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38,916,170 | 38,916,355 | 1 | 2 | 38,913,649 | train | <story><title>Tuna species popular in sashimi and poke bowls in sharp decline</title><url>https://phys.org/news/2024-01-tuna-species-popular-sashimi-bowls.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>0xbadcafebee</author><text><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Passenger_pigeon" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Passenger_pigeon</a><p><pre><code> Passenger pigeons were hunted by Native Americans, but hunting intensified after the
arrival of Europeans, particularly in the 19th century. Pigeon meat was commercialized
as cheap food, resulting in hunting on a massive scale for many decades. There were
several other factors contributing to the decline and subsequent extinction of the
species, including shrinking of the large breeding populations necessary for
preservation of the species and widespread deforestation, which destroyed its habitat.
A slow decline between about 1800 and 1870 was followed by a rapid decline between 1870
and 1890. In 1900, the last confirmed wild bird was shot in southern Ohio.
</code></pre>
So too shall go the tuna. The size of a single tuna is already 50% to 70% smaller than normal. Soon their populations will go into freefall once there&#x27;s not enough mature ones to spawn. The fishing will continue until there&#x27;s no more. Even if legal limits are imposed, fishing will just continue illegally as it already does today.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wharvle</author><text><i>1491</i> (or is it the sequel, <i>1493</i>? I could see this topic ending up in either) makes the case that there&#x27;s nowhere near as much evidence of Native Americans eating passenger pigeons as one might expect given the vast populations (and incredible ease of hunting) reported in later decades. Instead, the vast numbers may have been a sign of a badly screwed-up ecosystem, with huge swaths of native-managed agriculture and land suddenly going unmanaged, freeing up tons of cheap calories of exactly the kind the birds could use, leading to a gigantic boom in species perfectly-situated to take advantage of it, which would include the Passenger. All this, on account of the continent experiencing an apocalyptic drop in population after European disease arrived (and for other reasons, of course, but the diseases did a great deal of it).<p>That&#x27;s not why it went extinct, of course, but does put in perspective what may have been a more &quot;natural&quot; population level for the bird, previously—the shocking decline may have been from an aberrant many-times-larger-than-normal population, not from the range in which the population had tended to stay before extensive contact with Europe. It may also explain why it was <i>possible</i> for it to go extinct so seemingly-easily—they weren&#x27;t truly thriving as much as one might suppose from the numbers, and in fact were quite vulnerable, especially if people got accustomed to eating lots of them and their population was already destined to rubber-band back to something <i>under</i> its ordinary level.</text></comment> | <story><title>Tuna species popular in sashimi and poke bowls in sharp decline</title><url>https://phys.org/news/2024-01-tuna-species-popular-sashimi-bowls.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>0xbadcafebee</author><text><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Passenger_pigeon" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Passenger_pigeon</a><p><pre><code> Passenger pigeons were hunted by Native Americans, but hunting intensified after the
arrival of Europeans, particularly in the 19th century. Pigeon meat was commercialized
as cheap food, resulting in hunting on a massive scale for many decades. There were
several other factors contributing to the decline and subsequent extinction of the
species, including shrinking of the large breeding populations necessary for
preservation of the species and widespread deforestation, which destroyed its habitat.
A slow decline between about 1800 and 1870 was followed by a rapid decline between 1870
and 1890. In 1900, the last confirmed wild bird was shot in southern Ohio.
</code></pre>
So too shall go the tuna. The size of a single tuna is already 50% to 70% smaller than normal. Soon their populations will go into freefall once there&#x27;s not enough mature ones to spawn. The fishing will continue until there&#x27;s no more. Even if legal limits are imposed, fishing will just continue illegally as it already does today.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>strangattractor</author><text>The worlds fisheries are almost universally mismanaged.<p>Which reminds me of a conversation with a relative of mine from the Eastern shore of Va. He worked for a company that caught Horseshoe Crabs. These crabs were then ground up and used for bait to catch Conch. I pointed out to him that down the street from his company was another company that caught and released Horseshoe Crabs. They used their blood to produce medicine at great profit. Since that time Va has sadly had to place restrictions on harvesting Horseshoe Crabs. So not only did we over fish Horseshoe Crabs - we did it to over fish Conch.</text></comment> |
30,745,582 | 30,745,521 | 1 | 2 | 30,743,891 | train | <story><title>Using a Minitel 1B as a serial terminal</title><url>https://blog.jgc.org/2022/03/using-minitel-1b-as-serial-terminal.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>JPLeRouzic</author><text>A very long time ago (~1985), I dropped my Minitel and the screen was dead.
I cabled an Ascii keyboard on the Mother board and made an interface for a Black&amp; White TV with only one transistor (2N2222 probably) and a few resistors.
The motherboard was inserted in a &quot;Traoumad&quot; metal box for the famous biscuits.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Traou_Mad" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Traou_Mad</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Using a Minitel 1B as a serial terminal</title><url>https://blog.jgc.org/2022/03/using-minitel-1b-as-serial-terminal.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jfim</author><text>One of the things that blog post makes me realize is that we don&#x27;t have instruction manuals that are intended for a technical audience anymore. The odds of seeing an instruction manual with pinouts for connectors and voltage levels are pretty much nil nowadays.</text></comment> |
12,819,997 | 12,818,399 | 1 | 3 | 12,817,722 | train | <story><title>Zcash begins</title><url>https://z.cash/blog/zcash-begins.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Animats</author><text><i>&quot;This technology can do for cooperation what the Internet did for communication two decades ago.&quot;</i><p>Huh? Why? How? It&#x27;s an altcoin with more anonymity than Bitcoin. That&#x27;s nice, but no big deal.<p>I went to hear Tromer&#x27;s talk on the theory behind Zcash at Stanford last Wednesday.[1] There were a lot of very strong claims and a lot of hand-waving. I&#x27;m not an expert in that area, but the claims were awfully strong and the presentation didn&#x27;t back them up sufficiently. Here&#x27;s his key paper.[2] He claims, at least, to have developed a new way to generate cryptographically strong hash functions. See section 1.1 of that paper. That&#x27;s a hard problem. Of the existing crypto-grade hash functions, Snefru, MD2 (128-bit), MD4, MD5, RIPEMD, HAVAL-128, and SHA-0 have all been broken, and SHA-1 is looking weak. Solving that problem alone would be a noteworthy achievement. So where&#x27;s Tromer&#x27;s proposed hash function, evaluated by the crypto community?<p>On the financial front, the insiders take a 20% rakeoff of new Zcash coins for the first four years. That&#x27;s a huge cut for a financial product. The investors include Roger Ver, the convicted felon who publicly said Mt. Gox was sound. What could possibly go wrong?<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.stanford.edu&#x2F;class&#x2F;ee380&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.stanford.edu&#x2F;class&#x2F;ee380&#x2F;</a>
[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eprint.iacr.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;580.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eprint.iacr.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;580.pdf</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Zcash begins</title><url>https://z.cash/blog/zcash-begins.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mostly_harmless</author><text>&gt; Zcash is a technology, and like any technology it has multiple uses. I suspect that many of the best applications of this technology haven&#x27;t been conceived of yet.<p>&gt; 10% pre-mine to founders<p>This smells super fishy. Altogether, I&#x27;ve yet to see anything to do with cryptocurrencies be useful. Nothing but scams, hiding illegal activities, and hopeless optimism so far.</text></comment> |
27,975,921 | 27,976,170 | 1 | 3 | 27,973,986 | train | <story><title>Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/father-builds-exoskeleton-help-wheelchair-bound-son-walk-2021-07-26/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manmeet</author><text>This is amazing. I built one to help my nephew walk, and now selling commercially ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;trexorobotics.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;trexorobotics.com</a> )<p>I am fed-up at the lack of options available to individuals. People thought that everyone will get an exoskeleton and be able to walk with it everywhere. But the industry ran into many challenges.<p>A big one that many dont understand is getting insurance coverage. The way the US healthcare system is designed, it will only cover restoration of mobility, not a restoration of function. So, from their perspective, a wheelchair and some pain meds can do the job easily.<p>I believe that they key is to start with children, this is where you have families desperate for a solution, higher costs due to them growing and spending their entire life in a wheelchair, and the option to truly have a life changing impact.<p>But things are changing, people are starting to notice the work that we are doing. We need a lot more people building exoskeletons and similar powered orthotics!!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chime</author><text>&gt; So, from their perspective, a wheelchair and some pain meds can do the job easily.<p>And not even a good wheelchair. For my wife recently diagnosed with MS, they would only approve of a basic, featureless, uncomfortable one after I would pay the $3000 deductible plus 20% coinsurance. Instead, I got a light-weight folding electric wheelchair with nearly full-day worth of battery (15 miles), with a spare battery, adjustable headrest for $1300 off Amazon. Add an octopus-tripod fan with 10hr battery, golf-cart umbrella, bendable cane holder, bottle holder, and an A&#x2F;C fan jacket for a total of $200 and now she is able to spend a few hours out with our kids at museums, aquariums, and zoos.<p>It was literally cheaper for me to buy all of this cash than try to spend 40+ hours getting insurance approval.<p>I absolutely love how practical and solid your product is. I cannot comment on the pricing because I have no idea what your costs&#x2F;market is but if my kid needed $999&#x2F;mo to walk, I would do literally anything to be able to afford it. Hopefully the costs keep coming down for those with a smaller budget. Good luck!</text></comment> | <story><title>Father builds exoskeleton to help wheelchair-bound son walk</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/father-builds-exoskeleton-help-wheelchair-bound-son-walk-2021-07-26/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manmeet</author><text>This is amazing. I built one to help my nephew walk, and now selling commercially ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;trexorobotics.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;trexorobotics.com</a> )<p>I am fed-up at the lack of options available to individuals. People thought that everyone will get an exoskeleton and be able to walk with it everywhere. But the industry ran into many challenges.<p>A big one that many dont understand is getting insurance coverage. The way the US healthcare system is designed, it will only cover restoration of mobility, not a restoration of function. So, from their perspective, a wheelchair and some pain meds can do the job easily.<p>I believe that they key is to start with children, this is where you have families desperate for a solution, higher costs due to them growing and spending their entire life in a wheelchair, and the option to truly have a life changing impact.<p>But things are changing, people are starting to notice the work that we are doing. We need a lot more people building exoskeletons and similar powered orthotics!!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>optymizer</author><text>I was looking at the videos, and realized that maybe we don&#x27;t need small exo-bones (societal expectations and normalcy aside), maybe it&#x27;s easier to go the other way and make exo-robots, since they&#x27;d be bigger with more room for batteries, could balance on their own and a human could be sitting&#x2F;standing inside, driving the legs with some input method - either with legs, or hand gestures.<p>I&#x27;m picturing the robot in Avatar [1], but with an open top and much less threatening and not weaponized [2], like big robotic pants. If I were to quit my job, it would be to make human robot minotaurs a reality, but then again, what do I know about robots?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=F6ttDZFmGqg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=F6ttDZFmGqg</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pcmag.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;toyotas-latest-humanoid-robot-can-balance-on-one-leg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pcmag.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;toyotas-latest-humanoid-robot-can...</a></text></comment> |
14,180,585 | 14,180,179 | 1 | 3 | 14,177,411 | train | <story><title>Writing a Time Series Database from Scratch</title><url>https://fabxc.org/blog/2017-04-10-writing-a-tsdb</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jnordwick</author><text>I still can&#x27;t figure out why people can&#x27;t even come close to KDB+. It is a real conundrum. I&#x27;ve been waiting patiently for something to show up, but the gap seems to keep getting bigger instead of smaller.<p>Is it that people want to make the problem more complex that it needs to be? Is it that those who know most about these issues don&#x27;t share their secrets so implemented from the outside often don&#x27;t have a good understanding of how to do things properly? If you were to asked the guy behind Prometheus if he&#x27;s looked at the commercial offerings and what he&#x27;s learned from them, would even be able to speak about them intelligently?<p>There seems to be a huge skills gap on these things that I can&#x27;t put my finger on. I&#x27;d love to be able to use a real TSDB, even at only half the speed and usefulness. It would be great for these smaller firms that cant or wont pay the license fees for a commercial offering until they get larger.</text></comment> | <story><title>Writing a Time Series Database from Scratch</title><url>https://fabxc.org/blog/2017-04-10-writing-a-tsdb</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ah-</author><text>Exciting times in database land! It certainly seems like the good systems are converging on very similar storage architectures. This design is so similar to how Kafka and Kudu work internally.<p>As the raw storage seems pretty optimal now, I suspect next we&#x27;ll see a comeback of indices for more precise queries to get another jump in performance.</text></comment> |
19,570,904 | 19,570,946 | 1 | 3 | 19,560,994 | train | <story><title>Network Determines Success More Than People Realize</title><url>https://medium.com/swlh/your-network-determines-success-more-than-you-realize-41a3e889ecea</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dorkwood</author><text>I use to think of networking as “going to events and handing out my business card”, which I could never quite bring myself to do. I figured I just wasn’t cut out for the whole networking thing.<p>What I ended up realising after looking back over my career was that I’ve been networking this whole time without even meaning to. By generally working hard and being friendly those who have come and gone over the years, I now have a pretty sizeable network of people who will vouch for me. If someone ever asks me for networking advice, it will be “find a job where other people are doing the same thing as you, and then become someone they enjoy working with”.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>leereeves</author><text>The dark side of that is discrimination when &quot;someone they enjoy working with&quot; is based on more than a friendly attitude and hard work.<p>And I&#x27;m not just talking about the politically favored and protected groups. I&#x27;d say it applies even more so to groups that don&#x27;t get that political support.</text></comment> | <story><title>Network Determines Success More Than People Realize</title><url>https://medium.com/swlh/your-network-determines-success-more-than-you-realize-41a3e889ecea</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dorkwood</author><text>I use to think of networking as “going to events and handing out my business card”, which I could never quite bring myself to do. I figured I just wasn’t cut out for the whole networking thing.<p>What I ended up realising after looking back over my career was that I’ve been networking this whole time without even meaning to. By generally working hard and being friendly those who have come and gone over the years, I now have a pretty sizeable network of people who will vouch for me. If someone ever asks me for networking advice, it will be “find a job where other people are doing the same thing as you, and then become someone they enjoy working with”.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ed_balls</author><text>Even having a Github profile and some open source contributions is networking in my book.</text></comment> |
11,978,843 | 11,978,858 | 1 | 2 | 11,977,898 | train | <story><title>Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit</title><url>http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tigershark</author><text>I hope that you&#x27;re really happy of the outcome of your vote.
You destroyed uk and global economy, even if you still Don&#x27;t realise it.
A nation with narrow minded people that cannot understand the simple consequences of their actions will not have the most happy outcome.</text></item><item><author>Normal_gaussian</author><text>I am British, and I socialise with a whole host of young Brits who voted leave. A whole host of educated Engineers - software, civil, mech. A handful of NQT&#x27;s, nurses, vets, doctors, and then a spattering of assorted jobs at large companies from banks to telecoms to charities to sales.<p>These are people I talk to one on one about all kinds of different issues - mostly philisophocal, rarely political - and they all had a few small things in common with the EU debate:<p>* a certainty that the UK is dying. There is less and less value here, and continuing with the current setup spells for a long slow death.<p>* an outright distrust of the political class and the media class. Most can cite cases where they have been outright knowingly lied to in ways most wouldn&#x27;t realise.<p>* a feeling of betrayal by those screaming remain and insulting anyone who disagrees. These are people who were often close friends who just weren&#x27;t the kind to get into the discussions we enjoyed.<p>So the obvious thing for these people to do? Vote leave. We can start the fight now and possibly survive, or delay it and definitely die. Why didn&#x27;t they talk about it? They did. Just in places where there is no audience, only participants.</text></item><item><author>monk_e_boy</author><text>Part of the problem is &quot;vote leave&quot; became &quot;vote leave because racist&quot; so most of the vote leavers have kept quiet.<p>There is a whole bunch of reasons to vote leave and the debates for the last 6 months have been very informative. These, you missed. But radio 4 had debates most days from smart people on both sides. Older people listen to the radio and watch debates on the TV.<p>I was often surprised that the &#x27;vote remain&#x27; people often couldn&#x27;t answer simple questions. The biggest being with uncontrolled immigration (no possible way of capping a maximum) how do you plan for schools, hospitals, teachers, nurses. So you hear from teachers, day after day on the radio with these arguments and it becomes easy to vote out.<p>Then you have the popular radio 1 and other &#x27;younger generation&#x27; tv shows, twitter, facebook, reddit etc that are posing the debate in a different light. Farage is an idiot (true.) Immigration is good, the EU is great and has done so much for us, we can fix the broken bits. Then it&#x27;s much better to vote in.<p>A lot of people who voted remain did so because they were terrified that if the Tories had more power they would strip workers of their rights, decimate the NHS, privatise schools, etc etc (a lot of these things have nothing to do with the EU - sigh) so they voted in because they fear our own government!<p>Other people voted out because they hate our government - a sort of protest vote.<p>It&#x27;s been a crazy time.</text></item><item><author>nsainsbury</author><text>As someone with no horse in this race, I hadn&#x27;t been following the debate leading up to the Brexit but I did see the aftermath on Twitter, FB, mainstream media, etc. What I saw was really fascinating - an almost universal outpouring of scorn and derision for &quot;Leave&quot; voters: Ageism. Racism. Classism - &quot;Only uneducated old, poor, white people voted to leave&quot;.<p>It hit me then pretty hard just how much of a echo chamber places like Twitter, FB, and even the mainstream media now are and how poorly they sample and represent the views of everyone. Here was a democratically conducted vote for which &gt;50% of a population voted &quot;Leave&quot;, yet based on how one-sided the response has been you would think the votes must have been rigged.<p>I deeply suspect as well that the one-sidedness of presentation in the MSM is a root contributor to the massive divide that drove the Brexit. What you have here is a failure of empathy - as the article touches on, &quot;every smug, liberal, snobbish barb that Ian Hislop threw his way...was ensuring that revenge would be all the greater, once it arrived&quot;. Here are ridiculed and marginalised people showing you that while they lack representation in Twitter, MSM, etc, in a democracy their vote is just as powerful as yours.<p>In some sense I actually find it quite a satisfying outcome when viewed in this lense. A simple analogy might be &quot;A bullied child just threw a punch back at his bully even though he may have deep down known it&#x27;ll get him in more trouble.&quot;<p>And a part of me wonders whether the same daily outpouring of hatred you see dumped on Trump&#x2F;Trump supporters has also created a very large class of marginalized, ridiculed people who are going to let us know exactly what they think come time to vote -- and like the Brexit we may not even see it coming, because we live in the Twitter, FB, MSM bubble that does not accurately sample the people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>UVB-76</author><text><i>&gt; I hope that you&#x27;re really happy of the outcome of your vote. You destroyed uk and global economy, even if you still Don&#x27;t realise it. A nation with narrow minded people that cannot understand the simple consequences of their actions will not have the most happy outcome.</i><p>Get a grip.<p>Has the UK economy been destroyed? No, the FTSE 100 dropped 3.15% on Friday, reacting to temporary uncertainty, and is up 1% on last week.<p>European markets fell far more, reflecting the fact they have more to lose from an acrimonious Brexit than the UK does.<p>What is narrow minded about voting to leave an anachronistic, sclerotic, anti-democratic political union, to which the UK contributes more money than it receives back, and from which the UK imports more than it exports to?<p>In all likelihood, the UK will leave the EU, but retain access to the single market through the EEA. This will enable us to enter into free trade deals with the rest of the world, which we are not able to do as EU members. There is nothing narrow minded about that.</text></comment> | <story><title>Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit</title><url>http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tigershark</author><text>I hope that you&#x27;re really happy of the outcome of your vote.
You destroyed uk and global economy, even if you still Don&#x27;t realise it.
A nation with narrow minded people that cannot understand the simple consequences of their actions will not have the most happy outcome.</text></item><item><author>Normal_gaussian</author><text>I am British, and I socialise with a whole host of young Brits who voted leave. A whole host of educated Engineers - software, civil, mech. A handful of NQT&#x27;s, nurses, vets, doctors, and then a spattering of assorted jobs at large companies from banks to telecoms to charities to sales.<p>These are people I talk to one on one about all kinds of different issues - mostly philisophocal, rarely political - and they all had a few small things in common with the EU debate:<p>* a certainty that the UK is dying. There is less and less value here, and continuing with the current setup spells for a long slow death.<p>* an outright distrust of the political class and the media class. Most can cite cases where they have been outright knowingly lied to in ways most wouldn&#x27;t realise.<p>* a feeling of betrayal by those screaming remain and insulting anyone who disagrees. These are people who were often close friends who just weren&#x27;t the kind to get into the discussions we enjoyed.<p>So the obvious thing for these people to do? Vote leave. We can start the fight now and possibly survive, or delay it and definitely die. Why didn&#x27;t they talk about it? They did. Just in places where there is no audience, only participants.</text></item><item><author>monk_e_boy</author><text>Part of the problem is &quot;vote leave&quot; became &quot;vote leave because racist&quot; so most of the vote leavers have kept quiet.<p>There is a whole bunch of reasons to vote leave and the debates for the last 6 months have been very informative. These, you missed. But radio 4 had debates most days from smart people on both sides. Older people listen to the radio and watch debates on the TV.<p>I was often surprised that the &#x27;vote remain&#x27; people often couldn&#x27;t answer simple questions. The biggest being with uncontrolled immigration (no possible way of capping a maximum) how do you plan for schools, hospitals, teachers, nurses. So you hear from teachers, day after day on the radio with these arguments and it becomes easy to vote out.<p>Then you have the popular radio 1 and other &#x27;younger generation&#x27; tv shows, twitter, facebook, reddit etc that are posing the debate in a different light. Farage is an idiot (true.) Immigration is good, the EU is great and has done so much for us, we can fix the broken bits. Then it&#x27;s much better to vote in.<p>A lot of people who voted remain did so because they were terrified that if the Tories had more power they would strip workers of their rights, decimate the NHS, privatise schools, etc etc (a lot of these things have nothing to do with the EU - sigh) so they voted in because they fear our own government!<p>Other people voted out because they hate our government - a sort of protest vote.<p>It&#x27;s been a crazy time.</text></item><item><author>nsainsbury</author><text>As someone with no horse in this race, I hadn&#x27;t been following the debate leading up to the Brexit but I did see the aftermath on Twitter, FB, mainstream media, etc. What I saw was really fascinating - an almost universal outpouring of scorn and derision for &quot;Leave&quot; voters: Ageism. Racism. Classism - &quot;Only uneducated old, poor, white people voted to leave&quot;.<p>It hit me then pretty hard just how much of a echo chamber places like Twitter, FB, and even the mainstream media now are and how poorly they sample and represent the views of everyone. Here was a democratically conducted vote for which &gt;50% of a population voted &quot;Leave&quot;, yet based on how one-sided the response has been you would think the votes must have been rigged.<p>I deeply suspect as well that the one-sidedness of presentation in the MSM is a root contributor to the massive divide that drove the Brexit. What you have here is a failure of empathy - as the article touches on, &quot;every smug, liberal, snobbish barb that Ian Hislop threw his way...was ensuring that revenge would be all the greater, once it arrived&quot;. Here are ridiculed and marginalised people showing you that while they lack representation in Twitter, MSM, etc, in a democracy their vote is just as powerful as yours.<p>In some sense I actually find it quite a satisfying outcome when viewed in this lense. A simple analogy might be &quot;A bullied child just threw a punch back at his bully even though he may have deep down known it&#x27;ll get him in more trouble.&quot;<p>And a part of me wonders whether the same daily outpouring of hatred you see dumped on Trump&#x2F;Trump supporters has also created a very large class of marginalized, ridiculed people who are going to let us know exactly what they think come time to vote -- and like the Brexit we may not even see it coming, because we live in the Twitter, FB, MSM bubble that does not accurately sample the people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gutnor</author><text>As per the article the people that voted leave didn&#x27;t really care about the consequences because they are at the bottom of the barrel already. So of course, they are not nice to fuck it up for every body else, but hey, they didn&#x27;t setup a referendum in order to stay PM.<p>Parent is on topic and gives a slightly different perspective.
I assume each of his friend had at least additional argument that probably align with one the messages of the Leave campaign as with the argument he listed most people would just stay home and not vote.<p>What is done is done, you better understand what those guys think because you will need their vote.</text></comment> |
16,033,360 | 16,033,334 | 1 | 2 | 16,030,838 | train | <story><title>Call of Duty gaming community points to ‘swatting’ in Wichita police shooting</title><url>https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swatting-attack/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>What do you think happens in a <i>real</i> scenario where someone has shot someone and is holding a group of other people hostage? You think they get some agents on a jet from Quantico to start collecting evidence?<p>That&#x27;s what makes this crime so evil: the people doing it are deliberately trying to put the police in the worst possible scenario. Police need more training and better procedures and they are certainly abusive, but it&#x27;s <i>this exact situation</i> --- when it&#x27;s really occurring, and isn&#x27;t just some troll --- that drives most of those abuses.</text></item><item><author>andybak</author><text>Wow. Let me take a breath here.<p>I&#x27;m British and the words you just wrote sound insane to me.<p>The key point here is that the threshold for the use of lethal force by the state should be much, much higher than merely an anonymous call. If that makes me &quot;anti-police&quot; then I&#x27;m very happy not to live in your great nation.</text></item><item><author>krapp</author><text>&gt;Unfortunately, calling this homicide requires acknowledging the fact that calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed.<p>Telling the police <i>someone has murdered several people and is armed and has taken hostages</i> is likely to result in SWAT responding with potentially deadly force, because that&#x27;s what they&#x27;re supposed to do.<p>That&#x27;s not at all equivalent to a proof that &quot;calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed.&quot;<p>I understand the anti-police contingent in these threads tends to be strong, and the feeling is often justifiable, but let&#x27;s not pretend what happened here is a typical police response, even in the US.</text></item><item><author>rcthompson</author><text>Unfortunately, calling this homicide requires acknowledging the fact that calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed. And however obvious that fact may be, it&#x27;s probably not something that the justice system (of which the police are a part) will be willing to acknowledge.</text></item><item><author>baddox</author><text>Is this even controversial for anyone beyond the most die-hard blue liners? <i>Of course</i> this is homocide, both for the caller and the shooter. If it’s not, then it’s hard to imagine anything is.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Two things can obviously be true at the same time: that &quot;police officers&quot;† are improperly keyed up as if they&#x27;re shock troops preparing for a battle, and that calling in a false report with the hope that it will provoke an armed response is effectively an attempt at homicide.<p>To me, the (standard) overreaction by the police makes arguments minimizing what the gamer did here even harder. Unless you live under a rock, you&#x27;re aware of the controversy about armed police response in the US. Surely this gamer knew that, and called a fake report in anyways --- one involving an active shooter and a hostage.<p>I&#x27;m with Ken &quot;Popehat&quot; White: what the gamer did here is homicide. We can argue about the degree.<p>† <i>really, in almost all cases in the US, &quot;assault officers&quot;, and we should separate the two concepts, stop hiring new assault officers, and start hiring a new class of less-armed police officers</i><p><i>Later</i><p>It turns out there&#x27;s already a concept in US law that captures this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Depraved-heart_murder" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Depraved-heart_murder</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gregmac</author><text>While SWAT should respond, shouldn&#x27;t they cordon off the area and try to make contact? Actually going inside seems like it should be the last resort, after there is no response or there is observable probable cause or imminent threat.<p>Especially if the call is anonymous with few concrete details -- the police should consider why does this caller know the info they know? Why is the call anonymous or otherwise untraceable?<p>How many times have lives been saved by SWAT entering after a call like this vs an innocent person getting injured or killed? How many anonymous, untraceable calls to 911 have even turned out to be legitimate?</text></comment> | <story><title>Call of Duty gaming community points to ‘swatting’ in Wichita police shooting</title><url>https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swatting-attack/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>What do you think happens in a <i>real</i> scenario where someone has shot someone and is holding a group of other people hostage? You think they get some agents on a jet from Quantico to start collecting evidence?<p>That&#x27;s what makes this crime so evil: the people doing it are deliberately trying to put the police in the worst possible scenario. Police need more training and better procedures and they are certainly abusive, but it&#x27;s <i>this exact situation</i> --- when it&#x27;s really occurring, and isn&#x27;t just some troll --- that drives most of those abuses.</text></item><item><author>andybak</author><text>Wow. Let me take a breath here.<p>I&#x27;m British and the words you just wrote sound insane to me.<p>The key point here is that the threshold for the use of lethal force by the state should be much, much higher than merely an anonymous call. If that makes me &quot;anti-police&quot; then I&#x27;m very happy not to live in your great nation.</text></item><item><author>krapp</author><text>&gt;Unfortunately, calling this homicide requires acknowledging the fact that calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed.<p>Telling the police <i>someone has murdered several people and is armed and has taken hostages</i> is likely to result in SWAT responding with potentially deadly force, because that&#x27;s what they&#x27;re supposed to do.<p>That&#x27;s not at all equivalent to a proof that &quot;calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed.&quot;<p>I understand the anti-police contingent in these threads tends to be strong, and the feeling is often justifiable, but let&#x27;s not pretend what happened here is a typical police response, even in the US.</text></item><item><author>rcthompson</author><text>Unfortunately, calling this homicide requires acknowledging the fact that calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed. And however obvious that fact may be, it&#x27;s probably not something that the justice system (of which the police are a part) will be willing to acknowledge.</text></item><item><author>baddox</author><text>Is this even controversial for anyone beyond the most die-hard blue liners? <i>Of course</i> this is homocide, both for the caller and the shooter. If it’s not, then it’s hard to imagine anything is.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Two things can obviously be true at the same time: that &quot;police officers&quot;† are improperly keyed up as if they&#x27;re shock troops preparing for a battle, and that calling in a false report with the hope that it will provoke an armed response is effectively an attempt at homicide.<p>To me, the (standard) overreaction by the police makes arguments minimizing what the gamer did here even harder. Unless you live under a rock, you&#x27;re aware of the controversy about armed police response in the US. Surely this gamer knew that, and called a fake report in anyways --- one involving an active shooter and a hostage.<p>I&#x27;m with Ken &quot;Popehat&quot; White: what the gamer did here is homicide. We can argue about the degree.<p>† <i>really, in almost all cases in the US, &quot;assault officers&quot;, and we should separate the two concepts, stop hiring new assault officers, and start hiring a new class of less-armed police officers</i><p><i>Later</i><p>It turns out there&#x27;s already a concept in US law that captures this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Depraved-heart_murder" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Depraved-heart_murder</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grw_</author><text>&gt; when it&#x27;s really occurring, and isn&#x27;t just some troll<p>I don&#x27;t know how often hostage scenarios as extreme as you describe actually occur in the USA, but I read about instances of &#x27;swatting&#x27; constantly. Given the false-positive rate of such reports, it&#x27;s no surprise that sending military-style squads to &#x27;shoot on sight&#x27; ends in tragedy again and again.</text></comment> |
41,053,907 | 41,052,721 | 1 | 3 | 41,051,327 | train | <story><title>You can opt out of airport face scans</title><url>https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/360952/summer-travel-airport-facial-recognition-scan</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>&gt; <i>They are 100% planning to force mandatory facial recognition on the general public.</i><p>They already have your photo if you have a driver&#x27;s license or US passport or basically any form of government ID. The whole point is to compare it to what they already have.<p>So I don&#x27;t really understand the privacy concerns here, but maybe I&#x27;m missing something. Is there something that these cameras record that is different from the biometrics they already have from your ID photos?<p>(You&#x27;re also obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras in the airport, of course.)</text></item><item><author>oceanplexian</author><text>I opted out at Boston International Airport. It involved arguing with the TSA for about 5 minutes while holding up a 150 person line. Then the supervisor came over, told me that I &quot;was required to have to have my photo taken&quot; and opting out consisted of checking a box in the software to not save my photo. My alternative was to not get on the flight.<p>The whole idea of opting out is a scam. They are 100% planning to force mandatory facial recognition on the general public.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cookiengineer</author><text>&gt; privacy concerns<p>The super duper classified high security no-flight list was shared internationally via a public ftp server with the username and password anonymous:anonymous.<p>A hacker that disclosed that responsibly got into lots of troubles for exposing that. [1]<p>So I&#x27;d argue indeed I assume that TSA and border control use the most incompetent and most lying way to solve anything when the control mechanism are privacy laws. They literally care 0% about that. If they say they delete something, I assume they keep a physical copy.<p>And I totally understand people worrying a lot about that, given the golden age of deep fakes we live in. Imagine what&#x27;s possible 10 years ahead when that biometric data can be used to imitate and authenticate you.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34446673">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34446673</a></text></comment> | <story><title>You can opt out of airport face scans</title><url>https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/360952/summer-travel-airport-facial-recognition-scan</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>&gt; <i>They are 100% planning to force mandatory facial recognition on the general public.</i><p>They already have your photo if you have a driver&#x27;s license or US passport or basically any form of government ID. The whole point is to compare it to what they already have.<p>So I don&#x27;t really understand the privacy concerns here, but maybe I&#x27;m missing something. Is there something that these cameras record that is different from the biometrics they already have from your ID photos?<p>(You&#x27;re also obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras in the airport, of course.)</text></item><item><author>oceanplexian</author><text>I opted out at Boston International Airport. It involved arguing with the TSA for about 5 minutes while holding up a 150 person line. Then the supervisor came over, told me that I &quot;was required to have to have my photo taken&quot; and opting out consisted of checking a box in the software to not save my photo. My alternative was to not get on the flight.<p>The whole idea of opting out is a scam. They are 100% planning to force mandatory facial recognition on the general public.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rgrieselhuber</author><text>Privacy is a concern but it’s more a matter of conditioning. Every time you actively consent to it, you’re submitting to the conditioning and further enabling the system to move in this direction as a whole.</text></comment> |
18,094,725 | 18,094,697 | 1 | 3 | 18,093,568 | train | <story><title>Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/widely-used-election-systems-are-vulnerable-to-attack-report-finds-1538020802</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ntsplnkv2</author><text>Seems simple enough to just make it a national holiday.</text></item><item><author>BatFastard</author><text>Elections are held on Tuesday as a way of restricting who can vote PERIOD.
