even seem like an outlier.<p>One thing I&#x27;ve noticed: the women I work with now are far more likely to have taken a non-linear path to get here. They weren&#x27;t encouraged to go into that career when they were in high school, but later in life realized it was a good choice. One really great staff dev I&#x27;ve worked with told me how she was encouraged to be a tech recruiter (and did), then slowly realized she could be the one making the huge salaries she was offering people.<p>Amazon would never have given them a chance. And funny enough, Amazon struggles to hire women in dev roles.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>r-s</author><text>Did Shopify have a choice?<p>Many Canadians who got computer science degrees left to work for American companies for 2x-3x more money.</text></comment> | <story><title>Non-linear career paths are the future</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2023/02/26/why-non-linear-career-paths-are-the-future/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mabbo</author><text>For a decade at Amazon, nearly everyone I worked with was following the linear, expected path. High school, university, degree, FAANG job. Amazon basically didn&#x27;t interview SDE1s unless they were new grads. For a number of years that policy was explicit from our Director because &quot;we find that works out best&quot;.<p>Now I&#x27;m at Shopify, where it feels like a complete 180. More than half my team took non-traditional paths- former dietician, government clerk, logger (like with a chainsaw). My team doesn&#x27;t even seem like an outlier.<p>One thing I&#x27;ve noticed: the women I work with now are far more likely to have taken a non-linear path to get here. They weren&#x27;t encouraged to go into that career when they were in high school, but later in life realized it was a good choice. One really great staff dev I&#x27;ve worked with told me how she was encouraged to be a tech recruiter (and did), then slowly realized she could be the one making the huge salaries she was offering people.<p>Amazon would never have given them a chance. And funny enough, Amazon struggles to hire women in dev roles.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xthrown1</author><text>Amazon is universally known as the shit tier of tech. They can&#x27;t hire top grads and people with experience because everyone has heard the horror stories. Sounds like they are optimizing their hiring strategy to mitigate this.</text></comment> |
36,351,978 | 36,351,905 | 1 | 2 | 36,351,065 | train | <story><title>Subreddit Migration Directory</title><url>https://redditmigration.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>unclekev</author><text>Just went to the &#x27;Programming&#x27; lemmy&#x2F;beehaw and the first thing I see is a post about how they have had to defederate from some instances because of a lack of proper mod tools, trolls and bad actors.<p>The irony.<p>&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;beehaw.org&#x2F;post&#x2F;567170" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;beehaw.org&#x2F;post&#x2F;567170</a><p>&gt; these two instances’ open registration policy, which is extremely problematic for us given how federation works and how trivial it makes trolling, harassment, and other undesirable behavior;<p>&gt; unfortunate reality we’ve also found is we just don’t have the tools or the time here to parse out all the good from all the bad. all we have is a nuke and some pretty rudimentary mod powers that don’t scale well. we have a list of improvements we’d like to see both on the moderation side of Lemmy and federation if at all possible–but we’re unanimous in the belief that we can’t wait on what we want to be developed here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>guywithahat</author><text>One of the biggest issues with the fediverse imo is moderation. People will literally create blacklists of sites, and if you don&#x27;t follow the blacklist you&#x27;ll get added to it. You end up in these situations where there are completely separate versions of the fediverse and the largest instances will often not be able to talk to each other.<p>At least before Elon bought Twitter I know the most active (depending on how you count metrics) site was poa.st, and this was on a mastodon.social blacklist, which was one of the other major sites, and every site had their own list. I know people would sometimes have 4 or 5 accounts so that they could talk to everyone they wanted or as insurance in case the current admin got bored and closed the site.<p>I of course support the idea of a federated reddit, but there are a lot of problems that exist in the community</text></comment> | <story><title>Subreddit Migration Directory</title><url>https://redditmigration.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>unclekev</author><text>Just went to the &#x27;Programming&#x27; lemmy&#x2F;beehaw and the first thing I see is a post about how they have had to defederate from some instances because of a lack of proper mod tools, trolls and bad actors.<p>The irony.<p>&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;beehaw.org&#x2F;post&#x2F;567170" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;beehaw.org&#x2F;post&#x2F;567170</a><p>&gt; these two instances’ open registration policy, which is extremely problematic for us given how federation works and how trivial it makes trolling, harassment, and other undesirable behavior;<p>&gt; unfortunate reality we’ve also found is we just don’t have the tools or the time here to parse out all the good from all the bad. all we have is a nuke and some pretty rudimentary mod powers that don’t scale well. we have a list of improvements we’d like to see both on the moderation side of Lemmy and federation if at all possible–but we’re unanimous in the belief that we can’t wait on what we want to be developed here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lolinder</author><text>Beehaw was around a long time before Lemmy took the spotlight, and they explicitly have tried to have a high-moderation community with a distinct character. It wouldn&#x27;t surprise me if they continue to defederate any instance with open registration.<p>There are other programming communities on other servers that will likely become the actual replacement for r&#x2F;programming.<p>EDIT: The &quot;What is Beehaw?&quot; post in their sidebar[0] is a really enlightening introduction to the community, and also quite interesting for developing an understanding of the fediverse as a whole. This isn&#x27;t going to be a drop-in replacement for Reddit because the admins will all have very different visions of the kinds of communities they want to create. I didn&#x27;t end up deciding to join Beehaw, but reading their post made me very hopeful for the future of the fediverse as a whole.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;beehaw.org&#x2F;post&#x2F;107014" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;beehaw.org&#x2F;post&#x2F;107014</a></text></comment> |
27,436,001 | 27,435,241 | 1 | 2 | 27,434,159 | train | <story><title>PlayPhrase: Site for Searching Cinema Phrases</title><url>https://www.playphrase.me</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ThisNameIsTaken</author><text>For those interested in playing around with something similar: it looks like a sort of large scale implementation of Sam Lavigne&#x27;s Videogrep[1].<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;antiboredom.github.io&#x2F;videogrep&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;antiboredom.github.io&#x2F;videogrep&#x2F;</a></text></comment> | <story><title>PlayPhrase: Site for Searching Cinema Phrases</title><url>https://www.playphrase.me</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ortusdux</author><text>One of the Daily Show&#x27;s greatest strengths was their ability to quickly compile relevant clips. I always wondered if they had a service like this. I assumed that they were scraping CC text themselves. Maybe they just had a phenomenal research dept.</text></comment> |
27,932,016 | 27,932,286 | 1 | 2 | 27,931,557 | train | <story><title>Judges reject Viasat’s plea to stop SpaceX Starlink satellite launches</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/spacex-wins-court-ruling-that-lets-it-continue-launching-starlink-satellites/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>underseacables</author><text>“Viasat is worried that its slower Internet service delivered from geostationary satellites will lose customers once Starlink is out of beta and more widely available.”<p>I am not a lawyer, but if I’m reading this correctly, the only claim here is that the FCC and SpaceX did not follow proper procedure, but the catalyst is fear of competition.<p>My opinion is that if a company needs government help to thwart competition, then competition is absolutely needed.<p>Edit: Formatting is having some issues it seems.</text></comment> | <story><title>Judges reject Viasat’s plea to stop SpaceX Starlink satellite launches</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/spacex-wins-court-ruling-that-lets-it-continue-launching-starlink-satellites/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kiba</author><text>SpaceX announced their plans years ago, all the way back to 2015.[1]<p>Satellite companies have <i>six years</i> to plan and respond.<p>ViaSat have no excuses if they&#x27;re worried about their competitor. It&#x27;s amazing about the depth of complacency that the space industry in general sunk to.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Starlink" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Starlink</a></text></comment> |
20,812,774 | 20,812,018 | 1 | 2 | 20,809,247 | train | <story><title>Helsinki Central Library chosen as the best new public library</title><url>https://www.oodihelsinki.fi/en/helsinki-central-library-oodi-chosen-as-the-best-new-public-library-in-the-world/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>enra</author><text>I&#x27;m a Finn but been living in SF for the last few years. Went to Oodi couple of weeks ago was impressed by the facilities and the building. In addition to books, there were workstations, 3D printers, large format printers, sewing machines, video games, board games, kids play area, restaurant, and a cafe. Our startup also worked there for one day. There is free Wifi, a lot of chairs and places to sit and even meeting rooms you can book. Noise levels are also quite low that you can read or work, much better than in a regular cafe even in the large open spaces. They have seemed to have worked a lot on the acoustics.<p>There are also books you can read, borrow and return. The book selection seemed more recent&#x2F;popular, not a lot of old books (still it has 100k books). To those that comment on the how little books there are: There are several other libraries in Helsinki that house old and vast amounts of books. Helsinki has nearly 40 public libraries and numerous scholarly libraries: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myhelsinki.fi&#x2F;en&#x2F;see-and-do&#x2F;sights&#x2F;helsinki%E2%80%99s-most-beautiful-libraries" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myhelsinki.fi&#x2F;en&#x2F;see-and-do&#x2F;sights&#x2F;helsinki%E2%8...</a><p>Overall it feels like a great place for people to go outside of their home or office to read, meet with people, take their kids to, and for free.<p>I uploaded a few mobile photos and videos if anyone is interested: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;sh&#x2F;z7ez8rhisktpaac&#x2F;AAD7xd6xsCESP6LhJkC1Wmi9a?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;sh&#x2F;z7ez8rhisktpaac&#x2F;AAD7xd6xsCESP6LhJ...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Helsinki Central Library chosen as the best new public library</title><url>https://www.oodihelsinki.fi/en/helsinki-central-library-oodi-chosen-as-the-best-new-public-library-in-the-world/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zaroth</author><text>This is absolutely the new definition of “library”, and honestly though I came here to criticize an egotistical architectural exercise, after reading more about Oodi I am suitably impressed.<p>$100 million is an extremely good deal for what they got, and they say that <i>includes</i> the equipment? I don’t quite believe they built it for that little.<p>My town (population ~15,000) wanted to build a new library last year — it was voted down as unnecessary — at a cost of almost <i>~$30 million</i> for a two story 30,000 sq. ft building.<p>Oodi’s 185,000 square feet is an exquisite leisure center, and with up to 20,000 visitors a day sounds like a fantastic investment for Helsinki.</text></comment> |
35,997,205 | 35,994,778 | 1 | 3 | 35,982,447 | train | <story><title>TikTok is now banned in Montana</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/17/23686294/montana-tiktok-ban-signed-governor-gianforte-court</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>screye</author><text>&gt; side-loading of apps on Android<p>90%+ users are never going to use apks. If this ban kills the network effect (the R0 of the viral infection), then the last 10% aren&#x27;t going to last long either.</text></item><item><author>barathr</author><text>I wrote up a quick analysis last night here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ioc.exchange&#x2F;@invisv&#x2F;110387246627189198" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ioc.exchange&#x2F;@invisv&#x2F;110387246627189198</a><p>Here are the takeaways:<p>* It&#x27;d be easy for Apple and Google to prevent downloads of TikTok for most users, which would also include app updates, as they have a significant amount of knowledge of users&#x27; locations and could prevent most users in Montana -- even those using a VPN -- from downloading the app or updating it.<p>* It&#x27;d be very difficult for Montana to enforce the other piece of the TikTok ban -- if &quot;entity&quot; in the bill means any company, they&#x27;re stuck: the state has little ability to prevent side-loading of apps on Android and users who want TikTok can access app repositories hosted out of state. There&#x27;s virtually no way for ISPs inside Montana to surveil all user usage to find out if they&#x27;re trying to download TikTok from a third-party repository, and even if they could there would be legal issues with the state mandating this.<p>Fundamentally, this makes user privacy and security much worse.<p>* Apple, Google, and ByteDance could be aggressive and use the data they have -- all three have GPS data for most or all relevant users here (i.e. TikTok users on an iPhone or Android) -- and block requests to download or use TikTok from within Montana. And they probably will, unless they get a court to block the bill.<p>The one thing the bill banning TikTok <i>doesn&#x27;t</i> do is the one thing that is desperately needed: actually protect user privacy, by banning the collection, aggregation, sale, and use of fine-grained user data -- by ByteDance, Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, or any other.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Buttons840</author><text>There will be quite a stir in the school after TikTok disappears, and if a few kids still have access, they will get attention and other kids will want to know how. Perhaps a silver lining is that we&#x27;re helping the upcoming generation understand the importance of controlling their own devices.</text></comment> | <story><title>TikTok is now banned in Montana</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/17/23686294/montana-tiktok-ban-signed-governor-gianforte-court</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>screye</author><text>&gt; side-loading of apps on Android<p>90%+ users are never going to use apks. If this ban kills the network effect (the R0 of the viral infection), then the last 10% aren&#x27;t going to last long either.</text></item><item><author>barathr</author><text>I wrote up a quick analysis last night here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ioc.exchange&#x2F;@invisv&#x2F;110387246627189198" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ioc.exchange&#x2F;@invisv&#x2F;110387246627189198</a><p>Here are the takeaways:<p>* It&#x27;d be easy for Apple and Google to prevent downloads of TikTok for most users, which would also include app updates, as they have a significant amount of knowledge of users&#x27; locations and could prevent most users in Montana -- even those using a VPN -- from downloading the app or updating it.<p>* It&#x27;d be very difficult for Montana to enforce the other piece of the TikTok ban -- if &quot;entity&quot; in the bill means any company, they&#x27;re stuck: the state has little ability to prevent side-loading of apps on Android and users who want TikTok can access app repositories hosted out of state. There&#x27;s virtually no way for ISPs inside Montana to surveil all user usage to find out if they&#x27;re trying to download TikTok from a third-party repository, and even if they could there would be legal issues with the state mandating this.<p>Fundamentally, this makes user privacy and security much worse.<p>* Apple, Google, and ByteDance could be aggressive and use the data they have -- all three have GPS data for most or all relevant users here (i.e. TikTok users on an iPhone or Android) -- and block requests to download or use TikTok from within Montana. And they probably will, unless they get a court to block the bill.<p>The one thing the bill banning TikTok <i>doesn&#x27;t</i> do is the one thing that is desperately needed: actually protect user privacy, by banning the collection, aggregation, sale, and use of fine-grained user data -- by ByteDance, Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, or any other.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>knaik94</author><text>This is only a single state ban, the majority of content creators are unaffected. There is zero chance of this ban having any impact on the network effect. If anything I predict the opposite, people will become frustrated with the walled-garden of iOS, I can see people choosing Android over it for the sake of being able to sideload TikTok. I remember when there was a sudden aftermarket of iOS and Android devices when flappy bird was delisted by the developer. TikTok is obscenely bigger.</text></comment> |
1,299,752 | 1,299,654 | 1 | 3 | 1,299,029 | train | <story><title>Learn Python The Hard Way: a new book by Zed Shaw</title><url>http://learnpythonthehardway.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>starkfist</author><text><i>You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession</i><p>In what fields is this true? What is the metric of "better off?" More money? More "respect?"</text></item><item><author>wanderingmarker</author><text>A nice quote from the last chapter:<p><i>Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but if you want to make about the same money and be happier you could actually just go run a fast food joint. You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession.</i><p>Well said, Zed. Very well said indeed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gte910h</author><text>Marketing: You can analyze and check your data 100-1000x faster than your co-workers. Hell, you can make entire vendors obsolete. Additionally: Making graphs without opening Excel shaves days of work off your year.<p>Biology: You can catalog and simplify your workflow by breaking things up and correctly keeping them all organized while doing things the fast way.<p>Author: You create smart searches, web spiders, pattern recognition (to capture your repetitive sections) and you learn formatting. Additionally, the text editor skills are <i>very</i> nice for some types of writing.<p>Automotive/Racing: Calculating gear ratios? Analyzing race data? Optimizing pit stops? Not everyone is a formula one racer.<p>Small Businesses: Automated Scheduling of Clerks/floorpeople, inventory managment, loss detection.<p>Fashion: Modeling (no pun intended) cloth usage by shape cuts, number of seams required, etc.</text></comment> | <story><title>Learn Python The Hard Way: a new book by Zed Shaw</title><url>http://learnpythonthehardway.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>starkfist</author><text><i>You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession</i><p>In what fields is this true? What is the metric of "better off?" More money? More "respect?"</text></item><item><author>wanderingmarker</author><text>A nice quote from the last chapter:<p><i>Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but if you want to make about the same money and be happier you could actually just go run a fast food joint. You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession.</i><p>Well said, Zed. Very well said indeed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hyperbovine</author><text>Business consulting. They look at you like a wizard.</text></comment> |
5,846,107 | 5,846,134 | 1 | 2 | 5,845,272 | train | <story><title>US surveillance revelations deepen European fears</title><url>http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/europe-surveillance-prism-idUSL5N0EJ31S20130607</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>philwelch</author><text>It&#x27;s interesting. There are few European countries where I can unconditionally refuse to speak to police or refuse them to search my home or person without a warrant. We don&#x27;t have CCTV cameras like they do in the UK. And when it comes to being able to overthrow your government yourselves, much of Europe has the same sham democracy we do. (Berlusconi? Seriously? Twice?) We have guns, but the parts of Western Europe who really wanted to overthrow their governments within recent history were able to get all the guns and explosives they wanted too. So it&#x27;s hard to really say one is any better than the other.</text></item><item><author>flexie</author><text>Whereas we in the EU have our own dubious surveillance programmes, at least they are made by governments we can overthrow ourselves.<p>Also, European governments mostly grant us basic human rights, have no secret overseas prisons, no death penalty for &quot;treason&quot;, no decade long imprisonments for whistle blowing or hacking, no secret military tribunals, no recent record of torture, almost no drones, small military, tiny intelligence budgets etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davidw</author><text>&gt; So it&#x27;s hard to really say one is any better than the other.<p>Smart people look at both and try and learn, rather than getting on a high horse about &quot;better&quot;, when &quot;better&quot; is awfully difficult to define anyway.<p>&gt; Berlusconi? Seriously? Twice?<p>Sadly, no: three times, the first being in 1994.</text></comment> | <story><title>US surveillance revelations deepen European fears</title><url>http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/europe-surveillance-prism-idUSL5N0EJ31S20130607</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>philwelch</author><text>It&#x27;s interesting. There are few European countries where I can unconditionally refuse to speak to police or refuse them to search my home or person without a warrant. We don&#x27;t have CCTV cameras like they do in the UK. And when it comes to being able to overthrow your government yourselves, much of Europe has the same sham democracy we do. (Berlusconi? Seriously? Twice?) We have guns, but the parts of Western Europe who really wanted to overthrow their governments within recent history were able to get all the guns and explosives they wanted too. So it&#x27;s hard to really say one is any better than the other.</text></item><item><author>flexie</author><text>Whereas we in the EU have our own dubious surveillance programmes, at least they are made by governments we can overthrow ourselves.<p>Also, European governments mostly grant us basic human rights, have no secret overseas prisons, no death penalty for &quot;treason&quot;, no decade long imprisonments for whistle blowing or hacking, no secret military tribunals, no recent record of torture, almost no drones, small military, tiny intelligence budgets etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>flexie</author><text>The European Court of Human Rights has established that the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination applies.<p>All over Europe elections are held at least every 4th or 5th year and governments are regularly overthrown, in Italy more often than anywhere else, I think.</text></comment> |