Poorer voters have a harder time getting off work, and getting transportation to voting site, which is usually close to their home, but not their work.</text></item><item><author>seren</author><text>Why are elections not held on Sundays ? I assume that on average there are less people working that day that Monday - Friday, so less people would have to take time off from their job.<p>Edit: Found this<p>&gt; In 1845, the United States Congress chose a single date for all national elections in all states. The first Tuesday after the first Monday in November was chosen so that there would never be more than 34 days between Election Day and the first Wednesday in December. Election Day is held on a Tuesday so that voters will not have to vote or travel on Sunday. This was an important consideration at the time when the laws were written and is still so in some Christian communities in the United States.<p>This seems a pretty dated reason. Why no one is proposing to change it ?</text></item><item><author>jniedrauer</author><text>&gt; It’s a little taxing, but everyone involved enjoy the process<p>This is part of the problem in the United States. Voting is a chore, and you&#x27;re often going to lose money (unpaid time off) to do it. If elections were national holidays and voting was treated as a privilege instead of a chore, we would be much better off.</text></item><item><author>return-value</author><text>I work for the municipality of Skanderborg, Denmark. We have what we call digital elections, but what’s digitized is the registration process. Basically every adult gets a voting card with their information + a barcode, we scan those barcodes when they turn up to receive their ballot(is that the right word for voting list?), and then they are registered.<p>The actual voting takes place on paper, and while it takes time to prepare the ballots and count the votes, the process of voting doesn’t take very longer than a few minutes for the individual citizen. From they enter the voting place till they are done.<p>I think that’s the way to digitize elections, you make them speedy for the citizens, but safe for democracy.<p>I can’t for the life of me understand why you would ever do a digital vote. It’s just so risky. I guess you save money by adding effectiveness to the process surrounding an election, preparing ballots and counting votes, but those parts of the process are owned by the public sector and I don’t think the government should ever value the safety of our democracy as less important than money. We count votes by enlisting employees of the municipality, members of political parties and paid help from local NGOs, and everything is monitored and counted a few times. It’s a little taxing, but everyone involved enjoy the process, and financially it’s not that expensive compared to paying a license for voting machines.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jrockway</author><text>People work on national holidays, though.<p>I assume there is some correlation between people who are unlikely to receive paid time off for voting and people that have to work on unusual days, so I&#x27;m not sure changing what day Election Day falls on will fix anything.<p>The solution is to mandate that employers give you a couple of paid hours off on Election Day. I would be surprised if this was not already the case in several states.<p>States can also help out by keeping the polls open for longer hours, so that someone who has to work an 8 hour shift has plenty of time on either side of their workday to go vote. (Last primary, I forgot in the morning, then worked late... and still had plenty of time to vote after work. The same is not true in every state.)</text></comment> | <story><title>Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/widely-used-election-systems-are-vulnerable-to-attack-report-finds-1538020802</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ntsplnkv2</author><text>Seems simple enough to just make it a national holiday.</text></item><item><author>BatFastard</author><text>Elections are held on Tuesday as a way of restricting who can vote PERIOD.
Poorer voters have a harder time getting off work, and getting transportation to voting site, which is usually close to their home, but not their work.</text></item><item><author>seren</author><text>Why are elections not held on Sundays ? I assume that on average there are less people working that day that Monday - Friday, so less people would have to take time off from their job.<p>Edit: Found this<p>&gt; In 1845, the United States Congress chose a single date for all national elections in all states. The first Tuesday after the first Monday in November was chosen so that there would never be more than 34 days between Election Day and the first Wednesday in December. Election Day is held on a Tuesday so that voters will not have to vote or travel on Sunday. This was an important consideration at the time when the laws were written and is still so in some Christian communities in the United States.<p>This seems a pretty dated reason. Why no one is proposing to change it ?</text></item><item><author>jniedrauer</author><text>&gt; It’s a little taxing, but everyone involved enjoy the process<p>This is part of the problem in the United States. Voting is a chore, and you&#x27;re often going to lose money (unpaid time off) to do it. If elections were national holidays and voting was treated as a privilege instead of a chore, we would be much better off.</text></item><item><author>return-value</author><text>I work for the municipality of Skanderborg, Denmark. We have what we call digital elections, but what’s digitized is the registration process. Basically every adult gets a voting card with their information + a barcode, we scan those barcodes when they turn up to receive their ballot(is that the right word for voting list?), and then they are registered.<p>The actual voting takes place on paper, and while it takes time to prepare the ballots and count the votes, the process of voting doesn’t take very longer than a few minutes for the individual citizen. From they enter the voting place till they are done.<p>I think that’s the way to digitize elections, you make them speedy for the citizens, but safe for democracy.<p>I can’t for the life of me understand why you would ever do a digital vote. It’s just so risky. I guess you save money by adding effectiveness to the process surrounding an election, preparing ballots and counting votes, but those parts of the process are owned by the public sector and I don’t think the government should ever value the safety of our democracy as less important than money. We count votes by enlisting employees of the municipality, members of political parties and paid help from local NGOs, and everything is monitored and counted a few times. It’s a little taxing, but everyone involved enjoy the process, and financially it’s not that expensive compared to paying a license for voting machines.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>subpixel</author><text>&quot;Seems simple enough&quot; is to politics what &quot;this should be a quick fix&quot; is to engineering.</text></comment> |
36,472,038 | 36,456,756 | 1 | 2 | 36,456,447 | train | <story><title>All IP addresses are equal? “Dot-zero” addresses are less equal (2013)</title><url>https://labs.ripe.net/author/stephane_bortzmeyer/all-ip-addresses-are-equal-dot-zero-addresses-are-less-equal/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jedberg</author><text>This is what happens when you make the fresh college hire, who has only ever seen a &#x2F;24, write your network interfaces. They just assume .0 and .255 are always special.<p>I say this because I was one of those people when I graduated. At our school every network was &#x2F;24, so 0 and 255 were always reserved. It was a while before I learned about CIDR and how those addresses may not be reserved.</text></comment> | <story><title>All IP addresses are equal? “Dot-zero” addresses are less equal (2013)</title><url>https://labs.ripe.net/author/stephane_bortzmeyer/all-ip-addresses-are-equal-dot-zero-addresses-are-less-equal/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>schoen</author><text>(2013)<p>You can see quite a lot of these in<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ec2-reachability.amazonaws.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ec2-reachability.amazonaws.com&#x2F;</a><p>I think the situation has improved with regard to this specific issue since 2013. I did run some of my own RIPE Atlas tests on this more recently (targeting some of the AWS addresses mentioned above), and it didn&#x27;t look particularly bad at all.<p>Somewhat relatedly, we&#x27;ve been proposing to explicitly allow the lowest address within a subnet to be used to number a host. (This isn&#x27;t necessarily dot-zero, and dot-zero isn&#x27;t necessarily this; they coincide exactly in the specific case of a &#x2F;24 network.)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;datatracker.ietf.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;draft-schoen-intarea-unicast-lowest-address&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;datatracker.ietf.org&#x2F;doc&#x2F;draft-schoen-intarea-unicas...</a><p>We&#x27;ve gotten patches in Linux and FreeBSD for this, while OpenBSD and NetBSD each independently adopted this behavior some time ago.</text></comment> |
32,269,915 | 32,270,147 | 1 | 3 | 32,269,792 | train | <story><title>Apple Reports Third Quarter Results</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/07/apple-reports-third-quarter-results/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tims33</author><text>Sad to see &quot;services&quot; as a headline on Apple&#x27;s earnings beat. I&#x27;m sure it is gratifying for Tim Cook, but this is going to be the thing that brings on much harder regulation for Apple.</text></comment> | <story><title>Apple Reports Third Quarter Results</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/07/apple-reports-third-quarter-results/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>radiojasper</author><text>Sorry for being ignorant, but I suck at reading numbers. Especially the comma confuses me as a European. Do I read correctly that Apple turned over more 40 billion USD on iPhone sales this quarter alone?</text></comment> |
10,969,541 | 10,969,282 | 1 | 3 | 10,965,871 | train | <story><title>Zcash, an untraceable Bitcoin alternative, launches in alpha</title><url>http://www.wired.com/2016/01/zcash-an-untraceable-bitcoin-alternative-launches-in-alpha/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ctoth</author><text>Of course, once these techniques were in place, they conclusively destroyed the ability of governments to control the flow of electronic funds, anywhere, anytime, for any purpose. As it happened, this process had pretty much destroyed any human control at all over the modern electronic economy. By the time people figured out that raging nonlinear anarchy was not exactly to the advantage of anyone concerned, the process was simply too far gone to stop. All workable standards of wealth had vaporized, digitized, and vanished into a nonstop hurricane of electronic thin air. Even physically tearing up the fiber optics couldn&#x27;t stop it; governments that tried to just found that the whole encryption mess oozed swiftly into voice mail and even fax machines.<p>...<p>Alex did not find it surprising that people like the Chinese Triads and the Corsican Black Hand were electronically minting their own cash. He simply accepted it: electronic, private cash, unbacked by any government, untraceable, completely anonymous, global in reach, lightninglike in speed, ubiquitous, fungible, and usually highly volatile. Of course, such funds didn&#x27;t boldly say &quot;Sicilian Mafia&quot; right on the transaction screen; they usually had some stuffy official-sounding alias such as &quot;Banco Ambrosiano ATM Euro-DigiLira,&quot; but the private currency speculators would usually have a pretty good guess as to the solvency of the issuers.<p>- Heavy Weather</text></comment> | <story><title>Zcash, an untraceable Bitcoin alternative, launches in alpha</title><url>http://www.wired.com/2016/01/zcash-an-untraceable-bitcoin-alternative-launches-in-alpha/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jhasse</author><text>For anyone interested in how Zcash (formely Zerocoin) works and who understands German, I&#x27;ve written my Bachelor thesis about it in 2013: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.uni-bremen.de&#x2F;~jhasse&#x2F;Kryptografische%20Grundlagen%20von%20Bitcoin.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.uni-bremen.de&#x2F;~jhasse&#x2F;Kryptografische%20Grun...</a> (Part IV)</text></comment> |
14,515,491 | 14,515,098 | 1 | 2 | 14,514,600 | train | <story><title>Words growing or shrinking in Hacker News titles: a tidy analysis</title><url>http://varianceexplained.org/r/hn-trends/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>flavio81</author><text>A frequent post then would be:<p>&quot;Using VR to train a deep learning neural network on driving and react correctly to unexpected conditions, a bot implemented via a microservices stack using aws as a container and of course connected with cars and related traffic devices via the IoT, logging unexpected events into a blockchain.&quot;</text></comment> | <story><title>Words growing or shrinking in Hacker News titles: a tidy analysis</title><url>http://varianceexplained.org/r/hn-trends/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>robteix</author><text>I&#x27;m surprised both &quot;NSA&quot; and &quot;surveillance&quot; are two of the fastest shrinking words. I thought we saw more now than ever. Shows how perception doesn&#x27;t always match reality.</text></comment> |
25,894,636 | 25,894,709 | 1 | 2 | 25,894,174 | train | <story><title>Show HN: RevoGrid – Spreadsheet data table for all frameworks</title><url>https://github.com/revolist/revogrid</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>robbiejs</author><text>Nice work, seems a little faster compared to most data grids. Not as fast as DataGridXL though! (Disclaimer: I am the creator of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;datagridxl.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;datagridxl.com</a>)<p>Best of luck!</text></comment> | <story><title>Show HN: RevoGrid – Spreadsheet data table for all frameworks</title><url>https://github.com/revolist/revogrid</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mcc1ane</author><text>&quot;... for all _Javascript_ framerworks&quot;</text></comment> |
8,939,358 | 8,939,151 | 1 | 3 | 8,938,647 | train | <story><title>Tough Times on the Road to StarCraft</title><url>http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-starcraft</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jokoon</author><text>What&#x27;s the point of using linked lists ? Low memory ? I&#x27;ll never understand why the usage of linked lists is so common.<p>I mean you don&#x27;t have fast random access with linked list, aren&#x27;t hash maps just better for fast insertion&#x2F;deletion ? Object pools are also pretty great too.<p>I&#x27;ll never forget the day a classmate in some game programming school argued that linked list were like vectors (std::vector).<p>Linked lists only seems viable for insertions, they&#x27;re not viable for fast deletion since you need to search for the pointer first. Maybe you need to index linked lists instead, but since the heap already allows itself to be fragmented like a linked list can, wouldn&#x27;t it be better to just use vectors as often as possible so it can be more cache friendly ?</text></comment> | <story><title>Tough Times on the Road to StarCraft</title><url>http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-starcraft</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>EvanAnderson</author><text>Prior discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4491216" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4491216</a></text></comment> |
1,916,299 | 1,915,914 | 1 | 2 | 1,915,750 | train | <story><title>Buddhism and Happiness: Sitting Quietly, Doing Something</title><url>http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/sitting-quietly-doing-something/#more-7137</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>akozak</author><text>It seems like Neuroscientists and Buddhists keep agreeing on things.</text></comment> | <story><title>Buddhism and Happiness: Sitting Quietly, Doing Something</title><url>http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/sitting-quietly-doing-something/#more-7137</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>blizkreeg</author><text>Some of you here must meditate.<p>What is the form of meditation you practice? Can you elaborate a little so the novice could benefit?</text></comment> |
8,761,635 | 8,761,590 | 1 | 2 | 8,761,539 | train | <story><title>Linus Torvalds on semaphores (1999)</title><url>http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/semaphores.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Animats</author><text>Here&#x27;s Dijkstra&#x27;s original paper on P and V (in Dutch), from about 1963.<p><a href="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD00xx/EWD35.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.utexas.edu&#x2F;users&#x2F;EWD&#x2F;transcriptions&#x2F;EWD00xx&#x2F;EW...</a><p>Here is a implementation of P and V, the original counted semaphore primitives, from 1972.<p><a href="http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/fang/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fourmilab.ch&#x2F;documents&#x2F;univac&#x2F;fang&#x2F;</a><p>This is UNIVAC 1108 assembly code. Along with P and V is the code for bounded buffers, with the operations &quot;PUT&quot; and &quot;GET&quot;. Bounded buffers are what Go calls &quot;channels&quot;. Note how simple they are if you have P and V. That code even works on multiprocessors. There&#x27;s one semaphore for &quot;queue full&quot; and one for &quot;queue empty&quot;. PUT does a P on &quot;queue full&quot;, puts on an item, and does a V on &quot;queue empty&quot;. GET does a P on &quot;queue empty&quot;, takes off an item, and does a V on &quot;queue full&quot;. It&#x27;s very simple. That&#x27;s the real use case for P and V. Linus&#x27; note indicates that in 1999 he didn&#x27;t know this.<p>(I didn&#x27;t write those primitives, but I&#x27;ve used that code, and once ported it to a Pascal compiler I adapted to handle concurrency.)<p>This stuff was all well understood four decades ago. Much of it was forgotten outside the mainframe world, because threads and multiprocessors didn&#x27;t make it to microprocessors for several more decades. UNIX, for a long time, had very primitive synchronization primitives. Early UNIX didn&#x27;t have threads, and even after it got threads, it took years before the locking primitives settled down. The DOS&#x2F;Windows world didn&#x27;t get them until Windows NT, circa 1993.<p>It&#x27;s been amusing to me to see bounded buffers resurface in Go. They&#x27;re quite useful, and I&#x27;ve been using them in concurrent programs for many years.</text></comment> | <story><title>Linus Torvalds on semaphores (1999)</title><url>http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/semaphores.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>robert_tweed</author><text><i>&quot;Dijkstra was probably a
bit heavy on drugs or something (I think the official explanation is
that P and V are the first letters in some Dutch words, but I personally
find the drug overdose story much more believable).&quot;</i><p>Quotes like this are why I always read what Linus has to say, regardless of whether the subject is relevant to my life in the slightest.<p>Edit: Yes people, those Dutch words exist! I get it! I&#x27;m sure Linus was well aware of that when he made this remark. However, the point Linus was making (in a humorous way) was that like most computer scientists &#x2F; mathematicians, Dijkstra was overly fond of obscure, single-letter names, which nobody ever intuitively understands. Whereas the names &quot;up&quot; and &quot;down&quot; (see the rest of Linus&#x27; quote) are far more intuitive. Personally, I would argue that &quot;hold&quot; and &quot;release&quot; convey the intent in a clearer, more abstract way.</text></comment> |
13,267,140 | 13,267,251 | 1 | 2 | 13,266,238 | train | <story><title>Open Letter to a Car-Addicted City (2014)</title><url>http://www.planetizen.com/node/72068/open-letter-car-addicted-city</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bgirard</author><text>I recall in ~2009 my university (UWaterloo) had a referendum to increase tuition by $50&#x2F;term (now $80&#x2F;term) to increase city bus routes to the university and provide free service to students using your student card. I voted against it because I could easily carpool and was against another mandatory fee.<p>The vote was fairly controversial and passed by a narrow margin. But since the service was improved to every 15 minutes and I was already paying for it I started using the service and shortly stopped driving to school altogether.<p>By the time I graduated I really loved the system since it really improved my commute and really regretted voting against it. I just checked and now the approval is at 94% for the UPass.</text></comment> | <story><title>Open Letter to a Car-Addicted City (2014)</title><url>http://www.planetizen.com/node/72068/open-letter-car-addicted-city</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wildmusings</author><text>A car gives you privacy and freedom that trains and buses cannot. It&#x27;s your space that you control; you&#x27;re not forced to share it with strangers. You control the music, the temperature, and the route you take. You talk on the phone about whatever you want without worrying about being overheard. You can fill your trunk with a cart-full of groceries and drive it home. When you want to get somewhere, you can immediately get on your way. No train schedules, and no late buses. You drive home every day to your reasonably priced house, an appreciating asset that you own and that comfortably fits you, your spouse, and children.<p>There&#x27;s a reason why even in dense cities with great public transit and walkable neighborhoods, the rich choose to be driven everywhere.</text></comment> |
26,458,230 | 26,457,653 | 1 | 2 | 26,455,956 | train | <story><title>Is Being Salaried a Scam?</title><url>https://www.askamanager.org/2021/03/is-being-salaried-a-scam.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ipnon</author><text>&gt;The way it’s supposed to work is if you’re salaried&#x2F;exempt, you’re getting paid to do a job, not for a specific number of hours. So if you work 45 hours one week and 36 hours the next, that’s supposed to be okay.<p>I am satisfied with my salary because I finish my responsibilities in 2 to 4 hours, then spend the rest of the &quot;work day&quot; maintaining a green dot on Slack and promptly responding to merge requests, looking as busy as possible. My coworkers who feel the need to work a certain number of hours (40), invariably work overtime every week because their work expands to fit their perceived availability. They all get paid twice as much as me, but if I&#x27;m working half the hours is that equal compensation? I say no, because I still have my hair and my doctor says my blood pressure has improved.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ryanSrich</author><text>&gt; &quot;I am satisfied with my salary because I finish my responsibilities in 2 to 4 hours, then spend the rest of the &quot;work day&quot; maintaining a green dot on Slack&quot;<p>This is precisely why when I started my company I committed to only hiring contract devs for 10-20 hours per week. No meetings. No bullshit. I pay you a high hourly wage, you do as much (often more) work than if you were a salaried 40 hour FTE, and you likely make more money in the process.<p>The model of work and the 40 hour work week is so fundamentally broken I feel like I&#x27;m in a perpetual twilight zone state when I talk to people. They think it&#x27;s normal and okay to have 3+ hours of meetings per day and barely get any work done. I will never understand it.<p>My first 7 years of work life outside of college consisted of THOUSANDS of pointless meetings and months of pretending to be busy. I&#x27;ve promised myself I will never do that shit again, and I will not let my business succumb to that style of work.</text></comment> | <story><title>Is Being Salaried a Scam?</title><url>https://www.askamanager.org/2021/03/is-being-salaried-a-scam.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ipnon</author><text>&gt;The way it’s supposed to work is if you’re salaried&#x2F;exempt, you’re getting paid to do a job, not for a specific number of hours. So if you work 45 hours one week and 36 hours the next, that’s supposed to be okay.<p>I am satisfied with my salary because I finish my responsibilities in 2 to 4 hours, then spend the rest of the &quot;work day&quot; maintaining a green dot on Slack and promptly responding to merge requests, looking as busy as possible. My coworkers who feel the need to work a certain number of hours (40), invariably work overtime every week because their work expands to fit their perceived availability. They all get paid twice as much as me, but if I&#x27;m working half the hours is that equal compensation? I say no, because I still have my hair and my doctor says my blood pressure has improved.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rubicon33</author><text>Where do you work where employees who work twice as much, make twice as much?<p>The issue I have with salary structure is that you have no opportunity for going above and beyond. If I work a minimum hours to get my job done, I get payed the same amount than if I went overtime and finished my tasks sooner.<p>It seems like software industry needs a bonus system for people who are eager to lean into their work, but struggle to see the reason to when it’s just another company that will do nothing about it.<p>To be clear - salary is much better than an hourly + overtime system. The former provides a ton of flexibility. It’s just that it provides little to no incentive for going above and beyond.</text></comment> |
11,730,043 | 11,729,838 | 1 | 2 | 11,729,499 | train | <story><title>The brain is not a computer</title><url>https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anotheryou</author><text>I don&#x27;t see it.<p>- The brain is more fuzzy, but it still stores the link between the smell of roses and the look of roses. Just as a probability, like a Bayes network. And you will fall for Illusions, just like a Bayes network can be wrong (&quot;for a second I thought this was...&quot; and than more information from the senses falsifies&#x2F;corrects the probabilities).<p>- The brain is imperfect in reading from memory, but it still does. It just uses really good, lossy compression. It&#x27;s loosing much detail, but often filling holes probabilistically. Besides neural nets, in computers this would be: defaults, recovery blocks etc. In part the good compression comes from an additional layer of abstraction, but computers can do this too. A very simple example are the the blurry color layers in jpg.<p>- We are better at recognizing than recalling, because a highly compressed memory is not enough to recreate the original, but has enough indicators to verify. This us very much like a checksum.<p>What there is, is the bias of the &quot;hardware&quot;. Our brains are not good at deterministic iterations, computers struggle with the complexity of forming wisdom and fuzziness and feedback does not come naturally to them either. But in principle, we are both turing complete or something :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alexwebb2</author><text>Agreed. This article struck me as exceedingly pedantic.<p>Given the author&#x27;s background, I&#x27;d put money on the idea that this is the result of years of frustration at having his life&#x27;s work dismissively reduced by casual observers to something like &quot;yeah, it&#x27;s basically a computer&quot; and thinking they therefore understand all the intricacies of the human brain. I can see how that might grate on a person in his field and trigger a response like this.</text></comment> | <story><title>The brain is not a computer</title><url>https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anotheryou</author><text>I don&#x27;t see it.<p>- The brain is more fuzzy, but it still stores the link between the smell of roses and the look of roses. Just as a probability, like a Bayes network. And you will fall for Illusions, just like a Bayes network can be wrong (&quot;for a second I thought this was...&quot; and than more information from the senses falsifies&#x2F;corrects the probabilities).<p>- The brain is imperfect in reading from memory, but it still does. It just uses really good, lossy compression. It&#x27;s loosing much detail, but often filling holes probabilistically. Besides neural nets, in computers this would be: defaults, recovery blocks etc. In part the good compression comes from an additional layer of abstraction, but computers can do this too. A very simple example are the the blurry color layers in jpg.<p>- We are better at recognizing than recalling, because a highly compressed memory is not enough to recreate the original, but has enough indicators to verify. This us very much like a checksum.<p>What there is, is the bias of the &quot;hardware&quot;. Our brains are not good at deterministic iterations, computers struggle with the complexity of forming wisdom and fuzziness and feedback does not come naturally to them either. But in principle, we are both turing complete or something :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>d99kris</author><text>To add on to the image compression theory, I read somewhere (maybe here on HN) that perhaps many image memories are stored as difference from a &quot;nominal&quot; representation. So one might not remember a complete face for example, but rather the features that stood out from a &quot;normal face&quot;.</text></comment> |
31,789,768 | 31,790,003 | 1 | 3 | 31,788,967 | train | <story><title>Dan's Tools</title><url>https://www.danstools.com/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>yeahdef</author><text>i like cyberchef for this kind of thing better
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gchq.github.io&#x2F;CyberChef&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gchq.github.io&#x2F;CyberChef&#x2F;</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Dan's Tools</title><url>https://www.danstools.com/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Jack5500</author><text>If you like to do most of this directly in vscode check out Voop:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marketplace.visualstudio.com&#x2F;items?itemName=PhilippT.voop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marketplace.visualstudio.com&#x2F;items?itemName=PhilippT...</a></text></comment> |
34,508,433 | 34,508,313 | 1 | 2 | 34,506,278 | train | <story><title>PagerDuty to Lay Off 7% of Staff; Revenue Officer to Exit</title><url>https://www.marketwatch.com/story/pagerduty-to-lay-off-7-of-staff-revenue-officer-to-exit-271674568511</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phpisthebest</author><text>We need a competitor. I find PagerDuty to be over priced for what they are, and Atlassian is doing their best to destroy all of their services including OpsGenie which was very good until Atlassian bought them<p>Those are the big 2 in the space, who else is there?</text></item><item><author>mullingitover</author><text>Pagerduty doesn&#x27;t have a big moat, either. They&#x27;ve just cut loose a bunch of people who know the intimate details of how to build a product exactly like theirs, ripe for the plucking by a competitor who knows they have a business with healthy margins.<p>Looking forward to more competition in this space, PD is not as cheap as it should be.</text></item><item><author>_ktx2</author><text>&gt; Despite executing well over the last eight quarters, sustaining high growth and dramatically improving operating margins, there is more to do to secure PagerDuty’s future.<p>This pattern of laying people off for short term gains is for the birds. It affects the entire industry when patterns like this become normalized. If you wonder why engineers don&#x27;t stay around more than three years or have perceivably less loyalty, remember these events.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mullingitover</author><text>I think Datadog is getting all the pieces in place to checkmate Pagerduty. They&#x27;ve been steadily building out their Service Catalog feature with fields for on call contact info for teams responsible for services. Once they have all that in place, they just need to wire something up to a dialer&#x2F;SMS&#x2F;push notifications, set up a scheduling tool, and they can start consuming Pagerduty&#x27;s lunch.</text></comment> | <story><title>PagerDuty to Lay Off 7% of Staff; Revenue Officer to Exit</title><url>https://www.marketwatch.com/story/pagerduty-to-lay-off-7-of-staff-revenue-officer-to-exit-271674568511</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phpisthebest</author><text>We need a competitor. I find PagerDuty to be over priced for what they are, and Atlassian is doing their best to destroy all of their services including OpsGenie which was very good until Atlassian bought them<p>Those are the big 2 in the space, who else is there?</text></item><item><author>mullingitover</author><text>Pagerduty doesn&#x27;t have a big moat, either. They&#x27;ve just cut loose a bunch of people who know the intimate details of how to build a product exactly like theirs, ripe for the plucking by a competitor who knows they have a business with healthy margins.<p>Looking forward to more competition in this space, PD is not as cheap as it should be.</text></item><item><author>_ktx2</author><text>&gt; Despite executing well over the last eight quarters, sustaining high growth and dramatically improving operating margins, there is more to do to secure PagerDuty’s future.<p>This pattern of laying people off for short term gains is for the birds. It affects the entire industry when patterns like this become normalized. If you wonder why engineers don&#x27;t stay around more than three years or have perceivably less loyalty, remember these events.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CSDude</author><text>Ex-Opsgenie here. Sorry it turned out to be that way but I’m saddened by the state as well.</text></comment> |
33,983,693 | 33,983,681 | 1 | 2 | 33,981,873 | train | <story><title>ThreeUK blocks access to encrypted provider Tutanota due to 'age restriction'</title><url>https://twitter.com/tutanotateam/status/1602968787766345728</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>warent</author><text>can someone explain to me in simple terms why governments have constant obsessions with IDing&#x2F;tracking everyone everywhere all the time?</text></item><item><author>friend_and_foe</author><text>I want to see the shock on the faces of the people who support legislation like this for the sake of the children.<p>Of course this was going to happen. If it gets enough blowback there will be a statement claiming this was a mistake. But people warned everyone, scope creep is real, if you allow governments to restrict access for one reason they&#x27;ll use it to restrict access for any and every reason. This starts with pornography, then it will be anonymous services to get around the anonymity, eventually it will be &quot;please verify your identity to access internet services&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>unsupp0rted</author><text>Nobody in the government ever got fired for &quot;erring on the side of caution&quot;.</text></comment> | <story><title>ThreeUK blocks access to encrypted provider Tutanota due to 'age restriction'</title><url>https://twitter.com/tutanotateam/status/1602968787766345728</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>warent</author><text>can someone explain to me in simple terms why governments have constant obsessions with IDing&#x2F;tracking everyone everywhere all the time?</text></item><item><author>friend_and_foe</author><text>I want to see the shock on the faces of the people who support legislation like this for the sake of the children.<p>Of course this was going to happen. If it gets enough blowback there will be a statement claiming this was a mistake. But people warned everyone, scope creep is real, if you allow governments to restrict access for one reason they&#x27;ll use it to restrict access for any and every reason. This starts with pornography, then it will be anonymous services to get around the anonymity, eventually it will be &quot;please verify your identity to access internet services&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pydry</author><text>It seems pretty natural to me. Government is dominated by people who want power and people who want power pretty much always want more power.<p>It&#x27;s only natural that they don&#x27;t see themselves as the threat. To them the threat is criminals&#x2F;terrorists, etc. and sacrificing our civil liberties would typically let them catch one or two more of those.</text></comment> |
29,822,463 | 29,822,493 | 1 | 2 | 29,821,386 | train | <story><title>Google fined €150M, Facebook €60M for for non-compliance with French legislation</title><url>https://www.cnil.fr/en/cookies-cnil-fines-google-total-150-million-euros-and-facebook-60-million-euros-non-compliance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>danuker</author><text>By forcing every website to implement the same functionality for cookie prompts.<p>They are legally enforcing the reinventing of the wheel.<p>It could have been done at browser level, which would have been a relatively negligible cost of compliance.</text></item><item><author>joosters</author><text><i>Agreed. The way the EU has handled this is naive at best.</i><p>How so? The law is explicit that it should be just as easy to refuse the cookies as it is to accept them. Companies are ignoring the letter of the law anyway.</text></item><item><author>PontifexMinimus</author><text>&gt; It&#x27;s a shame there aren&#x27;t more big fines for shitty sites, like stackoverflow.com, that punish people who don&#x27;t accept all cookies by prompting on every visit.<p>Agreed. The way the EU has handled this is naive at best.<p>&gt; These large sites know exactly what they&#x27;re doing. They&#x27;re hoping people will become fed up enough to just accept, or they&#x27;re hoping there&#x27;ll be enough accidents where people click &quot;Accept all&quot;. It&#x27;s rather shitty.<p>Yes, and there need to be new regulations to prevent them from doing this. Something like:<p>(1) all web browsers should have a setting allowing users to accept or reject advertising&#x2F;tracking cookies.<p>(2) this must default to not accepting them.<p>(3) in headers of http GET&#x2F;POST requests, if the user allows advertising&#x2F;tracking cookies, it should indicate this; if the user doesn&#x27;t allow such cookies, it should be silent.<p>(4) all websites would be forbidden from using advertising&#x2F;tracking cookies unless explicitly permitted<p>(5) all websites and web browsers would be banned from nagging the user or giving them a worse user experience for not allowing advertising&#x2F;tracking cookies<p>(6) The spirit of these regulations is that users need do nothing and they will automatically have a tracking-free experience; any work-around by companies attempting to find a loophole in this is a violation of the regulations.<p>(7) Violation of any of the above would result in heavy fines; and if infractions continue, further crippling fines would be levied.</text></item><item><author>johnklos</author><text>It&#x27;s a shame there aren&#x27;t more big fines for shitty sites, like stackoverflow.com, that punish people who don&#x27;t accept all cookies by prompting on every visit.<p>If that&#x27;s not bad enough, having an &quot;Accept all&quot; button but requiring another click to have the option of refusing, then making us manually select each category to turn off, then confirming, is certainly not symmetric.<p>These large sites know exactly what they&#x27;re doing. They&#x27;re hoping people will become fed up enough to just accept, or they&#x27;re hoping there&#x27;ll be enough accidents where people click &quot;Accept all&quot;. It&#x27;s rather shitty.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>foepys</author><text>The EU does not want to say how it has to be done. It&#x27;s a bad idea to put something into law because changing the law is incredibly slow. They only do that when the market failed over a long time.<p>See smartphone connectors where they will demand USB-C soon. When the news hit HN quite a few people were calling EU anti innovation.</text></comment> | <story><title>Google fined €150M, Facebook €60M for for non-compliance with French legislation</title><url>https://www.cnil.fr/en/cookies-cnil-fines-google-total-150-million-euros-and-facebook-60-million-euros-non-compliance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>danuker</author><text>By forcing every website to implement the same functionality for cookie prompts.<p>They are legally enforcing the reinventing of the wheel.<p>It could have been done at browser level, which would have been a relatively negligible cost of compliance.</text></item><item><author>joosters</author><text><i>Agreed. The way the EU has handled this is naive at best.</i><p>How so? The law is explicit that it should be just as easy to refuse the cookies as it is to accept them. Companies are ignoring the letter of the law anyway.</text></item><item><author>PontifexMinimus</author><text>&gt; It&#x27;s a shame there aren&#x27;t more big fines for shitty sites, like stackoverflow.com, that punish people who don&#x27;t accept all cookies by prompting on every visit.<p>Agreed. The way the EU has handled this is naive at best.<p>&gt; These large sites know exactly what they&#x27;re doing. They&#x27;re hoping people will become fed up enough to just accept, or they&#x27;re hoping there&#x27;ll be enough accidents where people click &quot;Accept all&quot;. It&#x27;s rather shitty.<p>Yes, and there need to be new regulations to prevent them from doing this. Something like:<p>(1) all web browsers should have a setting allowing users to accept or reject advertising&#x2F;tracking cookies.<p>(2) this must default to not accepting them.<p>(3) in headers of http GET&#x2F;POST requests, if the user allows advertising&#x2F;tracking cookies, it should indicate this; if the user doesn&#x27;t allow such cookies, it should be silent.<p>(4) all websites would be forbidden from using advertising&#x2F;tracking cookies unless explicitly permitted<p>(5) all websites and web browsers would be banned from nagging the user or giving them a worse user experience for not allowing advertising&#x2F;tracking cookies<p>(6) The spirit of these regulations is that users need do nothing and they will automatically have a tracking-free experience; any work-around by companies attempting to find a loophole in this is a violation of the regulations.<p>(7) Violation of any of the above would result in heavy fines; and if infractions continue, further crippling fines would be levied.</text></item><item><author>johnklos</author><text>It&#x27;s a shame there aren&#x27;t more big fines for shitty sites, like stackoverflow.com, that punish people who don&#x27;t accept all cookies by prompting on every visit.<p>If that&#x27;s not bad enough, having an &quot;Accept all&quot; button but requiring another click to have the option of refusing, then making us manually select each category to turn off, then confirming, is certainly not symmetric.<p>These large sites know exactly what they&#x27;re doing. They&#x27;re hoping people will become fed up enough to just accept, or they&#x27;re hoping there&#x27;ll be enough accidents where people click &quot;Accept all&quot;. It&#x27;s rather shitty.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Filligree</author><text>It could have been, and doing so would have been perfectly compliant. It&#x27;s not the EU that made them not do that.</text></comment> |
12,213,051 | 12,212,881 | 1 | 3 | 12,211,851 | train | <story><title>Verizon: We Can't Become Dumb Pipes</title><url>https://mondaynote.com/verizon-no-we-cant-become-dumb-pipes-ddab2b41a2d8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>There is - Sonic. Sonic is a dumb pipe company. No middle boxes, just bits. Sonic fiber is deployed in Santa Rosa and is slowly moving into San Francisco, but their management doesn&#x27;t want to go into heavy debt, so it&#x27;s slow. You can also get Sonic in many areas of California, but it&#x27;s over leased AT&amp;T lines.<p>The CEO of Sonic says that being a fiber provider is profitable without any additional services, and that their wholesale cost for upstream bandwidth keeps dropping.</text></item><item><author>terravion</author><text>It would be great if there was a major telco that was excited about being dumb pipe and just crushing the others. That seems to be what Google Fiber is an attempt at creating but the capital required is so great that only a hundred year old company like Verizon or AT&amp;T is really in a position to execute on that well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>equalarrow</author><text>I have Sonic FTTN 50Mbps service. I&#x27;ve used Sonic over the years and have always enjoyed their service and their mission as a business. I&#x27;ve lapsed a few times because their DSL in some places in SF is just crap, but that&#x27;s because of AT&amp;T and distance to the closest CO.<p>Where I&#x27;m at now (prob less than a mile from their fiber service, sigh..), when we first moved in, we got Comcast. Of course, the Comcast service was all over the place. Some days 1Mb, some 100Mb (which I never signed up for, but just received), some 45Mb (what I signed up for). As usual, I had man techs come out to try to fix things and of course, none did and all of them had a different excuse as to why things didn&#x27;t work. So many support people promised me good service but I never got it.<p>Fed up, I saw I could get Sonic FTTN and it&#x27;s been rock solid for over a year. It&#x27;s never gone down and just works - as I would expect. It&#x27;s too bad we don&#x27;t have more ISPs like them because if we did, access would be a totally different experience.</text></comment> | <story><title>Verizon: We Can't Become Dumb Pipes</title><url>https://mondaynote.com/verizon-no-we-cant-become-dumb-pipes-ddab2b41a2d8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>There is - Sonic. Sonic is a dumb pipe company. No middle boxes, just bits. Sonic fiber is deployed in Santa Rosa and is slowly moving into San Francisco, but their management doesn&#x27;t want to go into heavy debt, so it&#x27;s slow. You can also get Sonic in many areas of California, but it&#x27;s over leased AT&amp;T lines.<p>The CEO of Sonic says that being a fiber provider is profitable without any additional services, and that their wholesale cost for upstream bandwidth keeps dropping.</text></item><item><author>terravion</author><text>It would be great if there was a major telco that was excited about being dumb pipe and just crushing the others. That seems to be what Google Fiber is an attempt at creating but the capital required is so great that only a hundred year old company like Verizon or AT&amp;T is really in a position to execute on that well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jcoffland</author><text>Sonic is awesome. They have excellent customer support and actually care about and actively protect your privacy.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailydot.com&#x2F;layer8&#x2F;sonic-isp-privacy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailydot.com&#x2F;layer8&#x2F;sonic-isp-privacy&#x2F;</a></text></comment> |
37,078,125 | 37,078,008 | 1 | 2 | 37,076,968 | train | <story><title>Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists</title><url>https://dynomight.net/harvard/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fossuser</author><text>&gt; “On a personal note, I was accepted to an Ivy League school (though not Harvard) as a high school senior, but my family couldn&#x27;t afford to send me there, so I had to go to a state school instead. My classmate and friend was accepted to MIT but also had to go to a state school because of money.”<p>This does fit my hypothesis that the outliers at state schools are likely undervalued in the market by recruiters. The averages at selective schools are a lot higher (work a few career fairs where you ask basic technical questions and this is obvious), but everyone is competing over them and the outliers at state schools are people like you with extenuating circumstances. Since the actual education product isn’t that different (though there is some difference), there’s probably opportunity in trying to recruit the best students from state schools companies tend to ignore.</text></item><item><author>lapcat</author><text>&gt; This is a typical &quot;let&#x27;s be all equally poor&#x2F;bad&quot; argument.<p>I think you missed the point of the article, which was &quot;Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic, and it does that while subsidized by everyone else.&quot;<p>&gt; Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren&#x27;t amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies.<p>The author discusses this: &quot;The hardest part of Harvard is <i>getting in</i>.&quot; &quot;High-stakes college admissions means that much of the value of a college degree is determined <i>before students even start college</i>. If you must mark and sort young people, gross, but OK. But why do it at 18 rather than 22?&quot;<p>On a personal note, I was accepted to an Ivy League school (though not Harvard) as a high school senior, but my family couldn&#x27;t afford to send me there, so I had to go to a state school instead. My classmate and friend was accepted to MIT but also had to go to a state school because of money. This was decades ago, so perhaps things have changed recently, but my higher education was gated on my family&#x27;s wealth, i.e., lack thereof. Was it a &quot;meritocracy&quot;? No fucking way.</text></item><item><author>glimshe</author><text>This is a typical &quot;let&#x27;s be all equally poor&#x2F;bad&quot; argument. Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation and not a single person is <i>required</i> to go there or hire someone from there.<p>Why do Harvard people &quot;drive 20% above the speed limit&quot;? Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren&#x27;t amazing proxies for productivity, but they are <i>decent</i> proxies. I&#x27;ve seen dozens of theories on how to interview and triage people, but few approaches beat the cost-benefit of supporting decisions based on a degree from a solid institution.<p>Having managed over 100+ people, I can say that <i>on average</i> the people from better institutions are better employees - even though I have managed amazing people without college degrees and bad people with amazing degrees. The top schools can be pretty darn great, Harvard being just one of them.<p>Not very different than an Apple product being generally better than a product from some random vendor from Amazon with names like &quot;GREAT TECH&quot; or &quot;SUPER QUALITY PRO&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CrazyStat</author><text>&gt; The averages at selective schools are a lot higher<p>This is what I expected when I went from undergrad at a solid but not elite shool (top 100, ~50% admission rate) to grad school (top 10, single digit admission rate).<p>It&#x27;s not what I experienced. The undergrad students I taught and TA for at the elite school were no better, on average, than my peers at my undergrad school. They were more ambitious and entitled. They were not smarter or harder working or more engaged or motivated.</text></comment> | <story><title>Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists</title><url>https://dynomight.net/harvard/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fossuser</author><text>&gt; “On a personal note, I was accepted to an Ivy League school (though not Harvard) as a high school senior, but my family couldn&#x27;t afford to send me there, so I had to go to a state school instead. My classmate and friend was accepted to MIT but also had to go to a state school because of money.”<p>This does fit my hypothesis that the outliers at state schools are likely undervalued in the market by recruiters. The averages at selective schools are a lot higher (work a few career fairs where you ask basic technical questions and this is obvious), but everyone is competing over them and the outliers at state schools are people like you with extenuating circumstances. Since the actual education product isn’t that different (though there is some difference), there’s probably opportunity in trying to recruit the best students from state schools companies tend to ignore.</text></item><item><author>lapcat</author><text>&gt; This is a typical &quot;let&#x27;s be all equally poor&#x2F;bad&quot; argument.<p>I think you missed the point of the article, which was &quot;Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic, and it does that while subsidized by everyone else.&quot;<p>&gt; Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren&#x27;t amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies.<p>The author discusses this: &quot;The hardest part of Harvard is <i>getting in</i>.&quot; &quot;High-stakes college admissions means that much of the value of a college degree is determined <i>before students even start college</i>. If you must mark and sort young people, gross, but OK. But why do it at 18 rather than 22?&quot;<p>On a personal note, I was accepted to an Ivy League school (though not Harvard) as a high school senior, but my family couldn&#x27;t afford to send me there, so I had to go to a state school instead. My classmate and friend was accepted to MIT but also had to go to a state school because of money. This was decades ago, so perhaps things have changed recently, but my higher education was gated on my family&#x27;s wealth, i.e., lack thereof. Was it a &quot;meritocracy&quot;? No fucking way.</text></item><item><author>glimshe</author><text>This is a typical &quot;let&#x27;s be all equally poor&#x2F;bad&quot; argument. Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation and not a single person is <i>required</i> to go there or hire someone from there.<p>Why do Harvard people &quot;drive 20% above the speed limit&quot;? Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren&#x27;t amazing proxies for productivity, but they are <i>decent</i> proxies. I&#x27;ve seen dozens of theories on how to interview and triage people, but few approaches beat the cost-benefit of supporting decisions based on a degree from a solid institution.<p>Having managed over 100+ people, I can say that <i>on average</i> the people from better institutions are better employees - even though I have managed amazing people without college degrees and bad people with amazing degrees. The top schools can be pretty darn great, Harvard being just one of them.<p>Not very different than an Apple product being generally better than a product from some random vendor from Amazon with names like &quot;GREAT TECH&quot; or &quot;SUPER QUALITY PRO&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lapcat</author><text>&gt; the outliers at state schools are people like you with extenuating circumstances.<p>Being middle class is an extenuating circumstance? ;-)</text></comment> |
8,323,064 | 8,321,942 | 1 | 2 | 8,321,007 | train | <story><title>The Bézier Game</title><url>http://bezier.method.ac/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>egypturnash</author><text>When you pull out the first point of a curve, it&#x27;s oriented backwards. Here&#x27;s what I see when I click on the left point of the circle, drag the curve handle upwards, release, and move the cursor to the second point: <a href="http://imgur.com/zw20Ig4" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;zw20Ig4</a><p>I get the same behavior on the next exercise (the heart), as well.<p>Also I feel that you are giving exactly enough points to do a nicely editable shape, and then asking them to do it in <i>less</i> by having the score mechanic. I&#x27;m at the face now, and every preceding image has been done with exactly the amount of points allocated when I follow my usual rules of point placement. I feel like you&#x27;re teaching people to make hard-to-edit images by asking them to use less points.<p>(Said rules:
1. Pull curve handles out to about 1&#x2F;3 of the length of the line they control.
2. Never turn more than 90º between two control points.
3. Avoid S-curves between two points.)<p>OSX 10.9.4, Safari. And fourteen years using Illustrator as my main artistic medium.<p>Edit. I stopped at the swooshy S when you asked me to try and make it with about 3&#x2F;4 as many points as I would consider to be the minimum for a nice, controllable path. I feel you are teaching people bad form.<p>(To make a programming analogy: think of the difference between ultra-compact, hyper-idiomatic Perl code with single-letter variables and nicely-commented code with informative variable names - the Perl may be smaller, but it takes a <i>lot</i> more effort to go back and read when you need to change something.)</text></comment> | <story><title>The Bézier Game</title><url>http://bezier.method.ac/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Balgair</author><text>I could not even get through the first tutorial stage. What did any of the cursor things mean? I kept clicking , but the colors turned from peach to green to purple only, nothing else happened. What is this supposed to teach again? A better tutorial is needed for sure. This was &#x27;clever&#x27; but too clever for me to use.</text></comment> |
25,572,365 | 25,572,274 | 1 | 2 | 25,568,335 | train | <story><title>Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating</title><url>https://joemorrison.substack.com/p/google-maps-moat-is-evaporating</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alasdair_</author><text>I worked at a company that <i>heavily</i> used the maps API in 2018. The 1,400% price hike really was an eye opener. It wasn&#x27;t just the money involved, which was large, but the fact that it came so suddenly and with so much magnitude.<p>Google&#x27;s choice to bump these prices made me realize that they could do the same thing with their compute cloud pricing or other APIs, again with little notice. That, in turn, led to the realization that we needed to remove our reliance on Google&#x27;s entire stack, and quickly, or we&#x27;d be in a terrible bargaining position later.<p>This one choice by the maps team likely cost Google significantly in the medium to long term, if any other companies realized the same things we did.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wpietri</author><text>Google&#x27;s fundamental relationship with users is statistical, and I think it shows. They&#x27;re very good at optimizing metrics; their search, for example has remained the leader 20+ years on. In that world, if you lose a few users or give a bad experience, well, there are plenty more where those came from, and the ones who leave will often come back.<p>I think they mistakenly bring that attitude to their consumer businesses, though. The stories of bad customer experiences are legion. Like you, I&#x27;ve learned that I can&#x27;t really trust them. Which is true of all companies, of course, but it&#x27;s different with Google. Amazon is even more rapacious, but I trust them to be long-term greedy, to not shoot themselves in the foot with some short-sighted action. For all their flaws, they understand that customer relationships have long-term value.</text></comment> | <story><title>Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating</title><url>https://joemorrison.substack.com/p/google-maps-moat-is-evaporating</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alasdair_</author><text>I worked at a company that <i>heavily</i> used the maps API in 2018. The 1,400% price hike really was an eye opener. It wasn&#x27;t just the money involved, which was large, but the fact that it came so suddenly and with so much magnitude.<p>Google&#x27;s choice to bump these prices made me realize that they could do the same thing with their compute cloud pricing or other APIs, again with little notice. That, in turn, led to the realization that we needed to remove our reliance on Google&#x27;s entire stack, and quickly, or we&#x27;d be in a terrible bargaining position later.<p>This one choice by the maps team likely cost Google significantly in the medium to long term, if any other companies realized the same things we did.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stiray</author><text>&gt; Google&#x27;s choice to bump these prices made me realize that they could do the same thing with their compute cloud pricing or other APIs, again with little notice. That, in turn, led to the realization that we needed to remove our reliance on Google&#x27;s entire stack, and quickly, or we&#x27;d be in a terrible bargaining position later.<p>Yes. You are right. The whole cloud deal is a try to rule out on premise infrastructure and once it is gone and everyone is dependent on it (due to lost of knowledge, and for cloud providers ideally when hardware vendors are no longer selling hardware to non cloud entities) harvest the dependent businesses left at their mercy and charge dearly (including for all the years before that). It is actually not even a complicated plan but it is staggering how many people are putting cloth over their eyes.</text></comment> |
25,283,817 | 25,283,900 | 1 | 2 | 25,278,781 | train | <story><title>Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/2/22047383/google-spied-workers-before-firing-labor-complaint</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>renewiltord</author><text>People should be allowed to unionize but I&#x27;ll oppose it at every front. Because mass power means mass power that can be turned against me. 2016 taught me something. There are a large contingent of anti-immigrants out there. Should you allow the creation of a mob, a day will come when the populists will take control of it.<p>In moments, the mob can break generations of integration. The best defence against it is prevention of its formation.<p>No, should you gain any appreciable fraction of power to unionize, I think there&#x27;s a lot of my money I would throw into the opposite effort. No populist mobs. Never again. No group should have that power.</text></item><item><author>black_puppydog</author><text>The whole thread here seems to revolve around whether or not Spiers should have been fired for what she did.
And while I have a clear opinion on that and had fun sparring with y&#x27;all here about it, can we also talk about how unionization is actually something that we need to think about as a profession &#x2F; group of professions?<p>The days where &quot;being in IT&quot; made you a rockstar that could command a premium in individual negotiations are, best I can tell, way in the past.
Open source frameworks and industry standards, while certainly excellent from a standpoint of work de-duplication and stability, have made it much easier (at least for bigger corps) to replace engineers, or to simply hire someone who&#x27;s cheaper and less likely to make trouble (read: people more vulnerable to exploitation).<p>There are certainly still exceptions to this, and there will continue to be. For example, the mythical 10x people among you will never have to worry about this, because they&#x27;re simply <i>that good</i>. Or if you happen to be working on rust for a year before it breaks into the mainstream, then you&#x27;ll have a head start for a while. But don&#x27;t expect that to last.<p>Overall: we will either realize and act on the fact that we are now for the most part a skilled labor like any other, or we will see our precious privileges erode and our incomes and work conditions deteriorate. And like it or not, but for many among us who are not &quot;the gift of god to coding&quot; the rational strategy will be to not fight on our own.<p>To bring this back to the current case: the NLRB decided that Spiers got illegally spied on. Whatever your take on her actions before that: illegal stays illegal, and as such don&#x27;t blame her for it &quot;because she had it coming.&quot; Blame google, for blatantly pushing against workers knowing and demanding their rights. If you see what they did here, and the context of this whole story, can you really take their argument at face value that she got fired for misappropriating company property or some such? Doesn&#x27;t it seem much more likely that they simply made an example of her for <i>informing</i> her co-workers of their rights?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>madeofpalk</author><text>The problem is there already is a single &quot;mob of power&quot;, and that’s the employer. If your employer decides it’s anti-immigrant, that’s bad for you.<p>Unions are an attempt to create a &quot;mob&quot; to counter the &quot;mob&quot; of the employer.</text></comment> | <story><title>Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/2/22047383/google-spied-workers-before-firing-labor-complaint</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>renewiltord</author><text>People should be allowed to unionize but I&#x27;ll oppose it at every front. Because mass power means mass power that can be turned against me. 2016 taught me something. There are a large contingent of anti-immigrants out there. Should you allow the creation of a mob, a day will come when the populists will take control of it.<p>In moments, the mob can break generations of integration. The best defence against it is prevention of its formation.<p>No, should you gain any appreciable fraction of power to unionize, I think there&#x27;s a lot of my money I would throw into the opposite effort. No populist mobs. Never again. No group should have that power.</text></item><item><author>black_puppydog</author><text>The whole thread here seems to revolve around whether or not Spiers should have been fired for what she did.
And while I have a clear opinion on that and had fun sparring with y&#x27;all here about it, can we also talk about how unionization is actually something that we need to think about as a profession &#x2F; group of professions?<p>The days where &quot;being in IT&quot; made you a rockstar that could command a premium in individual negotiations are, best I can tell, way in the past.