9,441,866 | 9,441,768 | 1 | 2 | 9,440,965 | train | <story><title>Looking Up Symptoms Online? These Companies Are Tracking You</title><url>http://motherboard.vice.com/read/looking-up-symptoms-online-these-companies-are-collecting-your-data</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andy_ppp</author><text>If I download Tor I&#x27;ll end up on one of the governments&#x27; lists. Is there a way to download it anonymously :-)</text></item><item><author>aw3c2</author><text>Just a reminder that <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.torproject.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.torproject.org</a> offers a free and open-source unzip-and-run Firefox to use a anonymizing network run mostly by volunteers.<p>Using Tor to anonymously and privately educate yourself about embarrassing or potentially ostracized problems with yourself is a great use of it. Just remember that you should not ever enter any identifying information while using it.<p>Tor is more than fast enough for every day browsing, heck I use it to watch Youtube without major problems. I also use it to read the news, find recipes or lyrics (or similarly shady web circles) etc.<p>If the other side does not <i>need</i> to know who you are and does not <i>have to</i> synchronize that information into a vast tracking&#x2F;advertising network, why should you willingly submit it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dredmorbius</author><text>You&#x27;re already on the lists.<p>If you <i>don&#x27;t</i> use Tor, you&#x27;re on the list <i>and</i> they&#x27;ve got ready access to your browsing data and metadata.<p>If you do use Tor, you&#x27;re only on the list, and their workfactor for accessing your data and metadata is far higher.<p>Plus you&#x27;re providing more cover for those who have strongly urgent needs for similar levels of protection.</text></comment> | <story><title>Looking Up Symptoms Online? These Companies Are Tracking You</title><url>http://motherboard.vice.com/read/looking-up-symptoms-online-these-companies-are-collecting-your-data</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andy_ppp</author><text>If I download Tor I&#x27;ll end up on one of the governments&#x27; lists. Is there a way to download it anonymously :-)</text></item><item><author>aw3c2</author><text>Just a reminder that <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.torproject.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.torproject.org</a> offers a free and open-source unzip-and-run Firefox to use a anonymizing network run mostly by volunteers.<p>Using Tor to anonymously and privately educate yourself about embarrassing or potentially ostracized problems with yourself is a great use of it. Just remember that you should not ever enter any identifying information while using it.<p>Tor is more than fast enough for every day browsing, heck I use it to watch Youtube without major problems. I also use it to read the news, find recipes or lyrics (or similarly shady web circles) etc.<p>If the other side does not <i>need</i> to know who you are and does not <i>have to</i> synchronize that information into a vast tracking&#x2F;advertising network, why should you willingly submit it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nnq</author><text>That&#x27;s one more reason to also convince your coworkers, acquaintances, friends etc. to download and try it, even if you know they probably won&#x27;t need it :) The longer the lists, the harder it will be for anyone to be singled out from those lists and the lesser information the fact that we&#x27;re on them will provide.<p>...the best place to hide is in a crowd, and the bigger the crowd the better :)</text></comment> |
6,691,384 | 6,691,157 | 1 | 2 | 6,690,043 | train | <story><title>TWTR</title><url>http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=7a97UujgDO-UwQP89AE</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>corford</author><text>Can someone with more clue please tell me that the following cynical thought I keep having is wrong and laughably misinformed (and then explain why)?<p>Twitter&#x27;s investors (who have plowed hundreds of millions in to a loss making company) decide to sell some of their stock at $26&#x2F;share (after consulting with banks to arrive at this price). This will make right the losses they&#x27;ve experienced so far and pass the problem down the line. The banks buy at $26 and then immidiately flip for north of $40. This lines their pockets and passes the problem down the line once more to joe public.<p>End result: investors in loss making company cover their investment and make some profit, banks make some juicy profit for facilitating the game, joe public swallows the hype and makes the whole dance possible by eventually footing the bill.<p>Edit 1: thanks everyone for the thoughtful replies. I guess I can only continue to feel cynical if I believe that the original investors did all of this knowing full well that twitter never has a chance of living up to its valuation i.e. they just wanted to cover their losses, make a nice profit on top and punt the problem down river. The alternative is that the investors do honestly believe in the future profitability of the company and have decided now is the time to take some well earned profit as a reward for taking the financial risks in getting the company to where it is today.<p>It&#x27;s going to take me some time to make my mind up as to which of those two scenarios I believe.<p>Edit 2: still difficult to understand why the banks have managed to come away with doubling their money though.<p>Edit 3 (final one!): See <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6691157" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6691157</a> for a nice reply that seems (to my clearly very untrained eye) to make the investors motives a little less cynical.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>I think you fundamentally misunderstand the process but that is ok, its not all that straight forward.<p>The transaction here is between risk takers (venture capitalists and investment banks) and risk pricers (people who buy stock). Nobody is getting &quot;ripped off&quot; as long as everyone is following the rules set down by the SEC.<p>Investors put money at risk. You know that because you&#x27;ve been here on HN a couple of years and no doubt read the &lt;foo&gt; is shutting down. stories. For each of those there is usually one or more investors who have put in thousands if not millions of dollars who get anywhere from $0 to some fraction of their investment back. Sometimes, their investment &#x27;bet&#x27; pays off and they get back multiple times their investment. The trick is you blend all of those $0 and multi-X returns and you get their &quot;effective&quot; return.<p>&quot;Joe Public&quot; and by that I assume you mean an unsophisticated retail investor (they aren&#x27;t investing anyone&#x27;s money but their own). Can achieve a similar result by buying &quot;shares&quot; in a fund managed by a banker. When folks ask me where I would put some extra savings I tell them I&#x27;ve been very pleased with the Vanguard funds. You make more than then .8% return that a Bank savings account pays, and your risk is relatively moderate (but if it is not zero like it is with the savings account). But this unsophisticated person should <i>never</i> be investing in an IPO stock.<p>The professional managers who invest in an IPO stock may have hundreds of millions of dollars under management. They spread some of those over a number of IPOs as a way to provide &#x27;long kicks&#x27; (which is that the stock is held for a long time and the success provides a large return many years later). Clearly they aren&#x27;t putting their kids college fund in there. And most of the <i>other</i> dollars in their fund are on much &#x27;safer&#x27; sorts of things, like Coca Cola or Alcoa.<p>So this is the &#x27;cycle of life&#x27; for many new tech companies, and if these investors in Twitter do well their Venture Funds will have a reasonable rate of return, and more rich people will give them some of their &#x27;excess&#x27; funds to invest in other tech companies, and you and I can go get some of that by pitching them a great team and a great idea.<p>So for the 11 times smart people came to them and they gave them millions and got nothing back, this 12th time they got a lot back. Nobody gets hurt as long as the people who don&#x27;t know what they are doing stay out of the game. That didn&#x27;t happen in the late 90&#x27;s lets hope it doesn&#x27;t happen again.</text></comment> | <story><title>TWTR</title><url>http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=7a97UujgDO-UwQP89AE</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>corford</author><text>Can someone with more clue please tell me that the following cynical thought I keep having is wrong and laughably misinformed (and then explain why)?<p>Twitter&#x27;s investors (who have plowed hundreds of millions in to a loss making company) decide to sell some of their stock at $26&#x2F;share (after consulting with banks to arrive at this price). This will make right the losses they&#x27;ve experienced so far and pass the problem down the line. The banks buy at $26 and then immidiately flip for north of $40. This lines their pockets and passes the problem down the line once more to joe public.<p>End result: investors in loss making company cover their investment and make some profit, banks make some juicy profit for facilitating the game, joe public swallows the hype and makes the whole dance possible by eventually footing the bill.<p>Edit 1: thanks everyone for the thoughtful replies. I guess I can only continue to feel cynical if I believe that the original investors did all of this knowing full well that twitter never has a chance of living up to its valuation i.e. they just wanted to cover their losses, make a nice profit on top and punt the problem down river. The alternative is that the investors do honestly believe in the future profitability of the company and have decided now is the time to take some well earned profit as a reward for taking the financial risks in getting the company to where it is today.<p>It&#x27;s going to take me some time to make my mind up as to which of those two scenarios I believe.<p>Edit 2: still difficult to understand why the banks have managed to come away with doubling their money though.<p>Edit 3 (final one!): See <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6691157" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6691157</a> for a nice reply that seems (to my clearly very untrained eye) to make the investors motives a little less cynical.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jonknee</author><text>Only a small percentage of TWTR shares were up for sale in the IPO--there are 544.70M total shares and just 70M were part of the IPO (a little less than 13%). Unless I missed something the shares sold in the IPO were issued, so for example if you were a VC with a million shares of TWTR you would still have a million shares of TWTR (now valued at $45M). The money from the sale will go to Twitter, not an investor. Twitter did &quot;leave money on the table&quot;, but their #1 goal was not to pull a Facebook and have the IPO be DOA.</text></comment> |
10,023,541 | 10,023,573 | 1 | 3 | 10,023,336 | train | <story><title>Court rules drug dog barely more accurate than a coin flip is good enough</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/08/04/federal-appeals-court-drug-dog-thats-barely-more-accurate-than-a-coin-flip-is-good-enough/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gburt</author><text>This isn&#x27;t being fair. I don&#x27;t really think the post title is fair either. That 93% isn&#x27;t comparable to the 50% you&#x27;re probably thinking for the coin flip, or even the 0&#x2F;100% mentioned in your edit.<p>---<p>93% alert rate means:<p>93% = false positive + true positive<p>7% = true negative + false negative<p>---<p>We&#x27;re given &quot;His success rate was much lower, at 59 percent.&quot; Assuming that means that 59% are true positives, we know the false positive rate is 34%.<p>Without data on how many passengers are carrying drugs, we can&#x27;t say anything about the rest of that result. A plausible world where the drug dog may be valuable is when he unquestionably rules out that 7% of the population that he doesn&#x27;t alert on, as in false negative = 0.<p>I believe the reason this number is so high (59%) is that the officer has already used his suspicion to determine filter out most people. This makes the value of the &quot;ruling out&quot; plausibility even more valuable: the drug dog reduces searches compared to trusting the cop.<p>Ideally, they&#x27;d provide the receiver operating characteristics curve [0] or the confusion matrix [1].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Receiver_operating_characteristic" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Receiver_operating_characteris...</a>
[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Confusion_matrix" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Confusion_matrix</a></text></item><item><author>fiatmoney</author><text>The dog isn&#x27;t even &quot;as accurate as a coin flip&quot;. Given a 93% alert rate, regardless of the subsequent true positive rate, information gain from an alert is approximately zero.<p>Edit: &quot;accurate as a coin flip&quot; is a bad construction, but I wouldn&#x27;t exactly expect better from a newspaper. The information gain from a device that activates randomly 50% of the time, 0% of the time, and 100% of the time are all the same, which is to say zero.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nickff</author><text>The real question is whether the dog is better than the officer at guessing who has drugs. If the dog is much better than the officer, it would suggest that a dog &#x27;alert&#x27; should be given more weight than the officer&#x27;s guess. If the dog is no better than the officer, the dog is useless.<p>I say this because it is possible (and indeed likely) that the officer is also better at guessing who has drugs than a coin toss.<p>Full Disclosure: I have never used or trafficked contraband, but I do not support random searches or the use of drug dogs in public without a warrant, regardless of their effectiveness.</text></comment> | <story><title>Court rules drug dog barely more accurate than a coin flip is good enough</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/08/04/federal-appeals-court-drug-dog-thats-barely-more-accurate-than-a-coin-flip-is-good-enough/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gburt</author><text>This isn&#x27;t being fair. I don&#x27;t really think the post title is fair either. That 93% isn&#x27;t comparable to the 50% you&#x27;re probably thinking for the coin flip, or even the 0&#x2F;100% mentioned in your edit.<p>---<p>93% alert rate means:<p>93% = false positive + true positive<p>7% = true negative + false negative<p>---<p>We&#x27;re given &quot;His success rate was much lower, at 59 percent.&quot; Assuming that means that 59% are true positives, we know the false positive rate is 34%.<p>Without data on how many passengers are carrying drugs, we can&#x27;t say anything about the rest of that result. A plausible world where the drug dog may be valuable is when he unquestionably rules out that 7% of the population that he doesn&#x27;t alert on, as in false negative = 0.<p>I believe the reason this number is so high (59%) is that the officer has already used his suspicion to determine filter out most people. This makes the value of the &quot;ruling out&quot; plausibility even more valuable: the drug dog reduces searches compared to trusting the cop.<p>Ideally, they&#x27;d provide the receiver operating characteristics curve [0] or the confusion matrix [1].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Receiver_operating_characteristic" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Receiver_operating_characteris...</a>
[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Confusion_matrix" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Confusion_matrix</a></text></item><item><author>fiatmoney</author><text>The dog isn&#x27;t even &quot;as accurate as a coin flip&quot;. Given a 93% alert rate, regardless of the subsequent true positive rate, information gain from an alert is approximately zero.<p>Edit: &quot;accurate as a coin flip&quot; is a bad construction, but I wouldn&#x27;t exactly expect better from a newspaper. The information gain from a device that activates randomly 50% of the time, 0% of the time, and 100% of the time are all the same, which is to say zero.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brobdingnagian</author><text>The dog has low precision and high recall. The dogs are capable of high precision and high recall, but aren&#x27;t being trained to do that because other incentives are at play.<p>I found it impressive that the dog that alerts 93% of the time was correct 40% of the time. That means the police are doing what seems like a good job of identifying targets that actually have drugs. With those kind of odds, you&#x27;d probably want to take a closer look at everyone just to make sure you aren&#x27;t letting people with drugs get away (false negatives).</text></comment> |
8,711,530 | 8,710,616 | 1 | 2 | 8,710,019 | train | <story><title>HTML5 Video and the End of Plugins</title><url>http://blog.zencoder.com/2014/07/28/html5-video-and-the-end-of-plugins-recording-uploading-and-transcoding-video-straight-from-the-browser/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>shmerl</author><text><i>&gt; Some of the things I talked about, like Encrypted Media Extensions, were, for the most part, still a pipe dream with few to no working implementations.</i><p>Why would anyone dream about this DRM junk? Something to dream about is for example Daala codec which is supposed to arrive in 2015.<p>Also, is there any non patented and freely available technology for adaptive video streaming? Unless DASH is not patent encumbered.</text></comment> | <story><title>HTML5 Video and the End of Plugins</title><url>http://blog.zencoder.com/2014/07/28/html5-video-and-the-end-of-plugins-recording-uploading-and-transcoding-video-straight-from-the-browser/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>harshreality</author><text>HLS (http live streaming, .m3u8 rotating playlists of chunks of video) isn&#x27;t supported by desktop browsers except for Safari. That seems to be preventing live streaming sites from migrating away from flash. Notably, NASA&#x27;s videos of the Orion mission were on flash on desktop, but their mobile site (mobile browsers—iOS, and Android since Honeycomb—support HLS) wasn&#x27;t using flash.</text></comment> |
23,692,393 | 23,691,936 | 1 | 2 | 23,690,967 | train | <story><title>Google Acquires North</title><url>https://blog.google/products/hardware/focus-helpful-devices-google-acquires-north/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peeters</author><text>I&#x27;m not sure &quot;promising startup&quot; describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well. Everything I&#x27;ve heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government. Tales from past employees are not flattering. Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders and the employees, if Google acquires the latter.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;kitchener&#x2F;comments&#x2F;hg11tl&#x2F;a_vision_fades_alphabet_buying_canadian_smart&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;kitchener&#x2F;comments&#x2F;hg11tl&#x2F;a_vision_...</a></text></item><item><author>DiabloD3</author><text>Sigh, all I can think is yet another promising startup vanishes into the depths of Google, never to be seen again.<p>Google, please stop buying companies, please learn to support your products and build a loyal customer base. You are not a startup anymore, you need to make the transformation that companies like Microsoft did, and quit moving fast and breaking things.<p>People don&#x27;t want an agile foundation, they want a hundred year foundation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>macNchz</author><text>I lived across the street from their Brooklyn store from when it opened in 2018 to when it closed last winter (in anticipation of &quot;relaunching&quot; for the new glasses they were planning this year).<p>They rented an expensive glassy corner storefront ($50k&#x2F;month I heard at the time) and built it out to a very high standard, but there was <i>never</i> anyone inside shopping. The store employees just stood around looking at their phones all day looking super bored.<p>I also found it bizarre that they didn&#x27;t seem to be making any effort to use the space as a marketing tool beyond it&#x27;s mere presence...I anticipated when they opened that there would be VIP&#x2F;media&#x2F;influencer events on a regular basis, but they seemingly just opened in the mornings and closed at night. Having been involved in opening some retail stores, &quot;if you build it they will come&quot; was certainly never part of our strategy.<p>There never seemed to be any attempt to attract customers or make the store more inviting at all...they didn&#x27;t even have a listing on Google Maps for months after they opened. Seeing this stagnant shop every single day I spent a lot of time thinking about what must be going on inside this outwardly &quot;promising startup&quot; to make such an investment only to let it languish. Seems like my suspicions weren&#x27;t misplaced!</text></comment> | <story><title>Google Acquires North</title><url>https://blog.google/products/hardware/focus-helpful-devices-google-acquires-north/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peeters</author><text>I&#x27;m not sure &quot;promising startup&quot; describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well. Everything I&#x27;ve heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government. Tales from past employees are not flattering. Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders and the employees, if Google acquires the latter.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;kitchener&#x2F;comments&#x2F;hg11tl&#x2F;a_vision_fades_alphabet_buying_canadian_smart&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;kitchener&#x2F;comments&#x2F;hg11tl&#x2F;a_vision_...</a></text></item><item><author>DiabloD3</author><text>Sigh, all I can think is yet another promising startup vanishes into the depths of Google, never to be seen again.<p>Google, please stop buying companies, please learn to support your products and build a loyal customer base. You are not a startup anymore, you need to make the transformation that companies like Microsoft did, and quit moving fast and breaking things.<p>People don&#x27;t want an agile foundation, they want a hundred year foundation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ornornor</author><text>&gt; mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government<p>This describes a surprisingly high number of companies I’ve worked at in Canada. These SRED credits keep afloat so many companies that should have otherwise perished and that won’t ever go anywhere.<p>You can even hire SRED consultants that will help you milk those credits as much as possible (for a fee of course). You can then apply for more credits to pay off these SRED consultants fees, as I understand it... While producing little to no commercial value, and coast on these for years.</text></comment> |
5,908,092 | 5,907,848 | 1 | 3 | 5,907,649 | train | <story><title>Zinc – Order products with a few lines of code</title><url>https://zinc.io</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ceejayoz</author><text>As Amazon doesn&#x27;t offer an API for this, how&#x27;s it done? Scraping? Hordes of low-wage folks filing orders manually? What&#x27;s stopping Amazon from blocking this?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>FriedPickles</author><text>We use mostly automated processes, with manual intervention only for rare edge cases. One thing that&#x27;s surprised us is just how many (i.e., non-rare) edge cases there are when you take into account shipping exceptions, order constraints, etc. We believe we are on solid footing both legally and technically, and this has been supported by three years of reliable operation.<p>Unfortunately we&#x27;re unable to use most affiliate programs. At the same time, we&#x27;re mostly interested in building a framework that easily scales across to all merchants.</text></comment> | <story><title>Zinc – Order products with a few lines of code</title><url>https://zinc.io</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ceejayoz</author><text>As Amazon doesn&#x27;t offer an API for this, how&#x27;s it done? Scraping? Hordes of low-wage folks filing orders manually? What&#x27;s stopping Amazon from blocking this?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>marban</author><text>Filing via MechTurk would be really amusing.</text></comment> |