Open source frameworks and industry standards, while certainly excellent from a standpoint of work de-duplication and stability, have made it much easier (at least for bigger corps) to replace engineers, or to simply hire someone who&#x27;s cheaper and less likely to make trouble (read: people more vulnerable to exploitation).<p>There are certainly still exceptions to this, and there will continue to be. For example, the mythical 10x people among you will never have to worry about this, because they&#x27;re simply <i>that good</i>. Or if you happen to be working on rust for a year before it breaks into the mainstream, then you&#x27;ll have a head start for a while. But don&#x27;t expect that to last.<p>Overall: we will either realize and act on the fact that we are now for the most part a skilled labor like any other, or we will see our precious privileges erode and our incomes and work conditions deteriorate. And like it or not, but for many among us who are not &quot;the gift of god to coding&quot; the rational strategy will be to not fight on our own.<p>To bring this back to the current case: the NLRB decided that Spiers got illegally spied on. Whatever your take on her actions before that: illegal stays illegal, and as such don&#x27;t blame her for it &quot;because she had it coming.&quot; Blame google, for blatantly pushing against workers knowing and demanding their rights. If you see what they did here, and the context of this whole story, can you really take their argument at face value that she got fired for misappropriating company property or some such? Doesn&#x27;t it seem much more likely that they simply made an example of her for <i>informing</i> her co-workers of their rights?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>postingpals</author><text>I was planning to argue with this, but I only feel sorry that you see something as historically useful as unionising in such a light.</text></comment> |
41,045,699 | 41,045,666 | 1 | 2 | 41,043,771 | train | <story><title>Show HN: Convert HTML DOM to semantic markdown for use in LLMs</title><url>https://github.com/romansky/dom-to-semantic-markdown</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mistercow</author><text>This is cool. When dealing with tables, you might want to explore departing from markdown. I’ve found that LLMs tend to struggle with tables that have large numbers of columns containing similar data types. Correlating a row is easy enough, because the data is all together, but connecting a cell back to its column becomes a counting task, which appears to be pretty rough.<p>A trick I’ve found seems to work well is leaving some kind of id or coordinate marker on each column, and adding that to each cell. You could probably do that while still having valid markdown if you put the metadata in HTML comments, although it’s hard to say how an LLM will do at understanding that format.</text></comment> | <story><title>Show HN: Convert HTML DOM to semantic markdown for use in LLMs</title><url>https://github.com/romansky/dom-to-semantic-markdown</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gmaster1440</author><text>&gt; Semantic Clarity: Converts web content to a format more easily &quot;understandable&quot; for LLMs, enhancing their processing and reasoning capabilities.<p>Are there any data or benchmarks available that show what kind of text content LLMs understand best? Is it generally understood at this point that they &quot;understand&quot; markdown better than html?</text></comment> |
2,750,329 | 2,750,417 | 1 | 2 | 2,750,280 | train | <story><title>Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14</title><url>http://www.extremetech.com/internet/89570-firefox-8-is-20-faster-than-firefox-5-matches-chrome-14</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>arkitaip</author><text>Mozilla needs to do something to de-dramatize what some people see as version inflation. A lot of people get anxious to see these very frequent bumps because major x releases are associated with add-ons not working, bloat, etc.</text></comment> | <story><title>Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5, matches Chrome 14</title><url>http://www.extremetech.com/internet/89570-firefox-8-is-20-faster-than-firefox-5-matches-chrome-14</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>macavity23</author><text>You couldn't have a better demonstration of why competition is good.<p>I stick with FF because I prefer the interface, but there's no question that all web browsers have become much better since Chrome's introduction. And if you're willing to drop support for IE6, web development is really a pleasure compared to five years ago.</text></comment> |
36,778,029 | 36,777,870 | 1 | 3 | 36,777,053 | train | <story><title>Citus 12: Schema-based sharding for PostgreSQL</title><url>https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2023/07/18/citus-12-schema-based-sharding-for-postgres/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mslot</author><text>Nice to see this on HN :)<p>The high-level is: You enable a setting and every CREATE SCHEMA creates a new shard. All the tables in the schema will be co-located so you can have efficient joins &amp; foreign keys between the tables.<p>On top of that, you can also have reference tables that are replicated to all nodes, again for fast joins &amp; foreign keys with all schemas.<p>Everything else is about making every PostgreSQL feature work as seamlessly as if there was no sharding. You can still do things like transactions across schemas, create and use custom types, access controls, work with other extensions, use procedures, etc.</text></comment> | <story><title>Citus 12: Schema-based sharding for PostgreSQL</title><url>https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2023/07/18/citus-12-schema-based-sharding-for-postgres/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>pickledish</author><text>Hm, question for people a bit more familiar with Postgres -- what is meant by &quot;schema&quot; here?<p>My definition is &quot;the columns and column types of a table&quot;, but, that doesn&#x27;t seem to make sense with what they&#x27;re talking about here (&quot;large&quot; and &quot;small&quot; schemas probably aren&#x27;t referring to wide and narrow tables for example, and I don&#x27;t see how sharding by my definition of &quot;schema&quot; could even make sense anyways)</text></comment> |
9,832,063 | 9,831,795 | 1 | 3 | 9,831,429 | train | <story><title>The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)</title><url>http://www.nngroup.com/articles/anti-mac-interface/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>m_mueller</author><text>One thing that almost always gets overlooked when critizing &#x2F; trying to innovate on Xerox Parc-like interfaces, is discoverability. Look at departures from this interface (or predecessors of it) and you&#x27;ll almost always find a system where it&#x27;s hard for users to discover what they can do and how their actions will affect the state. Most prominently:<p>* iOS style gestures<p>* Office Ribbons (where has my feature XY been moved to? I guess I have to google now..)<p>* CLI (what does parameter -p do again?)<p>* Metro style swipes<p>* Voice commands<p>The only interface that has <i>improved</i> on discoverability so far, is OSX, especially with its integrated spotlight search in each application&#x27;s help menu.<p>What I&#x27;d like to see is a CLI that (a) understands objects by default (i.e. PowerShell) and (b) is discoverable, for example by using mouse interactions when you&#x27;re trying to learn.<p>(a) would mean that the command line applications become much easier to compose. Imagine something like list &#x2F; dict comprehensions in the command line:<p>ls | [entry.created for entry in $@ if entry.filename[0] == &#x27;a&#x27;] | sort<p>(b) would mean that you could hover each of the commands above, inspect the possible parameters, default values, examples without having to execute anything. The whole interface could get much richer as well, for example if the output of your commands is a list of objects that have the same attributes (e.g. `ls`), it would display it in a table where each column is sortable using <i>gasp</i> the mouse.</text></comment> | <story><title>The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)</title><url>http://www.nngroup.com/articles/anti-mac-interface/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>vbezhenar</author><text>&gt; We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore.<p>It&#x27;s an interesting exercise to compare this to the mobile platforms, e.g. iOS. Windows are gone. Icons are here. Menus are changed. Pointer is changed too (your finger is pointer, not an abstract arrow).<p>Though on OS X desktop I don&#x27;t see any innovations at all! May be I&#x27;m missing something? Windows, icons, menu, pointer, that&#x27;s all. Probably gestures are an innovation, but it isn&#x27;t used widely except in operating system windows manager and Safari. Can we think of a tabs as an innovation? I never really liked them, I believe that tabs could be replaced by better window management. It&#x27;s something that tied to application now, but it should be tied to a window manager and probably in better ways.<p>Desktop user interface is definitely stagnating, if we&#x27;re talking about OS X. I don&#x27;t know much about new Windows releases, but in Windows 7 it was the same story.</text></comment> |
24,557,671 | 24,554,231 | 1 | 2 | 24,553,514 | train | <story><title>Blacklight – A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector</title><url>https://themarkup.org/blacklight/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fxtentacle</author><text>I feel like we should unify the copyright and privacy laws.<p>If I copy a Disney movie without their knowledge and then extract value from it, for example by watching the movie without paying, everyone agrees that this is theft. And punishment is generally strong to excessive.<p>If a website copies my private data without my knowledge or even after I decline permission by sending DNT headers, that is somehow considered completely fine.<p>But to me, the value of my private data is vastly higher than the value of watching a copied movie. And the potential for financial damages stemming from a stolen identity is also much highest than the real damages from someone downloading an mp4.<p>I suggest that we classify the secret collection of private data as theft.<p>Edit: With my wording, I was referring to this old pro-copyright ad: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sandworm101</author><text>&gt;&gt; for example by watching the movie without paying, everyone agrees that this is theft.<p>No. Very few would equate this to theft, especially lawyers. There is even a debate to be had as to what &quot;watching a movie&quot; even means. How about a youtube review of the movie? What about a clip incorporated into something else? What about my IronMan costume for halloween? Intellectual property is not like land or objects. That is why it is subject to very special and very specific limitations on when and where it can be applied.<p>There are even a few disney movies that, soon, will be out of copyright. Steamboat Willy falls out in 2024. Superman in 2031. &#x27;Sherlock Holmes&#x27; fell out of UK copyright in 2000, so too &#x27;Gone With the Wind&#x27;. Brits can print those books all they want. Americans ... will have to wait a few decades. Copyright violates are a totally different game than traditional understandings of &quot;theft&quot;.</text></comment> | <story><title>Blacklight – A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector</title><url>https://themarkup.org/blacklight/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fxtentacle</author><text>I feel like we should unify the copyright and privacy laws.<p>If I copy a Disney movie without their knowledge and then extract value from it, for example by watching the movie without paying, everyone agrees that this is theft. And punishment is generally strong to excessive.<p>If a website copies my private data without my knowledge or even after I decline permission by sending DNT headers, that is somehow considered completely fine.<p>But to me, the value of my private data is vastly higher than the value of watching a copied movie. And the potential for financial damages stemming from a stolen identity is also much highest than the real damages from someone downloading an mp4.<p>I suggest that we classify the secret collection of private data as theft.<p>Edit: With my wording, I was referring to this old pro-copyright ad: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>raspyberr</author><text>Why would you unify two unrelated things? I think privacy is a right and copyright is so overstretched it literally works against its original intention.<p>As an aside, the only part of &quot;Intellectual Property&quot; as an idea that I agree with is the right for an author to claim that they authored something. It shoudln&#x27;t give them a right to control how its distributed or what people do with it. Why would you compare the rights of people to the &quot;rights&quot; of companies? Why would you defend enormous corporations? Disney doesn&#x27;t have &quot;knowledge&quot;. It&#x27;s not a person.</text></comment> |
20,773,002 | 20,773,030 | 1 | 2 | 20,772,416 | train | <story><title>The Many Possibilities of iMessage File Vulnerability</title><url>https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-many-possibilities-of-cve-2019-8646.html?m=1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>To me the key question is: Why is iMessage not a normal iOS app?<p>We&#x27;ve seen numerous iMessage bugs over the years inc. full OS take-overs (often used for jailbreak), soft bricking (endless restarts due to corrupt notifications&#x2F;requiring a factory reset), crashes that reboot the phone (once), and a bunch of potential for escalation&#x2F;code execution.<p>None of this is possible with apps in the normal iOS sandbox. The apps themselves would crash, but they&#x27;re context confined, they cannot bring down the underlying OS, write invalid notifications, or cause a kernel panic.<p>But they&#x27;ve designed iMessage to act like a part of the underlying OS for no real reason. You could very easily hand off the most hazardous parts of iMessage&#x27;s inner workings into the app&#x27;s context, or even another user space&#x2F;context confined service, and just let them crash like normal apps do.<p>Ten years ago it was common for font processing to happen in the kernel. This was problematic because front processing is hard, and bugs occur. Since then we&#x27;ve seen many migrate fonts into userland. Why is iMessage&#x27;s security model so far behind the times, it is a lot less critical&#x2F;performance impacted than fonts, but yet has worse security than most font systems in 2019?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>csande17</author><text>I suspect it&#x27;s because historically, iOS didn&#x27;t have a way to embed views from one app into another app. When Apple wanted to let you view iMessages from the lock screen, or expose iMessage via Share buttons in third-party apps, they accomplished that by shoving most of iMessage into the operating system itself.<p>These days, there <i>are</i> systems to do this properly (it&#x27;s how third-party keyboards work, for example), but Apple is a small indie company that does not have the resources to refactor iMessage to use the iOS features they created.</text></comment> | <story><title>The Many Possibilities of iMessage File Vulnerability</title><url>https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-many-possibilities-of-cve-2019-8646.html?m=1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>To me the key question is: Why is iMessage not a normal iOS app?<p>We&#x27;ve seen numerous iMessage bugs over the years inc. full OS take-overs (often used for jailbreak), soft bricking (endless restarts due to corrupt notifications&#x2F;requiring a factory reset), crashes that reboot the phone (once), and a bunch of potential for escalation&#x2F;code execution.<p>None of this is possible with apps in the normal iOS sandbox. The apps themselves would crash, but they&#x27;re context confined, they cannot bring down the underlying OS, write invalid notifications, or cause a kernel panic.<p>But they&#x27;ve designed iMessage to act like a part of the underlying OS for no real reason. You could very easily hand off the most hazardous parts of iMessage&#x27;s inner workings into the app&#x27;s context, or even another user space&#x2F;context confined service, and just let them crash like normal apps do.<p>Ten years ago it was common for font processing to happen in the kernel. This was problematic because front processing is hard, and bugs occur. Since then we&#x27;ve seen many migrate fonts into userland. Why is iMessage&#x27;s security model so far behind the times, it is a lot less critical&#x2F;performance impacted than fonts, but yet has worse security than most font systems in 2019?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saagarjha</author><text>iMessage <i>is</i> a normal iOS app, at least mostly. It has access to a couple of entitlements that normal apps don&#x27;t get, since it needs to do things like access Apple Pay and launch iMessage apps, but it&#x27;s possible to have the app itself crash without hosing the entire OS. The problems we&#x27;re seeing here, however, are issues where iMessage&#x27;s (buggy) frameworks are being loaded into the SpringBoard process (which is essentially the UI shell for iOS) and this is what is crashing, causing the phone to be unusable. So the solution here would be to stop allowing for message parsing to happen in contexts like these. (Also, as far as I am aware, there have not been any jailbreaks in iMessage that rely on the app being special in any particular way because it&#x27;s really not.)</text></comment> |
4,814,628 | 4,814,403 | 1 | 2 | 4,814,187 | train | <story><title>Everything Technical in F1</title><url>http://scarbsf1.com/blog1/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>junto</author><text>A friend of mine was a transmission/gearbox designer for F1 cars. It was fascinating to hear about the things going on behind the scenes.<p>Most teams have components built by a handful of specialized external engineering companies. Some things are dealt with internally, but the lower order teams don't have the budgets to deal with much of the technology in-house. Ferrari is the exception and they do almost everything themselves (this might have changed because this was nearly 10 years ago).<p>The lower order teams get called "pit dodgers" (behind their backs). External companies know that statistically these teams don't finish so many races, and the attention to detail in the design and finish for these teams is much less than those premium teams receive.<p>It is sadly a vicious circle. Statistically, they will have worse drivers, who are more likely to crash or damage the cars early in the race, so often the cars in the lower order teams don't have the required staying power for the entire race.<p>I found it interesting to know that F1 cars have reverse gear, simply in accordance with regulations. It doesn't always work that well however, and I believe on one occasion its inclusion was overlooked.</text></comment> | <story><title>Everything Technical in F1</title><url>http://scarbsf1.com/blog1/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ImprovedSilence</author><text>If you ever have a chance to go to an F1 race, do it. You might have a terrible view of the race, but it is the greatest sound you will ever hear. It's like the sky is getting ripped apart by a million banshees.</text></comment> |
14,053,653 | 14,053,678 | 1 | 3 | 14,053,011 | train | <story><title>Uber said to use “sophisticated” software to defraud drivers, passengers</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/uber-said-to-use-sophisticated-software-to-defraud-drivers-passengers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Consultant32452</author><text>I don&#x27;t really understand why Uber would be required to show the same price to both sides unless contractually obligated. When I hire a contractor to renovate my house he doesn&#x27;t typically show me the invoices to all his subs. He negotiates one price with them and a different price with me.</text></item><item><author>Judgmentality</author><text>One time when I took an Uber, the driver told me how Uber was defrauding him. He had his friend order an Uber, and he made sure to pick him up, and they compared the prices. The prices, unsurprisingly, were much higher for the passenger than for the driver.<p>The difficulty of course is proving this to be true. And then the question is how much does Uber lose from a settlement? Probably less than they earned from price manipulation.<p>But at this point it seems people might actually think negatively of Uber as a whole, but how long that will stick is hard to say.</text></item><item><author>lithos</author><text>Uber has killed so much goodwill and their reputation so well that no one will be surprised at almost any accusation directed at Uber.<p>I know my first thought was &quot;not surprising&quot;, and I imagine others will think the same.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ewjordan</author><text>According to the complaint, this was part of the contract:<p><pre><code> 52. The Uber Defendants and Plaintiff and the other Class Members had a
contractual agreement regarding the collection, receipt, and payment to drivers of the
fares paid by Users for the driver’s transportation services.
53. The Uber Defendants agreed that they would collect and pay to the
Plaintiff the fare by the User, minus a contractual service fee and booking fee.
54. As a result of the misrepresentations and omissions alleged herein,
including the Uber Defendants&#x27; failure to remit payment to the Plaintiff and other Class
members of the full amount of the fare (after deducting the contractual service fee
percentage and booking fee), there has been a violation or breach of the agreement
between Plaintiff and the Uber Defendants. Accordingly, Plaintiff and the other Class
members have been underpaid for their services and did not receive the benefit of
their bargain.
</code></pre>
If the contract with drivers did, in fact, say that Uber would pay out the fare that the user paid minus a standard service and booking fee, then it seems like this is pretty solid, though IANAL. I have no idea if that&#x27;s what the actual agreement is, though.</text></comment> | <story><title>Uber said to use “sophisticated” software to defraud drivers, passengers</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/uber-said-to-use-sophisticated-software-to-defraud-drivers-passengers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Consultant32452</author><text>I don&#x27;t really understand why Uber would be required to show the same price to both sides unless contractually obligated. When I hire a contractor to renovate my house he doesn&#x27;t typically show me the invoices to all his subs. He negotiates one price with them and a different price with me.</text></item><item><author>Judgmentality</author><text>One time when I took an Uber, the driver told me how Uber was defrauding him. He had his friend order an Uber, and he made sure to pick him up, and they compared the prices. The prices, unsurprisingly, were much higher for the passenger than for the driver.<p>The difficulty of course is proving this to be true. And then the question is how much does Uber lose from a settlement? Probably less than they earned from price manipulation.<p>But at this point it seems people might actually think negatively of Uber as a whole, but how long that will stick is hard to say.</text></item><item><author>lithos</author><text>Uber has killed so much goodwill and their reputation so well that no one will be surprised at almost any accusation directed at Uber.<p>I know my first thought was &quot;not surprising&quot;, and I imagine others will think the same.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Steko</author><text>If they&#x27;re using a fraudulent route as the basis for the price, that&#x27;s like your contractor billing you for more manhours than it actually took.</text></comment> |
40,812,482 | 40,812,152 | 1 | 2 | 40,796,447 | train | <story><title>Making AI better at math tutoring</title><url>https://blog.khanacademy.org/why-were-deeply-invested-in-making-ai-better-at-math-tutoring-and-what-weve-been-up-to-lately/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JustinSkycak</author><text>Conversational dialogue seems like a fascinating distraction.<p>Many people who have (unsuccessfully) attempted to apply AI to education have focused too much on the &quot;explanation&quot; part and not enough on scaffolding, navigating, and managing the entire learning process. It’s easy to go on a wild goose chase building an explanation AI.<p>You fall in love with the idea of AI having conversational dialogue with students, and then you get lost in the weeds of complexity. You solve just enough of the problem to produce a cool demo, yet you&#x27;re still hopelessly far away from self-service learning in real life.<p>I don&#x27;t think conversational dialogue is even necessary.<p>What we do at mathacademy.com is hard-code explanations and break them up into bite-size pieces that are served at just the right moment. And we close the feedback loop by having students solve problems, which they need to do anyway. (The student&#x27;s &quot;response&quot; is whether they got the problem correct.)<p>Sure, hard-coding explanations feels tedious, takes a lot of work, and isn&#x27;t &quot;sexy&quot; like an AI that generates responses from scratch – but at least it&#x27;s not a pipe dream. It&#x27;s a practical solution that lets us move on to other components of the AI that are just as important.<p>What are those other components? A handful off the top of my head:<p>* After a minimum effective dose of explanation, the AI needs to switch over to active problem-solving. Students should begin with simple cases and then climb up the ladder of difficulty, covering all cases that they could reasonably be expected to solve on a future assessment.<p>* Assessments should be frequent and broad in coverage, and students should be assigned personalized remedial reviews based on what they answered incorrectly.<p>* Students should progress through the curriculum in a personalized mastery-based manner, only being presented with new topics when they have (as individuals, not just as a group) demonstrated mastery of the prerequisite material.<p>* After a student has learned a topic, they should periodically review it using spaced repetition, a systematic way of reviewing previously-learned material to retain it indefinitely into the future.<p>* If a student ever struggles, the system should not lower the bar for success on the learning task (e.g., by giving away hints). Rather, it should strengthen a student’s area of weakness so that they can clear the bar fully and independently on their next attempt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chongli</author><text>I find myself endlessly frustrated by these discussions around the teaching of mathematics. People seem to want to make it more conversational, more interactive, more engaging. It doesn&#x27;t work that way! Learning mathematics is like learning to play a musical instrument. No amount of 1-on-1 discussion with a teacher will get you to mastery.<p>You just need to practice. For hours and hours and hours.<p>The teacher&#x27;s job is to help guide you to what you might want to study next. The teacher cannot replace individual practice time.</text></comment> | <story><title>Making AI better at math tutoring</title><url>https://blog.khanacademy.org/why-were-deeply-invested-in-making-ai-better-at-math-tutoring-and-what-weve-been-up-to-lately/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JustinSkycak</author><text>Conversational dialogue seems like a fascinating distraction.<p>Many people who have (unsuccessfully) attempted to apply AI to education have focused too much on the &quot;explanation&quot; part and not enough on scaffolding, navigating, and managing the entire learning process. It’s easy to go on a wild goose chase building an explanation AI.<p>You fall in love with the idea of AI having conversational dialogue with students, and then you get lost in the weeds of complexity. You solve just enough of the problem to produce a cool demo, yet you&#x27;re still hopelessly far away from self-service learning in real life.<p>I don&#x27;t think conversational dialogue is even necessary.<p>What we do at mathacademy.com is hard-code explanations and break them up into bite-size pieces that are served at just the right moment. And we close the feedback loop by having students solve problems, which they need to do anyway. (The student&#x27;s &quot;response&quot; is whether they got the problem correct.)<p>Sure, hard-coding explanations feels tedious, takes a lot of work, and isn&#x27;t &quot;sexy&quot; like an AI that generates responses from scratch – but at least it&#x27;s not a pipe dream. It&#x27;s a practical solution that lets us move on to other components of the AI that are just as important.<p>What are those other components? A handful off the top of my head:<p>* After a minimum effective dose of explanation, the AI needs to switch over to active problem-solving. Students should begin with simple cases and then climb up the ladder of difficulty, covering all cases that they could reasonably be expected to solve on a future assessment.<p>* Assessments should be frequent and broad in coverage, and students should be assigned personalized remedial reviews based on what they answered incorrectly.<p>* Students should progress through the curriculum in a personalized mastery-based manner, only being presented with new topics when they have (as individuals, not just as a group) demonstrated mastery of the prerequisite material.<p>* After a student has learned a topic, they should periodically review it using spaced repetition, a systematic way of reviewing previously-learned material to retain it indefinitely into the future.<p>* If a student ever struggles, the system should not lower the bar for success on the learning task (e.g., by giving away hints). Rather, it should strengthen a student’s area of weakness so that they can clear the bar fully and independently on their next attempt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JustinSkycak</author><text>Should mention that I recently wrote an essay that elaborates on this argument with plenty more detail: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justinmath.com&#x2F;the-situation-with-ai-in-education&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justinmath.com&#x2F;the-situation-with-ai-in-educatio...</a></text></comment> |
10,597,558 | 10,596,837 | 1 | 3 | 10,588,849 | train | <story><title>Signs Point to Unencrypted Communications Between Terror Suspects</title><url>https://theintercept.com/2015/11/18/signs-point-to-unencrypted-communications-between-terror-suspects/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rtl49</author><text>I don&#x27;t mean to downplay the importance of this tragedy for the people involved, but it&#x27;s interesting to observe the media reaction to this event with a more detached frame of mind than I was capable of as a child.<p>The attacks have played right into the hands of parties with political interests lying in wait. For months articles on one or the other side of the encryption &quot;debate&quot; have been produced by news organizations at a low hum. Now that something, anything, loosely relevant has occurred, they can now point to this as further evidence in support of whatever position was espoused over the course of the preceding months. It strikes a person who pays attention to such things as rather methodical.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mikeash</author><text>Just try to find a public figure, <i>any</i> public figure, on any side, who has changed their mind on any policy question as a result of recent events or the information that has come to light from them.<p>It&#x27;s obvious if you pay any attention that approximately nobody is examining facts and then reaching conclusions. They all reached their conclusions long ago, and now they use facts to justify those conclusions when suitable.</text></comment> | <story><title>Signs Point to Unencrypted Communications Between Terror Suspects</title><url>https://theintercept.com/2015/11/18/signs-point-to-unencrypted-communications-between-terror-suspects/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rtl49</author><text>I don&#x27;t mean to downplay the importance of this tragedy for the people involved, but it&#x27;s interesting to observe the media reaction to this event with a more detached frame of mind than I was capable of as a child.<p>The attacks have played right into the hands of parties with political interests lying in wait. For months articles on one or the other side of the encryption &quot;debate&quot; have been produced by news organizations at a low hum. Now that something, anything, loosely relevant has occurred, they can now point to this as further evidence in support of whatever position was espoused over the course of the preceding months. It strikes a person who pays attention to such things as rather methodical.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sliverstorm</author><text>Basically, everyone has already made up their minds whether encryption&#x2F;guns&#x2F;drugs&#x2F;etc are good or bad, and use global events as &quot;proof&quot; of why they are right. It&#x27;s not just the news anchors that do it.<p>When was the last time you read someone say, &quot;And this latest attack has changed my mind...&quot;. Almost never. Mostly it&#x27;s &quot;And this latest attack proves my agenda is right...&quot;</text></comment> |
34,525,168 | 34,524,885 | 1 | 3 | 34,522,597 | train | <story><title>Amazon has radically transformed small businesses in both the U.S. and China</title><url>https://www.semafor.com/article/01/25/2023/how-amazon-turned-small-businesses-into-day-traders</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zaphod12</author><text>There is one single really key difference. Walmart takes responsibility for the products they put in their store. That they are genuine and represented as they are. They squeezed sellers, encouraged moves to china and all of that, but they aren&#x27;t a marketplace - they are a store. Amazon has abrogated all responsibility in that area and pretended they are the equivalent of the open field on which a flea market is set up.</text></item><item><author>kneebonian</author><text>To be honest maybe I am just old but it seems like every argument and quibble people have been having over Amazon is the exact same arguments I saw back in the early 2000&#x27;s the only difference is the company was Wal-Mart instead of Amazon.</text></item><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>Interesting that this &quot;transformation&quot; is pretty close to what Sun and other dot com infrastructure sellers were promising in 1998. They phrased it as &quot;take your small town business and give it a world wide footprint&quot; but it is the same. They missed the &quot;we&#x27;ll take 1&#x2F;3 of your price too&quot; part :-).<p>That, in itself, is just curious. But the interesting lesson here is that the real thing has not been &quot;web presence&quot; or world wide visibility, it was Amazon has built a pretty impressive logistics setup for moving stuff from vendors to users. It rivals what Sears &amp; Roebuck did in the 60&#x27;s and 70&#x27;s. THAT seems to be the missing piece which one might call &quot;logistics as a service.&quot;<p>It makes me wonder why Aliexpress doesn&#x27;t have more warehouses in the US. Clearly there are a number of Amazon vendors who buy from factories advertising on AE and then drop ship to Amazon, and sell at a markup that covers Amazon&#x27;s take and gives them a profit. So basically Amazon is taking a big piece of the &quot;value chain&quot; from factory to customer. If you can run a distributed logistics operation at 20% or even 15% of the market value of the goods your distributing, you can under cut Amazon.<p>Given that Walmart already has relationships with freight forwarders from China and a bunch of brick and mortar stores that could double as warehouses, I wonder if they have considered this as a &quot;side hustle.&quot;<p>Considering that this hinges on the cost of operations for the logistics service the interest in logistic based robotics is quite understandable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>phil21</author><text>&gt; Walmart takes responsibility for the products they put in their store.<p>Amazon also did this for it&#x27;s physical stores. Walmart does not do this for it&#x27;s web presence - it has a third party marketplace you need to actively avoid.<p>I have both Prime and Walmart+ due to credit card benefits, and honestly don&#x27;t see a huge difference in either experiences. Amazon is more spammy but faster shipping, Walmart less selection and slower but more reliable shipping. Walmart is more curated, but you still need to ignore the third party crap.</text></comment> | <story><title>Amazon has radically transformed small businesses in both the U.S. and China</title><url>https://www.semafor.com/article/01/25/2023/how-amazon-turned-small-businesses-into-day-traders</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zaphod12</author><text>There is one single really key difference. Walmart takes responsibility for the products they put in their store. That they are genuine and represented as they are. They squeezed sellers, encouraged moves to china and all of that, but they aren&#x27;t a marketplace - they are a store. Amazon has abrogated all responsibility in that area and pretended they are the equivalent of the open field on which a flea market is set up.</text></item><item><author>kneebonian</author><text>To be honest maybe I am just old but it seems like every argument and quibble people have been having over Amazon is the exact same arguments I saw back in the early 2000&#x27;s the only difference is the company was Wal-Mart instead of Amazon.</text></item><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>Interesting that this &quot;transformation&quot; is pretty close to what Sun and other dot com infrastructure sellers were promising in 1998. They phrased it as &quot;take your small town business and give it a world wide footprint&quot; but it is the same. They missed the &quot;we&#x27;ll take 1&#x2F;3 of your price too&quot; part :-).<p>That, in itself, is just curious. But the interesting lesson here is that the real thing has not been &quot;web presence&quot; or world wide visibility, it was Amazon has built a pretty impressive logistics setup for moving stuff from vendors to users. It rivals what Sears &amp; Roebuck did in the 60&#x27;s and 70&#x27;s. THAT seems to be the missing piece which one might call &quot;logistics as a service.&quot;<p>It makes me wonder why Aliexpress doesn&#x27;t have more warehouses in the US. Clearly there are a number of Amazon vendors who buy from factories advertising on AE and then drop ship to Amazon, and sell at a markup that covers Amazon&#x27;s take and gives them a profit. So basically Amazon is taking a big piece of the &quot;value chain&quot; from factory to customer. If you can run a distributed logistics operation at 20% or even 15% of the market value of the goods your distributing, you can under cut Amazon.<p>Given that Walmart already has relationships with freight forwarders from China and a bunch of brick and mortar stores that could double as warehouses, I wonder if they have considered this as a &quot;side hustle.&quot;<p>Considering that this hinges on the cost of operations for the logistics service the interest in logistic based robotics is quite understandable.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>user3939382</author><text>Yep. For the curious, go search Amazon for &quot;1 TB USB&quot; for a good laugh.</text></comment> |
37,930,720 | 37,930,881 | 1 | 3 | 37,929,017 | train | <story><title>Binance US No Longer Allows USD Withdrawal for Users</title><url>https://thenewscrypto.com/binance-us-no-longer-allows-usd-withdrawal-for-users/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>UncleMeat</author><text>This really is the key thing. Crypto allows for the evasion of laws. That&#x27;s its key contribution. In authoritarian states this is probably a net good. In the rest of the world this is a harm.<p>&quot;The killer app for this technology is crime.&quot;</text></item><item><author>vaxintar</author><text>Thanks to Ethereum (and specially now that there are L2s which have cheaper tx costs) I can distribute revenue from my business between different types of collaborators, without incurring in paying 120% in taxes for having &quot;employees&quot;.<p>In Argentina if someone works for you more than 15&#x2F;20 hours in a given month you are legally obliged to hire them for, at least, 3 months.
The legislation doesn&#x27;t fit in tons of cases, and led the country to over 35% of working people outside the legal framework.<p>Crypto gives people living in dysfunctional democracies a chance to participate in the global economy, something that people living in Europe or North America cannot comprehend.<p>And don&#x27;t even get me started on why ownership of your money is important but if you are willing to read take a look at this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Corralito" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Corralito</a></text></item><item><author>stouset</author><text>Nearly 14 years in, where exactly is this “ton of real world utility”?<p>Surely someone somewhere would have a product providing this utility, even amidst the sea of fraud and grift. I still don’t see it.<p><i>Some</i> utility? Okay, sure. A ton? Not even close. Consider that the web launched in 1993. By 2007 (14 years later), virtually the entire planet had changed dramatically as a result. <i>That</i> is a technology with a ton of real world utility.</text></item><item><author>sickofparadox</author><text>Cryptocurrency was (and still is to an extent) a really interesting idea that has a ton of real world utility, especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon. It&#x27;s a shame that the &quot;get rich quick&quot; grifters and speculators took ahold of it and have killed any chance of normal people adopting it as a regular form of payment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gary_0</author><text>&gt; In authoritarian states this is probably a net good<p>Crypto doesn&#x27;t fix the problem with authoritarian states (or the drug war, or backwards prostitution laws), though, it&#x27;s just another workaround. There&#x27;s no shortcut around actual social change.<p>And the idealistic notion that crypto could allow mass civil disobedience didn&#x27;t really pan out; these days, &quot;civil disobedience&quot; is usually too marketable and monetizable for it to not get co-opted by scamvangelists and corporations (which reminds me of the Black Mirror episode where they monetize the guy&#x27;s suicidal protest against everything being monetized).</text></comment> | <story><title>Binance US No Longer Allows USD Withdrawal for Users</title><url>https://thenewscrypto.com/binance-us-no-longer-allows-usd-withdrawal-for-users/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>UncleMeat</author><text>This really is the key thing. Crypto allows for the evasion of laws. That&#x27;s its key contribution. In authoritarian states this is probably a net good. In the rest of the world this is a harm.<p>&quot;The killer app for this technology is crime.&quot;</text></item><item><author>vaxintar</author><text>Thanks to Ethereum (and specially now that there are L2s which have cheaper tx costs) I can distribute revenue from my business between different types of collaborators, without incurring in paying 120% in taxes for having &quot;employees&quot;.<p>In Argentina if someone works for you more than 15&#x2F;20 hours in a given month you are legally obliged to hire them for, at least, 3 months.
The legislation doesn&#x27;t fit in tons of cases, and led the country to over 35% of working people outside the legal framework.<p>Crypto gives people living in dysfunctional democracies a chance to participate in the global economy, something that people living in Europe or North America cannot comprehend.<p>And don&#x27;t even get me started on why ownership of your money is important but if you are willing to read take a look at this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Corralito" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Corralito</a></text></item><item><author>stouset</author><text>Nearly 14 years in, where exactly is this “ton of real world utility”?<p>Surely someone somewhere would have a product providing this utility, even amidst the sea of fraud and grift. I still don’t see it.<p><i>Some</i> utility? Okay, sure. A ton? Not even close. Consider that the web launched in 1993. By 2007 (14 years later), virtually the entire planet had changed dramatically as a result. <i>That</i> is a technology with a ton of real world utility.</text></item><item><author>sickofparadox</author><text>Cryptocurrency was (and still is to an extent) a really interesting idea that has a ton of real world utility, especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon. It&#x27;s a shame that the &quot;get rich quick&quot; grifters and speculators took ahold of it and have killed any chance of normal people adopting it as a regular form of payment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vaxintar</author><text>&gt;in the rest of the world is a harm<p>Have you ever considered what might happen if that distant, authoritarian state suddenly appeared within your country? It has happened many times before, and I don&#x27;t see why we should think it won&#x27;t happen again.<p>Things turn around faster and faster as technology progresses, at least from my perspective</text></comment> |
18,078,595 | 18,078,221 | 1 | 3 | 18,077,750 | train | <story><title>Skripal Suspect Boshirov Identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga</title><url>https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/26/skripal-suspect-boshirov-identified-gru-colonel-anatoliy-chepiga/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rdtsc</author><text>Outstanding work.<p>Now it is interesting to go back and look at the PR campaign and all the disinformation pushed to deflect and cover it up.<p>The RT channel&#x27;s interview with the &quot;gay Russian tourists&quot; was precious.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rt.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;438356-rt-petrov-boshirov-full-interview&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rt.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;438356-rt-petrov-boshirov-full-inter...</a><p>&gt; You know, let’s not breach anyone’s privacy. We came to you for protection, but this is turning into some kind of an interrogation. You are going too far. We came to you for protection. You’re not interrogating us.<p>And you can almost see through the logic - &quot;Hmm, the West sympathizes with gays so why don&#x27;t we insinuate you are gay and then they&#x27;ll feel sorry for you and forget about you being GRU agents assassinating people&quot;.</text></comment> | <story><title>Skripal Suspect Boshirov Identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga</title><url>https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/26/skripal-suspect-boshirov-identified-gru-colonel-anatoliy-chepiga/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>krn</author><text>The Web of Death[1] by Buzzfeed lists all the people related to Russia who died in unexpected circumstances on the UK&#x27;s soil in the last 15 years, together with their personal stories and connections.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.buzzfeed.com&#x2F;heidiblake&#x2F;from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil#11278400" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.buzzfeed.com&#x2F;heidiblake&#x2F;from-russia-with-blood-1...</a></text></comment> |
13,702,094 | 13,701,152 | 1 | 2 | 13,700,073 | train | <story><title>Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater</title><url>http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/want-an-energyefficient-data-center-build-it-underwater</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jefflombardjr</author><text>I&#x27;m all for exploring new approaches, however:<p>a) Salt water is highly corrosive. Wouldn&#x27;t maintenance costs be high?<p>b) Isn&#x27;t marine biology highly sensitive to heat pollution?<p>For high latency services like Amazon Glacier, wouldn&#x27;t it make sense to host in a place like Iceland? Really cheap hydrothermic&#x2F;clean power. Highly educated local talent pool, and relatively consistent cool temperatures. If you&#x27;re maintaining 80F (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.datacenterknowledge.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2008&#x2F;10&#x2F;14&#x2F;google-raise-your-data-center-temperature&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.datacenterknowledge.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2008&#x2F;10&#x2F;14&#x2F;googl...</a>) the ambient temps outside should provide ample cooling year round.<p>For lower latency requirements, wouldn&#x27;t it be worth it to install efficient cooling powered by electricity? (preferably renewable) With cheap solar who really cares about grid power loss and associated inefficiencies?<p>Essentially, I think it makes sense to get better at solar than to have Steve Zissou as a server admin.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stcredzero</author><text><i>Essentially, I think it makes sense to get better at solar than to have Steve Zissou as a server admin.</i><p>1) In the original article, these server farms would be remote administration only.<p>2) Such facilities would make the secret construction of one&#x27;s James Bond Villain underwater base much, much easier. (Wouldn&#x27;t Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Peter Thiel all make great Bond villains?)</text></comment> | <story><title>Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater</title><url>http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/want-an-energyefficient-data-center-build-it-underwater</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jefflombardjr</author><text>I&#x27;m all for exploring new approaches, however:<p>a) Salt water is highly corrosive. Wouldn&#x27;t maintenance costs be high?<p>b) Isn&#x27;t marine biology highly sensitive to heat pollution?<p>For high latency services like Amazon Glacier, wouldn&#x27;t it make sense to host in a place like Iceland? Really cheap hydrothermic&#x2F;clean power. Highly educated local talent pool, and relatively consistent cool temperatures. If you&#x27;re maintaining 80F (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.datacenterknowledge.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2008&#x2F;10&#x2F;14&#x2F;google-raise-your-data-center-temperature&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.datacenterknowledge.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2008&#x2F;10&#x2F;14&#x2F;googl...</a>) the ambient temps outside should provide ample cooling year round.<p>For lower latency requirements, wouldn&#x27;t it be worth it to install efficient cooling powered by electricity? (preferably renewable) With cheap solar who really cares about grid power loss and associated inefficiencies?<p>Essentially, I think it makes sense to get better at solar than to have Steve Zissou as a server admin.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>longerthoughts</author><text>&gt; b) Isn&#x27;t marine biology highly sensitive to heat pollution?<p>Impact on the marine environment is briefly mentioned in the last couple of paragraphs of the article, although they&#x27;re a little dismissive and don&#x27;t provide any evidence supporting their claim of negligible impact.</text></comment> |
9,009,420 | 9,009,489 | 1 | 2 | 9,008,360 | train | <story><title>UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/06/gchq-mass-internet-surveillance-unlawful-court-nsa</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ch215</author><text>The way this same story has been spun by the BBC worries me.<p>You&#x27;d think the news line has to be, as the Guardian and others are reporting, GCHQ mass Internet surveillance was &#x27;unlawful&#x27;.<p>The Beeb did go with &#x27;unlawful&#x27; in their original headline but the story has since been watered down with sheer wordiness.<p>&#x27;Unlawlful&#x27; now appears in the tenth paragraph, below an analysis panel, and is only then included in a quotation from a campaign group.<p>Nowhere in the article does the BBC succinctly say a tribunal held that GCHQ breached human rights law. It simply says the agency is now complaint (without saying that it was not for seven years).<p>To me at least, it seems the BBC is becoming less of a public-service broadcaster and more of a state one.<p>--
GCHQ censured over sharing of internet surveillance data with US
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31164451" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-31164451</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>UVB-76</author><text>Diffs: <a href="http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31164451" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;newsdiffs.org&#x2F;article-history&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-3...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/06/gchq-mass-internet-surveillance-unlawful-court-nsa</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ch215</author><text>The way this same story has been spun by the BBC worries me.<p>You&#x27;d think the news line has to be, as the Guardian and others are reporting, GCHQ mass Internet surveillance was &#x27;unlawful&#x27;.<p>The Beeb did go with &#x27;unlawful&#x27; in their original headline but the story has since been watered down with sheer wordiness.<p>&#x27;Unlawlful&#x27; now appears in the tenth paragraph, below an analysis panel, and is only then included in a quotation from a campaign group.<p>Nowhere in the article does the BBC succinctly say a tribunal held that GCHQ breached human rights law. It simply says the agency is now complaint (without saying that it was not for seven years).<p>To me at least, it seems the BBC is becoming less of a public-service broadcaster and more of a state one.<p>--
GCHQ censured over sharing of internet surveillance data with US
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31164451" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-31164451</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>Even worse, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30345801" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-30345801</a> &quot;GCHQ does not breach human rights, judges rule&quot;. This is ridiculous and insulting.</text></comment> |
10,689,289 | 10,688,733 | 1 | 2 | 10,688,201 | train | <story><title>E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>re</author><text>I didn&#x27;t notice at first, but, like with some other Wikipedia articles, the editors of this one have enforced the E-Prime constraint on the article itself. After the possibility occurred to me and I went back to the page to check, I only found it particularly unnatural in the initial sentence, since almost every other article begins with the sentence &quot;[subject] is [concise definition].&quot;<p>For a similar example, the &quot;Plot Summary&quot; section of the page about &quot;A Void&quot; also conforms to its subject&#x27;s constraint--in that case, avoiding the letter &quot;e&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;A_Void#Plot_summary" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;A_Void#Plot_summary</a><p>It surprises me that avoiding forms of &quot;to be&quot; presents such a challenge for me--particularly with this sentence. I feel that it makes my writing sound more repetitive, since I end up replacing &quot;X is&quot; with wordy alternatives like &quot;I find X&quot; or &quot;X seems&quot;; while I&#x27;m used to forms of &quot;to be&quot; appearing dozens of times in a paragraph, my replacements stand out more when overused.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chrisseaton</author><text>Actually the first sentence shows a loop-hole doesn&#x27;t it?<p>&gt; E-Prime, a prescriptive version of the English language, excludes all forms of the verb to be.<p>Doesn&#x27;t the part parenthesised in commas have a kind of implicit &#x27;is&#x27;?<p>For example E&#x27; is supposed to stop me saying things like &#x27;Terminator is a good film and is 2 hours long&#x27;, but I can say &#x27;Terminator, a good film, lasts for 2 hours&#x27;.</text></comment> | <story><title>E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>re</author><text>I didn&#x27;t notice at first, but, like with some other Wikipedia articles, the editors of this one have enforced the E-Prime constraint on the article itself. After the possibility occurred to me and I went back to the page to check, I only found it particularly unnatural in the initial sentence, since almost every other article begins with the sentence &quot;[subject] is [concise definition].&quot;<p>For a similar example, the &quot;Plot Summary&quot; section of the page about &quot;A Void&quot; also conforms to its subject&#x27;s constraint--in that case, avoiding the letter &quot;e&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;A_Void#Plot_summary" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;A_Void#Plot_summary</a><p>It surprises me that avoiding forms of &quot;to be&quot; presents such a challenge for me--particularly with this sentence. I feel that it makes my writing sound more repetitive, since I end up replacing &quot;X is&quot; with wordy alternatives like &quot;I find X&quot; or &quot;X seems&quot;; while I&#x27;m used to forms of &quot;to be&quot; appearing dozens of times in a paragraph, my replacements stand out more when overused.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>level3</author><text>I haven&#x27;t checked the whole article, but the second paragraph contains the phrase &quot;could not be expressed,&quot; so it doesn&#x27;t completely adhere to E-Prime.<p>Edit: I didn&#x27;t notice earlier while viewing the mobile version of the page, but the Talk page includes a discussion of whether or not to enforce E-Prime.
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Talk:E-Prime&#x2F;Archive_1#Article_written_in_E-Prime_considered_a_violation_of_npov" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Talk:E-Prime&#x2F;Archive_1#Article...</a>.</text></comment> |
10,492,861 | 10,493,031 | 1 | 2 | 10,492,163 | train | <story><title>IntelliJ IDEA 15 Released, Adds Kotlin to the Family of Supported JVM Languages</title><url>http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/11/intellij-idea-15-released-adds-kotlin-to-the-family-of-supported-jvm-languages/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mark_l_watson</author><text>I just updated to version 15.<p>A little off topic: even though my IntelliJ license is paid up for another month, I just signed up for the complete toolbox. Seems like a really good deal and I am happy enough with the revised license.<p>I am a polyglot programmer so also having the professional versions of RubyMine, PyCharm, and WebStorm is great. (BTW, IntelliJ is also my dev environment for Clojure and Haskell)<p>For many years JetBrains gave me complementary licenses (because of all the Java books I have written) but for the last few years I have happily paid them. I basically &#x27;live&#x27; in IntelliJ.</text></comment> | <story><title>IntelliJ IDEA 15 Released, Adds Kotlin to the Family of Supported JVM Languages</title><url>http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/11/intellij-idea-15-released-adds-kotlin-to-the-family-of-supported-jvm-languages/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>stevoski</author><text>I&#x27;ve been using IntelliJ IDEA since 2002. I used to get excited every time IntelliJ IDEA released a new version. But in recent years I find the improvements in a new version are marginal. I guess that is a sign of it being a rich and complete product. I no longer upgrade and find myself saying &quot;wow, that&#x27;s a great improvement&quot; for a few weeks.</text></comment> |
32,617,644 | 32,617,663 | 1 | 3 | 32,591,864 | train | <story><title>Complete Introduction to Particles in Japanese</title><url>https://www.gokugoku.app/en/post/complete-introduction-to-particles-in-japanese</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wokwokwok</author><text>I feel like the big language models have proved this style of learning a language is the wrong approach.<p>I learnt Japanese; I studied it for 4 years and spent a year in japan.<p>You know what worked?<p>Lots of examples of people using particles.<p>What did not work?<p>Text books explaining what the particles do.<p>A grammatical study of particles is only useful after you’ve gained an understanding of when you should use them <i>from shed loads of examples</i>.<p>It helps you refine specific fine detail points of when to use them technically, and in formal writing.<p>For early learning, I posit it’s next to useless.<p>Language is not a well designed programming language full of orthogonal concepts.<p>This has long been an argument, but language models <i>reallly</i> nail down the fact that a probabilistic approach to “similar to existing examples” approach to language is categorically superior to attempting to construct semantically correct statements from “rules”.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>woojoo666</author><text>I find that examples and technical explanations complement each other. Examples are important, but the grammar explanations help give an idea of what to focus on in the examples.<p>In fact I see it as a gradient. Vocabulary that stands on its own (like &quot;apple&quot;) is best learned through examples. Stuff that is extremely structural (like how verbs conjugate in Japanese) is much easier to learn through explanations, instead of going through examples trying to find the pattern yourself. And there is of course middle ground, like grammar particles, which are vocabulary that also obey lots of rules.</text></comment> | <story><title>Complete Introduction to Particles in Japanese</title><url>https://www.gokugoku.app/en/post/complete-introduction-to-particles-in-japanese</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wokwokwok</author><text>I feel like the big language models have proved this style of learning a language is the wrong approach.<p>I learnt Japanese; I studied it for 4 years and spent a year in japan.<p>You know what worked?<p>Lots of examples of people using particles.<p>What did not work?<p>Text books explaining what the particles do.<p>A grammatical study of particles is only useful after you’ve gained an understanding of when you should use them <i>from shed loads of examples</i>.<p>It helps you refine specific fine detail points of when to use them technically, and in formal writing.<p>For early learning, I posit it’s next to useless.<p>Language is not a well designed programming language full of orthogonal concepts.<p>This has long been an argument, but language models <i>reallly</i> nail down the fact that a probabilistic approach to “similar to existing examples” approach to language is categorically superior to attempting to construct semantically correct statements from “rules”.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yorwba</author><text>Inferring rules from shed loads of examples instead of coding them explicitly is only superior for big language models because machines are faster at processing examples than humans are at implementing a comprehensive set of rules for the machines to follow. So it&#x27;s a trade-off between slow and expensive human labor vs. fast and comparatively cheap machine labor.<p>When it&#x27;s a human learning a language, that speed difference doesn&#x27;t apply. When the choice is between a slow human processing a lot of examples vs. a slow human processing a small number of examples plus a description of the rule governing them, it&#x27;s no longer so obvious that the first approach is better.</text></comment> |
8,723,026 | 8,722,816 | 1 | 2 | 8,722,458 | train | <story><title>ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide</title><url>http://fr.slideshare.net/_TheFamily/paris-isback-indextf</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sp4ke</author><text>As a previous foreign entrepreneur who lived in Paris for 8 years here&#x27;s my experience and my advice: In paris entrepreneurship is a VIP club for rich people who will rarely take real risk. Seed investment is next to impossible. The tax reduction schemes requires months of procedures and administrative paperwork. Real estate is almost as expensive as London. And the worst, if you&#x27;re a foreigner you&#x27;ll have a real hard time given all the immigration laws nonsense.<p>You&#x27;re better off making your startup almost anywhere else.<p>EDIT: and as other comments said, people don&#x27;t speak English, the French have some sort of pride of only speaking their native language ...</text></comment> | <story><title>ParisIsBack – The Paris Tech Guide</title><url>http://fr.slideshare.net/_TheFamily/paris-isback-indextf</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>carlob</author><text>There are a bunch of nice things to be said about Paris and the tax rebate system they put in place for startups and companies that spend heavily in R&amp;D. However I think that Paris has a very low quality of life in most of the fields that are ignored in metrics:<p>- Apartment prices are usually measure by the room when doing comparisons. In Paris the room count is misleading: I&#x27;ve seen studios smaller than 15 m^2 and 1BR smaller than 25 m^2.<p>- Apartment quality is really really bad: creaky, cracked hardwood floors that haven&#x27;t been replaced since Haussmann, humidity and mold are the default.<p>- The weather is awful, it rains 40% of the days.<p>- This might sound surprising but the average food quality is abysmal: produce is expensive and tastes like nothing and the random brasserie is an expensive tourist trap.<p>- Some of the stereotypes about the Parisian being grumpy and pretending not to speak English have a grain of truth. [edit: this is going to get me downvoted to hell]<p>So if you are really planning to start a business in France, go to another city: e.g. Lille is a thriving city with a very rich cultural life, it&#x27;s 1h away from Paris by train (if you need to network you can commute) and doesn&#x27;t suffer from most of the above (except for the climate).</text></comment> |
27,483,296 | 27,483,030 | 1 | 3 | 27,479,428 | train | <story><title>Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?</title><url>https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/06/05/once-a-corporate-heavyweight-europe-is-now-an-also-ran-can-it-recover-its-footing</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thow-01187</author><text>Imho, what was happening in the Silicon Valley economy looks much more like displacement of value rather than creation of value (1).<p>Google&#x2F;Facebook have displaced other ad formats, redirecting money to themselves. AWS have displaced IT technicians in other corporations, redirecting money to themselves. Apple is selling overpriced commodity hardware, redirecting money to themselves. Uber is displacing taxis, redirecting money to themselves.<p>In other words, it&#x27;s barely above zero-sum game. And US productivity statistics are clear - the aforementioned corporations grew 500%-1000% in their profits and valuations since 2010. Meanwhile, the US productivity has grown by 4.7%. Had the SV tech been a clear net positive to the economy, the productivity growth would look different. When the tech&#x2F;telecom was truly creating new value (1995-2005), the productivity growth was at 27% that decade.<p>(1) with notable exceptions: Microsoft really is creating value where one didn&#x27;t exist before. So is Netflix, Amazon&#x27;s venerable logistics and Tesla&#x27;s drive to decrease battery costs</text></item><item><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&gt; <i>the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies</i><p>This is literally the article’s point. Europe and the U.S. grew similarly. The U.S. and China produced more large companies. (The Continent’s larger companies also being older than the other two’s.)<p>&gt; <i>supposedly more investment in R&amp;D</i><p>Not supposedly, factually. The article explicitly states this. It’s the Economist; if you need a source, they’re available on Google Scholar.<p>&gt; <i>take the global innovation index, the number of Nobel price per 100&#x27;000 habitants, the number of registered patents per year or simply the size of the economy</i><p>Nobel prizes and patents are measures of innovation, albeit not commercial ones. Leading product centres are another. The article measure the latter.<p>Europe has constrained its big businesses and scale-oriented entrepreneurs. America and China have not. This is a tradeoff, and we’re seeing it play out. The Economist takes one side; it’s the side of iPhones, AWS, the Falcon 9, drones and other businesses with economies of scale. It’s against social sensibilities aligned against “big business.”</text></item><item><author>satellite2</author><text>This article is truly bizarre.<p>The main point it makes is that the top 500 US companies grew faster than the top 500 European ones in the last decade or so.<p>But then it quickly mention, without any further analysis, that both their GDP actually grew at a similar pace. So the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies. So all else being equals it means that the smaller US companies grew more slowly and that this article is simply mesuring increasing corporate inequalities (if there is such a thing).<p>It then goes on to say, without much evidence, that this is actually good as economies of scale, supposedly more investment in R&amp;D and increasing concentration should imply more innovation.<p>If this article actually wants to discuss innovation, why don&#x27;t it use recognised tools to do so? If you take the global innovation index, the number of Nobel price per 100&#x27;000 habitants, the number of registered patents per year or simply the size of the economy, all point to a very healthy European continent.<p>I will even go further and say that the US should monitor much more closely increasing concentration as typically the ISPs or the energy distribution sectors show that concentration can be good for the shareholders but devastating for the consumer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simonh</author><text>I people freely move from one service or product to another, usually it&#x27;s because the new service is cheaper or better than the old service or product. That&#x27;s direct value to the end user right there.<p>Moving to AWS from running your own data centres is vastly more cost effective for most companies, you can build systems faster, you can scale them instantly, you can move resources between regions easily, you can focus on your company&#x27;s core competencies. AWS creates massive value, that&#x27;s why we use it.<p>I used to look up the phone numbers of restaurants in a phone book, but now I use Google. That doesn&#x27;t mean they are equivalent to me and they provide the same value. Looking up a restaurant on Google Maps is quicker, I can do it from anywhere, I can look at reviews and I can see exactly where it is and get routing direction. The experience now is orders of magnitude more powerful and that creates huge value for customers and businesses.<p>Apple hardware is highly customised, and dramatically better than anything their customers have with better performance and advanced features like machine learning and secure authentication all implemented in custom hardware. That&#x27;s been true on the phones for many years, and now with their in house designed desktop processors it&#x27;s true for the Mac as well. Although the Mac has had unique custom hardware like the T1 and the 5K iMac video system for a while too. You cannot buy hardware like it anywhere else, at any price.</text></comment> | <story><title>Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?</title><url>https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/06/05/once-a-corporate-heavyweight-europe-is-now-an-also-ran-can-it-recover-its-footing</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thow-01187</author><text>Imho, what was happening in the Silicon Valley economy looks much more like displacement of value rather than creation of value (1).<p>Google&#x2F;Facebook have displaced other ad formats, redirecting money to themselves. AWS have displaced IT technicians in other corporations, redirecting money to themselves. Apple is selling overpriced commodity hardware, redirecting money to themselves. Uber is displacing taxis, redirecting money to themselves.<p>In other words, it&#x27;s barely above zero-sum game. And US productivity statistics are clear - the aforementioned corporations grew 500%-1000% in their profits and valuations since 2010. Meanwhile, the US productivity has grown by 4.7%. Had the SV tech been a clear net positive to the economy, the productivity growth would look different. When the tech&#x2F;telecom was truly creating new value (1995-2005), the productivity growth was at 27% that decade.<p>(1) with notable exceptions: Microsoft really is creating value where one didn&#x27;t exist before. So is Netflix, Amazon&#x27;s venerable logistics and Tesla&#x27;s drive to decrease battery costs</text></item><item><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&gt; <i>the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies</i><p>This is literally the article’s point. Europe and the U.S. grew similarly. The U.S. and China produced more large companies. (The Continent’s larger companies also being older than the other two’s.)<p>&gt; <i>supposedly more investment in R&amp;D</i><p>Not supposedly, factually. The article explicitly states this. It’s the Economist; if you need a source, they’re available on Google Scholar.<p>&gt; <i>take the global innovation index, the number of Nobel price per 100&#x27;000 habitants, the number of registered patents per year or simply the size of the economy</i><p>Nobel prizes and patents are measures of innovation, albeit not commercial ones. Leading product centres are another. The article measure the latter.<p>Europe has constrained its big businesses and scale-oriented entrepreneurs. America and China have not. This is a tradeoff, and we’re seeing it play out. The Economist takes one side; it’s the side of iPhones, AWS, the Falcon 9, drones and other businesses with economies of scale. It’s against social sensibilities aligned against “big business.”</text></item><item><author>satellite2</author><text>This article is truly bizarre.<p>The main point it makes is that the top 500 US companies grew faster than the top 500 European ones in the last decade or so.<p>But then it quickly mention, without any further analysis, that both their GDP actually grew at a similar pace. So the entire EU economy grew at the same speed than the US one but not its 500 bigger companies. So all else being equals it means that the smaller US companies grew more slowly and that this article is simply mesuring increasing corporate inequalities (if there is such a thing).<p>It then goes on to say, without much evidence, that this is actually good as economies of scale, supposedly more investment in R&amp;D and increasing concentration should imply more innovation.<p>If this article actually wants to discuss innovation, why don&#x27;t it use recognised tools to do so? If you take the global innovation index, the number of Nobel price per 100&#x27;000 habitants, the number of registered patents per year or simply the size of the economy, all point to a very healthy European continent.<p>I will even go further and say that the US should monitor much more closely increasing concentration as typically the ISPs or the energy distribution sectors show that concentration can be good for the shareholders but devastating for the consumer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aikinai</author><text>&gt; Apple is selling overpriced commodity hardware<p>This hasn’t been true since the 90s. And the rest of your examples are similarly ignorant of the incredible pace of innovation coming from a lot of these companies. Google ads might not be changing the world, but their peripheral technology certainly is. AWS and Amazon’s core business as well.</text></comment> |
26,216,623 | 26,215,268 | 1 | 3 | 26,212,563 | train | <story><title>Choose Exciting Technology</title><url>https://lucjan.medium.com/choose-exciting-technology-e735bba08acc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hliyan</author><text>Engineers who find a stable technology boring after a few years probably lack curiosity and are not digging deep enough. It&#x27;s a form of ADHD.<p>After almost a decade, I still find lots of interesting ways to write plain vanilla JS code that makes developer&#x27;s jobs easier in lots of interesting ways. Before that, I spent a full decade writing C++ using nothing but a restricted set of in-house libraries. I don&#x27;t recall ever being bored because I always felt like a carpenter: have a problem? You have the tools to build more tools to make your life easier. I experimented with event driven models vs. streams vs. queues, doing complex calculations by spreading them across the nodes of a tree, developing unit and API test tools (C++ had none, many years ago).<p>Today, architecture feels more like technology shopping than tinkering.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bluemetal</author><text>FYI using the terms ADHD&#x2F;ADD when not talking about the actual disorder is often offensive to people who have ADHD. It fails to acknowledge that the condition is more complicated than just getting bored quickly, especially when your statement can be interpreted as implying that people with ADHD &quot;lack curiosity and are not digging deep enough&quot;. Things are hard enough for people with ADHD without trivialising&#x2F;generalising&#x2F;moralising their problems.</text></comment> | <story><title>Choose Exciting Technology</title><url>https://lucjan.medium.com/choose-exciting-technology-e735bba08acc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hliyan</author><text>Engineers who find a stable technology boring after a few years probably lack curiosity and are not digging deep enough. It&#x27;s a form of ADHD.<p>After almost a decade, I still find lots of interesting ways to write plain vanilla JS code that makes developer&#x27;s jobs easier in lots of interesting ways. Before that, I spent a full decade writing C++ using nothing but a restricted set of in-house libraries. I don&#x27;t recall ever being bored because I always felt like a carpenter: have a problem? You have the tools to build more tools to make your life easier. I experimented with event driven models vs. streams vs. queues, doing complex calculations by spreading them across the nodes of a tree, developing unit and API test tools (C++ had none, many years ago).<p>Today, architecture feels more like technology shopping than tinkering.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>forgotmypw17</author><text>I write mostly HTML 3.2 (with progressive enhancement additions on top for newer browsers) and I&#x27;m still finding new things to do with it after 20+ years.</text></comment> |
41,638,175 | 41,638,174 | 1 | 2 | 41,635,176 | train | <story><title>Jetstream: Shrinking the AT Protocol Firehose by >99%</title><url>https://jazco.dev/2024/09/24/jetstream/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Ericson2314</author><text>I gotta say, I am not very excited about &quot;let&#x27;s throw away all the security properties for performance!&quot; (and also &quot;CBOR is too hard!&quot;)<p>If everyone is on one server (remains to be seen), and all the bots blindly trust it because they are cheap and lazy, what the hell is the point?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>skybrian</author><text>Centralization on trusted servers is going to happen but if they speak a common protocol, at least they can be swapped out. For JetStream, anyone can run an instance, though it will cost them more.<p>It’s sort of like the right to fork in Open Source; it doesn’t mean people fork all the time or verify every line of code themselves. There’s still trust involved.<p>I wonder if some security features could be added back, though?</text></comment> | <story><title>Jetstream: Shrinking the AT Protocol Firehose by >99%</title><url>https://jazco.dev/2024/09/24/jetstream/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Ericson2314</author><text>I gotta say, I am not very excited about &quot;let&#x27;s throw away all the security properties for performance!&quot; (and also &quot;CBOR is too hard!&quot;)<p>If everyone is on one server (remains to be seen), and all the bots blindly trust it because they are cheap and lazy, what the hell is the point?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hinkley</author><text>If you’re going to try data reduction and compression, <i>always try compression first</i>. It may reveal that the 10x reduction you were looking at is only 2x and not worth the trouble.<p>Reduction first may show the compression is less useful. Verbose, human friendly protocols compressed win out in maintenance tasks, and it’s a marathon not a sprint.</text></comment> |
16,843,247 | 16,842,554 | 1 | 3 | 16,840,438 | train | <story><title>The Artificial Intelligentsia</title><url>https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-artificial-intelligentsia-timms</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dsacco</author><text>Offtopic, but I have a really difficult time reading articles like this. I don’t know if this reflects a problem with the style or my ability to focus, but I find it really annoying:<p><i>&gt; “SANDHOGS,” THEY CALLED THE LABORERS who built the tunnels leading into New York’s Penn Station at the beginning of the last century. Work distorted their humanity, sometimes literally. Resurfacing at the end of each day from their burrows beneath the Hudson and East Rivers, caked in the mud of battle against glacial rock and riprap, many sandhogs succumbed to the bends. Passengers arriving at the modern Penn Station—the luminous Beaux-Arts hangar of old long since razed, its passenger halls squashed underground—might sympathize. Vincent Scully once compared the experience to scuttling into the city like a rat. Zoomorphized, we are joined to the earlier generations.</i><p>This goes on for about seven paragraphs before I have any idea what the article about. I understand “setting the scene” but I can’t tell whether or not to care about an article if it meanders about with this flowing exposition before indicating what its central thesis is.<p>It seems like a popular style in thinkpieces and some areas of journalism. The author makes a semi-relevant title, provacative subtitle, and five - ten paragraphs of “introduction” that throw you right into the thick of a story whose purpose doesn’t seem clear unless you know what the article is about. Rather than capturing my attention with engaging exposition, I find it takes me out of it. But it must work if it’s so uniquitous; presumably their analytics have confirmed this style is engaging.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>_nothing</author><text>It&#x27;s not the style-- it&#x27;s just not good writing, but it&#x27;s trying so hard to be. It&#x27;s the kind of thing that would show up in a college writing workshop and hopefully get workshopped into something more intelligible. As they say, &quot;Show, don&#x27;t tell.&quot; The passage describes a lot but not in a way that helps you actually visualize any of it, thus it&#x27;s really hard to follow.</text></comment> | <story><title>The Artificial Intelligentsia</title><url>https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-artificial-intelligentsia-timms</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dsacco</author><text>Offtopic, but I have a really difficult time reading articles like this. I don’t know if this reflects a problem with the style or my ability to focus, but I find it really annoying:<p><i>&gt; “SANDHOGS,” THEY CALLED THE LABORERS who built the tunnels leading into New York’s Penn Station at the beginning of the last century. Work distorted their humanity, sometimes literally. Resurfacing at the end of each day from their burrows beneath the Hudson and East Rivers, caked in the mud of battle against glacial rock and riprap, many sandhogs succumbed to the bends. Passengers arriving at the modern Penn Station—the luminous Beaux-Arts hangar of old long since razed, its passenger halls squashed underground—might sympathize. Vincent Scully once compared the experience to scuttling into the city like a rat. Zoomorphized, we are joined to the earlier generations.</i><p>This goes on for about seven paragraphs before I have any idea what the article about. I understand “setting the scene” but I can’t tell whether or not to care about an article if it meanders about with this flowing exposition before indicating what its central thesis is.<p>It seems like a popular style in thinkpieces and some areas of journalism. The author makes a semi-relevant title, provacative subtitle, and five - ten paragraphs of “introduction” that throw you right into the thick of a story whose purpose doesn’t seem clear unless you know what the article is about. Rather than capturing my attention with engaging exposition, I find it takes me out of it. But it must work if it’s so uniquitous; presumably their analytics have confirmed this style is engaging.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>subcosmos</author><text>Just imagine ... that some day in the future journalism will be AI based, and will generate entire articles tailored to your viewing habits based on extensive psych profiling and AB testing to maximize clicks and screen time!<p>The content need not be true, but at least everyone will be happy with their preferred writing styles....<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;karpathy.github.io&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;21&#x2F;rnn-effectiveness&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;karpathy.github.io&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;21&#x2F;rnn-effectiveness&#x2F;</a></text></comment> |
12,178,040 | 12,177,970 | 1 | 2 | 12,177,002 | train | <story><title>The Rust Platform</title><url>https://aturon.github.io/blog/2016/07/27/rust-platform/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kibwen</author><text><p><pre><code> &gt; Empirically, languages that have large standard
&gt; libraries (e.g. Java, Python, Go) seem to do better than
&gt; their competitors.