7,984,296 | 7,983,599 | 1 | 2 | 7,983,124 | train | <story><title>NSA targets the privacy-conscious</title><url>http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/NSA-targets-the-privacy-conscious,nsa230.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>caster_cp</author><text>The only way out of this, as I see it, is making privacy the default. But this require some cooperation and motivation from the big guys at silicon valley.<p>Imagine if Chrome, Firefox, Safari, all of them had, just like the incognito mode, the private mode. Of course, as anonymity also depends on the behavior of the user online, other actions are needed to really ensure security and privacy. But making it the default will educate more people about the importance of privacy and, more importantly, make the point that privacy isn&#x27;t only for criminals, terrorists and wrong-doers, but that &quot;normal&quot;, law abiding citizens also should have the right to be private. And that is paramount for a democracy to work.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yry4345</author><text>I think the cooperation necessary would be for the &quot;big guys&quot; to not have a vested interest in selling out privacy, which has been the prevailing business model for a long time. And, since the big guys only listen to their bottom line, that means not using them until they support privacy. It may mean not using the Internet substantially at all. (It&#x27;s more than a little ironic to be saying this on the preeminent &quot;business hacker&quot; (or &quot;startup&quot;) community, which has a visible subset who sympathize with some of the NSA&#x27;s programs, or at least have been able to rationalize them...)<p>As you say, the tools have always been there, but no one uses them. That might be because it&#x27;s a chicken-or-egg problem. At the same time, it might be because the people in the positions to develop and promote the tools, even if only for their own use, are being prevented by a one-track culture that encourages them to sell out their client&#x27;s privacy in addition to discouraging them from working on projects like Tor. (Again, the HN forum is an example of that conflict - being a largely business-oriented forum; surveillance technology sells... Even DuckDuckGo, a favorite startup in this community, has filters to protect us.) Rather than peer-to-peer solutions like Gnutella, Gnunet, Tor, and even open wireless, people continue to make websites with JavaScript encryption, despite the proven MITM threat.<p>I don&#x27;t think JavaScript and CSS will get us out of this, but if this latest revelation doesn&#x27;t wake people up in the tech community specifically, nothing will, since BoingBoing readership is a large number of them - which to me means that the tech and programmer categories are themselves a primary focus of the surveillance that some highly-respected tech pundits (and HN forum members) have defended and rationalized as only being used for terrorists and perverts. That definition now includes anyone with enough knowledge to build or use strong privacy tools. The definition now includes everyone on this forum.</text></comment> | <story><title>NSA targets the privacy-conscious</title><url>http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/NSA-targets-the-privacy-conscious,nsa230.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>caster_cp</author><text>The only way out of this, as I see it, is making privacy the default. But this require some cooperation and motivation from the big guys at silicon valley.<p>Imagine if Chrome, Firefox, Safari, all of them had, just like the incognito mode, the private mode. Of course, as anonymity also depends on the behavior of the user online, other actions are needed to really ensure security and privacy. But making it the default will educate more people about the importance of privacy and, more importantly, make the point that privacy isn&#x27;t only for criminals, terrorists and wrong-doers, but that &quot;normal&quot;, law abiding citizens also should have the right to be private. And that is paramount for a democracy to work.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Zigurd</author><text>&gt; <i>But this require some cooperation and motivation from the big guys at silicon valley</i><p>Unfortunately, this is key to making strong encryption commonplace. A social graph and real-time communication could be used to make key exchange easy and secure. Open client software is needed to make security verifiable. And the storage and email infrastructure and clients need to make using encryption the default.<p>All the pieces of a &quot;trust nobody&quot; environment are there, and so are the pieces for making it an easy to use default.<p>Hopefully, doing this will be required for American service and technology companies to regain trust.</text></comment> |
18,316,799 | 18,315,007 | 1 | 2 | 18,313,753 | train | <story><title>Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/health/private-equity-dermatology.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thaumasiotes</author><text>I mean, this is close to being right, but it&#x27;s wrong in every one of the details.<p>Crassus didn&#x27;t own the fire department. Crassus owned a bunch of slaves who he had trained to put out fires.<p>Crassus didn&#x27;t charge for extinguishing fires. If your house was on fire, Crassus took his team and negotiated <i>to buy your house</i>. If you sold it to him, he&#x27;d put out the fire. There was no flow of money from you to Crassus under any circumstances. (But he could get a low price, because the value of your house was constantly dropping while it burned.)<p>In imperial times, private firefighting groups were illegal since they were viewed as a potential source of rebellion. (Using your own slaves to put out fires on your own property was of course fully legal.) It&#x27;s in my mind that Crassus benefited from similar laws, but he was active during the Republic. Maybe someone else knows more about the precise timings.</text></item><item><author>LaundroMat</author><text>In ancient Rome, Crassus owned the fire department. When there was a home on fire, Crassus would negotiate the price for extinguishing the fire with the owners or tenants.<p>Plus ça change...</text></item><item><author>duxup</author><text>There was an NPR (I think it was NPR) story about how medical helicopter rides have skyrocketed in cost.<p>The issue was a lot of private equity folks realized that you could just get in the market and if you didn&#x27;t get enough rides... you just cranked up the price and went after individuals who where hardly in a position to shop around when they needed the ride.<p>Now there is an excess of medical helicopters, solution? Crank up the price...</text></item><item><author>aaavl2821</author><text>This isn&#x27;t discussed much, but the healthcare provider industry has traditionally been a major sector of interest for private equity. Hospital companies like HCA, dental clinics, ambulatory surgery centers, etc.<p>Healthcare providers are attractive to private equity 1) because of stable, non-cyclical cash flow, 2) benefits to scale (ie better negotiating leverage with payers), 3) ability to easily increase revenue at small clinics by &quot;optimizing&quot; billing (ie use more lucrative codes for the same procedure) and practice management (optimizing procedure mix and scheduling) and 4) regulatory protection -- local monopolies enjoy durable economic advantages and often are politically entrenched as healthcare providers are major employers<p>These factors aren&#x27;t limited to private equity backed healthcare, though. Even non-profits take advantage of these things (sutter health in the bay area is an example). If you&#x27;re looking for why US healthcare is so expensive, this isn&#x27;t a bad place to start</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ErikVandeWater</author><text>&gt; Crassus didn&#x27;t own the fire department. Crassus owned a bunch of slaves who he had trained to put out fires.<p>That sounds like he literally owned the fire department? It was just made up of slaves.<p>Otherwise I really found what you said very interesting!</text></comment> | <story><title>Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/health/private-equity-dermatology.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thaumasiotes</author><text>I mean, this is close to being right, but it&#x27;s wrong in every one of the details.<p>Crassus didn&#x27;t own the fire department. Crassus owned a bunch of slaves who he had trained to put out fires.<p>Crassus didn&#x27;t charge for extinguishing fires. If your house was on fire, Crassus took his team and negotiated <i>to buy your house</i>. If you sold it to him, he&#x27;d put out the fire. There was no flow of money from you to Crassus under any circumstances. (But he could get a low price, because the value of your house was constantly dropping while it burned.)<p>In imperial times, private firefighting groups were illegal since they were viewed as a potential source of rebellion. (Using your own slaves to put out fires on your own property was of course fully legal.) It&#x27;s in my mind that Crassus benefited from similar laws, but he was active during the Republic. Maybe someone else knows more about the precise timings.</text></item><item><author>LaundroMat</author><text>In ancient Rome, Crassus owned the fire department. When there was a home on fire, Crassus would negotiate the price for extinguishing the fire with the owners or tenants.<p>Plus ça change...</text></item><item><author>duxup</author><text>There was an NPR (I think it was NPR) story about how medical helicopter rides have skyrocketed in cost.<p>The issue was a lot of private equity folks realized that you could just get in the market and if you didn&#x27;t get enough rides... you just cranked up the price and went after individuals who where hardly in a position to shop around when they needed the ride.<p>Now there is an excess of medical helicopters, solution? Crank up the price...</text></item><item><author>aaavl2821</author><text>This isn&#x27;t discussed much, but the healthcare provider industry has traditionally been a major sector of interest for private equity. Hospital companies like HCA, dental clinics, ambulatory surgery centers, etc.<p>Healthcare providers are attractive to private equity 1) because of stable, non-cyclical cash flow, 2) benefits to scale (ie better negotiating leverage with payers), 3) ability to easily increase revenue at small clinics by &quot;optimizing&quot; billing (ie use more lucrative codes for the same procedure) and practice management (optimizing procedure mix and scheduling) and 4) regulatory protection -- local monopolies enjoy durable economic advantages and often are politically entrenched as healthcare providers are major employers<p>These factors aren&#x27;t limited to private equity backed healthcare, though. Even non-profits take advantage of these things (sutter health in the bay area is an example). If you&#x27;re looking for why US healthcare is so expensive, this isn&#x27;t a bad place to start</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stephengillie</author><text>Ah, the ol&#x27; fire sale.<p>At other times in history, it was the seller whose house (or business) was literally on fire, trying to sell to an unwitting buyer.</text></comment> |
36,036,418 | 36,036,347 | 1 | 2 | 36,029,115 | train | <story><title>Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-05-22/News_and_notes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mattlondon</author><text>It has always been like this - at least for the past 10-15 years or so it has been essentially impossible to edit wikipedia.<p>Basically <i>any</i> change you make it insta-reverted by some bot or over-zealous power-crazed editor.<p>I think some editors decide that they &quot;own&quot; certain pages or group of pages and install themselves as some sort of authority&#x2F;gate keeper&#x2F;moderator. If your edit does not please them, it&#x27;s gone. Instantly. You only get to edit the pages if you are in the editor&#x27;s cabal of friends.<p>If you don&#x27;t have an account, or you do have an account but perhaps have only made a handful of edits, you are instantly distrusted and assumed to be malicious.<p>Of course, you can never prove that you are <i>not</i> malicious, because there is the default stance of immediate-distrust for anyone, so your edits are constantly undone and you never get to build up enough credibility to appease the editors who control who gets to edit &quot;their&quot; articles.<p>I gave up years ago after a small edit-war with someone who kept reverting changes about a UK politician who was in national news at the time. No amount of references or citations from e.g. the BBC or the Guardian was good enough as I guess the verifiable truth didn&#x27;t fit with their view of what this page should selectively say about that person, and so they banned my IP as a &quot;vandal&quot;. I gave up (but got a new IP after redialing so it was pointless)</text></item><item><author>ilikehurdles</author><text>In that time it’s become increasingly challenging to contribute anything to The People’s Encyclopedia.<p>I wanted to update a local wiki page with newer data from its original sources, but apparently I have become blacklisted because I use&#x2F;used Apple’s private relay and safari’s privacy measures by default in all my browsing. Disabling them didn’t fix it. I would love to sign up as a fallback measure to be able to contribute, and verify my account by whatever means necessary, but apparently in the 2020s that’s just not something Wikipedia supports (as I’m also black listed from signing up despite never contributing to Wikipedia.)<p>Increasingly I see out of date and opinionated articles and I wonder how many of us have meaningful contributions ready but are forced to sit on the sidelines because there’s no “way in” with this product.</text></item><item><author>costco</author><text>2016 Wikimedia Foundation Budget: $69,136,758<p>2022 Wikimedia Foundation Budget: $145,970,915<p>I love Wikipedia but I don&#x27;t see how this cost explosion can evenly be remotely justified. What value have they added in that time? A new editor and CSS on articles?</text></item><item><author>andersrs</author><text>Just take a look at this graph. The salaries have been bloating whilst hosting expenses are flat and plummeting as a proportion of all expenses.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:Wikimedia_Foundation&#x27;s_expenses_evolution_by_rubrics_in_US_Dollars.svg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&#x2F;media&#x2F;Fi...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:Wikimedia_Foundation&#x27;s_expenses_percentage.svg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&#x2F;media&#x2F;Fi...</a><p>Net assets are sitting at ~$240M about 10x what they were a decade ago. Yet they roll out a sob-story banner on every page insinuating that they might cease to exist if you don&#x27;t cough up.<p>It gives me an uneasy feeling that the ex-CEO went to work for a think tank. I hope they&#x27;re politically neutral.<p>Obviously it&#x27;s become a gravy train. At a certain point they should have stopped the begging because clearly they have the resources to run the site several times over.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>swalling</author><text>&gt; Basically any change you make it insta-reverted by some bot or over-zealous power-crazed editor.<p>You sound like someone who was pushing a particular point of view about politics, which is precisely the kind of edits that are set up for organ rejection given Wikipedia&#x27;s strict stance on neutrality, sourcing, and the fact that politics are naturally contentious &#x2F; prone to edit warring.<p>There are between 1.5 and 2 million anonymous edits to Wikipedia every month. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stats.wikimedia.org&#x2F;#&#x2F;all-wikipedia-projects&#x2F;contributing&#x2F;edits&#x2F;normal|line|all|editor_type~anonymous*group-bot*name-bot*user|monthly" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stats.wikimedia.org&#x2F;#&#x2F;all-wikipedia-projects&#x2F;contrib...</a> A lot of them are in reality vandalism, spam, and garbage by passersby, but they aren&#x27;t all reverted.</text></comment> | <story><title>Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-05-22/News_and_notes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mattlondon</author><text>It has always been like this - at least for the past 10-15 years or so it has been essentially impossible to edit wikipedia.<p>Basically <i>any</i> change you make it insta-reverted by some bot or over-zealous power-crazed editor.<p>I think some editors decide that they &quot;own&quot; certain pages or group of pages and install themselves as some sort of authority&#x2F;gate keeper&#x2F;moderator. If your edit does not please them, it&#x27;s gone. Instantly. You only get to edit the pages if you are in the editor&#x27;s cabal of friends.<p>If you don&#x27;t have an account, or you do have an account but perhaps have only made a handful of edits, you are instantly distrusted and assumed to be malicious.<p>Of course, you can never prove that you are <i>not</i> malicious, because there is the default stance of immediate-distrust for anyone, so your edits are constantly undone and you never get to build up enough credibility to appease the editors who control who gets to edit &quot;their&quot; articles.<p>I gave up years ago after a small edit-war with someone who kept reverting changes about a UK politician who was in national news at the time. No amount of references or citations from e.g. the BBC or the Guardian was good enough as I guess the verifiable truth didn&#x27;t fit with their view of what this page should selectively say about that person, and so they banned my IP as a &quot;vandal&quot;. I gave up (but got a new IP after redialing so it was pointless)</text></item><item><author>ilikehurdles</author><text>In that time it’s become increasingly challenging to contribute anything to The People’s Encyclopedia.<p>I wanted to update a local wiki page with newer data from its original sources, but apparently I have become blacklisted because I use&#x2F;used Apple’s private relay and safari’s privacy measures by default in all my browsing. Disabling them didn’t fix it. I would love to sign up as a fallback measure to be able to contribute, and verify my account by whatever means necessary, but apparently in the 2020s that’s just not something Wikipedia supports (as I’m also black listed from signing up despite never contributing to Wikipedia.)<p>Increasingly I see out of date and opinionated articles and I wonder how many of us have meaningful contributions ready but are forced to sit on the sidelines because there’s no “way in” with this product.</text></item><item><author>costco</author><text>2016 Wikimedia Foundation Budget: $69,136,758<p>2022 Wikimedia Foundation Budget: $145,970,915<p>I love Wikipedia but I don&#x27;t see how this cost explosion can evenly be remotely justified. What value have they added in that time? A new editor and CSS on articles?</text></item><item><author>andersrs</author><text>Just take a look at this graph. The salaries have been bloating whilst hosting expenses are flat and plummeting as a proportion of all expenses.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:Wikimedia_Foundation&#x27;s_expenses_evolution_by_rubrics_in_US_Dollars.svg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&#x2F;media&#x2F;Fi...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:Wikimedia_Foundation&#x27;s_expenses_percentage.svg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&#x2F;media&#x2F;Fi...</a><p>Net assets are sitting at ~$240M about 10x what they were a decade ago. Yet they roll out a sob-story banner on every page insinuating that they might cease to exist if you don&#x27;t cough up.<p>It gives me an uneasy feeling that the ex-CEO went to work for a think tank. I hope they&#x27;re politically neutral.<p>Obviously it&#x27;s become a gravy train. At a certain point they should have stopped the begging because clearly they have the resources to run the site several times over.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>olivermarks</author><text><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vice.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;article&#x2F;7x47bb&#x2F;wikipedia-editors-elite-diversity-foundation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vice.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;article&#x2F;7x47bb&#x2F;wikipedia-editors-eli...</a><p>&#x27;Nearly All of Wikipedia Is Written By Just 1 Percent of Its Editors
Researchers found that 77 percent of Wikipedia articles are written by 1 percent of Wikipedia editors, and they think this is probably for the best.&#x27;</text></comment> |
5,491,179 | 5,490,938 | 1 | 3 | 5,490,600 | train | <story><title>Free Must-Have “Security Engineering” Book</title><url>https://www.novainfosec.com/2013/04/03/free-must-have-security-engineering-book/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lawnchair_larry</author><text>Non-blogspam version: <a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html</a><p>Also, I really don't understand why this book gets so many recommendations. I can't figure out who the target audience is or how it adds value to the field. I think all that I can tell is that the target audience is not me.<p>To be honest, it feels like some of the Schneier books that give you a lot of those "Aha!" moments, but don't actually have a lot of information. Maybe I'm missing something.<p>Edit: Damn, this guy has been blogspamming HN twice a day for like a year. 5 submissions to his blog in the last 2 days.</text></comment> | <story><title>Free Must-Have “Security Engineering” Book</title><url>https://www.novainfosec.com/2013/04/03/free-must-have-security-engineering-book/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ggamecrazy</author><text>I use it for class, I bought the book before searching if it was free :/. You can use it to kill someone -&#62; <a href="http://i.imgur.com/ytr9PZa.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/ytr9PZa.jpg</a></text></comment> |
40,727,684 | 40,727,668 | 1 | 3 | 40,726,974 | train | <story><title>Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"</title><url>https://github.com/dylanaraps</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zer00eyz</author><text>&gt; You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist<p>I love this about farmers. They are the polymaths of our age and folks dont get it. Farming YouTube is a trip because there&#x27;s more tech in a tractor than in some startups.<p>&gt; and if you&#x27;re doing properly, crooked accountant as well.<p>Yea, most people dont get what a &quot;future&quot; is, and why corn and lumber have them (but not onions... thats a lesson too)... The farm has the support of a lot of high finance and hedging exists not just as an instrument but has a purpose.<p>Ask a farmer about a grain&#x2F;pork &quot;Marketing Plan&quot; and who they are hiring as advisors and where that person got their degree...<p>It&#x27;s a complicated world and there are some interesting intersections out there.</text></item><item><author>KaiserPro</author><text>I do hope they enjoy it.<p>I grew up in a farming community, and whist it can be rewarding, if you are trying to make money, or be self sufficient, its fucking hard work.<p>Is it harder than programming? thats a subjective call. Objectively its physically harder work, mentally its way more varied. You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist, and if you&#x27;re doing properly, crooked accountant as well.<p>Would I take up farming? probably not. Would rather become a water mill owner? hell yeah.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>3D30497420</author><text>&gt; (but not onions... thats a lesson too)<p>That was too enticing to not look up. Wow, the story behind that is something: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Onion_Futures_Act" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Onion_Futures_Act</a><p>Edit: There&#x27;s a Planet Money with more on this story (which I&#x27;ve not listened to): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;14&#x2F;448718171&#x2F;episode-657-the-tale-of-the-onion-king" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;14&#x2F;448718171&#x2F;epis...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"</title><url>https://github.com/dylanaraps</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zer00eyz</author><text>&gt; You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist<p>I love this about farmers. They are the polymaths of our age and folks dont get it. Farming YouTube is a trip because there&#x27;s more tech in a tractor than in some startups.<p>&gt; and if you&#x27;re doing properly, crooked accountant as well.<p>Yea, most people dont get what a &quot;future&quot; is, and why corn and lumber have them (but not onions... thats a lesson too)... The farm has the support of a lot of high finance and hedging exists not just as an instrument but has a purpose.<p>Ask a farmer about a grain&#x2F;pork &quot;Marketing Plan&quot; and who they are hiring as advisors and where that person got their degree...<p>It&#x27;s a complicated world and there are some interesting intersections out there.</text></item><item><author>KaiserPro</author><text>I do hope they enjoy it.<p>I grew up in a farming community, and whist it can be rewarding, if you are trying to make money, or be self sufficient, its fucking hard work.<p>Is it harder than programming? thats a subjective call. Objectively its physically harder work, mentally its way more varied. You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist, and if you&#x27;re doing properly, crooked accountant as well.<p>Would I take up farming? probably not. Would rather become a water mill owner? hell yeah.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AdamN</author><text>&gt; You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist<p>Not sure how commmon this is anymore. The age of the family farm with a mix of livestock, rotating crops, and woodlands are long gone in the developed world. Each of these tasks would be handled mostly by a professional in any serious farming operation.</text></comment> |
28,972,344 | 28,972,361 | 1 | 3 | 28,970,792 | train | <story><title>Something special is happening in Barcelona</title><url>https://twitter.com/zachklein/status/1450113164775870468</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>yawaworht1978</author><text>I used to live in Barcelona, the infrastructure is definitely anti car in every aspect, it&#x27;s desired to be.