</code></pre>
You seem to be overlooking the ultimate counterexample: C. :P</text></item><item><author>tibbe</author><text>I wouldn&#x27;t recommend following the Haskell approach. It hasn&#x27;t worked well for us. (I took part in creating the Haskell Platform and the process used to add packages to it. I also used to maintain a few of our core libraries, like our containers packages and networking).<p>Small vs large standard library:<p>A small standard library with most functionality in independent, community-maintained packages has given us API friction as types, traits (type classes), etc are hard to coordinate across maintainers and separate package release cycles. We ended up with lots of uncomfortable conversions at API boundaries.<p>Here&#x27;s a number of examples of problems we currently have:<p>- Conversions between our 5(!) string types are very common.<p>- Standard library I&#x2F;O modules cannot use new, de-facto standard string types (i.e. `Text` and `ByteString`) defined outside it because of dependency cycle.<p>- Standard library cannot use containers, other than lists, for the same reason.<p>- No standard traits for containers, like maps and sets, as those are defined outside the standard library. Result is that code is written against one concrete implementation.<p>- Newtype wrapping to avoid orphan instances. Having traits defined in packages other than the standard library makes it harder to write non-orphan instances.<p>- It&#x27;s too difficult to make larger changes as we cannot atomically update all the packages at once. Thus such changes don&#x27;t happen.<p>Empirically, languages that have large standard libraries (e.g. Java, Python, Go) seem to do better than their competitors.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brandonbloom</author><text>You were being down voted, maybe for perceived snark, but I think you raise an interesting point.<p>To me, C did have a standard library: Unix. It&#x27;s a runtime system too! Due to the nature of the original C bootstrapping process it just happens to be possible to remove this standard library, and Windows was evidence of this.<p>There is another interesting potential counter example: Lua. It&#x27;s minimalistic standard library is part of what makes it so attractive for embedding, eg. in game engines. However, Lua&#x27;s embedding API is so good, you could almost say that it comes with a large standard library too: Your existing C code!<p>I guess my larger point is that languages rarely are able to stand completely on their own. They need some sort of valuable body of code to justify people to choose the language and libraries together. It might have been the case 40 years ago that you&#x27;d reasonably choose to build something &quot;from scratch&quot;, but today, if you start on an island, you need to build a bridge, lest you remain on an island forever. Better to start on the mainland.<p>It&#x27;s one thing to build a layered system with a small core. It&#x27;s another thing to completely ignore the fact that the libraries and community _are_ the language, in the only ways that actually matter.</text></comment> | <story><title>The Rust Platform</title><url>https://aturon.github.io/blog/2016/07/27/rust-platform/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kibwen</author><text><p><pre><code> &gt; Empirically, languages that have large standard
&gt; libraries (e.g. Java, Python, Go) seem to do better than
&gt; their competitors.
</code></pre>
You seem to be overlooking the ultimate counterexample: C. :P</text></item><item><author>tibbe</author><text>I wouldn&#x27;t recommend following the Haskell approach. It hasn&#x27;t worked well for us. (I took part in creating the Haskell Platform and the process used to add packages to it. I also used to maintain a few of our core libraries, like our containers packages and networking).<p>Small vs large standard library:<p>A small standard library with most functionality in independent, community-maintained packages has given us API friction as types, traits (type classes), etc are hard to coordinate across maintainers and separate package release cycles. We ended up with lots of uncomfortable conversions at API boundaries.<p>Here&#x27;s a number of examples of problems we currently have:<p>- Conversions between our 5(!) string types are very common.<p>- Standard library I&#x2F;O modules cannot use new, de-facto standard string types (i.e. `Text` and `ByteString`) defined outside it because of dependency cycle.<p>- Standard library cannot use containers, other than lists, for the same reason.<p>- No standard traits for containers, like maps and sets, as those are defined outside the standard library. Result is that code is written against one concrete implementation.<p>- Newtype wrapping to avoid orphan instances. Having traits defined in packages other than the standard library makes it harder to write non-orphan instances.<p>- It&#x27;s too difficult to make larger changes as we cannot atomically update all the packages at once. Thus such changes don&#x27;t happen.<p>Empirically, languages that have large standard libraries (e.g. Java, Python, Go) seem to do better than their competitors.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saghm</author><text>JS, too, right? Forget &quot;large&quot; standard library, there really isn&#x27;t any standard library at all</text></comment> |
38,036,682 | 38,034,304 | 1 | 2 | 38,027,587 | train | <story><title>How bioelectricity could regrow limbs and organs</title><url>https://news.uchicago.edu/how-bioelectricity-could-regrow-limbs-and-organs</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>keyle</author><text>This implies that your brain could handle 4 arms. Chances are they would just be dead limbs.</text></item><item><author>aussieguy1234</author><text>So, in other words, if this technology pans out, this could be possible <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mortalkombat.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Goro" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mortalkombat.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Goro</a></text></item><item><author>progne</author><text>This technology doesn&#x27;t seem to be limited to existing limbs and organs. After replacing a missing arm you could add a third arm. A man could grow a uterus since he has the X chromosomes and with a transplant that includes Y chromosomes, a woman could grow testes. Parthenogenesis could become a choice. Another head seems possible. The limits are more likely to come from regulation than a reluctance of people to transform themselves.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grishka</author><text>Biological systems have an incredible plasticity. That same Michael Levin once used his discoveries to make a tadpole with an eye somewhere near the gut. The eye formed correctly and grew a nerve that connected to the spinal cord. The tadpole was able to see out of that eye. It&#x27;s definitely a non-stock configuration yet it worked. I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;s much more complicated than having 4 arms.</text></comment> | <story><title>How bioelectricity could regrow limbs and organs</title><url>https://news.uchicago.edu/how-bioelectricity-could-regrow-limbs-and-organs</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>keyle</author><text>This implies that your brain could handle 4 arms. Chances are they would just be dead limbs.</text></item><item><author>aussieguy1234</author><text>So, in other words, if this technology pans out, this could be possible <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mortalkombat.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Goro" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mortalkombat.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Goro</a></text></item><item><author>progne</author><text>This technology doesn&#x27;t seem to be limited to existing limbs and organs. After replacing a missing arm you could add a third arm. A man could grow a uterus since he has the X chromosomes and with a transplant that includes Y chromosomes, a woman could grow testes. Parthenogenesis could become a choice. Another head seems possible. The limits are more likely to come from regulation than a reluctance of people to transform themselves.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Root_Denied</author><text>The problem isn&#x27;t (just) the brain power, the shoulder joint is also a necessary component of the full range of motion and degrees of freedom your arm has. You can&#x27;t just slot a ball and socket somewhere into the side of your ribs (and all the supporting musculature) and have it work the same way.</text></comment> |
5,793,244 | 5,792,185 | 1 | 2 | 5,791,489 | train | <story><title>Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses</title><url>http://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jzwinck</author><text>US addresses exhibit neither increasing nor decreasing specificity. Apartment numbers are usually written in the middle, like "30 Tristan Way, Apt. 107, Gwyneth VA 27384". This never seemed strange to me until I saw it being done more sensibly elsewhere.<p>Singapore is another good one: its postcode scheme changed twice in less than a century, and being a city-state, there is nothing useful to put in a "city" field (mail is often sent to "Singapore Singapore", or even "Singapore Singapore Singapore").</text></item><item><author>masklinn</author><text>The article remains western- (and especially UK-) centric in outlook, a more international business will probably find plenty others. For instance japans disprove:<p>* The address format is uniform across the country (Sapporo has its own, and Kyoto uses an alternative system on top of the standard one)<p>* Addresses go from the most specific to least (e.g. flat number to postal code), japan is the exact opposite<p>* Addressing systems don't change (Japan's was reformed in 1998)<p>* Building numbers are street-based (Japan's are block-based)<p>It also expands on things like "addresses will have a street": standard japanese addressing is subdivision-based so addresses provide the prefecture, the ward (~county), the district and the city block.<p>Except for Sapporo and Kyoto (see 1): Kyoto allows an denoting blocks as the intersection of two streets and the position relative to the intersection (north, south, east or west). One reason is that some wards have multiple districts with the same name... Sapporo uses a system where blocks are addressed by their distance (in blocks) + direction from city center, so you might be told the address is "the 4th building, 3 blocks north and 5 blocks east".</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thaumasiotes</author><text>This really bothered me when I had mail shipped to me in Shanghai from amazon (US). Amazon forces you to provide a state. Shanghai is its own administrative unit, at a level with Chinese provinces. So my address ended up being "&#60;street&#62;, Shanghai, Shanghai China".<p>I've seen natives handle that problem by filling in their district in the "city" field, so e.g. in my case "&#60;street&#62;, Minhang district, Shanghai China", analogous to e.g. "&#60;street&#62;, Nob Hill, San Francisco, USA".</text></comment> | <story><title>Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses</title><url>http://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jzwinck</author><text>US addresses exhibit neither increasing nor decreasing specificity. Apartment numbers are usually written in the middle, like "30 Tristan Way, Apt. 107, Gwyneth VA 27384". This never seemed strange to me until I saw it being done more sensibly elsewhere.<p>Singapore is another good one: its postcode scheme changed twice in less than a century, and being a city-state, there is nothing useful to put in a "city" field (mail is often sent to "Singapore Singapore", or even "Singapore Singapore Singapore").</text></item><item><author>masklinn</author><text>The article remains western- (and especially UK-) centric in outlook, a more international business will probably find plenty others. For instance japans disprove:<p>* The address format is uniform across the country (Sapporo has its own, and Kyoto uses an alternative system on top of the standard one)<p>* Addresses go from the most specific to least (e.g. flat number to postal code), japan is the exact opposite<p>* Addressing systems don't change (Japan's was reformed in 1998)<p>* Building numbers are street-based (Japan's are block-based)<p>It also expands on things like "addresses will have a street": standard japanese addressing is subdivision-based so addresses provide the prefecture, the ward (~county), the district and the city block.<p>Except for Sapporo and Kyoto (see 1): Kyoto allows an denoting blocks as the intersection of two streets and the position relative to the intersection (north, south, east or west). One reason is that some wards have multiple districts with the same name... Sapporo uses a system where blocks are addressed by their distance (in blocks) + direction from city center, so you might be told the address is "the 4th building, 3 blocks north and 5 blocks east".</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sageikosa</author><text>&#62;US addresses exhibit neither increasing nor decreasing specificity. Apartment numbers are usually written in the middle, like "30 Tristan Way, Apt. 107, Gwyneth VA 27384". This never seemed strange to me until I saw it being done more sensibly elsewhere.<p>Best to think of it as an onion. On the outer layers (beginning and end) automated and semi-automated sorting can be applied most easily (the ZIP code was designed for automated sorting and routing). Apartment and suite numbers in the middle are handled (usually) manually by carriers already at or near the service address.</text></comment> |
26,049,882 | 26,049,901 | 1 | 3 | 26,049,111 | train | <story><title>How to lower the price of plant-based meat</title><url>https://us14.campaign-archive.com/?u=66df320da8400b581cbc1b539&id=cea38367f1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hannob</author><text>Interestingly it doesn&#x27;t even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities. (Interestingly even in places where there&#x27;s some form of carbon pricing - like the EU - this often doesn&#x27;t cover a large share of emissions from meat production, as methane emissions are very relevant here - I&#x27;m not aware of any methane pricing scheme anywhere.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danShumway</author><text>Even if we ignore externalities and pollution costs, just stop outright subsidizing animal meat production so much. The reason meat is so cheap is because our government puts a lot of effort and money into making it cheap.<p>I don&#x27;t know why more people aren&#x27;t trying to sell this to the &quot;free market&quot; crowd as government overreach. The reality right now is that plant-based protein is gaining popularity despite the market being artificially biased against it in terms of price. Animal meat <i>should</i> cost more than it does, not just in the sense of &quot;you&#x27;re not paying for the true environmental cost&quot;, but also in the sense of, &quot;you&#x27;re not paying the actual monetary cost it takes to produce this product.&quot;<p>The US government throws billions of dollars into subsidizing meat and dairy production every year. Plant-based protein&#x27;s growth is restricted in part because our food prices and production aren&#x27;t determined just by the free market. That&#x27;s not necessarily <i>bad</i>, but if we&#x27;re going to be messing with the market anyway we could choose to subsidize other things.<p>And we could obviously do more than just lowering subsidies, I&#x27;m not saying we should ignore externalities or that we should just completely abandon all subsidies entirely. But I am saying we shouldn&#x27;t pretend that meat actually costs what we see in the store. Meat is cheap because (for various reasons) as a society we&#x27;ve all collectively decided to spend tax money so that we can pretend that it costs very little to produce.</text></comment> | <story><title>How to lower the price of plant-based meat</title><url>https://us14.campaign-archive.com/?u=66df320da8400b581cbc1b539&id=cea38367f1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hannob</author><text>Interestingly it doesn&#x27;t even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities. (Interestingly even in places where there&#x27;s some form of carbon pricing - like the EU - this often doesn&#x27;t cover a large share of emissions from meat production, as methane emissions are very relevant here - I&#x27;m not aware of any methane pricing scheme anywhere.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>m463</author><text>You know, I wonder if a meat-based production system is a hedge against catastrophic&#x2F;extinction events.<p>For example, let&#x27;s say we have another potato-famine style event. Even a bio-engineered attack that takes out a crop or crops.<p>We could scale back meat production and use the crop capacity we use to support the &quot;meat pyramid&quot; to feed people directly until the crisis has passed.<p>Subsidizing crop capacity might make strategic sense. Sort of like how the just-in-time production pipeline ran into a wall with respect to mask shortages at the start of the pandemic.</text></comment> |
11,402,807 | 11,402,610 | 1 | 3 | 11,402,101 | train | <story><title>Model 3 Unveiling [video]</title><url>https://model3.tesla.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>OK, $35K, 115,000 pre-orders, delivery early 2018. (Yeah, he said &quot;next year&quot;, and then the projection said &quot;late next year&quot;, and then he waffled, so 2018 is realistic.)<p>Tesla&#x27;s current production rate is about 70,000 units a year. Yes, the NUMMI plant once produced 500K vehicles a year on that site, but that just means Tesla has lots of empty building shell into which they can expand.<p>The real problem is profitability. Bloomberg is skeptical.[1] Tesla isn&#x27;t profitable, and they have a high price point now. Cutting the price means they have to produce at a far lower cost while expanding factory capacity. That will be very tough. Jason Wheeler, Tesla&#x27;s CFO, is going to have to come up with some creative financial strategies. But with near-zero interest rates, and lots of pre-orders, they can probably borrow heavily for plant at very low cost.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;videos&#x2F;2016-03-31&#x2F;tesla-doubles-down-with-the-model-3" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;videos&#x2F;2016-03-31&#x2F;tesla-double...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>abtinf</author><text>&gt;Tesla isn&#x27;t profitable<p>On a per-unit sold basis, Tesla Model S is wildly profitable, with a gross margin north of 30% [1]. However, they are obviously still in startup mode, so they reinvest all of those earnings along with investor capital into improving the business.<p>&gt;Cutting the price means they have to produce at a far lower cost while expanding factory capacity.<p>Corporate finance is a little more nuanced than that. The price of expanding factory capacity is not an interesting number by itself; what matters is whether that investment will yield a profit over its useful life. Or, in more technical jargon, over the useful life of this investment, will marginal revenue per unit made possible by this investment exceed average total cost of producing units with this investment. Moreover, a dramatic expansion of capacity, executed competently, will reduce production costs across all product lines due to economies of scale, economies of scope, and improved negotiating power.<p>&gt;But with near-zero interest rates, and lots of pre-orders, they can probably borrow heavily for plant at very low cost.<p>Tesla&#x27;s credit rating is in junk bond territory [2] and their weighted average cost of capital is almost 9% (which includes interest free loans from pre-order reservation payments). So there isn&#x27;t a lot of financial magic here - they need to produce units profitably to be successful.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;seekingalpha.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;855661-tesla-profit-point" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;seekingalpha.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;855661-tesla-profit-point</a>
[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;tesla-rated-junk-by-sp-2014-5" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;tesla-rated-junk-by-sp-2014-5</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Model 3 Unveiling [video]</title><url>https://model3.tesla.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>OK, $35K, 115,000 pre-orders, delivery early 2018. (Yeah, he said &quot;next year&quot;, and then the projection said &quot;late next year&quot;, and then he waffled, so 2018 is realistic.)<p>Tesla&#x27;s current production rate is about 70,000 units a year. Yes, the NUMMI plant once produced 500K vehicles a year on that site, but that just means Tesla has lots of empty building shell into which they can expand.<p>The real problem is profitability. Bloomberg is skeptical.[1] Tesla isn&#x27;t profitable, and they have a high price point now. Cutting the price means they have to produce at a far lower cost while expanding factory capacity. That will be very tough. Jason Wheeler, Tesla&#x27;s CFO, is going to have to come up with some creative financial strategies. But with near-zero interest rates, and lots of pre-orders, they can probably borrow heavily for plant at very low cost.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;videos&#x2F;2016-03-31&#x2F;tesla-doubles-down-with-the-model-3" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;videos&#x2F;2016-03-31&#x2F;tesla-double...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>slg</author><text>They did just get a zero interest 2 year loan of $115 million.</text></comment> |
40,673,631 | 40,673,320 | 1 | 3 | 40,672,158 | train | <story><title>Ted Chiang has won the PEN/Faulkner Foundation's short story prize</title><url>https://lithub.com/ted-chiang-has-won-the-pen-faulkner-foundations-short-story-prize/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vessenes</author><text>I feel like the only person in scifi who doesn&#x27;t LOVE Ted Chiang. Don&#x27;t get me wrong -- I <i>like</i> his writing a lot. But, I often feel like it&#x27;s a little &#x27;light&#x27; -- not sure how to describe this exactly.<p>I guess I&#x27;m saying he&#x27;s not Philip K Dick or Stanislaw Lem, or even William Gibson, but he&#x27;s awarded&#x2F;discussed as much.<p>I will, of course, buy his next book, short or long-form. But I&#x27;d love it if he went a little higher&#x2F;deeper conceptually. I think he has it in him.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ttjjtt</author><text>I just want to counter balanced this by sharing love ted chiang but cannot happily get through any p k dick and little Gibson either. I find Chiangs work hits me deeper on a conceptual level and perhaps it&#x27;s that exact lightness of tone. I find Dick and Gibson too affected with gravitas and a vision of stylistic coolness that I do not share for me to enjoy them. But that is all purely subjective preference, they&#x27;re both objectively fine writers</text></comment> | <story><title>Ted Chiang has won the PEN/Faulkner Foundation's short story prize</title><url>https://lithub.com/ted-chiang-has-won-the-pen-faulkner-foundations-short-story-prize/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vessenes</author><text>I feel like the only person in scifi who doesn&#x27;t LOVE Ted Chiang. Don&#x27;t get me wrong -- I <i>like</i> his writing a lot. But, I often feel like it&#x27;s a little &#x27;light&#x27; -- not sure how to describe this exactly.<p>I guess I&#x27;m saying he&#x27;s not Philip K Dick or Stanislaw Lem, or even William Gibson, but he&#x27;s awarded&#x2F;discussed as much.<p>I will, of course, buy his next book, short or long-form. But I&#x27;d love it if he went a little higher&#x2F;deeper conceptually. I think he has it in him.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>karaterobot</author><text>Oh wow! I&#x27;m late to the Ted Chiang game, having only read his books last year, but I&#x27;ve read a lot of PDK, a fair amount of Gibson, and a little bit of Lem. I think Chiang&#x27;s less eager to end on a grim note than they are. And maybe that&#x27;s what you&#x27;re feeling. But I think the topics he deals with can be incredibly big, and incredibly dark. For instance, <i>The Lifecycle of Software Objects</i> was so realistic, and so dismally cynical about the software industry in particular, that it made me feel palpable fear and pre-emptive shame for the future.</text></comment> |
10,738,024 | 10,737,537 | 1 | 2 | 10,732,523 | train | <story><title>The sad economics of being famous on the internet</title><url>http://fusion.net/story/244545/famous-and-broke-on-youtube-instagram-social-media/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kriro</author><text>&quot;&quot;&quot;Van Gogh didn’t have to shill for Audible.com to pissed-off fans of his art.&quot;&quot;&quot;<p>Pretty sure many artist of that day had to paint wives&#x2F;daughters of rich folks that they&#x27;d rather not have painted to get by. And most artists that sell for millions today were pretty poor unless they had a random rich person and were their &quot;pet artist&quot;.<p>I&#x27;ll sound pretty heartless but the post sounds entitled. There is no grantee of riches just because you&#x27;re &quot;famous&quot;. Actually turning that fame into money is a skill and not something that happens automatically. If you think it&#x27;s unfair and you deserve more because you have so many fans...charge them directly and not through indirect means like adds, branding or product placement and see how many stick around.<p>&quot;&quot;&quot;The most Allison and I have made combined on one deal is $6,000, and 30 percent of that went to our multichannel network&quot;&quot;&quot;<p>And despite that they started a company to make it a full time gig?<p>I also don&#x27;t buy the implied sentiment that telling the truth about being more or less busto despite all the followers is seen as whining. Sure by some but you don&#x27;t want those as followers. Transparency is usually valued very much in communities.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vinceguidry</author><text>From Wikipedia:<p>He moved in November 1885 to Antwerp and rented a small room above a paint dealer&#x27;s shop in the Rue des Images (Lange Beeldekensstraat).[69] He had little money and ate poorly, preferring to spend the money Theo sent on painting materials and models. Bread, coffee, and tobacco were his staple intake. In February 1886, he wrote to Theo saying that he could only remember eating six hot meals since May of the previous year. His teeth became loose and painful.[70] While in Antwerp, he applied himself to the study of color theory and spent time in museums, particularly studying the work of Peter Paul Rubens, gaining encouragement to broaden his palette to carmine, cobalt, and emerald green. He bought Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcuts in the docklands, and incorporated their style into the background of some of his paintings.[71] While in Antwerp, Van Gogh began to drink absinthe heavily.[72] He was treated by Dr. Amadeus Cavenaile, whose practice was near the docklands,[note 9] possibly for syphilis;[note 10] the treatment of alum irrigation and sitz baths was jotted down by Van Gogh in one of his notebooks.[73] Despite his rejection of academic teaching, he took the higher-level admission exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and, in January 1886, matriculated in painting and drawing. For most of February, he was ill and run down by overwork, a poor diet, and excessive smoking.<p>Once Van Gogh broke through and gained some success, he shot himself after <i>two years</i>.<p>Yes, it&#x27;s tough to make it on YouTube, but comparing yourself to famous painters isn&#x27;t going to win any sympathy.</text></comment> | <story><title>The sad economics of being famous on the internet</title><url>http://fusion.net/story/244545/famous-and-broke-on-youtube-instagram-social-media/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kriro</author><text>&quot;&quot;&quot;Van Gogh didn’t have to shill for Audible.com to pissed-off fans of his art.&quot;&quot;&quot;<p>Pretty sure many artist of that day had to paint wives&#x2F;daughters of rich folks that they&#x27;d rather not have painted to get by. And most artists that sell for millions today were pretty poor unless they had a random rich person and were their &quot;pet artist&quot;.<p>I&#x27;ll sound pretty heartless but the post sounds entitled. There is no grantee of riches just because you&#x27;re &quot;famous&quot;. Actually turning that fame into money is a skill and not something that happens automatically. If you think it&#x27;s unfair and you deserve more because you have so many fans...charge them directly and not through indirect means like adds, branding or product placement and see how many stick around.<p>&quot;&quot;&quot;The most Allison and I have made combined on one deal is $6,000, and 30 percent of that went to our multichannel network&quot;&quot;&quot;<p>And despite that they started a company to make it a full time gig?<p>I also don&#x27;t buy the implied sentiment that telling the truth about being more or less busto despite all the followers is seen as whining. Sure by some but you don&#x27;t want those as followers. Transparency is usually valued very much in communities.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>blisterpeanuts</author><text>I didn&#x27;t detect entitlement in the article. It seemed to me that she was just describing the cold economics of being a vlogger.<p>Thousands of people see you on social media and many of them mistakenly assume you&#x27;re making a decent living. They&#x27;re so ignorant.<p>What&#x27;s more, it&#x27;s those opinionated viewers with their snarky comments about selling out who are entitled. They expect free, adless entertainment by selfless, sharing Internet personalities.<p>I&#x27;m grateful to this vlogger for having the courage to speak out on a painful and embarrassing topic. It&#x27;s given me a lot to think about.</text></comment> |
7,497,366 | 7,497,365 | 1 | 2 | 7,497,130 | train | <story><title>Why Lisp is a Big Hack and Haskell is Doomed to Succeed (2011)</title><url>http://axisofeval.blogspot.ca/2011/01/why-lisp-is-big-hack-and-haskell-is.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jes5199</author><text>For a language that prioritizes &quot;safety&quot; above all things, there is an awful lot of flying blind and dangerously in Haskell. It&#x27;s so, so easy to write Haskell code that&#x27;s safe until you change something distant in the system, which changes when things get lazily-evaluated, and now you have a very serious resource leak. And because of the IO restrictions, you aren&#x27;t likely to put logging in your code - and if you <i>do</i>, the logs will themselves change the lazy evaluation behavior of your code. I&#x27;ve seen Haskell programs that stop crashing when you pass in --debug !<p>If the Haskell environment was more like a virtual machine - like in Java - where you could connect into a side-channel and see what types of data were persisting in memory as the program ran - you&#x27;d at least have a chance of debugging this sort of thing. But instead it compiles to machine binaries.<p>There doesn&#x27;t seem to be any interest in the Haskell community in making tools to deal with this sort of thing - they say &quot;you should learn not to make resource-leaking code&quot;. Which is the same thing the Lisp hackers say - &quot;just learn not to make type errors&quot;.</text></comment> | <story><title>Why Lisp is a Big Hack and Haskell is Doomed to Succeed (2011)</title><url>http://axisofeval.blogspot.ca/2011/01/why-lisp-is-big-hack-and-haskell-is.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lukeqsee</author><text>I cannot speak for Lisp, but I am in the throes of writing a compiler from scratch in Haskell (while concurrently learning Haskell). I feel&#x2F;felt very much as this article described—constrained. And then I learned ETA-reduces. Then I learned monads. And then I learned … The list just keeps going.<p>As I slowly learned the language the proper way, I am now able to do anything I did in a imperative&#x2F;OOP&#x2F;whatever language, but now I have that foundation of type safety. Like many will say, if it compiles, it most likely just works. Coupling this with automatic checking via GHC-mod and I am just as performant (in terms of writing code) and encounter half as many bugs as any other language I&#x27;ve ever used. Haskell isn&#x27;t a panacea, but it&#x27;s a very good language.</text></comment> |
21,846,740 | 21,846,293 | 1 | 2 | 21,834,368 | train | <story><title>Using Python and OCaml in the same Jupyter notebook</title><url>https://blog.janestreet.com/using-python-and-ocaml-in-the-same-jupyter-notebook/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pcr910303</author><text>The jupyter-notebook interface is IMO, not really suited for interactive development.
Notebooks enforce code to be broken up into pieces of cells to be evaluated. The code must be written in a specific linear way to cater the format of notebooks. Also the distinction between the code &amp; notebooks are too big, it&#x27;s clunky to move between. You get to resort copy-pasting back-and-forth. It&#x27;s always frustrating when I try to do development in an interactive way, and finds out that hooking on jupyter-notebook (whether the language is Python or Node.JS or etc...) is the best way.<p>I think there should be a better integration between editors &amp; REPLs, something like Common Lisp &amp; Emacs SLIME. SLIME queries a server running on Common Lisp to incrementally compile &amp; evaluate code from the editor (like LSP, but not autocomplete queries but evaluation queries). I hope the LSP protocol gains ability to evaluate code for languages with REPLs, it would be awesome if it allows interactive development in multiple editors &amp; multiple languages (like how LSP is facilitating autocomplete).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jph00</author><text>&gt; <i>Also the distinction between the code &amp; notebooks are too big, it&#x27;s clunky to move between. You get to resort copy-pasting back-and-forth.</i><p>We have solved this problem by providing 2-way sync between notebooks and libraries, using a system called nbdev:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fast.ai&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;02&#x2F;nbdev&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fast.ai&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;02&#x2F;nbdev&#x2F;</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Using Python and OCaml in the same Jupyter notebook</title><url>https://blog.janestreet.com/using-python-and-ocaml-in-the-same-jupyter-notebook/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pcr910303</author><text>The jupyter-notebook interface is IMO, not really suited for interactive development.
Notebooks enforce code to be broken up into pieces of cells to be evaluated. The code must be written in a specific linear way to cater the format of notebooks. Also the distinction between the code &amp; notebooks are too big, it&#x27;s clunky to move between. You get to resort copy-pasting back-and-forth. It&#x27;s always frustrating when I try to do development in an interactive way, and finds out that hooking on jupyter-notebook (whether the language is Python or Node.JS or etc...) is the best way.<p>I think there should be a better integration between editors &amp; REPLs, something like Common Lisp &amp; Emacs SLIME. SLIME queries a server running on Common Lisp to incrementally compile &amp; evaluate code from the editor (like LSP, but not autocomplete queries but evaluation queries). I hope the LSP protocol gains ability to evaluate code for languages with REPLs, it would be awesome if it allows interactive development in multiple editors &amp; multiple languages (like how LSP is facilitating autocomplete).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>snackematician</author><text>Another complaint I have with jupyter notebooks is that they don&#x27;t play nice with git. For this (and other reasons), I much prefer Emacs org-mode, or even running Python in Rmarkdown+Rstudio+reticulate.</text></comment> |
35,003,979 | 35,004,006 | 1 | 3 | 35,003,701 | train | <story><title>Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips</title><url>https://www.ridereport.com/blog/ebike-inventive-programs</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>d_sem</author><text>When you factor in the reduced capital costs, carbon emissions, noise pollution, traffic, wear on infrastructure, health benefits, etc of electric bicycles the opportunity cost of car ownership over e-bike adoption is tremendous. The average cost of owning a car in 2022 is $10,728 per year: a figure which blows my mind.(edit: Source bankrate.com, the top hit on google)<p>As a personal anecdote, my household has gone from 3 cars pre-pandemic (2 commuters + 1 back up beater car) down to 1 commuter, 1 e-bike, 1 bicycle. The change has been startling in improved quality of life.</text></comment> | <story><title>Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips</title><url>https://www.ridereport.com/blog/ebike-inventive-programs</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>simonsarris</author><text>Not mentioned in the summary but super relevant to understand what they are talking about:<p>&gt; After nine months, the City had spent $4.7 million to provide vouchers to 4,734 Denver residents [for ebikes and equipment to ride in the winter]<p>I&#x27;m a bit skeptical of some of this data:<p>&gt; 65% of Ride Report&#x27;s Ride App users were riding at least once daily, and 90% were riding weekly.<p>In the report, it mentions the Ride App was iPhone only and &quot;Our sample size consisted of 70 riders across 12 of the 19 participating local bike shops&quot;. Is that 70 iPhone users out of the 4,734 voucher recipients? It seems like it would <i>wildly</i> skew any survey data to expect them to be representative.<p>Sadly they do not report any other survey data, like how many of the recipients even completed the online survey. I suspect there&#x27;s some huge self selection going on. It&#x27;s hard to take these numbers at face value.</text></comment> |
16,724,965 | 16,724,508 | 1 | 2 | 16,723,801 | train | <story><title>You can't Rust that</title><url>http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2018/3/31/you-cant-rust-that/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jnordwick</author><text>Is is even remotely true though? C++ probably moves things around more than rust, and I thought rust would want to reduce cache churn. It isn&#x27;t like GC were things magically change locations.<p>I&#x27;m not really sure I understand what he&#x27;s getting at with that description.</text></item><item><author>pcwalton</author><text>I really like the way you captured one of the fundamental differences between Rust and C++ as &quot;Things Move&quot;. That&#x27;s an interesting way to summarize it that I hadn&#x27;t really considered before—and I designed a lot of that system :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>oconnor663</author><text>&gt; I thought rust would want to reduce cache churn<p>I think the main way Rust reduces cache churn, is that it makes it safer to pass references&#x2F;pointers around instead of making copies. For example, if I have f(char*) in C, I might be worried about what f is doing with that pointer. It might save it somewhere, or try to free it, or who knows what. In C++, I might prefer to write f(std::string) to avoid those worries, but that comes at the cost of unnecessarily copying the string. (You could pass it by reference to avoid the copy, but then you still have to worry about f saving the reference.) In Rust, I can safely write f(&amp;str), and I know f can&#x27;t do anything dirty with that reference.</text></comment> | <story><title>You can't Rust that</title><url>http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2018/3/31/you-cant-rust-that/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jnordwick</author><text>Is is even remotely true though? C++ probably moves things around more than rust, and I thought rust would want to reduce cache churn. It isn&#x27;t like GC were things magically change locations.<p>I&#x27;m not really sure I understand what he&#x27;s getting at with that description.</text></item><item><author>pcwalton</author><text>I really like the way you captured one of the fundamental differences between Rust and C++ as &quot;Things Move&quot;. That&#x27;s an interesting way to summarize it that I hadn&#x27;t really considered before—and I designed a lot of that system :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>staticassertion</author><text>They&#x27;re talking about move semantics, not actual memory moving around.<p>In c++ you get copy semantics by default, requiring std::mov to get move semantics. In rust it is the opposite.</text></comment> |
36,434,614 | 36,434,522 | 1 | 2 | 36,433,262 | train | <story><title>How VSCode made bracket pair colorization faster (2021)</title><url>https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2021/09/29/bracket-pair-colorization</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fragmede</author><text>What CPU do you have? Because even though VSCode is &quot;just&quot; a text editor, I&#x27;ve found it&#x27;s relatively demanding. A Core 2 Duo, which is admittedly a little old, but which does <i>absolutely</i> fine with vim, is slow to the point of being unusable with VSCode.</text></item><item><author>vbezhenar</author><text>That&#x27;s surprising to hear, because I use vscode every day and its performance is miles away of any JS apps I&#x27;ve ever used. It truly feels like a native app when it comes to performance, at the same time keeping some &quot;fluidity&quot; of web app (like scale the entire UI with single key press or reloading the entire app like a web page).<p>I&#x27;d say I never had issues with vscode performance and actually its performance is a major factor why I use it.</text></item><item><author>voz_</author><text>If you can make something 10k x faster you didn’t so much fix it as just switch it to working correctly as it should have in the first place.<p>VSCode is a good tool, but it’s unbearably slow, and it breaks my heart that so much development has converged on something written in electron with such a low regard for performance by any measure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bick_nyers</author><text>I think unfortunately a CPU from 2008 just isn&#x27;t gonna cut it here. Single thread benchmarks core for core have risen about 4x since then, average core counts have risen 4x, and L3 caches were added. Probably SIMD instructions are a consideration here as well.<p>That being said I&#x27;m a huge fan of prioritizing longevity of computer parts versus constantly upgrading and generating e-waste.</text></comment> | <story><title>How VSCode made bracket pair colorization faster (2021)</title><url>https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2021/09/29/bracket-pair-colorization</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fragmede</author><text>What CPU do you have? Because even though VSCode is &quot;just&quot; a text editor, I&#x27;ve found it&#x27;s relatively demanding. A Core 2 Duo, which is admittedly a little old, but which does <i>absolutely</i> fine with vim, is slow to the point of being unusable with VSCode.</text></item><item><author>vbezhenar</author><text>That&#x27;s surprising to hear, because I use vscode every day and its performance is miles away of any JS apps I&#x27;ve ever used. It truly feels like a native app when it comes to performance, at the same time keeping some &quot;fluidity&quot; of web app (like scale the entire UI with single key press or reloading the entire app like a web page).<p>I&#x27;d say I never had issues with vscode performance and actually its performance is a major factor why I use it.</text></item><item><author>voz_</author><text>If you can make something 10k x faster you didn’t so much fix it as just switch it to working correctly as it should have in the first place.<p>VSCode is a good tool, but it’s unbearably slow, and it breaks my heart that so much development has converged on something written in electron with such a low regard for performance by any measure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wenc</author><text>I used to run vim and VS Code on a Core 2 Duo from 2005. Vim is a lot faster but VS Code is so much more powerful — it’s a full featured IDE. It’s not a quick and dirty text editor like Kate. It’s not meant to be that. I still use vim to edit config files but for everything else I use VS Code.<p>I’ve since upgraded to a 2014 i7 and now VS Code feels fast.</text></comment> |
32,704,719 | 32,703,778 | 1 | 3 | 32,702,117 | train | <story><title>Amazon's Global Quest to Crush Unions</title><url>https://newrepublic.com/maz/article/167263/amazons-global-quest-crush-unions</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ozzythecat</author><text>Amazon’s game is squeezing out every ounce of value they can.<p>I worked in one of the Seattle buildings. It was still a culture of people crying at their desks, incompetent managers being checked out or just stressing out everyone around them.<p>Then you had the more seasoned people who figured out how to play the game. Something is broken or had some outage?<p>Find a way to blame another team. Think of the most sleezy used car sales manager you’ve met in the finance office of a car dealership. Now give them a “Sr. software development manager” role. That’s Amazon for ya.<p>Managers going on vacations to Hawaii while their teams are slaving away over the weekend to meet unrealistic deadlines. Utter lack of leadership. A house of cards held together by H1Bs and other visa situations where people put up with it out of fear of losing their jobs and having to leave the country.<p>I pray the government breaks up that scam. It’s a stain on humanity.</text></comment> | <story><title>Amazon's Global Quest to Crush Unions</title><url>https://newrepublic.com/maz/article/167263/amazons-global-quest-crush-unions</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nakor</author><text>I have very conflicted views on unions.<p>I worked for ~2 years as a contractor for a government entity in Canada. ~3500 headcount of employees. What I observed there was sickening. This was a place that had white-collar unions for all non-management employees. This union had completely hijacked the mission of this institution. It was no longer about serving the people that this entity was created to serve, but rather to protect the union and its contributors.<p>The software we were in charge of writing had direct, material impact on the physical and mental well beings of people in the province. Life and death. And at times I saw things like a deployment of features being delayed by weeks&#x2F;months because a union member who was responsible for _manually_ deploying the changes was on vacation. To automate that deployment meant automating a union employees job and was impossible. These features directly served the needs of people that were in critical need of them.<p>On the other hand, I have family friends who work for UPS and other delivery services and see the brutal toll it takes on their body and mind. Pushed to absolute limits and exploited because they don&#x27;t have a union.<p>But to me, it seems unions can and often do exploit people. After witnessing all of this I&#x27;ve developed a very dim view of humanity. We all just want to exploit someone.</text></comment> |
27,368,144 | 27,367,420 | 1 | 3 | 27,365,608 | train | <story><title>Why Prefetch Is Broken</title><url>https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-prefetch-is-broken</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>matsemann</author><text>I don&#x27;t really understand the issue? If I want to prefetch an image, I&#x27;m on the same origin the whole time and this cache segregation doesn&#x27;t matter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cxr</author><text>Indeed. As the author puts it &quot;sometimes you know something is very likely to be needed&quot;. Let&#x27;s have a look:<p><pre><code> &lt;link rel=prefetch href=url&gt;
</code></pre>
What&#x27;s going on here, for the test case given? It&#x27;s introducing tight coupling (or it already exists, and you&#x27;re trying to capture a description of it to serve to the browser) to an external resource. It&#x27;s not that prefetch is broken, it&#x27;s that to desire to be able to gesture at the existence of a resource outside your organization&#x27;s control, while insisting that it&#x27;s so important as to be timing-critical, is like trying to have your cake and eat it, too.<p>As mentioned in similar comments, the observed behavior for this particular test case is potentially a problem if you are building Modern Web Apps by following the received wisdom of how you&#x27;re supposed to do that. There are lots of unstated assumptions in the article in this vein. One such assumption is that you&#x27;re going to do things that way. Another assumption is that the arguments for doing things that way and the plight of the tech professionals doing the doing are universally recognized and accepted.<p>From the Web-theoretic perspective—that is, following the original use cases that the Web was created to address—if that resource is so important to your organization, then you can mint your own identifier for it under your own authority.<p>Ultimately, I don&#x27;t have a lot of sympathy for the plight described in the article. It&#x27;s fair to say that the instances where this sort of thing shows up involve abusing the fundamental mechanism of the Web to do things that are, although widely accepted by contemporaries as standard practice, totally counter to its spirit.</text></comment> | <story><title>Why Prefetch Is Broken</title><url>https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-prefetch-is-broken</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>matsemann</author><text>I don&#x27;t really understand the issue? If I want to prefetch an image, I&#x27;m on the same origin the whole time and this cache segregation doesn&#x27;t matter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jefftk</author><text>Yes, sorry, an image is a bad example. The main issue is with HTML documents. You might open one at the top level, by clicking on it and navigating to it, or you might open one as a child of the current page, by putting it in an iframe. Since they can be opened in both contexts, prefetch doesn&#x27;t know what to do.</text></comment> |
32,166,095 | 32,166,377 | 1 | 3 | 32,163,704 | train | <story><title>EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved</title><url>https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022/07/18/dma-council-gives-final-approval-to-new-rules-for-fair-competition-online/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dane-pgp</author><text>I absolutely agree with you, but here&#x27;s a hypothesis worth considering: What if we&#x27;re building a society that is so complicated that it just isn&#x27;t feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more?<p>Societies have long accepted that things like medical treatments have to be prescribed by an expert, and some societies have even decided that healthy people can be forced to have medical treatments even against their will (i.e. vaccines).<p>My hope is that we are just in a temporary phase, where society has learnt how to transmit information freely but not how to reliably transmit <i>trust</i>. If the reputations of software developers and medical practitioners could be established without corporate or government monopolies, then society might get past this local minimum and into a more stable state.</text></item><item><author>MichaelCollins</author><text>The apparent desire for paternalism unnerves me. Any time people are free to choose who they associate with, they run the risk of coming across bad actors who would scam them or worse. In most domains of life, we have special protections for the senile elderly and children but everybody else is given freedom and subsequently expected to develop and exercise a sense of good judgement, because freedom is more important than security.<p>But in the specific case of iphones, the argument is made that giving rational level-headed adults the freedom to associate with the software they wish would imperil children and the elderly, and you don&#x27;t have to look far to find somebody arguing that that risk outweigh any other consideration. If this belief were likely to be limited to iphones I wouldn&#x27;t really care, I&#x27;d simply not buy an iphone. But I fear special-case exceptions don&#x27;t stay that way forever, and I fear Apple&#x27;s style of paternalism (which is very profitable) will inevitably spread and become difficult if not impossible to avoid unless stomped out soon.</text></item><item><author>bloppe</author><text>It blows my mind how many people have bought into Apple&#x27;s position on this. No, Apple restricting your freedom does not afford you greater security. You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software. If you&#x27;re not confident in your ability to tell shady from legit, just stick to the App Store. Don&#x27;t demand that Apple treat the rest of us like children just because that&#x27;s how you would like to be treated.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bloppe</author><text>I won&#x27;t argue with the hypothesis at large (even though I hope it&#x27;s unfounded), but as it applies to this particular situation, you&#x27;re ignoring a crucial factor: the gargantuan incentive for monopolists to convince you that their monopolies actually protect you. It&#x27;s incredible how successful Apple has been in convincing their users that freedom is bad, and I&#x27;m absolutely positive it&#x27;s not because Apple is genuinely concerned about society; they&#x27;re concerned about their multi-billion-dollar revenue streams.<p>If we reach a point as a society that we decide we have too much freedom, we should absolutely never let it be regulated by corps with such a perverse incentive.</text></comment> | <story><title>EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved</title><url>https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022/07/18/dma-council-gives-final-approval-to-new-rules-for-fair-competition-online/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dane-pgp</author><text>I absolutely agree with you, but here&#x27;s a hypothesis worth considering: What if we&#x27;re building a society that is so complicated that it just isn&#x27;t feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more?<p>Societies have long accepted that things like medical treatments have to be prescribed by an expert, and some societies have even decided that healthy people can be forced to have medical treatments even against their will (i.e. vaccines).<p>My hope is that we are just in a temporary phase, where society has learnt how to transmit information freely but not how to reliably transmit <i>trust</i>. If the reputations of software developers and medical practitioners could be established without corporate or government monopolies, then society might get past this local minimum and into a more stable state.</text></item><item><author>MichaelCollins</author><text>The apparent desire for paternalism unnerves me. Any time people are free to choose who they associate with, they run the risk of coming across bad actors who would scam them or worse. In most domains of life, we have special protections for the senile elderly and children but everybody else is given freedom and subsequently expected to develop and exercise a sense of good judgement, because freedom is more important than security.<p>But in the specific case of iphones, the argument is made that giving rational level-headed adults the freedom to associate with the software they wish would imperil children and the elderly, and you don&#x27;t have to look far to find somebody arguing that that risk outweigh any other consideration. If this belief were likely to be limited to iphones I wouldn&#x27;t really care, I&#x27;d simply not buy an iphone. But I fear special-case exceptions don&#x27;t stay that way forever, and I fear Apple&#x27;s style of paternalism (which is very profitable) will inevitably spread and become difficult if not impossible to avoid unless stomped out soon.</text></item><item><author>bloppe</author><text>It blows my mind how many people have bought into Apple&#x27;s position on this. No, Apple restricting your freedom does not afford you greater security. You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software. If you&#x27;re not confident in your ability to tell shady from legit, just stick to the App Store. Don&#x27;t demand that Apple treat the rest of us like children just because that&#x27;s how you would like to be treated.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nathanyz</author><text>And on top of this increase in complexity, is a decrease in legal consequences for bad actors taking advantage of this complexity. That is what is going on currently due to how the Internet crosses international borders which makes policing much more difficult for society.<p>It is a difficult conundrum as freedom is definitely something I value, but I think freedom may not be the best solution in a world without legal consequences for those abusing that freedom to take advantage of others.<p>Freedom with no guidelines to prevent use of that freedom to abuse others is not real freedom</text></comment> |
36,182,845 | 36,182,956 | 1 | 3 | 36,182,016 | train | <story><title>It could cost $21B to clean up California’s oil sites, study finds</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/cost-of-california-oil-cleanup-exceeds-industry-profits</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>readams</author><text>The secret here is they only investigate the things that support their narrative. In this article they actually explicitly stated they&#x27;re looking to cover a specific list of negative things associated with the industry. They would not, for example, publish an article about how much lower our standard of living would be without the industry. Or to attempt to weigh the positives adjust the negatives of the industry.<p>So you can always publish &quot;gold standard&quot; journalism and yet still present a distorted version of the truth.</text></item><item><author>kieselguhr_kid</author><text>There&#x27;s no such thing as neutral and you shouldn&#x27;t treat any journalists as such. I don&#x27;t know if their viewpoint is relevant here though; the question is about their ability to verify a factual assertion.</text></item><item><author>readams</author><text>ProPublica definitely has a viewpoint though and I would not recommend treating them as neutral.</text></item><item><author>hedora</author><text>As journalists go, Propublica (and their data science team) is the gold standard for verifying such things before going to press.</text></item><item><author>kortilla</author><text>How accurate are these costs? This was commissioned by an anti-fossil fuel policy organization and despite taking some feedback from industry, they have a huge bias that perfectly aligns the incentives for them to grossly exaggerate the figures.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>viraptor</author><text>So you can get information from multiple well researched sources. This is one of them. Don&#x27;t expect anyone to do all the work.<p>&quot;You&#x27;re not publishing full investigative journalism articles on absolutely everything.&quot; is not a valid criticism of your article, or a reasonable criticism of the publisher.</text></comment> | <story><title>It could cost $21B to clean up California’s oil sites, study finds</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/cost-of-california-oil-cleanup-exceeds-industry-profits</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>readams</author><text>The secret here is they only investigate the things that support their narrative. In this article they actually explicitly stated they&#x27;re looking to cover a specific list of negative things associated with the industry. They would not, for example, publish an article about how much lower our standard of living would be without the industry. Or to attempt to weigh the positives adjust the negatives of the industry.<p>So you can always publish &quot;gold standard&quot; journalism and yet still present a distorted version of the truth.</text></item><item><author>kieselguhr_kid</author><text>There&#x27;s no such thing as neutral and you shouldn&#x27;t treat any journalists as such. I don&#x27;t know if their viewpoint is relevant here though; the question is about their ability to verify a factual assertion.</text></item><item><author>readams</author><text>ProPublica definitely has a viewpoint though and I would not recommend treating them as neutral.</text></item><item><author>hedora</author><text>As journalists go, Propublica (and their data science team) is the gold standard for verifying such things before going to press.</text></item><item><author>kortilla</author><text>How accurate are these costs? This was commissioned by an anti-fossil fuel policy organization and despite taking some feedback from industry, they have a huge bias that perfectly aligns the incentives for them to grossly exaggerate the figures.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>emodendroket</author><text>I feel that the &quot;pro-&quot;extractive industry side of things has so much obvious monetary incentive behind it that it isn&#x27;t really necessary to worry about independent reporters not adequately presenting it.</text></comment> |
34,007,763 | 34,007,984 | 1 | 3 | 34,006,463 | train | <story><title>Things I want from Devs as SRE/DevOps</title><url>https://oschvr.com/posts/what-id-like-as-sre/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tayo42</author><text>I don&#x27;t get why SRE is a job(and it was my title for years) The stuff listed is just good software engineering. If a swe cant figure out that they need to monitor their application (or really anything on this list) you have no business being anything other then a junior programmer.<p>These kinds of responsibilities create this weird scenario now where the team sre is the teams babysitter. Which just leads to the ops vs dev bullshit weve seen before. Toxic right off the bat.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>0x457</author><text>&gt; I don&#x27;t get why SRE is a job(and it was my title for years) The stuff listed is just good software engineering. If a swe cant figure out that they need to monitor their application (or really anything on this list) you have no business being anything other then a junior programmer.<p>Someone has to enforce those good practices. Weak engineers hire more weak engineers and they suck and their job.</text></comment> | <story><title>Things I want from Devs as SRE/DevOps</title><url>https://oschvr.com/posts/what-id-like-as-sre/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tayo42</author><text>I don&#x27;t get why SRE is a job(and it was my title for years) The stuff listed is just good software engineering. If a swe cant figure out that they need to monitor their application (or really anything on this list) you have no business being anything other then a junior programmer.<p>These kinds of responsibilities create this weird scenario now where the team sre is the teams babysitter. Which just leads to the ops vs dev bullshit weve seen before. Toxic right off the bat.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kubectl_h</author><text>Yeah sure that sounds great in principle but at the end of the day someone has to be in charge of tracking down where that new user_uuid label in the prometheus metrics came from and find the team responsible and explain why that is a bad idea.</text></comment> |
27,881,863 | 27,881,687 | 1 | 3 | 27,880,432 | train | <story><title>Cryptocurrency is like taking the worst parts of today's capitalist system</title><url>https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1415353989323841537</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MereInterest</author><text>Not the OP, but this has been my experience as well.<p>* &quot;This will decentralize ownership of a currency.&quot; Nope, it will move from having government control to having oligarchic control.<p>* &quot;A strict limit on the number of tokens means that the value isn&#x27;t stolen away by inflation.&quot; If the supply of currency doesn&#x27;t keep up with demand, the price skyrockets. This discourages investment, since you get more value just by holding onto it.<p>* &quot;These are anonymous transactions.&quot; On a public ledger, the most you can do is pseudonymous. Just like TOR, you only need to monitor the exit nodes to map pseudonyms to actual people.<p>* &quot;Irreversible transactions are a feature.&quot; They&#x27;re definitely a bug. If I buy a TV with a credit card, and receive a box of rocks, I can do a chargeback. If I make that same transaction with cryptocurrencies, I&#x27;m SOL unless a fraudster suddenly decides that they really want to make good on it.<p>* &quot;We don&#x27;t need banks anymore.&quot; is absolutely hilarious when coupled with &quot;Off-chain transactions solve the throughput limits.&quot; If there&#x27;s an organization that holds money in their on-chain accounts on behalf of others, manages a balance of those off-chain accounts backed by deposited assets, and facilitates transactions between those off-chain accounts, that sure sounds like a bank to me.<p>* &quot;Sure, there&#x27;s a high electricity cost, but compare it to the entire banking system that it&#x27;s replacing and it&#x27;s minimal.&quot; This one manages to be both inaccurate and false. A proof-of-work cryptocurrency must at all times expend energy proportional to the value represented by the cryptocurrency, or else be vulnerable to attack. As such, the more it expands in usage, the more much be expended to secure it. We&#x27;ve seen how Bitcoin alone now dwarfs entire countries, let alone the banking sector. And even if the statement were true, it is misleading to compare a payment processor to the entire banking sector. Even if the entire banking sector ran on cryptocurrency, you&#x27;d still need somebody to underwrite loans and mortgages.<p>Overall, every single time I&#x27;ve looked into cryptocurrency over the past decade, I came away thinking that it&#x27;s a really neat idea, but there are so, so many downsides. In practice, cryptocurrencies are worse than Ponzi schemes, because at least Ponzi schemes only screw over people who invest in them. Cryptocurrencies also screw over anybody who wants to use GPUs for productivity&#x2F;entertainment, anybody who has higher electricity costs due to increased demand, and anybody downwind of (or on the same warming planet as) coal power plants being reactivated to run transaction validation.<p>Bitcoin delenda est.</text></item><item><author>danuker</author><text>&gt; arguments about technology, economics or freedom are not just wrong but very often the exact opposite is true.<p>Care to elaborate?<p>What exactly are the arguments that are wrong?</text></item><item><author>jstx1</author><text>He&#x27;s just right. I can&#x27;t object to using cryptocurrencies as a financial instrument to make money but all the arguments about technology, economics or freedom are not just wrong but very often the exact opposite is true.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JMTQp8lwXL</author><text>&gt; * &quot;This will decentralize ownership of a currency.&quot; Nope, it will move from having government control to having oligarchic control.<p>In most places where oligarchs exist, they largely control their government. That is, they are one in the same, whether this is a formal or informal arrangement. Though they may be different subsets of oligarchs.</text></comment> | <story><title>Cryptocurrency is like taking the worst parts of today's capitalist system</title><url>https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1415353989323841537</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MereInterest</author><text>Not the OP, but this has been my experience as well.<p>* &quot;This will decentralize ownership of a currency.&quot; Nope, it will move from having government control to having oligarchic control.<p>* &quot;A strict limit on the number of tokens means that the value isn&#x27;t stolen away by inflation.&quot; If the supply of currency doesn&#x27;t keep up with demand, the price skyrockets. This discourages investment, since you get more value just by holding onto it.<p>* &quot;These are anonymous transactions.&quot; On a public ledger, the most you can do is pseudonymous. Just like TOR, you only need to monitor the exit nodes to map pseudonyms to actual people.<p>* &quot;Irreversible transactions are a feature.&quot; They&#x27;re definitely a bug. If I buy a TV with a credit card, and receive a box of rocks, I can do a chargeback. If I make that same transaction with cryptocurrencies, I&#x27;m SOL unless a fraudster suddenly decides that they really want to make good on it.<p>* &quot;We don&#x27;t need banks anymore.&quot; is absolutely hilarious when coupled with &quot;Off-chain transactions solve the throughput limits.&quot; If there&#x27;s an organization that holds money in their on-chain accounts on behalf of others, manages a balance of those off-chain accounts backed by deposited assets, and facilitates transactions between those off-chain accounts, that sure sounds like a bank to me.<p>* &quot;Sure, there&#x27;s a high electricity cost, but compare it to the entire banking system that it&#x27;s replacing and it&#x27;s minimal.&quot; This one manages to be both inaccurate and false. A proof-of-work cryptocurrency must at all times expend energy proportional to the value represented by the cryptocurrency, or else be vulnerable to attack. As such, the more it expands in usage, the more much be expended to secure it. We&#x27;ve seen how Bitcoin alone now dwarfs entire countries, let alone the banking sector. And even if the statement were true, it is misleading to compare a payment processor to the entire banking sector. Even if the entire banking sector ran on cryptocurrency, you&#x27;d still need somebody to underwrite loans and mortgages.<p>Overall, every single time I&#x27;ve looked into cryptocurrency over the past decade, I came away thinking that it&#x27;s a really neat idea, but there are so, so many downsides. In practice, cryptocurrencies are worse than Ponzi schemes, because at least Ponzi schemes only screw over people who invest in them. Cryptocurrencies also screw over anybody who wants to use GPUs for productivity&#x2F;entertainment, anybody who has higher electricity costs due to increased demand, and anybody downwind of (or on the same warming planet as) coal power plants being reactivated to run transaction validation.<p>Bitcoin delenda est.</text></item><item><author>danuker</author><text>&gt; arguments about technology, economics or freedom are not just wrong but very often the exact opposite is true.<p>Care to elaborate?<p>What exactly are the arguments that are wrong?</text></item><item><author>jstx1</author><text>He&#x27;s just right. I can&#x27;t object to using cryptocurrencies as a financial instrument to make money but all the arguments about technology, economics or freedom are not just wrong but very often the exact opposite is true.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>helsinkiandrew</author><text>&gt; &quot;Irreversible transactions are a feature.&quot; They&#x27;re definitely a bug. If I buy a TV with a credit card, and receive a box of rocks, I can do a chargeback. If I make that same transaction with cryptocurrencies, I&#x27;m SOL unless a fraudster suddenly decides that they really want to make good on it.<p>Agree with all you said apart from this - I&#x27;m not sure how reversible transactions would help you get money back from a fraudster. With &#x27;legacy&#x27; money its eBay&#x2F;Amazon or your credit card company (or the laws that they operate under), the level above the currency&#x2F;transaction that gets you your money back. I imagine if Amazon accepted bitcoin they would also provide refunds.<p>The legal protection provided by using a credit card (in the UK&#x2F;EU anyway) is by far the biggest reason not to use anything else for transactions on the internet.</text></comment> |