For such a large city, the car traffic is minimal, there are not enough parking opportunities, especially at the beach.
There would be space, but the government knows better, if you have ever been in a tourist destination in Spain during peak season you will know that there is no way to accommodate all the cars.
The only traffic jams you&#x27;ll encounter is if an accident happened or if you go from Barcelona outwards toward the airport, when commuters go home on Friday afternoons or evening when headed to the nicer , less crowded beaches in the south.
But absolutely nothing compared to London, I have lived there as well and driven a car. It&#x27;s the city with the worst traffic jams you can imagine, it starts at 7am and never really ends, after 8pm it&#x27;s quite calm and deserted one weekdays.
But weekends, if you wanna go from the south east to the north, God help you.
It&#x27;s very bicycle friendly, own parts of the roads, unobstructed by cars. Taxis have a separate lane, and buses as well.
The public transportation is also very good, affordable, you have buses, underground trains, and well, overground trains.
And it&#x27;s a nice city to walk, the old part of town, the huge parks, really nice.<p>A role model implementation as far reducing car traffic issues go.
Many people use these electro kind skateboards(forgot name) and scooters. And many people just walk.
Of course , it needs to be mentioned that Barcelona is not built like American suburb areas, it&#x27;s all apartment blocks of 3-7 stories, all blocks glued together.
It&#x27;s tight, they even have a convention on how to dry your clothes on balconies and how not to do it.
Barcelona has many other issues, the typical ones for large cities, but transport and car traffic, I haven&#x27;t seen better in Europe.</text></comment> | <story><title>Something special is happening in Barcelona</title><url>https://twitter.com/zachklein/status/1450113164775870468</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>frereubu</author><text>I had an idea similar to this, based on my experience of Critical Mass cycle rides in London: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Critical_Mass_(cycling)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Critical_Mass_(cycling)</a><p>It was called &quot;Cycle Pods&quot;, which would be mini-critical mass rides for commuters. You&#x27;d probably need between five and ten riders who cycle the same route each day at a roughly similar pace, so you could register with a route and see whose rides were similar to yours.<p>The other idea was even more loose, where you&#x27;d wear something like a tabard with an identifiable &quot;cycle pods&quot; logo where anyone who was wearing one was effectively advertising that they were open to riding with other people. I preferred this version because it&#x27;s simpler and decentralised. Anyone could make something with the logo on it, so no purchase or registration needed.<p>I love the idea of doing it with kids, but honestly some of the reactions we got from car and van drivers with the Critical Mass rides, even when we were going at a decent pace, were incredibly dangerous, and I&#x27;d worry about that with kids unless the police were involved, as they were in this Bicibús. We had to have outriders looking out for car drivers who&#x27;d try to drive into the middle of the mass. There&#x27;s something about cyclists taking over the road that really provokes some drivers.</text></comment> |
10,219,923 | 10,219,931 | 1 | 2 | 10,219,563 | train | <story><title>400 days of Go</title><url>http://www.philipotoole.com/400-days-of-go/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arihant</author><text>I love Go, 90% of my company&#x27;s codebase is in Go. But I can&#x27;t ignore the Kool-Aid in this article.<p>I don&#x27;t see why people have perception of IDE being a bad thing. In past 15 years or so, I have never been in a situation where I was on a system where some IDE was not supported, and I wanted to use it.<p>They are everywhere, just like vim. That&#x27;s like mocking the Gmail cause it needs a browser, while praising mutt cause you can be lost in Jurassic World with an Apple II which cannot run Chrome.<p>The build times of Go 1.5 are not that fast. That point is not <i>that</i> valid. I also don&#x27;t see much point in have competition of build times among languages that compile to binary. Rust, Go, C are all fast enough.<p>I&#x27;m sure he has good points below (I see testing as one), but he started out bashing Java, after which I genuinely did not want to read the article. I&#x27;m not a Java fan, but I find the language extremely non-assuming, very less opinionated and quite useful. If Go one day has half a million repos of libraries, given it&#x27;s composability features, it will have names just as fugly as some Java classes. Java&#x27;s standard libraries are actually very clean.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mseebach</author><text>There&#x27;s nothing wrong with an IDE <i>per se</i> -- but it&#x27;s a smell when a language is so verbose that it effectively requires a machine to help you write it, which is definitely the case for Java.<p>It&#x27;s just a smell, it&#x27;s not disqualifying, because, as you correctly state, rare are the times when you can&#x27;t just run the IDE. But I think it&#x27;s a perfectly fair point that the language you can write effective in vi is -- all other things being equal -- better than the language that requires an IDE.</text></comment> | <story><title>400 days of Go</title><url>http://www.philipotoole.com/400-days-of-go/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arihant</author><text>I love Go, 90% of my company&#x27;s codebase is in Go. But I can&#x27;t ignore the Kool-Aid in this article.<p>I don&#x27;t see why people have perception of IDE being a bad thing. In past 15 years or so, I have never been in a situation where I was on a system where some IDE was not supported, and I wanted to use it.<p>They are everywhere, just like vim. That&#x27;s like mocking the Gmail cause it needs a browser, while praising mutt cause you can be lost in Jurassic World with an Apple II which cannot run Chrome.<p>The build times of Go 1.5 are not that fast. That point is not <i>that</i> valid. I also don&#x27;t see much point in have competition of build times among languages that compile to binary. Rust, Go, C are all fast enough.<p>I&#x27;m sure he has good points below (I see testing as one), but he started out bashing Java, after which I genuinely did not want to read the article. I&#x27;m not a Java fan, but I find the language extremely non-assuming, very less opinionated and quite useful. If Go one day has half a million repos of libraries, given it&#x27;s composability features, it will have names just as fugly as some Java classes. Java&#x27;s standard libraries are actually very clean.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>realusername</author><text>For the build times, I would say it&#x27;s more that C++ is really slow and the others are indeed quite okay. If you have done some work in Qt or with a library using Boost, you just hate any slow build after that.</text></comment> |
34,180,371 | 34,179,911 | 1 | 2 | 34,178,880 | train | <story><title>The IE 11 user-agent forced Mozilla to freeze part of its user-agent string</title><url>https://miketaylr.com/posts/2022/12/how-the-IE-11-ua-string-broke-sites-in-firefox.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>andirk</author><text>User agent sniffing is poor practice anyways. Try to use the feature and react according to the browser&#x27;s abilities. Analytics and similar can sniff all day though.<p>To push browsers to get rid of UA string, we should all use a UA string extension that uses the same string like &quot;DOG-SHIT&quot;. That way it&#x27;ll start showing up in analytics.<p>And if you&#x27;re trying to date the &quot;data science&quot; girl, spam the app&#x2F;website with UA string like &quot;hi-amy-will-you-go-out-with-me--sincerely-jack-who-sits-behind-you.&quot;</text></comment> | <story><title>The IE 11 user-agent forced Mozilla to freeze part of its user-agent string</title><url>https://miketaylr.com/posts/2022/12/how-the-IE-11-ua-string-broke-sites-in-firefox.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>feyman_r</author><text>Client Hints are the recommended replacement for UA strings. I believe the default behavior for Chromium browsers is already changing (looking for schedule link).<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;Web&#x2F;HTTP&#x2F;Client_hints" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;Web&#x2F;HTTP&#x2F;Client_hin...</a></text></comment> |
31,110,266 | 31,109,243 | 1 | 2 | 31,109,046 | train | <story><title>OpenBSD 7.1</title><url>https://www.openbsd.org/index.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>enriquto</author><text>Complete upgrading instructions:<p><pre><code> ssh myopenbsdbox # log-in to your machine
doas sysupgrade # will log you out, go drink some coffee
ssh myopenbsdbox # log-in to the upgraded machine
doas sysmerge # if any, solve merge conflicts of your cfg files
doas pkg_add -u # if any, upgrade local packages
doas sysclean # print obsolete files that you may want to remove
</code></pre>
the last step is optional. You may pipe its output to xargs rm -rf if you feel confident.</text></comment> | <story><title>OpenBSD 7.1</title><url>https://www.openbsd.org/index.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>johnklos</author><text>It&#x27;s good to see their regular update cadence bringing new code to the masses without much delay, like OpenSSH 9.0, for example.<p>I think many people who run other Unix-like OSes don&#x27;t always realize how much of the code they use regularly comes from the OpenBSD project, even if we don&#x27;t often run OpenBSD directly.<p>Thanks, OpenBSD!</text></comment> |
2,767,807 | 2,767,737 | 1 | 3 | 2,767,461 | train | <story><title>Founder Stories Volume 01: Slicehost</title><url>http://37signals.com/founderstories/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sudonim</author><text>I can't think of slicehost without thinking of Pickled Onion. This guy's tutorials were the reason I used slicehost. I remember being really thrilled when they added him to the team. Does anyone know where he is now? As a customer and stakeholder in slicehost, I felt let down by the sale to Rackspace.<p>I'm guessing without watching that these interviews reinforce the 37s mantra that building businesses you want to do for the rest of your life rather than building for the liquidity event is the "right" way to go. I can't help but agree in this case.</text></comment> | <story><title>Founder Stories Volume 01: Slicehost</title><url>http://37signals.com/founderstories/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>howradical</author><text>Hey all Matt here, if you have any questions/comments my email is [email protected].</text></comment> |
4,432,155 | 4,430,945 | 1 | 2 | 4,430,885 | train | <story><title>Onlive CEO fires staff, then donates $50,000 to health insurance fund</title><url>https://www.wepay.com/donations/ex-onlive-cobra-fund</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wilschroter</author><text>Last week at this time it was popular to pile on Onlive's CEO to say "he fired everyone and stole the company!".<p>No one asked <i>why</i> he did it. The common thread was "he was greedy!"<p>That really pisses me off. We come to find out a week later that the company was days away from total insolvency and that structuring an ABC to deal with $40 million of debt was the only way to keep anyone's jobs. It's a brutally painful place to be.<p>Sometimes people do awful things for simple and awful reasons. But I believe that's rare. I believe some people are forced to do awful things that they would never otherwise do given the option. I think in this case people didn't want to know, or perhaps didn't care to know <i>why</i> it happened. They just wanted to blame someone.<p>I fear the media's growing lack of interest in the why.</text></comment> | <story><title>Onlive CEO fires staff, then donates $50,000 to health insurance fund</title><url>https://www.wepay.com/donations/ex-onlive-cobra-fund</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tomasien</author><text>If you want to stay a leader, this is how you do it. Treat every single person who sacrifices their time for you like family. That's a leader.</text></comment> |
33,555,272 | 33,554,838 | 1 | 3 | 33,548,133 | train | <story><title>Vocaloid 6</title><url>https://www.vocaloid.com/en/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kyazawa</author><text>I went from Vocaloid hater to fan in the span of this year. There are Japanese Vocaloid producers who are pushing the boundaries of pop music in a way that wouldn&#x27;t be possible with a real singer. I&#x27;ve never come across anything like this music in the West. Definitely an acquired taste.<p>My Vocaloid song recommendation: Ungray Days by the producer Tsumiki. Tsumiki creates a sharp, aggressive sound that is disagreeable at first but really addictive. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=UvF3Mwj5d4E" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=UvF3Mwj5d4E</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>IAmGraydon</author><text>I&#x27;m sorry, but come on. Being a musician myself, I always try to keep an open mind and fully realize that not all music is supposed to give you the warm and fuzzies, but IMO nothing about that is interesting. It sounds like mathcore on fast forward with a chipmunk incomprehensibly chattering over it. No interesting harmonic structure, no interesting instrumentation or arrangement, rhythms straight stolen from other genres.<p>I&#x27;m being genuine when I say I&#x27;m interested to hear what about this moves you. I almost always get it even if I don&#x27;t like it. This...I don&#x27;t get it.</text></comment> | <story><title>Vocaloid 6</title><url>https://www.vocaloid.com/en/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kyazawa</author><text>I went from Vocaloid hater to fan in the span of this year. There are Japanese Vocaloid producers who are pushing the boundaries of pop music in a way that wouldn&#x27;t be possible with a real singer. I&#x27;ve never come across anything like this music in the West. Definitely an acquired taste.<p>My Vocaloid song recommendation: Ungray Days by the producer Tsumiki. Tsumiki creates a sharp, aggressive sound that is disagreeable at first but really addictive. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=UvF3Mwj5d4E" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=UvF3Mwj5d4E</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nineteen999</author><text>I&#x27;ve gone from being Vocaloid indifferent to a Vocaloid hater. Being the father of a 12 year girl who is obsessed with imaginary Japanese Vocaloid artists, I&#x27;m totally over the sound of it, although I agree the histrionics produced by these things can be fairly amazing to hear from time to time.<p>What I did find more interesting was the AI &quot;sung&quot; version of Joelene that was doing the rounds a few days ago, based on the voice of Holly Herndon:<p><pre><code> https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;kPAEMUzDxuo
</code></pre>
Interested to see where that goes, although I&#x27;ve got to admit, I&#x27;m a purist, and any type of digital vocalist is going to make me go &quot;meh&quot; sooner or later when compared to even a half decent human singer.</text></comment> |
32,956,495 | 32,956,219 | 1 | 2 | 32,950,204 | train | <story><title>Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?</title><text>Hi all. We&#x27;ve been playing a silly little game with my wife lately: we send each other messages about some topic we never talk about and then wait for ads related to our conversation to start showing up in Instagram. As of the last month, they never fail to show up.<p>Please keep in mind that this is a conversation between two &quot;personal&quot; accounts, no business accounts involved. More so, we haven&#x27;t accepted the new terms of use that &quot;allowed&quot; WhatsApp to access messages between personal accounts and business accounts.<p>Is WhatsApp scanning personal messages to target their ads as we are noticing? Weren&#x27;t WhatsApp messages end to end encrypted? Is this a violation of their Terms of Use or am I missing something silly?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>brap</author><text>For anyone who has ever worked at a FAANG like company in the last decade, yes, this is actually very hard to believe.<p>Despite the shady image they have, these companies go to great lengths to avoid doing shady things (because ultimately it’s bad for business). Not to mention the hundreds of tech employees that would have to be involved and keep quiet in this type of “conspiracy”. It’s incredibly unlikely, I truly believe that.</text></item><item><author>moralestapia</author><text>(wrt some comments in this thread)<p>Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? Meta, a company of unprecedented size that was built over monetizing your private data? A company who&#x27;s been caught in plenty of scandals (like Cambridge Analytic) about this exact sort of thing (violating their users&#x27; privacy)?<p>Someone from this community, which generally means educated, tech-literate and sensitive to these topics shares a perfectly plausible observation, of something that has been experienced as well by plenty of other folks, me included; and then some people come and try to make up the most convoluted explanations (candy boxes from Kazakhstan just happened to be trending that specific day, nothing to see here, move along!) to this phenomena and try to shift the blame away from Meta. Why do you do this? Are you Meta employees? A PR agency they hired?<p>It&#x27;s just baffling. Apparently some people DO want to be abused.<p>Plot twist: we all get ads about candy boxes from KZ now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dessant</author><text>I can imagine you haven&#x27;t been involved in anything illegal, but I&#x27;m sure you&#x27;ve aware of Meta&#x27;s documented track record of coordinated illegal actions. Do engineering teams just fall head first into a bucket of 2FA phone numbers and start using the data for ad targeting, and nobody bats an eye from the legal department to product managers? Or are they hypnotized to build services for biometric data collection without consent? Nobody does anything nefarious, but their collective actions which benefit the company just end up being illegal, again and again?<p>The tech companies you work for do often engage in illegal activities, and some of your collegues are complicit. I&#x27;m sure it is an uncomfortable thought for some of you, but this is all part of the public record.</text></comment> | <story><title>Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?</title><text>Hi all. We&#x27;ve been playing a silly little game with my wife lately: we send each other messages about some topic we never talk about and then wait for ads related to our conversation to start showing up in Instagram. As of the last month, they never fail to show up.<p>Please keep in mind that this is a conversation between two &quot;personal&quot; accounts, no business accounts involved. More so, we haven&#x27;t accepted the new terms of use that &quot;allowed&quot; WhatsApp to access messages between personal accounts and business accounts.<p>Is WhatsApp scanning personal messages to target their ads as we are noticing? Weren&#x27;t WhatsApp messages end to end encrypted? Is this a violation of their Terms of Use or am I missing something silly?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>brap</author><text>For anyone who has ever worked at a FAANG like company in the last decade, yes, this is actually very hard to believe.<p>Despite the shady image they have, these companies go to great lengths to avoid doing shady things (because ultimately it’s bad for business). Not to mention the hundreds of tech employees that would have to be involved and keep quiet in this type of “conspiracy”. It’s incredibly unlikely, I truly believe that.</text></item><item><author>moralestapia</author><text>(wrt some comments in this thread)<p>Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? Meta, a company of unprecedented size that was built over monetizing your private data? A company who&#x27;s been caught in plenty of scandals (like Cambridge Analytic) about this exact sort of thing (violating their users&#x27; privacy)?<p>Someone from this community, which generally means educated, tech-literate and sensitive to these topics shares a perfectly plausible observation, of something that has been experienced as well by plenty of other folks, me included; and then some people come and try to make up the most convoluted explanations (candy boxes from Kazakhstan just happened to be trending that specific day, nothing to see here, move along!) to this phenomena and try to shift the blame away from Meta. Why do you do this? Are you Meta employees? A PR agency they hired?<p>It&#x27;s just baffling. Apparently some people DO want to be abused.<p>Plot twist: we all get ads about candy boxes from KZ now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thatoneguytoo</author><text>I completely agree (as another employee of FAANG). It&#x27;s ridiculously hard to do anything against policy once it&#x27;s set, and trust me, the policies are set. Media overplays a lot of things which aren&#x27;t just there.<p>The sad reality is people are very predictable, even with basic data.</text></comment> |
39,092,334 | 39,092,212 | 1 | 2 | 39,090,879 | train | <story><title>Meta now lets EU users unlink their Facebook, Messenger and Instagram accounts</title><url>https://www.neowin.net/news/meta-now-lets-eu-users-unlink-their-facebook-messenger-and-instagram-accounts/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coldpie</author><text>We could have these regulations in the US, too, if we voted for them.</text></item><item><author>AlexandrB</author><text>It&#x27;s constantly frustrating to read about European users getting cool new features to help manage their digital life that the rest of the world doesn&#x27;t get. The expected cost in lost ad revenue per user must be pretty significant to justify the complexity of keeping this stuff limited to Europe.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BobaFloutist</author><text>Ok, how about this: &quot;It&#x27;s a bummer that the rest of the voting population doesn&#x27;t agree with my priorities enough to enact similar privacy regulation to Europe.&quot;</text></comment> | <story><title>Meta now lets EU users unlink their Facebook, Messenger and Instagram accounts</title><url>https://www.neowin.net/news/meta-now-lets-eu-users-unlink-their-facebook-messenger-and-instagram-accounts/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coldpie</author><text>We could have these regulations in the US, too, if we voted for them.</text></item><item><author>AlexandrB</author><text>It&#x27;s constantly frustrating to read about European users getting cool new features to help manage their digital life that the rest of the world doesn&#x27;t get. The expected cost in lost ad revenue per user must be pretty significant to justify the complexity of keeping this stuff limited to Europe.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>segasaturn</author><text>Both parties in the US are in the tank with big tech (see: NY Dems killing right to repair)</text></comment> |
41,055,820 | 41,041,093 | 1 | 3 | 41,040,520 | train | <story><title>Clojure macros continue to surprise me</title><url>https://tonsky.me/blog/clojure-macros/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lloydatkinson</author><text>I really enjoyed reading this, and I don&#x27;t know Clojure at all. This is a problem I&#x27;ve encountered several times while building design systems&#x2F;component libraries. It&#x27;s a very universal documentation problem, regardless of what platform it&#x27;s targeting.<p>I have done the same with React - but it gets messy. Something nice like in the post would be great for that.<p>Too often I see very poor Storybook sites in the wild (a web based design system visual explorer, somewhat like the screenshot in the post) where no thought was given to this exact problem.<p>Instead of something meaningful like in the post, I see:<p><pre><code> () =&gt; &lt;TextInputStorybook &#x2F;&gt;
</code></pre>
As the only avaliable code. The point of the code blocks is so people can copy paste. When I see that, I know I&#x27;m in for a rough ride because the code quality inevitably isn&#x27;t any good either.<p>For reference, this is easily the best design system I know of: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seek-oss.github.io&#x2F;braid-design-system&#x2F;components&#x2F;Text" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seek-oss.github.io&#x2F;braid-design-system&#x2F;components&#x2F;Te...</a> I use this as a reference when I work on my own.</text></comment> | <story><title>Clojure macros continue to surprise me</title><url>https://tonsky.me/blog/clojure-macros/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>seancorfield</author><text>The fifth time this has been posted in just over a week... it must be a REALLY good article! :)</text></comment> |
36,349,886 | 36,349,987 | 1 | 2 | 36,348,483 | train | <story><title>Localrf – Nerf from casual shaky videos</title><url>https://localrf.github.io/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>philipkglass</author><text>My grandmother&#x27;s farm had to be sold in 2012 after she died. Since my family moved around when I was a kid, but always visited there for holidays, it felt more like home than any other place I lived in. I have extensive videos I recorded in 2006. It&#x27;d be wonderful to walk through there again using reconstructions from material I already have.<p>Or maybe not. There&#x27;s a reason I haven&#x27;t watched those videos in years. Who wants to remember the garden of Eden when you know you can&#x27;t go back?</text></comment> | <story><title>Localrf – Nerf from casual shaky videos</title><url>https://localrf.github.io/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>laserDinosaur</author><text>FYI: Under the &quot;Video Comparisons&quot; section, those two little &quot;Sequence&quot; and &quot;Method&quot; buttons are actually dropdowns.</text></comment> |
3,773,885 | 3,773,800 | 1 | 2 | 3,772,045 | train | <story><title>Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas</title><url>http://ardenthoughts.tumblr.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jrkelly</author><text>I wasn't at the Demo Day, but it's hard to consider making car repair more efficient to be a problem that really matters. Not saying it can't be a decent business, but your essay about ambitious ideas was pushing people to do better.</text></item><item><author>pg</author><text>"If I were Paul Graham, these types of companies simply would not satisfy me (despite what look to be very lucrative payoffs)."<p>That's hilarious, because I'm the one who wrote all the summaries
of the startups that she's judging them by. I deliberately express
startup ideas as x for y whenever possible because that's the most
efficient way to describe a startup in a few words. Airbnb, for
example, was in its day "eBay for space."<p>On Demo Day we accompany each startup's name with a brief summary
of what they're doing. The goal of these summaries is not to convey
the full breadth of a startup's eventual ambitions, or even what
they're currently doing, but just to help investors watching 65
presentations remember which company is doing what. TechCrunch
reused these descriptions, as reporters often do. And now this
woman has read the summaries printed in TechCrunch and is treating
them as if that were all there was to know about the startup. It's
like a game of Telephone (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers</a>).<p>My standard advice to startups presenting to investors is that it's
better to start with an overly narrow description of what you do,
so that investors at least know what you're talking about, and then
expand from there.<p>See <a href="http://paulgraham.com/investors.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/investors.html</a>, particularly items 1 and
14.<p>It's surprising to me that someone who wasn't even at Demo Day would
feel confident enough to judge the startups' originality based on
the 3-5 word summaries we use on the schedule to help investors
keep them straight in their heads.<p>I was about to say that it's also surprising that people would
upvote such a post. But on reflection it's not that surprising.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tptacek</author><text>I am just baffled by the idea that people here think there isn't a huge dent to be made in the universe in auto repair. There are 723,400 auto mechanics in the US alone, making a median of $35k in an incredibly inefficient marketplace that fleeces and inflicts misery on millions of working class families (who get to work and their kids to school in cars, not fixies) <i>every year</i>.</text></comment> | <story><title>Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas</title><url>http://ardenthoughts.tumblr.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jrkelly</author><text>I wasn't at the Demo Day, but it's hard to consider making car repair more efficient to be a problem that really matters. Not saying it can't be a decent business, but your essay about ambitious ideas was pushing people to do better.</text></item><item><author>pg</author><text>"If I were Paul Graham, these types of companies simply would not satisfy me (despite what look to be very lucrative payoffs)."<p>That's hilarious, because I'm the one who wrote all the summaries
of the startups that she's judging them by. I deliberately express
startup ideas as x for y whenever possible because that's the most
efficient way to describe a startup in a few words. Airbnb, for
example, was in its day "eBay for space."<p>On Demo Day we accompany each startup's name with a brief summary
of what they're doing. The goal of these summaries is not to convey
the full breadth of a startup's eventual ambitions, or even what
they're currently doing, but just to help investors watching 65
presentations remember which company is doing what. TechCrunch
reused these descriptions, as reporters often do. And now this
woman has read the summaries printed in TechCrunch and is treating
them as if that were all there was to know about the startup. It's
like a game of Telephone (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers</a>).<p>My standard advice to startups presenting to investors is that it's
better to start with an overly narrow description of what you do,
so that investors at least know what you're talking about, and then
expand from there.<p>See <a href="http://paulgraham.com/investors.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/investors.html</a>, particularly items 1 and
14.<p>It's surprising to me that someone who wasn't even at Demo Day would
feel confident enough to judge the startups' originality based on
the 3-5 word summaries we use on the schedule to help investors
keep them straight in their heads.<p>I was about to say that it's also surprising that people would
upvote such a post. But on reflection it's not that surprising.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yabbadabbadoo</author><text>He also says this in that same essay -<p><i>If you want to take on a problem as big as the ones I've discussed, don't make a direct frontal attack on it. Don't say, for example, that you're going to replace email. If you do that you raise too many expectations. Empirically, the way to do really big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things. Want to dominate microcomputer software? Start by writing a Basic interpreter for a machine with a few thousand users.</i><p>So for all we know, there are a bunch of YC companies aiming to take over the world, but we just don't know about them since they start off by tackling a very specific, narrow niche. Take greplin for example. I could envision the founders aiming to eat Google's lunch one day, but they certainly didn't launch by announcing that to the public.</text></comment> |
23,759,313 | 23,759,425 | 1 | 2 | 23,758,203 | train | <story><title>Whole Earth Software Catalog (1984)</title><url>https://archive.org/details/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_1984_Point/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bostonpete</author><text>Wait, archive.org has scanned books?? I guess I&#x27;m only familiar with the archive&#x27;s &quot;Wayback Machine&quot; -- I wasn&#x27;t aware of their other offerings. This is interesting and has a pretty good interface for browsing. Even seems to use OCR to support search!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mannycalavera42</author><text>I&#x27;ve recently moved my support donations from wikipedia to archive.org after finding it out. Amazing content and the history of web deserves more</text></comment> | <story><title>Whole Earth Software Catalog (1984)</title><url>https://archive.org/details/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_1984_Point/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bostonpete</author><text>Wait, archive.org has scanned books?? I guess I&#x27;m only familiar with the archive&#x27;s &quot;Wayback Machine&quot; -- I wasn&#x27;t aware of their other offerings. This is interesting and has a pretty good interface for browsing. Even seems to use OCR to support search!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zozbot234</author><text>Archive.org has so many scanned books that they&#x27;re being sued by publishers calling it a pirate site. The EFF legal team is getting involved to defend the lawsuit.</text></comment> |
25,544,937 | 25,544,796 | 1 | 2 | 25,543,958 | train | <story><title>Domino’s Pizza drove increase in stock value by acting like a startup</title><url>https://producthabits.com/dominos-pizza-drove-90x-increase-stock-value-acting-like-tech-startup/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>parsimo2010</author><text>What a bunch of management school BS. There is one piece of truth in this article- They started doing better because they finally improved their product after years of cost optimization (read as shitty pizza). That&#x27;s it. Better pizza = more sales. Keeping it around long enough and word gets out that Domino&#x27;s is good again, which means more sales and growth. The rest of this article is fluff. The funny thing is that this article is written as if management saved the day by taking &quot;a huge risk.&quot; Since when is fixing your shitty core product considered a huge risk? That&#x27;s not a risk, that&#x27;s a prerequisite!<p>Domino&#x27;s aren&#x27;t currently delivering pizzas by drone or self-driving cars at significant scale, certainly not enough to affect their stock price. They aren&#x27;t putting enough money into drones or self-driving cars to make investors think that they might have some head start- they will get self-driving delivery the same time as every other pizza company, because they will be buying the solution from another company that is selling to everyone. Domino&#x27;s pizza tracking and online ordering is cool, but nobody orders Domino&#x27;s because of it. Because regardless of their tech, they are just about on par with most pizza places when it comes to delivery times.<p>Edit: want a &quot;free pro stock tip&quot; from me (&#x2F;s)? Domino&#x27;s is steady&#x2F;level at ~$400 right now, but they were steady&#x2F;level at ~$300 in 2018-2019. They got a 33% bump in price from the coronavirus. So 30x of the 90x bump this article brags about has nothing to do with management decisions. Once the Western world has gotten vaccinated, Domino&#x27;s is not staying at $400. They may not go all the way back to $300, but they won&#x27;t be keeping every customer once normal life resumes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>function_seven</author><text>I see sibling comments saying the same thing, so in the interest of during anecdotes into data, I’ll pile on.<p>First, I largely agree with what you wrote. The core improvement is significant and was also not “risky” or “daring”.<p>But:<p>&gt; <i>Domino&#x27;s pizza tracking and online ordering is cool, but nobody orders Domino&#x27;s because of it.</i><p>I do! Their app is executed beautifully, and is much nicer than phone orders where I hope my crazy order is interpreted correctly. It’s also better than the thinly-wrapped web pages from competitors.<p>And getting a heads up when the driver left the store allows me to shoo the dogs outside.<p>Seems like a small thing, but it makes a difference.</text></comment> | <story><title>Domino’s Pizza drove increase in stock value by acting like a startup</title><url>https://producthabits.com/dominos-pizza-drove-90x-increase-stock-value-acting-like-tech-startup/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>parsimo2010</author><text>What a bunch of management school BS. There is one piece of truth in this article- They started doing better because they finally improved their product after years of cost optimization (read as shitty pizza). That&#x27;s it. Better pizza = more sales. Keeping it around long enough and word gets out that Domino&#x27;s is good again, which means more sales and growth. The rest of this article is fluff. The funny thing is that this article is written as if management saved the day by taking &quot;a huge risk.&quot; Since when is fixing your shitty core product considered a huge risk? That&#x27;s not a risk, that&#x27;s a prerequisite!<p>Domino&#x27;s aren&#x27;t currently delivering pizzas by drone or self-driving cars at significant scale, certainly not enough to affect their stock price. They aren&#x27;t putting enough money into drones or self-driving cars to make investors think that they might have some head start- they will get self-driving delivery the same time as every other pizza company, because they will be buying the solution from another company that is selling to everyone. Domino&#x27;s pizza tracking and online ordering is cool, but nobody orders Domino&#x27;s because of it. Because regardless of their tech, they are just about on par with most pizza places when it comes to delivery times.<p>Edit: want a &quot;free pro stock tip&quot; from me (&#x2F;s)? Domino&#x27;s is steady&#x2F;level at ~$400 right now, but they were steady&#x2F;level at ~$300 in 2018-2019. They got a 33% bump in price from the coronavirus. So 30x of the 90x bump this article brags about has nothing to do with management decisions. Once the Western world has gotten vaccinated, Domino&#x27;s is not staying at $400. They may not go all the way back to $300, but they won&#x27;t be keeping every customer once normal life resumes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>OminousWeapons</author><text>I disagree with this. Yes it is true that they dramatically improved the state of their product which helped them substantially and that some of the novel delivery mechanisms are mainly PR hype, but I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s fair to disregard all the work they have done at all levels to simplify the delivery process.<p>Delivery from Dominoes is a seamless, reliable process. It is extremely easy to place orders however you want to place them; you can track the product through the stages of production and delivery in a highly granular way and be confident about when it will arrive; deliveries are fast, usually under 30 minutes; the product that is delivered always hits a certain level of quality in my experience; and you need basically zero interaction with a human to get it done.<p>Contrast this with food delivery services like Doordash which take FOREVER (eg &gt; 1 hour and frequently much longer than that); have unreliable tracking mechanisms and ETAs; result in food that usually arrives cold; are extremely expensive; always require interaction with a human; frequently result in mistakes; and have a dispute resolution process which basically involves Doordash et al saying not my problem or sorry but we don&#x27;t give refunds, here&#x27;s a 15% off coupon for your next order.</text></comment> |
10,464,453 | 10,464,153 | 1 | 3 | 10,463,464 | train | <story><title>Why you might want to choose Ceylon</title><url>http://ceylon-lang.org/blog/2015/10/27/why/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lmm</author><text>Have they tightened up the floating point semantics? Or do you still get different rounding behaviour on the JVM, dart and JS?<p>I want to like Ceylon because it&#x27;s the language Scala should be (assuming that higher-kinded types made it in - I could never work without them). It&#x27;s Scala with all the ugly parts polished away, Scala with ten years&#x27; progress in language design.<p>But it does nothing that Scala can&#x27;t. Scala might need a pile of bodges to offer these things - Shapeless implicit macros to use tuples generically, type-level libraries abusing the implicit resolution rules to implement unions, a retrofitted JavaScript backend. But that stuff has been written now, and as a developer it works - maybe with a couple of ugly extra lines here and there, but that&#x27;s all.<p>I&#x27;m glad it exists, but I just can&#x27;t see people choosing the more polished language over the one with ten years worth of library and tool support when there&#x27;s no USP beyond that polish.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lukedegruchy</author><text>Experimental support for higher order generics will be in 1.2 (JavaScript runtime only):<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ceylon-lang.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2015&#x2F;06&#x2F;03&#x2F;generic-function-refs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ceylon-lang.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2015&#x2F;06&#x2F;03&#x2F;generic-function-refs...</a>
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ceylon-lang.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2015&#x2F;06&#x2F;12&#x2F;more-type-functions&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ceylon-lang.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2015&#x2F;06&#x2F;12&#x2F;more-type-functions&#x2F;</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Why you might want to choose Ceylon</title><url>http://ceylon-lang.org/blog/2015/10/27/why/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lmm</author><text>Have they tightened up the floating point semantics? Or do you still get different rounding behaviour on the JVM, dart and JS?<p>I want to like Ceylon because it&#x27;s the language Scala should be (assuming that higher-kinded types made it in - I could never work without them). It&#x27;s Scala with all the ugly parts polished away, Scala with ten years&#x27; progress in language design.<p>But it does nothing that Scala can&#x27;t. Scala might need a pile of bodges to offer these things - Shapeless implicit macros to use tuples generically, type-level libraries abusing the implicit resolution rules to implement unions, a retrofitted JavaScript backend. But that stuff has been written now, and as a developer it works - maybe with a couple of ugly extra lines here and there, but that&#x27;s all.<p>I&#x27;m glad it exists, but I just can&#x27;t see people choosing the more polished language over the one with ten years worth of library and tool support when there&#x27;s no USP beyond that polish.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>taiar</author><text>&gt; I want to like Ceylon because it&#x27;s the language Scala should be<p>&gt; but I just can&#x27;t see people choosing the more polished language over the one with ten years worth of library and tool support when there&#x27;s no USP beyond that polish<p>It seems all a matter of time. What would Ceylon look like to you after some years of library and tool support?</text></comment> |
13,677,509 | 13,676,885 | 1 | 2 | 13,671,599 | train | <story><title>Don’t Take My Folders Away: Organizing Personal Info to Get Things Done (2005)</title><url>https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/2031</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jen729w</author><text>I do this <i>rigorously</i> with tremendous success. I can find anything, instantly. Yes, it takes a little work up front. For me, the payback is obvious and extreme.<p>I have to get round to finishing my site so please excuse its current incompletion, but hey, if you&#x27;re interested: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnnydecimal.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnnydecimal.com</a><p>I use this system at work and I have otherwise very competent Project Managers stare at me like I&#x27;m some sort of wizard when I navigate to the right folder, the first time, every time, and find exactly what I&#x27;m looking for. Email, our shared drive, SharePoint - I use it everywhere. I would be a mess without it.</text></comment> | <story><title>Don’t Take My Folders Away: Organizing Personal Info to Get Things Done (2005)</title><url>https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/2031</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>noonespecial</author><text>If you think about it, folders are really like limited tags where the only relationship you are allowed is &quot;and then&quot;.<p>It would be nice to see a system that would present a tag set in the appearance of folders for all &quot;and then&quot; relationships but then let you mix in things like &quot;and also&quot;, &quot;or&quot;, and &quot;but not&quot;.</text></comment> |
35,633,424 | 35,632,824 | 1 | 3 | 35,631,717 | train | <story><title>Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)</title><url>https://psmag.com/environment/iraqi-vikings-farouk-al-kasim-norway-oil-72715</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Mizza</author><text>Stupid use of funds for the most part, it&#x27;s not re-invested in the country, just the American stock market. It&#x27;s not like they had to buy solid gold rolls royces, but there&#x27;s no reinvestment internally other than oil and fish. Norway is a hedge fund with the F-35.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kwhitefoot</author><text>I suspect that the people arguing here that Norway should direct that huge volume of money internally are not Norwegian residents. Those of us who live in Norway, most of us anyway, recognize that doing that would be a disaster and would just fund short term spending and fuel inflation.<p>The UK and the Dutch just spent the money they got from the North Sea oil and at least the UK has little to show for it.<p>Anyway, the Norwegian economy is doing just fine without it, we bounced back from COVID faster than practically everywhere else and everywhere I look there are new commercial and industrial buildings going up.</text></comment> | <story><title>Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)</title><url>https://psmag.com/environment/iraqi-vikings-farouk-al-kasim-norway-oil-72715</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Mizza</author><text>Stupid use of funds for the most part, it&#x27;s not re-invested in the country, just the American stock market. It&#x27;s not like they had to buy solid gold rolls royces, but there&#x27;s no reinvestment internally other than oil and fish. Norway is a hedge fund with the F-35.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ceejayoz</author><text>I wish my country would make &quot;stupid&quot; investments to the tune of $250,000 per citizen set aside for a rainy day (or decade).</text></comment> |
27,774,973 | 27,773,666 | 1 | 2 | 27,771,219 | train | <story><title>You need Software Developers to believe in your project (2020)</title><url>https://iism.org/article/you-need-software-developers-to-believe-in-your-project-45</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>LordN00b</author><text>As a dev in a business environment, I don&#x27;t care about your project. At all.
It&#x27;s going to be run-of-the-mill business app, storage, front-end, logic. There will be nothing exciting or interesting for me whatsoever. I don&#x27;t care about your case management, insurance leads, or Teams Governance. Becuase I&#x27;m a human with human interests (writing code, and dreaming of a decent Transformers movie before I die), your projects are not interesting, and they will not invest me.<p>However for every project I take on, there will always be something I have never done before, or a maybe some new technique I want to try, could be a new language. That&#x27;s where the engagement comes from.<p>I don&#x27;t care about the project, I care about writing code (and exploring writing code) to the best of my ability (and to the best of the project constraints).<p>If I&#x27;ve done my job well, that means I learned something new&#x2F;had fun and the project will never burn my screen pixels ever again.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dnh44</author><text>One of the first bits of paid work I did was for a printing company that made business cards among lots of other things. They would manually create a CorelDraw document with a page full of cards for each employee, taking the contact information from an excel spreadsheet. The data entry for making cards for 100 people would take several days.<p>I was able to automate this for them with a pretty simple VB.net script. Several days of boring mind-numbing work per month were reduced to a couple button clicks and a few seconds of CPU time. It also eliminated all typographical errors on the part of the printing company.<p>I never touched vb.net again after that. I had no interest in the technology at all and there was nothing particularly interesting about the work itself. However saving people from having to do a bunch of boring work is extremely satisfying. And it saved the owner money which feels great too.<p>I find that being empathic towards my users not only makes the work more fulfilling but it also allows me to design better products. As a human with human interests you should at least give it a try.</text></comment> | <story><title>You need Software Developers to believe in your project (2020)</title><url>https://iism.org/article/you-need-software-developers-to-believe-in-your-project-45</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>LordN00b</author><text>As a dev in a business environment, I don&#x27;t care about your project. At all.
It&#x27;s going to be run-of-the-mill business app, storage, front-end, logic. There will be nothing exciting or interesting for me whatsoever. I don&#x27;t care about your case management, insurance leads, or Teams Governance. Becuase I&#x27;m a human with human interests (writing code, and dreaming of a decent Transformers movie before I die), your projects are not interesting, and they will not invest me.<p>However for every project I take on, there will always be something I have never done before, or a maybe some new technique I want to try, could be a new language. That&#x27;s where the engagement comes from.<p>I don&#x27;t care about the project, I care about writing code (and exploring writing code) to the best of my ability (and to the best of the project constraints).<p>If I&#x27;ve done my job well, that means I learned something new&#x2F;had fun and the project will never burn my screen pixels ever again.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jnorthrop</author><text>No matter your technical proficiency, you are a lousy hire. I do not want a developer that is solely interested in work that improves their skills. These projects contribute to the success of the business in one way or another. If you are not invested in understanding why that project is funded and what it will accomplish you will not do the job as well as someone who is engaged and only has half your skills.</text></comment> |
21,908,882 | 21,908,261 | 1 | 2 | 21,907,781 | train | <story><title>Ffmpeg-Python: Python bindings for FFmpeg – with complex filtering support</title><url>https://github.com/kkroening/ffmpeg-python</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>paol</author><text>FYI, the term &quot;binding&quot; is slightly misleading here. This is not bindings for the FFMPEG libraries, it&#x27;s just an API frontend to invoke the `ffmpeg` command.<p>For actual python bindings check out PyAV [0]<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mikeboers&#x2F;PyAV" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mikeboers&#x2F;PyAV</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Ffmpeg-Python: Python bindings for FFmpeg – with complex filtering support</title><url>https://github.com/kkroening/ffmpeg-python</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>johnchristopher</author><text>Really nice.<p>&gt; The corresponding command-line arguments are pretty gnarly:<p><pre><code> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i overlay.png -filter_complex &quot;[0]trim=start_frame=10:end_frame=20[v0];\
[0]trim=start_frame=30:end_frame=40[v1];[v0][v1]concat=n=2[v2];[1]hflip[v3];\
[v2][v3]overlay=eof_action=repeat[v4];[v4]drawbox=50:50:120:120:red:t=5[v5]&quot;\
-map [v5] output.mp4
</code></pre>
I have actually written scripts that would generate such horrors but north of 2000 characters :].<p>&gt; If you&#x27;re like me and find Python to be powerful and readable, it&#x27;s easier with ffmpeg-python:<p><pre><code> import ffmpeg
in_file = ffmpeg.input(&#x27;input.mp4&#x27;)
overlay_file = ffmpeg.input(&#x27;overlay.png&#x27;)
(
ffmpeg
.concat(
in_file.trim(start_frame=10, end_frame=20),
in_file.trim(start_frame=30, end_frame=40),
)
.overlay(overlay_file.hflip())
.drawbox(50, 50, 120, 120, color=&#x27;red&#x27;, thickness=5)
.output(&#x27;out.mp4&#x27;)
.run()
)</code></pre></text></comment> |
16,729,690 | 16,729,129 | 1 | 3 | 16,728,564 | train | <story><title>As Facebook Struggles, Rivals’ Leaders Stay Mostly Mum</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/technology/facebook-tech-industry-leaders.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>primitur</author><text>The elephant in the room is not Facebook.<p>Its the generations of people who have, over the last 10 years, grown up to assume that their personal lives are of interest to others, and wish therefore to capitalize&#x2F;profit on exposing their life to strangers.<p>This is going to be a much more difficult precipice to step back from than, say, the rampant piracy of things like Napster, and so on. We&#x27;ll definitely have to push technology harder and further to establish better ways for these addicts to come down from their highs and return to a more normal level of social interaction - but then again, maybe its too late.<p>(Upvote me if you agree.)<p>Seriously though, I believe we have to appeal to one demographic that gets ignored through all of this, thick and thin: parents. Its truly the only way to adjust this cultural liability for future generations - we simply must insist on parental controls over social media from now on.<p>And, in addition, we have to establish that parents <i>should</i> regulate their kids&#x27; use of online&#x2F;social media tools in such a way that we reduce the devolutionary effect on human interaction that is occurring now.<p>Perhaps its truly time for a revolutionary new service: FamilyBook. You can only gain access with a birth certificate .. mmm ...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>efdee</author><text>No, the elephant is definitely Facebook and friends.<p>&quot;Its the generations of people who have, over the last 10 years, grown up to assume that their personal lives are of interest to others, and wish therefore to capitalize&#x2F;profit on exposing their life to strangers.&quot; - Say what? Most people aren&#x27;t looking to capitalize&#x2F;profit on anything, they just want to share bits of their life with others that they count as their friends.<p>Most people are definitely not aware of what happens behind the curtains. The fact that there&#x27;s a big gorilla in the room watching everything they post and profiting of that is the problem.<p>And that gorilla is Facebook.</text></comment> | <story><title>As Facebook Struggles, Rivals’ Leaders Stay Mostly Mum</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/technology/facebook-tech-industry-leaders.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>primitur</author><text>The elephant in the room is not Facebook.<p>Its the generations of people who have, over the last 10 years, grown up to assume that their personal lives are of interest to others, and wish therefore to capitalize&#x2F;profit on exposing their life to strangers.<p>This is going to be a much more difficult precipice to step back from than, say, the rampant piracy of things like Napster, and so on. We&#x27;ll definitely have to push technology harder and further to establish better ways for these addicts to come down from their highs and return to a more normal level of social interaction - but then again, maybe its too late.<p>(Upvote me if you agree.)<p>Seriously though, I believe we have to appeal to one demographic that gets ignored through all of this, thick and thin: parents. Its truly the only way to adjust this cultural liability for future generations - we simply must insist on parental controls over social media from now on.<p>And, in addition, we have to establish that parents <i>should</i> regulate their kids&#x27; use of online&#x2F;social media tools in such a way that we reduce the devolutionary effect on human interaction that is occurring now.<p>Perhaps its truly time for a revolutionary new service: FamilyBook. You can only gain access with a birth certificate .. mmm ...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>&gt; assume that their personal lives are of interest to others<p>Celebrities and self-promoters have existed forever. As have gossips. Generally people <i>are</i> interested in others&#x27; personal lives.<p>&gt; parental control<p>This is going to be an endless battle, and will come with ludicrous comparisons to the various ages of personal responsibility. You can as easily end underage internet chatting as you can end underage drinking.</text></comment> |
11,408,695 | 11,406,850 | 1 | 3 | 11,405,552 | train | <story><title>Side Projects</title><url>http://avc.com/2016/03/side-projects/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>patio11</author><text>There is a thriving community &#x2F; ecosystem of people doing side projects. It is big enough to support conferences. I&#x27;m making my annual pilgrimmage tomorrow to Vegas to attend Microconf, where ~600 people selling software over the Internet are going to be shooting the breeze and talking conversion rates, email marketing, and Slack integrations.<p>As far as I&#x27;m aware, only one attendee has been acquired by Yahoo. HN is aware of <i>maybe</i> 10 of them. The next 200? You don&#x27;t know about them for the same reason you don&#x27;t know about Petersen Underwriters or Shiodome Accounting. (<i>Who?</i> The most recent two businesses which have had their yearly revenue chart moved not-at-all when I cut them a $1k+ check.)<p>It has not gotten harder to do side projects. Back in 2006, over 25% of my launch budget was to send a fax internationally to send a paper contract to eSellerate (remember them?) for payment processing. These days Stripe exists, and it is better all around.<p>It has not gotten harder to do web development since 2004. Remember when your only options were shared hosting for $4 a month on servers which had two nines of uptime or buying a Dell and learning what colocation meant? These days you can get a reliably hosted VPS for ~$20.<p>Remember when your only option for interactive scripts on the Internet was teaching yourself perl and &#x2F;cgi-bin&#x2F;? Rails exists now. Rails is a much, much more productive environment.<p>Remember when shareware marketing consisted of paying $200 to magazines so you could get a little ad in the back of them and pray that 20+ people bought your think, such that 20 * $25 &gt; $200? These days you do scalable online marketing approaches and sell products which have the same technical complexity as $25 shareware but, crucially, have LTVs in the mid-thousands or higher. (SaaS billing!)</text></comment> | <story><title>Side Projects</title><url>http://avc.com/2016/03/side-projects/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>infodroid</author><text>Contrary to what this VC believes, it is NOT okay to expect someone to &quot;work 60 hours a week at Facebook and then another 40 hours a week on your side project&quot;. Because starting a business should not be founded on giving up your personal life. Quitting your job to focus on your idea full-time is a perfectly reasonable expectation. Investors need to start doing their homework instead of pushing founders to the burnout limit.</text></comment> |
19,949,625 | 19,949,610 | 1 | 2 | 19,948,312 | train | <story><title>Chicago successfully taxes streaming services</title><url>https://www.cbsnews.com/news/netflix-tax-chicago-becomes-first-municipality-to-collect-netflix-tax/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rrrrreeeee</author><text>Do the employees and employers not pay into a separate fund that cannot be touched? I fail to see how it&#x27;s the fault of the pensioners. It&#x27;s absolutely archaic if the future taxpayers have to pay for a retirees pension. In Canada we have pension funds that are separately funded entities that are payed into over an employee&#x27;s career.</text></item><item><author>Shivetya</author><text>Chicago is in the hole for nearly thirty billion dollars. They have been floating the idea of a ten billion dollar bond with the debt structured in a way which lets current politicians escape the fallout from its payment and not having to raise property taxes. The state of Illinois is not well off either with debts estimated at the low of one hundred thirty billion to two hundred fifty billion. An Illinois proposal just to fix state pensions would result in a forty four percent property tax increase for thirty years.<p>Chicago has a narrower group of people to draw from so besides tourist and sin taxes they have to go after any product consumed by residents of the city and that includes digital.<p>Why is this all happening, because there is a well hidden largess in government employee payroll and worse in their pension system. Illinois alone is estimated to have over twenty three thousand retirees pulling down one hundred thousand dollars a year or more. A lot of this is from the higher end positions in city and county governments but you can find police and fire there too.<p>People complain about the disparity in corporate executive level pay to employee should also take a look at the disparity between the same in state and city governments let alone the disparity in retirement to even every day workers in the state. A 100k retirement not counting full benefits is equivalent to nearly forty eight dollars an hour.<p>So expect more digital taxes in your future.<p>PS: the Chicago debt is only for pensions, they are down tens of billions more in deferred maintenance and similar debts.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sct202</author><text>In Illinois and Chicago, the government has been playing games like declaring pension holidays where the contributions shift to the future. The unions control a large base of voters and haven&#x27;t objected, even though this basically endangers their retirements. There&#x27;s going to be a point where the funds will literally run out of money, and I doubt that there will be enough things to tax in a year to make up the difference that should have been paid in over decades.</text></comment> | <story><title>Chicago successfully taxes streaming services</title><url>https://www.cbsnews.com/news/netflix-tax-chicago-becomes-first-municipality-to-collect-netflix-tax/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rrrrreeeee</author><text>Do the employees and employers not pay into a separate fund that cannot be touched? I fail to see how it&#x27;s the fault of the pensioners. It&#x27;s absolutely archaic if the future taxpayers have to pay for a retirees pension. In Canada we have pension funds that are separately funded entities that are payed into over an employee&#x27;s career.</text></item><item><author>Shivetya</author><text>Chicago is in the hole for nearly thirty billion dollars. They have been floating the idea of a ten billion dollar bond with the debt structured in a way which lets current politicians escape the fallout from its payment and not having to raise property taxes. The state of Illinois is not well off either with debts estimated at the low of one hundred thirty billion to two hundred fifty billion. An Illinois proposal just to fix state pensions would result in a forty four percent property tax increase for thirty years.<p>Chicago has a narrower group of people to draw from so besides tourist and sin taxes they have to go after any product consumed by residents of the city and that includes digital.<p>Why is this all happening, because there is a well hidden largess in government employee payroll and worse in their pension system. Illinois alone is estimated to have over twenty three thousand retirees pulling down one hundred thousand dollars a year or more. A lot of this is from the higher end positions in city and county governments but you can find police and fire there too.<p>People complain about the disparity in corporate executive level pay to employee should also take a look at the disparity between the same in state and city governments let alone the disparity in retirement to even every day workers in the state. A 100k retirement not counting full benefits is equivalent to nearly forty eight dollars an hour.<p>So expect more digital taxes in your future.<p>PS: the Chicago debt is only for pensions, they are down tens of billions more in deferred maintenance and similar debts.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cljs-js-eval</author><text>It&#x27;s archaic and should be changed, but the way the system works in the U.S. is pretty well known to its citizens, which makes it at least partially the fault of the pensioners. I live in Chicago and every retired schoolteacher and police officer I meet knows full well that they&#x27;re making an exceptional amount of money in retirement. It&#x27;s usually part of why they took the job.</text></comment> |
23,009,300 | 23,007,618 | 1 | 2 | 23,003,308 | train | <story><title>iPhone SE: The One-Eyed King?</title><url>https://blog.halide.cam/iphone-se-the-one-eyed-king-96713d65a3b1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mrweasel</author><text>I don’t get it, it’s a phone, with a camera. The camera just needs to be good enough, and for most people it’s been good enough for years.<p>Most phone reviews these days focuses waaay to much on the camera, because the reviewers are often people who are also into photography or shooting videos.<p>For myself, I care solely on privacy and price, so I only have one option, if I need a new smartphone. I still think the iPhone SE need to come down in price, but it the only choice, there are no competitors</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joshstrange</author><text>&gt; For myself, I care solely on privacy and price,<p>For you yes. It&#x27;s perfectly fine to not care about the camera but<p>&gt; I don’t get it, it’s a phone, with a camera. The camera just needs to be good enough, and for most people it’s been good enough for years.<p>Can you see how some people really do care about the camera on their phone? I personally don&#x27;t make my phone buying decisions based on the camera either but I heard a parent make a comment a while back when discussing if they wished the phone had a better battery or better camera and they said camera, easy. When pressed they said something to the effect of &quot;In 5 years I&#x27;m not going to wish that I got another hour of battery life 5 years ago but I am going wish my pictures from 5 years ago were better&quot;.<p>Yes I know that &quot;if you really care about photos you should get a real camera&quot; but I think we can all agree that the best camera is the one you have with you and personally I&#x27;m not interested enough to carry a big DSLR with me. But that&#x27;s just me.</text></comment> | <story><title>iPhone SE: The One-Eyed King?</title><url>https://blog.halide.cam/iphone-se-the-one-eyed-king-96713d65a3b1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mrweasel</author><text>I don’t get it, it’s a phone, with a camera. The camera just needs to be good enough, and for most people it’s been good enough for years.<p>Most phone reviews these days focuses waaay to much on the camera, because the reviewers are often people who are also into photography or shooting videos.<p>For myself, I care solely on privacy and price, so I only have one option, if I need a new smartphone. I still think the iPhone SE need to come down in price, but it the only choice, there are no competitors</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stronglikedan</author><text>Funny you say that. I have <i>never</i> been one to take pictures. I took <i>maybe</i> 30 pictures in the first 30 years of my life. Even with my first few smartphones, I hesitated to start using the camera, because the quality was so bad. However, when I got a phone with decent camera, I started taking pictures. And the better cameras got, the more pictures I took. After over a decade of smartphones, I now value the camera as a feature, and good-enough no longer cuts it. And the best part - I don&#x27;t ever even share my pics, so I don&#x27;t even know why I care.</text></comment> |
25,935,339 | 25,934,997 | 1 | 2 | 25,933,121 | train | <story><title>OO in Python is mostly pointless</title><url>https://leontrolski.github.io/mostly-pointless.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fleabitdev</author><text>How do you compensate for the lack of type-dependent name resolution? MyModule.foo(my_t) seems verbose, compared to my_t.foo()</text></item><item><author>Ankintol</author><text>&gt; In general, object orientation is a reasonably elegant way of binding together a compound data type and functions that operate on that data type. Let us accept this at least, and be happy to use it if we want to!<p>Is it elegant? OO couples data types to the functions that operate on them. After years of working on production OO I&#x27;ve still never come across a scenario where I wouldn&#x27;t have been equally or better served by a module system that lets me co-locate the type with the most common operations on that type with all the auto-complete I want:<p><pre><code> &#x2F;&#x2F;type
MyModule {
type t = ...
func foo = ...
func bar = ...
}
</code></pre>
If I want to make use of the type without futzing around with the module, I just grab it and write my own function</text></item><item><author>gorgoiler</author><text>In general, object orientation is a reasonably elegant way of binding together a compound data type and functions that operate on that data type. Let us accept this at least, and be happy to use it if we want to! It is <i>useful</i>.<p>What are emphatically <i>not</i> pretty or useful are Python’s leading underscores to loosely enforce encapsulation. Ugh. I’d sooner use camelCase.<p>Nor do I find charming the belligerent lack of any magical syntactic sugar for `self`. Does Python force you to pass it as an argument to make some kind of clever point? Are there psychotic devs out there who call it something other than `self`? Yuck!<p>And why are some classes (int, str, float) allowed to be lower case but when I try to join that club I draw the ire from the linters? The arrogance!<p>...but I still adore Python. <i>People call these things imperfections but it’s just who we are.</i><p>PS I liked the Python5 joke a lot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dan-robertson</author><text>Most of the time you have:<p>- short names inside modules. I.e. you might have a function called Foo.merge(...) instead of x.merge_with_foo(...)<p>- a way to bring modules into scope so you don’t need to specify the name<p>- not using that many modules. Most lines of code won’t have more than one or two function calls so it shouldn’t matter that much (other techniques can be used in complicated situations)<p>The key advantage of type-dependant name resolution is in using the same names for different types. You might want to write code like foo.map(...) and it is ok if you don’t know the exact type of foo. With modules you may need to know whether to call SimpleFoo.map or CompoundFoo.map.</text></comment> | <story><title>OO in Python is mostly pointless</title><url>https://leontrolski.github.io/mostly-pointless.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fleabitdev</author><text>How do you compensate for the lack of type-dependent name resolution? MyModule.foo(my_t) seems verbose, compared to my_t.foo()</text></item><item><author>Ankintol</author><text>&gt; In general, object orientation is a reasonably elegant way of binding together a compound data type and functions that operate on that data type. Let us accept this at least, and be happy to use it if we want to!<p>Is it elegant? OO couples data types to the functions that operate on them. After years of working on production OO I&#x27;ve still never come across a scenario where I wouldn&#x27;t have been equally or better served by a module system that lets me co-locate the type with the most common operations on that type with all the auto-complete I want:<p><pre><code> &#x2F;&#x2F;type
MyModule {
type t = ...
func foo = ...
func bar = ...
}
</code></pre>
If I want to make use of the type without futzing around with the module, I just grab it and write my own function</text></item><item><author>gorgoiler</author><text>In general, object orientation is a reasonably elegant way of binding together a compound data type and functions that operate on that data type. Let us accept this at least, and be happy to use it if we want to! It is <i>useful</i>.<p>What are emphatically <i>not</i> pretty or useful are Python’s leading underscores to loosely enforce encapsulation. Ugh. I’d sooner use camelCase.<p>Nor do I find charming the belligerent lack of any magical syntactic sugar for `self`. Does Python force you to pass it as an argument to make some kind of clever point? Are there psychotic devs out there who call it something other than `self`? Yuck!<p>And why are some classes (int, str, float) allowed to be lower case but when I try to join that club I draw the ire from the linters? The arrogance!<p>...but I still adore Python. <i>People call these things imperfections but it’s just who we are.</i><p>PS I liked the Python5 joke a lot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Smaug123</author><text>If anything, this is an <i>aid</i> to type-checking. Since MyModule.foo takes only things of type t, the type-checker&#x27;s job is extremely easy and it will help you a lot more in cases when your program is incomplete.<p>So often when using C#-style fluent APIs I find that I&#x27;m completely on my own and have to turn a half-written line into something syntactically correct before Intellisense gives me anything useful. Using an F#-style MyModule.foo, the compiler can tell me everything.</text></comment> |
38,331,096 | 38,330,063 | 1 | 3 | 38,325,552 | train | <story><title>OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/18/23967199/breaking-openai-board-in-discussions-with-sam-altman-to-return-as-ceo</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adam_arthur</author><text>Pretty incredible incompetence all around if true.<p>From the board for not anticipating a backlash and caving immediately... from Microsoft for investing into an endeavor that is purportedly chartered as non-profit and governed by nobodies who can sink it on a whim. And having 0 hard influence on the direction despite a large ownership stake<p>Why bother with a non-profit model that is surreptitiously for profit? The whole structure of OpenAI is largely a facade at this point.<p>Just form a new for profit company and be done with it. Altman&#x27;s direction for profit is fine, but shouldn&#x27;t have been pursued under the loose premise of a non profit.<p>While OpenAI leads currently, there are so many competitors that are within striking distance without the drama. Why keep the baggage?<p>It&#x27;s pretty clear that the best engineering will decide the winners, not the popularity of the CEO. OpenAI has first mover advantage, and perhaps better talent, but not by an order of magnitude. There is no special sauce here.<p>Altman may be charismatic and well connected, but the hero worship put forward on here is really sad and misplaced.</text></item><item><author>meetpateltech</author><text>Update on the OpenAI drama: Altman and the board had till 5pm to reach a truce where the board would resign and he and Brockman would return. The deadline has passed and mass resignations expected if a deal isn’t reached ASAP<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;alexeheath&#x2F;status&#x2F;1726055095341875545" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;alexeheath&#x2F;status&#x2F;1726055095341875545</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jstummbillig</author><text>&gt; While OpenAI leads currently, there are so many competitors that are within striking distance without the drama.<p>It&#x27;s hard to put into words, that do not seem contradictory: GPT-4 is <i>barely</i> good enough to provide tremendous value. For what I need, no other model is passing that bar, which makes them not slightly worse but entirely unusable. But again, it&#x27;s not that GPT-4 is great, and I would most certainly go to whatever is better at the current price metrics in a heartbeat.</text></comment> | <story><title>OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/18/23967199/breaking-openai-board-in-discussions-with-sam-altman-to-return-as-ceo</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adam_arthur</author><text>Pretty incredible incompetence all around if true.<p>From the board for not anticipating a backlash and caving immediately... from Microsoft for investing into an endeavor that is purportedly chartered as non-profit and governed by nobodies who can sink it on a whim. And having 0 hard influence on the direction despite a large ownership stake<p>Why bother with a non-profit model that is surreptitiously for profit? The whole structure of OpenAI is largely a facade at this point.<p>Just form a new for profit company and be done with it. Altman&#x27;s direction for profit is fine, but shouldn&#x27;t have been pursued under the loose premise of a non profit.<p>While OpenAI leads currently, there are so many competitors that are within striking distance without the drama. Why keep the baggage?<p>It&#x27;s pretty clear that the best engineering will decide the winners, not the popularity of the CEO. OpenAI has first mover advantage, and perhaps better talent, but not by an order of magnitude. There is no special sauce here.<p>Altman may be charismatic and well connected, but the hero worship put forward on here is really sad and misplaced.</text></item><item><author>meetpateltech</author><text>Update on the OpenAI drama: Altman and the board had till 5pm to reach a truce where the board would resign and he and Brockman would return. The deadline has passed and mass resignations expected if a deal isn’t reached ASAP<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;alexeheath&#x2F;status&#x2F;1726055095341875545" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;alexeheath&#x2F;status&#x2F;1726055095341875545</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rurban</author><text>&gt; It&#x27;s pretty clear that the best engineering will decide the winners, not the popularity of the CEO.<p>This is ML, not Software engineering. Money wins, not engineering. Same as it with Google, which won because they invested massively into edge nodes, winning the ping race (fastest results), not the best results.<p>Ilja can follow Google&#x27;s Bard by holding it back until they have countermodels trained to remove conflicts (&quot;safety&quot;), but this will not win them any compute contracts, nor keep them the existing GPU hours. It&#x27;s only mass, not smarts. Ilja lost this one.</text></comment> |
33,707,385 | 33,706,986 | 1 | 3 | 33,704,054 | train | <story><title>Considering C99 for Curl</title><url>https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2022/11/17/considering-c99-for-curl/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tialaramex</author><text>Note that strncpy() is <i>not</i> intended for safety. The purpose of strncpy() is to write to fixed size data structures such as part of the filesystem where you don&#x27;t want to store NUL termination on strings.<p>Like 1980s Internet protocol features the rationale for weird things in C is more often &quot;That&#x27;s how Unix works&quot; than &quot;This is actually a clever safety feature&quot;.</text></item><item><author>Karellen</author><text>The tipping point for me would be `snprintf()` and related functions. I&#x27;ve found it generally more useful&#x2F;memorable&#x2F;readable than strncpy()&#x2F;strlcpy() and other updates to the dangerous and deprecated strcpy() just for copying strings safely, never mind it&#x27;s other formatting abilities.<p>If Curl already has its own &quot;decent and functional replacement&quot; for `snprintf()` that&#x27;s used extensively throughout the codebase, or if they just don&#x27;t need that functionality (I haven&#x27;t checked) then I guess that&#x27;s not an issue. But that would be the big selling point as far as I&#x27;m concerned.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kazinator</author><text>&gt; <i>write to fixed size data structures such as part of the filesystem where you don&#x27;t want to store NUL termination on strings</i><p>... AND where you want to pad the remaining space with zero bytes, so that you don&#x27;t leak uninitialized memory onto the disk, or network.<p>The null byte padding behavior of strncpy makes it clear what the intended use was.<p>Also, the way C initializes character arrays from literals has strncpy-like behavior, because the entire aggregate is initialized, so the extra bytes are all zero:<p><pre><code> char a[4] = &quot;a&quot;; &#x2F;&#x2F; like strncpy(a, &quot;a&quot;, 4);
char b[4] = &quot;abcd&quot;; &#x2F;&#x2F; like strncpy(a, &quot;abcd&quot;, 4);
</code></pre>
the compiler could literally emit strncpy calls to do these initializations, so we might say that strncpy is a primitive that is directly relevant for run-time support for a C declaration feature.</text></comment> | <story><title>Considering C99 for Curl</title><url>https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2022/11/17/considering-c99-for-curl/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tialaramex</author><text>Note that strncpy() is <i>not</i> intended for safety. The purpose of strncpy() is to write to fixed size data structures such as part of the filesystem where you don&#x27;t want to store NUL termination on strings.<p>Like 1980s Internet protocol features the rationale for weird things in C is more often &quot;That&#x27;s how Unix works&quot; than &quot;This is actually a clever safety feature&quot;.</text></item><item><author>Karellen</author><text>The tipping point for me would be `snprintf()` and related functions. I&#x27;ve found it generally more useful&#x2F;memorable&#x2F;readable than strncpy()&#x2F;strlcpy() and other updates to the dangerous and deprecated strcpy() just for copying strings safely, never mind it&#x27;s other formatting abilities.<p>If Curl already has its own &quot;decent and functional replacement&quot; for `snprintf()` that&#x27;s used extensively throughout the codebase, or if they just don&#x27;t need that functionality (I haven&#x27;t checked) then I guess that&#x27;s not an issue. But that would be the big selling point as far as I&#x27;m concerned.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kzrdude</author><text>Do we have a source for what the intended purpose is? I think you speak well to the effective purpose, but I&#x27;m not sure if it was that clear when it was introduced.</text></comment> |
23,427,075 | 23,427,101 | 1 | 2 | 23,415,034 | train | <story><title>First photo of HS2 tunnel boring machines</title><url>https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2020/06/04/first-photo-of-hs2-tunnel-boring-machines/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>acallaghan</author><text>I&#x27;m mainly annoyed about the rollout of HS2 because of the government&#x27;s insistence of all projects starting&#x2F;ending in London. A new trans-pennine rail tunnel from Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield under the peaks, and Manc-Leeds-Hull would add vastly more value than a faster connection between already well connected cities. This is planned for &#x27;HS3&#x27;, but that could be 40+ years off at this rate.<p>The large-scale projects need to srart every 10 years or so... the UK is in desperate need of non-car infrastructure if it wants to be carbon zero by 2050.</text></item><item><author>BlackVanilla</author><text>In the media, there&#x27;s been a focus on HS2&#x27;s ever-growing budget, bulldozing land, and massive delays. These are significant, if not more so than what I&#x27;m about to talk about, but it&#x27;s worth focusing on an aspect frequently not considered: the positive externality of improving human skills.<p>With Crossrail (now Elizabeth Line) nearly finished under London, the Channel Tunnel, and now HS2 tunnels, the UK is exposing some of its workforce to some great tunnelling projects. The skill these workers must have aquired working on these large-scale tunnelling projects is impressive. The UK could even be developing a comparative advantage in tunnelling.<p>It doesn&#x27;t solve the factors outlined at the start, but it&#x27;s a side affect few discuss in public discourse when deciding to fund an infrastructure project like HS2. The positive externalities of SpaceX&#x27;s work or of NASA&#x27;s work are not limited to the end goal (the fact we fly something to space), it&#x27;s also that now we have more people with better skills. This is something that the media doesn&#x27;t focus on when big breakthroughs happen, whether privately- or publicly-funded, and I think that&#x27;s a shame.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chrisseaton</author><text>&gt; A new trans-pennine rail tunnel from Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield under the peaks, and Manc-Leeds-Hull would add vastly more value than a faster connection between already well connected cities.<p>I live in this area and do these routes frequently and yes I&#x27;d love them to be more connected too.<p>But realistically, like almost everyone else in the country almost all my travel is to and from London, because that&#x27;s where most things happen.</text></comment> | <story><title>First photo of HS2 tunnel boring machines</title><url>https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2020/06/04/first-photo-of-hs2-tunnel-boring-machines/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>acallaghan</author><text>I&#x27;m mainly annoyed about the rollout of HS2 because of the government&#x27;s insistence of all projects starting&#x2F;ending in London. A new trans-pennine rail tunnel from Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield under the peaks, and Manc-Leeds-Hull would add vastly more value than a faster connection between already well connected cities. This is planned for &#x27;HS3&#x27;, but that could be 40+ years off at this rate.<p>The large-scale projects need to srart every 10 years or so... the UK is in desperate need of non-car infrastructure if it wants to be carbon zero by 2050.</text></item><item><author>BlackVanilla</author><text>In the media, there&#x27;s been a focus on HS2&#x27;s ever-growing budget, bulldozing land, and massive delays. These are significant, if not more so than what I&#x27;m about to talk about, but it&#x27;s worth focusing on an aspect frequently not considered: the positive externality of improving human skills.<p>With Crossrail (now Elizabeth Line) nearly finished under London, the Channel Tunnel, and now HS2 tunnels, the UK is exposing some of its workforce to some great tunnelling projects. The skill these workers must have aquired working on these large-scale tunnelling projects is impressive. The UK could even be developing a comparative advantage in tunnelling.<p>It doesn&#x27;t solve the factors outlined at the start, but it&#x27;s a side affect few discuss in public discourse when deciding to fund an infrastructure project like HS2. The positive externalities of SpaceX&#x27;s work or of NASA&#x27;s work are not limited to the end goal (the fact we fly something to space), it&#x27;s also that now we have more people with better skills. This is something that the media doesn&#x27;t focus on when big breakthroughs happen, whether privately- or publicly-funded, and I think that&#x27;s a shame.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>C1sc0cat</author><text>Rail lines out of London are already very very congested -
and the infrastructure is creaking.<p>The idea is that hs2 would be new track that would free up slots on the existing network.</text></comment> |
3,173,243 | 3,172,669 | 1 | 3 | 3,172,031 | train | <story><title>What's in a name? Freshmeat is now Freecode</title><url>http://freecode.com/articles/whats-in-a-name</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>sanswork</author><text>I haven't thought of Freshmeat in probably 8 years. Amazing to see that they are still around. Does anyone here actually actively use them anymore? If so how? Back in the day I would use it to watch for new releases of different types of software to try out and experiment with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pixelmonkey</author><text>I think freshmeat/freecode used to serve a niche that has now been filled by the open source community and the web itself. When announcements for new code releases used to happen on mailing lists and download links used to be tarballs, it was relevant to have a feed to notify you of new releases.<p>Now, new code releases happen at places like github, google code, and bitbucket, and the releases are almost immediately pushed upstream to package maintainers / repositories, blogs, twitter accounts, etc. Therefore, rather than a rebrand, I think what they really need to do is accept that their time is no longer here and go for a deadpool. Hard pill to swallow, perhaps, but probably the best medicine.</text></comment> | <story><title>What's in a name? Freshmeat is now Freecode</title><url>http://freecode.com/articles/whats-in-a-name</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>sanswork</author><text>I haven't thought of Freshmeat in probably 8 years. Amazing to see that they are still around. Does anyone here actually actively use them anymore? If so how? Back in the day I would use it to watch for new releases of different types of software to try out and experiment with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SageRaven</author><text>I visit once a week to view the projects that have been updated over the week. Keeps me aware of new projects and up to date on the status of stuff that I use every day but might not otherwise know how its progressing.<p>Personally, I'm kinda bummed about the the change of name.</text></comment> |
34,492,219 | 34,492,213 | 1 | 2 | 34,490,240 | train | <story><title>Netflix's New Chapter</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2023/netflixs-new-chapter/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tootie</author><text>Yeah, D+ is churning out an enormous volume of what would be considered prestige content at other services. All the Star Wars and Marvel shows are star-studded and larded with top-tier visual effects. And some of them aren&#x27;t really getting a lot of viewers from what the rumors say.</text></item><item><author>phphphphp</author><text>Content is expensive to produce. Disney+ is not just a streaming platform for existing Disney content, rather, Disney produce content for it. Likewise, Netflix spends most of its money on content, operating the actual platform is comparatively cheap.</text></item><item><author>zamadatix</author><text>What I don&#x27;t understand is how e.g. Disney+ is losing so much money. It&#x27;s Disney&#x27;s content, has an enormous userbase, and somehow is bleeding billions?</text></item><item><author>no_wizard</author><text>I&#x27;m gonna attempt to break this down:<p>- Netflix has 5-6 Billion USD free cash flow, and because they got what debt they do have under favorable terms, they are positioned to retain most of that free cash flow<p>- Disney, Comcast (Peacock), CBS&#x2F;Viacom and other media corporations are saddled with debt, and are all losing money on their own independent streaming businesses. Likely untenable in their shareholder model<p>- Therefore, Netflix needs to do what it can to retain &#x2F; attract subscribers, but essentially can wait until the other services have to give up due to cost<p>In a nutshell, Netflix is poised to play more long game, due to cost structures of their competitors.<p>so fair, sounds good, but it assumes the boards &#x2F; leadership of these companies won&#x27;t also play a long game, seeing some sort of profitability horizon is they cannibalize their existing businesses for sticky services (like streaming). I could see Disney doing this, to some extent, with their cable TV channels and movies. I&#x27;m less bullish on Comcast&#x2F;NBC, CBS&#x2F;Viacom or really any other media company being able to do this, simply because they don&#x27;t have the &quot;staying power&quot; Disney does.<p>This also fails to account for the strength of HBO Max (very strong sub numbers)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Volundr</author><text>TBH this more or less describes the problem at least for me. I&#x27;m like 3 Star Wars series behind. Catching up at this point feels more like a chore than entertainment. Forget Marvel.</text></comment> | <story><title>Netflix's New Chapter</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2023/netflixs-new-chapter/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tootie</author><text>Yeah, D+ is churning out an enormous volume of what would be considered prestige content at other services. All the Star Wars and Marvel shows are star-studded and larded with top-tier visual effects. And some of them aren&#x27;t really getting a lot of viewers from what the rumors say.</text></item><item><author>phphphphp</author><text>Content is expensive to produce. Disney+ is not just a streaming platform for existing Disney content, rather, Disney produce content for it. Likewise, Netflix spends most of its money on content, operating the actual platform is comparatively cheap.</text></item><item><author>zamadatix</author><text>What I don&#x27;t understand is how e.g. Disney+ is losing so much money. It&#x27;s Disney&#x27;s content, has an enormous userbase, and somehow is bleeding billions?</text></item><item><author>no_wizard</author><text>I&#x27;m gonna attempt to break this down:<p>- Netflix has 5-6 Billion USD free cash flow, and because they got what debt they do have under favorable terms, they are positioned to retain most of that free cash flow<p>- Disney, Comcast (Peacock), CBS&#x2F;Viacom and other media corporations are saddled with debt, and are all losing money on their own independent streaming businesses. Likely untenable in their shareholder model<p>- Therefore, Netflix needs to do what it can to retain &#x2F; attract subscribers, but essentially can wait until the other services have to give up due to cost<p>In a nutshell, Netflix is poised to play more long game, due to cost structures of their competitors.<p>so fair, sounds good, but it assumes the boards &#x2F; leadership of these companies won&#x27;t also play a long game, seeing some sort of profitability horizon is they cannibalize their existing businesses for sticky services (like streaming). I could see Disney doing this, to some extent, with their cable TV channels and movies. I&#x27;m less bullish on Comcast&#x2F;NBC, CBS&#x2F;Viacom or really any other media company being able to do this, simply because they don&#x27;t have the &quot;staying power&quot; Disney does.<p>This also fails to account for the strength of HBO Max (very strong sub numbers)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thedrbrian</author><text>&gt;All the Star Wars and Marvel shows are star-studded and larded with top-tier visual effects.<p>I&#x27;m just going to throw this out there. What if these shows just aren&#x27;t that good?</text></comment> |
36,737,187 | 36,735,661 | 1 | 3 | 36,734,333 | train | <story><title>Evidence for a gravitational wave background from a galaxy-sized detector</title><url>https://astrobites.org/2023/06/28/drop-the-bass-evidence-for-a-gravitational-wave-background-from-a-galaxy-sized-detector/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>c7DJTLrn</author><text>So when we say that a star is N light years away and therefore it would take N years to reach at the speed of light, is that not true? If the speed of light is changed by gravitational waves.<p>How does this play into our understanding of the size and expansion of the universe?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sclarisse</author><text>As others have noted, the speed of light (in a vacuum) will always constant. To be nice and pedantic, you can always slow it down by making that light go through a medium, where it will go slower (e.g. any prism that makes a pretty rainbow). It’s a cheat of sorts, but the speed of light isn’t some special property of light: it’s a property of spacetime. There is a maximum speed of anything at all, and unimpeded light goes this speed. For most astrophysics purposes this doesn’t worry us much, as space is essentially empty.<p>You can also “slow light down” by just making it go further: a few clever mirrors will do this easily. This is even more of a cheat, as the light itself isn’t any slower, it just gets where it was going a little later because it went further.<p>In a sense that’s what’s happening here: the spacetime is being stretched on one axis and squeezed on another, as gravitational waves pass through it. It isn’t by much, which is why we need a whole galaxy to measure it.</text></comment> | <story><title>Evidence for a gravitational wave background from a galaxy-sized detector</title><url>https://astrobites.org/2023/06/28/drop-the-bass-evidence-for-a-gravitational-wave-background-from-a-galaxy-sized-detector/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>c7DJTLrn</author><text>So when we say that a star is N light years away and therefore it would take N years to reach at the speed of light, is that not true? If the speed of light is changed by gravitational waves.<p>How does this play into our understanding of the size and expansion of the universe?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nathan_compton</author><text>The way to really think about this is that there really isn&#x27;t any objective thing except proper time and the manifold of the spacetime you&#x27;re interested in. The idea of things taking an objective amount of time as seen by all observers is only an approximation valid at low speeds and low curvature in a small area. The only objective thing is the causal structure.</text></comment> |
18,460,638 | 18,460,603 | 1 | 2 | 18,458,819 | train | <story><title>PG&E stock plunged 32% after it disclosed a possible link to California’s fire</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/pg-e-plunges-in-early-trading-amid-wildfire-destruction</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brownbat</author><text>99PI&#x27;s coverage of forest fire policy and design was really provocative:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&#x2F;episode&#x2F;built-to-burn&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&#x2F;episode&#x2F;built-to-burn&#x2F;</a><p>1. Our entire approach to fighting forest fires may just be making them worse.<p>2. Smart and simple design decisions can save houses.<p>A house can be thirty feet from an entire forest on fire and never burn down.<p>We learned this through hardcore experiments in Canada where they built homes to test and lit forests on fire nearby.<p>One of the immediate takeaways was to change roofing materials to resist embers, but there are other options for materials and landscaping that could make homes basically impervious.<p>The problem is probabilities. Fires are common, constant. They are exceedingly rare in any one location though. So fire resistant design is no one&#x27;s urgent problem, fires are always something that seems like it will happen to somebody else.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nixpulvis</author><text>My best friend in high school lost his house to a fire in the mountains of CO. The house was made out of clays and other highly fire resistant materials, to the point it was designated the safe house for the fire crew of the area... when the four mile canyon fire swept through it was so hot it even melted all the metals like copper and steel. There was nothing left.<p>I&#x27;m sure there are lots of ways to build houses to resist fire more, and we should be doing that, but &quot;basically impervious&quot; is an overstatement.</text></comment> | <story><title>PG&E stock plunged 32% after it disclosed a possible link to California’s fire</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/pg-e-plunges-in-early-trading-amid-wildfire-destruction</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brownbat</author><text>99PI&#x27;s coverage of forest fire policy and design was really provocative:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&#x2F;episode&#x2F;built-to-burn&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;99percentinvisible.org&#x2F;episode&#x2F;built-to-burn&#x2F;</a><p>1. Our entire approach to fighting forest fires may just be making them worse.<p>2. Smart and simple design decisions can save houses.<p>A house can be thirty feet from an entire forest on fire and never burn down.<p>We learned this through hardcore experiments in Canada where they built homes to test and lit forests on fire nearby.<p>One of the immediate takeaways was to change roofing materials to resist embers, but there are other options for materials and landscaping that could make homes basically impervious.<p>The problem is probabilities. Fires are common, constant. They are exceedingly rare in any one location though. So fire resistant design is no one&#x27;s urgent problem, fires are always something that seems like it will happen to somebody else.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dbcurtis</author><text>&gt; A house can be thirty feet from an entire forest on fire and never burn down.<p>In zero wind. The fires in Santa Rosa were driven by 60 mph (100 kph) winds. Even 30 mph winds will pick up the top 15 meters of a burning Ponderosa Pine and carry it 400 meters away and start a new fire.<p>After the Santa Rosa fires I saw newspaper photos of melted barbeque grills. A fire hot enough to melt cast iron is going to light or melt any roofing material I can think of.</text></comment> |
5,857,150 | 5,856,788 | 1 | 2 | 5,855,986 | train | <story><title>Encrypt your Google chats and make the NSA sad</title><url>https://github.com/nicolas-t/gAES</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tlrobinson</author><text>Possibly, if they had say, a backdoor in all Intel&#x2F;AMD processors.<p>The question is what he meant by &quot;We can plant bugs in machines.&quot;</text></item><item><author>conradfr</author><text>Well can they do that in Richard Stallman&#x27;s laptop ? If so we are doomed :)</text></item><item><author>freshhawk</author><text>This would definitely be the level of security that falls under this statement from Snowden:<p>Q: Is it possible to put security in place to protect against state surveillance?<p>A: &quot;You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying. We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.&quot;<p>(from <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.guardian.co.uk&#x2F;world&#x2F;2013&#x2F;jun&#x2F;09&#x2F;nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.guardian.co.uk&#x2F;world&#x2F;2013&#x2F;jun&#x2F;09&#x2F;nsa-whistleblowe...</a>)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SilasX</author><text>Not even then. I remember reading about how he uses the freest (as in freedomest) setup he can get:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stallman.org&#x2F;stallman-computing.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stallman.org&#x2F;stallman-computing.html</a><p>He mentions its a Lemote machine which doesn&#x27;t look like it uses an AMD&#x2F;Intel processor, as it uses Longsoon:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Loongson" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Loongson</a><p>&quot;Unlike processors from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices or VIA Technologies, Loongson does not support the x86 instruction set. The processor&#x27;s main operating system is Linux, while in theory any OS with MIPS support should also work.&quot;</text></comment> | <story><title>Encrypt your Google chats and make the NSA sad</title><url>https://github.com/nicolas-t/gAES</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tlrobinson</author><text>Possibly, if they had say, a backdoor in all Intel&#x2F;AMD processors.<p>The question is what he meant by &quot;We can plant bugs in machines.&quot;</text></item><item><author>conradfr</author><text>Well can they do that in Richard Stallman&#x27;s laptop ? If so we are doomed :)</text></item><item><author>freshhawk</author><text>This would definitely be the level of security that falls under this statement from Snowden:<p>Q: Is it possible to put security in place to protect against state surveillance?<p>A: &quot;You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying. We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.&quot;<p>(from <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.guardian.co.uk&#x2F;world&#x2F;2013&#x2F;jun&#x2F;09&#x2F;nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.guardian.co.uk&#x2F;world&#x2F;2013&#x2F;jun&#x2F;09&#x2F;nsa-whistleblowe...</a>)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xefer</author><text>&quot;We can plant bugs in machines&quot; to me sounds more like a clue that this guy really doesn&#x27;t know what the hell he&#x27;s talking about.</text></comment> |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.