33,328,239 | 33,325,029 | 1 | 2 | 33,320,294 | train | <story><title>Forgetting the Asbestos – how we lose knowledge and technologies</title><url>https://1517.substack.com/p/forgetting-the-asbestos</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>areoform</author><text>Author here, based on my reading of your comment, I think we&#x27;re talking at cross purposes.<p>Your comment seems to be about how these technologies aren&#x27;t useful for us in the present. AFAICT, it doesn&#x27;t dispute that the knowledge was lost.<p>An additional interpretation is that you&#x27;re interpreting my writing as being from someone who thinks that &quot;the Romans clearly built it better&quot; etc.<p>That&#x27;s not the point I&#x27;m making.<p>Yes, we have napalm and recipes for it. Yes, we have digital computers that are incalculably better than the Antikythera mechanism. Yes, we can trivially manufacture better concrete.<p>And that&#x27;s amazing, for us today, but how much better would it have been if we hadn&#x27;t forgotten about these technologies in the first place and had continued to improve on them? Heron of Alexandria described building steam engines, what if we had continued to experiment on them for over 2k years? Where would we be now?<p>The loss in knowledge doesn&#x27;t matter (as much) anymore in the present, but it has held us back, measurably so. For a thousand years, between the Antikythera mechanism and a few hundred years ago, we somehow lost their equivalent of Kepler&#x27;s laws, some version of calculus, precision machining, mechanical computing etc. For over a thousand years, we have no records of anyone producing devices that approached or surpassed its capabilities.<p>What if the knowledge behind that device hadn&#x27;t been lost and we were 1k years further along into our understanding of mathematics and computing?<p>That&#x27;s the point here.<p>The point is that those technologies were exceptional at their time, but were still lost, and we are poorer for it, because it took away hundreds of years of erstwhile progress that could have been made had we remembered and kept building on them.<p>Happy to hear how I could make the ending better though!</text></item><item><author>dale_glass</author><text>The ending doesn&#x27;t quite work, and I&#x27;d say neither does the article as a whole really.<p>First, we didn&#x27;t really forget &quot;greek fire&quot; or &quot;roman concrete&quot; exactly. We don&#x27;t know what the formula for &quot;greek fire&quot; was exactly because it wasn&#x27;t recorded. But in modern times we have an amazing chemistry and can come up with a hundred formulas for napalm -- we just don&#x27;t know which of those matches &quot;greek fire&quot;. Nothing was lost but the association between a formula we almost certainly know and a name.<p>Same goes for roman concrete. We know far more about concrete than the Romans did. We just don&#x27;t bother to engineer everything to last forever, because that costs money and has little point to it a lot of the time. Yes, some buildings are works of art, but many things just have a function to fulfill, which is often temporary. Nobody is sad that the millions of mass-made soviet residential crappy buildings aren&#x27;t still as good as new. If they were made to a better standard they&#x27;d still be ugly cookie cutter things.<p>And I&#x27;d say the same goes for the Saturn V. We didn&#x27;t forget material science or heat shielding. We launch plenty rockets and even landed car sized robots on Mars -- that required excellent understanding of heat shielding. If we had any reason to build a modern copy, we&#x27;d use whatever shielding is required, after accounting for modern improved materials. We wouldn&#x27;t be dumbfounded that the thing melted down on the launch pad. That in the popular consciousness we see the engines without the asbestos covering doesn&#x27;t really mean much of anything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dale_glass</author><text>I still don&#x27;t think it quite adds up. You&#x27;re mixing two different things together because they look kinda similar on the surface but aren&#x27;t.<p>If you want to make the point that &quot;what if we developed steam power sooner&quot;, then sure, that works so long you keep talking about steam power in Ancient Greece. Yes, knowledge did get lost there.<p>But that&#x27;s not what happened with the Saturn V. The knowledge didn&#x27;t really go anywhere. We still have the engines and the designs, they&#x27;re just technologically obsolete. We&#x27;re not making them not because it&#x27;s some lost wonder-technology we forgot how to make, but because it costs a lot of $$$ and there&#x27;s no profit to be made by sending another lander to the Moon and science funding is scarce. That we don&#x27;t see the asbestos covers much doesn&#x27;t really mean anything because the actual knowledge is in the fields of heat management and materials science, and not magazine cover photos.</text></comment> | <story><title>Forgetting the Asbestos – how we lose knowledge and technologies</title><url>https://1517.substack.com/p/forgetting-the-asbestos</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>areoform</author><text>Author here, based on my reading of your comment, I think we&#x27;re talking at cross purposes.<p>Your comment seems to be about how these technologies aren&#x27;t useful for us in the present. AFAICT, it doesn&#x27;t dispute that the knowledge was lost.<p>An additional interpretation is that you&#x27;re interpreting my writing as being from someone who thinks that &quot;the Romans clearly built it better&quot; etc.<p>That&#x27;s not the point I&#x27;m making.<p>Yes, we have napalm and recipes for it. Yes, we have digital computers that are incalculably better than the Antikythera mechanism. Yes, we can trivially manufacture better concrete.<p>And that&#x27;s amazing, for us today, but how much better would it have been if we hadn&#x27;t forgotten about these technologies in the first place and had continued to improve on them? Heron of Alexandria described building steam engines, what if we had continued to experiment on them for over 2k years? Where would we be now?<p>The loss in knowledge doesn&#x27;t matter (as much) anymore in the present, but it has held us back, measurably so. For a thousand years, between the Antikythera mechanism and a few hundred years ago, we somehow lost their equivalent of Kepler&#x27;s laws, some version of calculus, precision machining, mechanical computing etc. For over a thousand years, we have no records of anyone producing devices that approached or surpassed its capabilities.<p>What if the knowledge behind that device hadn&#x27;t been lost and we were 1k years further along into our understanding of mathematics and computing?<p>That&#x27;s the point here.<p>The point is that those technologies were exceptional at their time, but were still lost, and we are poorer for it, because it took away hundreds of years of erstwhile progress that could have been made had we remembered and kept building on them.<p>Happy to hear how I could make the ending better though!</text></item><item><author>dale_glass</author><text>The ending doesn&#x27;t quite work, and I&#x27;d say neither does the article as a whole really.<p>First, we didn&#x27;t really forget &quot;greek fire&quot; or &quot;roman concrete&quot; exactly. We don&#x27;t know what the formula for &quot;greek fire&quot; was exactly because it wasn&#x27;t recorded. But in modern times we have an amazing chemistry and can come up with a hundred formulas for napalm -- we just don&#x27;t know which of those matches &quot;greek fire&quot;. Nothing was lost but the association between a formula we almost certainly know and a name.<p>Same goes for roman concrete. We know far more about concrete than the Romans did. We just don&#x27;t bother to engineer everything to last forever, because that costs money and has little point to it a lot of the time. Yes, some buildings are works of art, but many things just have a function to fulfill, which is often temporary. Nobody is sad that the millions of mass-made soviet residential crappy buildings aren&#x27;t still as good as new. If they were made to a better standard they&#x27;d still be ugly cookie cutter things.<p>And I&#x27;d say the same goes for the Saturn V. We didn&#x27;t forget material science or heat shielding. We launch plenty rockets and even landed car sized robots on Mars -- that required excellent understanding of heat shielding. If we had any reason to build a modern copy, we&#x27;d use whatever shielding is required, after accounting for modern improved materials. We wouldn&#x27;t be dumbfounded that the thing melted down on the launch pad. That in the popular consciousness we see the engines without the asbestos covering doesn&#x27;t really mean much of anything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>taeric</author><text>But this is predicated on a non falsifiable claim that we could have built on these technologies. That they weren&#x27;t extended to better things just a easily hints at them being technological dead ends.<p>Consider the massive costs that went into many old structures. Often you could measure them in lives lost during construction.<p>In the case of asbestos and leaded paint, lives and damage done by having used them.<p>Now, I do believe we should have people study the past. I still like reading on old programming techniques. But progress is not necessarily held back by not building on what came before.</text></comment> |
20,978,186 | 20,978,063 | 1 | 2 | 20,977,753 | train | <story><title>How Do Developers Promote Open Source Projects?</title><url>https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.04219</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>near</author><text>A very useful article, thank you for sharing.<p>This is definitely a hard problem for solo developers who are like me and have significant difficulty with social aspects. I&#x27;ve never submitted any of my projects or writing here, because I have this underlying feeling that I&#x27;d be bothering people. It also doesn&#x27;t help to be on a site filled daily with dozens of really incredible projects that feel so much more deserving of attention. Yet I&#x27;ve often found myself bewildered by concepts such as SEO and promotion, and I much prefer to spend my time coding. I hate to generalize, but I can&#x27;t imagine I&#x27;m particularly unique in this regard.<p>But indeed, it&#x27;s a serious growth limiter when we are stuck working alone. I feel like any serious open source project really needs someone on the team who groks all the social stuff and can get the word out to the right parties who would be interested. A networking service to connect these two types of people would truly be invaluable, I feel.<p>I was also told that technical writing helps a lot, and indeed, despite being a little guy in a small niche, two of my articles were submitted by others recently, and seeing such a positive response has been a huge boost to my self-esteem and confidence. (It did ruin my bounce rate stats though, went from 44% to 87% in two days :p)<p>But yeah, I&#x27;ll agree with the arXiv conclusion that HN is an incredibly valuable resource for open source developers, with a very friendly community behind it.</text></comment> | <story><title>How Do Developers Promote Open Source Projects?</title><url>https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.04219</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>moron4hire</author><text>I&#x27;m a little worried that this only studies channels and not the original content itself. I&#x27;ve personally used most of these channels and have found a rather &quot;bucket-of-crabs&quot; sort of reaction, unless I&#x27;m very, very careful to release an absolutely perfect post.<p>There generally seems to be only a level of tolerance for projects released by big companies. If you have a FANG coolant behind your name, it doesn&#x27;t matter what you&#x27;re releasing, how long you&#x27;ve been working on it, or even how big your team actually is, you&#x27;ll grab a ton of popularity.<p>But as a solo dev releasing under my own name, the only things I can get attention for are basically hacks in niche topics. The long-standing, well designed work I do, that is used in real projects, with tons of documentation and proven results, at best gets ignored. At worst, I get accused of &quot;re-inventing the wheel&quot;, even for things <i>I</i> invented.<p>I&#x27;ve never gotten anyone to join me on a project. There are a lot of self-fulfilling prophecies that &quot;solo-dev work won&#x27;t be around in a year, so don&#x27;t bother even starting&quot;. Either I release too early and people don&#x27;t want to join because nothing is finished, or I put a ton of effort into documentation and contribution guidelines and then things just get ignored. Just when is it a good time to go from code I&#x27;ve written on my own to sharing with others?<p>It just really makes it seem like FOSS is only for people who have a big, recognised company backing them. I&#x27;ve even had a project or two copied by recognized companies, with no larger team than one or two people, and watched their half-baked early releases quickly eclipse my own efforts just because they could get people to join the effort and work for free.</text></comment> |
3,655,988 | 3,655,660 | 1 | 2 | 3,655,355 | train | <story><title>More than $215,000 stolen from Bitcoinica in Linode incident</title><url>https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66979.0</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>JoachimSchipper</author><text>Ah, Bitcoin. Security amateur hour. Again.<p>Seriously, trusting ~$200 000 to the security of a general-purpose VPS provider? With no failsafes of any kind? Ever notice how real banks don't do that? Even if you don't want to build your own data center, you could <i>at least</i> chat with <a href="http://www.thebunker.net/colocation/" rel="nofollow">http://www.thebunker.net/colocation/</a> or another properly-paranoid data center.<p>At least <i>these</i> guys didn't leave <i>all</i> their Bitcoins on this machine...</text></comment> | <story><title>More than $215,000 stolen from Bitcoinica in Linode incident</title><url>https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66979.0</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>joeyh</author><text>So they looked for connections to the IRC channel bitcoin uses to find linode IP's (or portscanned linode, but why bother when
every bitcoin daemon hangs out advertising its IP on IRC?).<p>And they stole from at least 3 systems. One had $5; one $15 thousand, and one had nearly a quarter $million. Which makes me curious why they bothered with the $5 account at all. It's like robbing a bank, and stopping to smash a gumball machine in the lobby on your way in or out.<p>My guess is that the attackers have a fully automated exploit payload that transfers the bitcoin out. And ran it on every system they could get on, indiscrimitely. So this is not a one-off. I'd be very cautious about running the bitcoin daemon, at least without setting noirc=1 in its configuration.</text></comment> |
27,705,817 | 27,706,019 | 1 | 2 | 27,697,855 | train | <story><title>Uno – the “unit” for dimensionless quantities</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parts-per_notation#Uno</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Synaesthesia</author><text>Interesting idea. We generally just say &quot;unit&quot; if necessary.<p>&gt;In 2004, a report to the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) stated that response to the proposal of the uno &quot;had been almost entirely negative&quot;, and the principal proponent &quot;recommended dropping the idea&quot;.[15] To date, the uno has not been adopted by any standards organization, and it appears unlikely that it will ever become an officially sanctioned way to express low-value (high-ratio) dimensionless quantities. The proposal was instructive, however, as to the perceived shortcomings of the current options for denoting dimensionless quantities.</text></comment> | <story><title>Uno – the “unit” for dimensionless quantities</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parts-per_notation#Uno</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>6gvONxR4sf7o</author><text>I&#x27;ve often felt it to be helpful to treat dimensionless quantities as a smell that the dimensions might be too unspecific. 12 meters &#x2F; 3 meters is just a unitless 4, but 12 meters east &#x2F; 3 meters north is a much more interesting 4 units-east-per-unit-north. Keeping track of these invariant &quot;hidden units&quot; was sometimes helpful to me in physics classes, especially in later classes where nondimensionalizing your equations was so handy.</text></comment> |
28,827,057 | 28,826,598 | 1 | 2 | 28,825,009 | train | <story><title>Worst Case</title><url>https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2021/10/08/The-WOrst-Case</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>michaelt</author><text>I assume the author isn&#x27;t asking &quot;What if there was a 30 minute outage of us-east-1&quot; (just wait for it to come back) or &quot;What if there was an outage of a single AZ in us-east-1&quot; (just spin things up in a different AZ)<p>Rather, they&#x27;re asking &quot;What if there was a 30 day outage of us-east-1&quot; - so anyone who isn&#x27;t multi-region or multi-cloud loses everything, including backups, AMIs, and control plane access.<p>(FWIW I agree with people disagreeing with the worry levels in the article - a solar storm last seen in 1859 is more likely than a software bug? Ha!)</text></item><item><author>dijit</author><text>&gt; Amazon itself would leverage every tool at it&#x27;s disposal to protect its reputation for reliability.<p>This is a joke, right? The _real_ degradation map of us-east-1 of the last 5 years looks significantly worse than my non-UPS backed Home PC in Sweden.<p>Personally I&#x27;m not looking at us-east-1 as reliable at all; they even suffered a &quot;harddrive crash&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bleepingcomputer.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology&#x2F;amazon-aws-outage-shows-data-in-the-cloud-is-not-always-safe&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bleepingcomputer.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology&#x2F;amazon-aws-...</a></text></item><item><author>implying</author><text>This is a bizarre analysis. Public legal risk is absolutely the last imaginable threat to us-east-1, short of aliens abducting it. The U.S. security apparatus depends on AWS and would never allow it, Wall Street would never allow it, never mind the fact that Amazon itself would leverage every tool at it&#x27;s disposal to protect its reputation for reliability. The politicians involved in this scenario might seek to remove Amazon&#x27;s competitive advantages, or fine them, but the people who understand what AWS even is would never consider a move to shut down a datacenter.<p>Both the &quot;enemy action&quot; and &quot;operation failure&quot; scenarios are much bigger risks than this article makes out to be. Every non-aligned nation-state offensive cyber team has a knockout of us-east-1 at the top of their desired capabilities. I&#x27;m sure efforts range from recruiting Amazon employees to preparing physical sabotage to hoarding 0days in the infrastructure. There&#x27;s no reason to think one of them wouldnt rock the boat if geopolitics dictated.<p>Operational failure is probably the most likely. AWS might have a decade of experience building resilience, but some events happen on longer timescales. A bug that silently corrupts data before checksums and duplication and doesn&#x27;t get noticed until almost every customer is borked, a vendor gives bad ECC ram that fails after 6 months in the field and is already deployed to 10,000 servers, etc. Networking is hard and an extended outage on the order of a week isn&#x27;t completely impossible. How many customer systems can survive a week of downtime? How many customer businesses can?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jdub</author><text>Please don&#x27;t mischaracterise the point: The solar storm is not more likely than a software bug. The <i>effect</i> of the solar storm is more likely than a similar effect by a software bug (particularly in the context of AWS).</text></comment> | <story><title>Worst Case</title><url>https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2021/10/08/The-WOrst-Case</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>michaelt</author><text>I assume the author isn&#x27;t asking &quot;What if there was a 30 minute outage of us-east-1&quot; (just wait for it to come back) or &quot;What if there was an outage of a single AZ in us-east-1&quot; (just spin things up in a different AZ)<p>Rather, they&#x27;re asking &quot;What if there was a 30 day outage of us-east-1&quot; - so anyone who isn&#x27;t multi-region or multi-cloud loses everything, including backups, AMIs, and control plane access.<p>(FWIW I agree with people disagreeing with the worry levels in the article - a solar storm last seen in 1859 is more likely than a software bug? Ha!)</text></item><item><author>dijit</author><text>&gt; Amazon itself would leverage every tool at it&#x27;s disposal to protect its reputation for reliability.<p>This is a joke, right? The _real_ degradation map of us-east-1 of the last 5 years looks significantly worse than my non-UPS backed Home PC in Sweden.<p>Personally I&#x27;m not looking at us-east-1 as reliable at all; they even suffered a &quot;harddrive crash&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bleepingcomputer.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology&#x2F;amazon-aws-outage-shows-data-in-the-cloud-is-not-always-safe&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bleepingcomputer.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology&#x2F;amazon-aws-...</a></text></item><item><author>implying</author><text>This is a bizarre analysis. Public legal risk is absolutely the last imaginable threat to us-east-1, short of aliens abducting it. The U.S. security apparatus depends on AWS and would never allow it, Wall Street would never allow it, never mind the fact that Amazon itself would leverage every tool at it&#x27;s disposal to protect its reputation for reliability. The politicians involved in this scenario might seek to remove Amazon&#x27;s competitive advantages, or fine them, but the people who understand what AWS even is would never consider a move to shut down a datacenter.<p>Both the &quot;enemy action&quot; and &quot;operation failure&quot; scenarios are much bigger risks than this article makes out to be. Every non-aligned nation-state offensive cyber team has a knockout of us-east-1 at the top of their desired capabilities. I&#x27;m sure efforts range from recruiting Amazon employees to preparing physical sabotage to hoarding 0days in the infrastructure. There&#x27;s no reason to think one of them wouldnt rock the boat if geopolitics dictated.<p>Operational failure is probably the most likely. AWS might have a decade of experience building resilience, but some events happen on longer timescales. A bug that silently corrupts data before checksums and duplication and doesn&#x27;t get noticed until almost every customer is borked, a vendor gives bad ECC ram that fails after 6 months in the field and is already deployed to 10,000 servers, etc. Networking is hard and an extended outage on the order of a week isn&#x27;t completely impossible. How many customer systems can survive a week of downtime? How many customer businesses can?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dijit</author><text>realistically if AWS is down for 1+ day in that region you will be wondering very much if they&#x27;re coming back in just 1hr more, 1 more day, 1 month or if at all.<p>Yeah, it&#x27;s kind of &quot;incredible&quot; that they&#x27;d be gone for so long, but I&#x27;ve been on AWS during long outages before and it&#x27;s never certain how long it will go on for and if data will be kept.<p>We assume too much I think of our providers, and I believe that&#x27;s what the post is about. If you already _know_ AWS will be down for 30 days then you can make an informed decision based on that.<p>For me, there&#x27;s no difference between 8 hours or 80, if you&#x27;re down more than 8hrs I&#x27;m going to activate my redundancies. But: I have redundancies. Many people don&#x27;t.</text></comment> |
8,901,388 | 8,900,867 | 1 | 2 | 8,900,016 | train | <story><title>SpaceX: “Close, but no cigar. This time”</title><url>https://vine.co/v/OjqeYWWpVWK</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>&gt; I&#x27;m not saying he can do no wrong, but I&#x27;m just flabbergasted that there are still so many armchair critics and naysayers when it comes to Elon Musk.<p>That&#x27;s why you&#x27;re a fanboy. Nobody is perfect, and Elon Musk likes to make fun of the competition quite publicly when they have an issue, while ignoring his project&#x27;s own failures.<p>It is hard to even discuss the man on HN as anything that could even be taken as critical gets downmoded or flagged. Just look at yesterday&#x27;s hyperloop discussions, nobody could say anything critical without being very actively attacked. By the way make sure &quot;show dead&quot; is turned on to see the full discussion.<p>Honestly his track record is very impressive indeed. His aspirations are also impressive. However his fans are insufferable as is HN&#x27;s general attitude about the man. When someone is treated as if they&#x27;re beyond reproach and their ideas are also, you&#x27;re just asking to get led down the garden path.<p>The hyperhoop concept in particular is pretty bad, and the white paper leaves more questions than it does answers. The cost is too high and the value too low Vs. normal high speed trains (e.g. Japan). Plus there are massive safety issues surrounding it (as you can see from the thread yesterday, that were largely just ignored and downmodded).<p>Overall I&#x27;ll be happy when people start acting rationally around the guy again. Currently I feel like I at a One Direction concert surrounding by a bunch of screaming teenage girls (on HN in particular).<p>PS - I wouldn&#x27;t dream of criticising this rocket failure. Rockets are hard, the last 80 years have proven that again and again.</text></item><item><author>sixQuarks</author><text>Sorry for sounding like such a fanboy, but during my 40 years on this earth, I have never been more impressed with a human being.<p>The guy is pushing the envelope on perhaps the most difficult engineering&#x2F;technological endeavor ever attempted by a private company - and he&#x27;s making it look cool and futuristic.<p>As if that wasn&#x27;t enough, he&#x27;s doing this in two different industries simultaneously.<p>I&#x27;m not saying he can do no wrong, but I&#x27;m just flabbergasted that there are still so many armchair critics and naysayers when it comes to Elon Musk.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SEJeff</author><text>Not sure what you&#x27;re saying reflects reality. When Orbital Science&#x27;s rocket recently exploded, Elon&#x27;s words were nothing but polite:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/527247155954610176" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;527247155954610176</a><p>And his comment on their rocket being the butt of a joke, using engines literally made in the 1960s and stored in Siberia were true. It is upsetting, but still not as surprising that they suffered catastrophic failure having such an adversion to new tech.</text></comment> | <story><title>SpaceX: “Close, but no cigar. This time”</title><url>https://vine.co/v/OjqeYWWpVWK</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>&gt; I&#x27;m not saying he can do no wrong, but I&#x27;m just flabbergasted that there are still so many armchair critics and naysayers when it comes to Elon Musk.<p>That&#x27;s why you&#x27;re a fanboy. Nobody is perfect, and Elon Musk likes to make fun of the competition quite publicly when they have an issue, while ignoring his project&#x27;s own failures.<p>It is hard to even discuss the man on HN as anything that could even be taken as critical gets downmoded or flagged. Just look at yesterday&#x27;s hyperloop discussions, nobody could say anything critical without being very actively attacked. By the way make sure &quot;show dead&quot; is turned on to see the full discussion.<p>Honestly his track record is very impressive indeed. His aspirations are also impressive. However his fans are insufferable as is HN&#x27;s general attitude about the man. When someone is treated as if they&#x27;re beyond reproach and their ideas are also, you&#x27;re just asking to get led down the garden path.<p>The hyperhoop concept in particular is pretty bad, and the white paper leaves more questions than it does answers. The cost is too high and the value too low Vs. normal high speed trains (e.g. Japan). Plus there are massive safety issues surrounding it (as you can see from the thread yesterday, that were largely just ignored and downmodded).<p>Overall I&#x27;ll be happy when people start acting rationally around the guy again. Currently I feel like I at a One Direction concert surrounding by a bunch of screaming teenage girls (on HN in particular).<p>PS - I wouldn&#x27;t dream of criticising this rocket failure. Rockets are hard, the last 80 years have proven that again and again.</text></item><item><author>sixQuarks</author><text>Sorry for sounding like such a fanboy, but during my 40 years on this earth, I have never been more impressed with a human being.<p>The guy is pushing the envelope on perhaps the most difficult engineering&#x2F;technological endeavor ever attempted by a private company - and he&#x27;s making it look cool and futuristic.<p>As if that wasn&#x27;t enough, he&#x27;s doing this in two different industries simultaneously.<p>I&#x27;m not saying he can do no wrong, but I&#x27;m just flabbergasted that there are still so many armchair critics and naysayers when it comes to Elon Musk.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>iamcreasy</author><text>Well, Elon Musk said talking about hyperloop was like shooting his own foot. It was a premature idea.<p>But the interesting part is some(more than some) people are actually trying trying to come up with a real world implementations of hyperloop and so far their verdict is &#x27;it&#x27;s doable&#x27; and they are working on it. And these people are engineers from reputed companies around the world.<p>I don&#x27;t particularly like the concept of fan boy either, but like you said, this man has impressive track records. And that&#x27;s absolutely brilliant.<p>The thing that intrigues me is in the new innovations he had in his rocket, and why NASA didn&#x27;t have it before SpaceX.</text></comment> |
39,018,875 | 39,017,905 | 1 | 2 | 39,016,395 | train | <story><title>On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney</title><url>https://catandgirl.com/4000-of-my-closest-friends/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>csallen</author><text>Computers and machines have been capable of mass production for decades, and humans have used them as tools. In the past 170 years, these tools of mass production have <i>already</i> diminished many thousands of professions that were staffed by people who had to painstakingly craft things one at a time.<p>Why is art some special case that should be protected, when many other industries were not?<p>Why should we kill this technology to protect existing artistic business models, when many other technologies were allowed to bloom despite killing other existing business models?<p>Nobody can really answer these questions.</text></item><item><author>bluefirebrand</author><text>We shouldn&#x27;t hold individual humans and ML models to the same standards, because ML models themselves are products capable of mass production and individual humans are not even remotely at the same scale.<p>If you write that book, chances are you will gain some fans that are also fans of other authors in that genre.<p>If ML models write that genre, they can flood that genre so full that human artists won&#x27;t be able to complete.<p>It&#x27;s not even a remotely equivalent scenario</text></item><item><author>Aeolun</author><text>If I read a lot of stories in a certain genre that I like, and I later write my own story, it’s almost by definition going to be a mish-mash of everything I like.<p>Should I pay the authors of the books I read when I sell mine?</text></item><item><author>tedivm</author><text>I firmly believe that training models qualifies as fair use. I think it falls under research, and is used to push the scientific community forward.<p>I also firmly believe that commercializing models built on top of copyrighted works (which all works start off as) does not qualify as fair use (or at least shouldn&#x27;t) and that commercializing models build on copyrighted material is nothing more than license laundering. Companies that commercialize copyrighted work in this manner should be paying for a license to train with the data, or should stick to using the licenses that the content was released under.<p>I don&#x27;t think your example is valid either. The reason that AI models are generating content similar to other people&#x27;s work is because those models were explicitly trained to do that. That is literally what they are and how they work. That is very different than people having similar styles.</text></item><item><author>sandworm101</author><text>&gt;&gt; If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can&#x27;t use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content.<p>But we are allowed to use copyrighted content. We are not allowed to <i>copy</i> copyrighted content. We are allowed to view and consume it, to be influenced by it, and under many circumstances even outright copy it. If one doesn&#x27;t want anyone to see&#x2F;consume or be influenced by one&#x27;s copyrighted work, then lock it in a box and don&#x27;t show it to anyone.<p>I have some, but diminishing sympathy for artists screaming about how AI generates images too similar to their work. Yes, the output does look very similar to your work. But if I take your work and compare it to the millions of other people&#x27;s work, I&#x27;d bet I can find some preexisting human-made art that also looks similar to your stuff too.<p>This is why clothing doesn&#x27;t qualify for copyright. No matter how original you think your clothing seems, someone in the last many thousands of years of fashion has done it before. Visual art may be approaching a similar point. No matter how original you think your drawings are, someone out there has already done something similar. They may not have created exactly the same image, but neither does AI literally copy images. That reality doesn&#x27;t kill visual arts as it didn&#x27;t kill off the fashion industry.</text></item><item><author>madeofpalk</author><text>&gt; <i>But I can&#x27;t even</i> get <i>cartoons to most people for free now, without doing unpaid work for the profit-making companies who own the most use channels of communication</i><p>This is the sticking point for me. OpenAI isn&#x27;t a profit-making company, but it&#x27;s certainly a valuable company. A valuable company that is built from the work of content others created without transferring any value back to them. Regardless of legalities, that&#x27;s wrong to me.<p>Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI&#x27;s products have? If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can&#x27;t use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>johnnyanmac</author><text>&gt;Why is art some special case that should be protected, when many other industries were not?<p>Because in this case the art is still necessary for the machine to work. You don&#x27;t need horse buggies to make a car, nor existing books to make a printing press. You DO need artist&#x27;s art to make these generative AI tools work.<p>If these worked purely off of open source art or from true scratch, I wouldn&#x27;t personally have an issue.<p>&gt;Why should we kill this technology to protect existing artistic business models,<p>We don&#x27;t need to kill it. Just pay your dang labor. But if we are treating proper compensation as stifling technology, I&#x27;m not surprised people are against it.<p>Maybe in the 2010&#x27;s tech would have the goodwill to pull this off in PR, but the 2020&#x27;s have drained that goodwill and then some. Tech&#x27;s made so many promises to make lives easier and now they joined the very corporations they claimed to fight against.<p>&gt;Nobody can really answer these questions.<p>Well it&#x27;s in courts, so someone is going to answer it soon-ish</text></comment> | <story><title>On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney</title><url>https://catandgirl.com/4000-of-my-closest-friends/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>csallen</author><text>Computers and machines have been capable of mass production for decades, and humans have used them as tools. In the past 170 years, these tools of mass production have <i>already</i> diminished many thousands of professions that were staffed by people who had to painstakingly craft things one at a time.<p>Why is art some special case that should be protected, when many other industries were not?<p>Why should we kill this technology to protect existing artistic business models, when many other technologies were allowed to bloom despite killing other existing business models?<p>Nobody can really answer these questions.</text></item><item><author>bluefirebrand</author><text>We shouldn&#x27;t hold individual humans and ML models to the same standards, because ML models themselves are products capable of mass production and individual humans are not even remotely at the same scale.<p>If you write that book, chances are you will gain some fans that are also fans of other authors in that genre.<p>If ML models write that genre, they can flood that genre so full that human artists won&#x27;t be able to complete.<p>It&#x27;s not even a remotely equivalent scenario</text></item><item><author>Aeolun</author><text>If I read a lot of stories in a certain genre that I like, and I later write my own story, it’s almost by definition going to be a mish-mash of everything I like.<p>Should I pay the authors of the books I read when I sell mine?</text></item><item><author>tedivm</author><text>I firmly believe that training models qualifies as fair use. I think it falls under research, and is used to push the scientific community forward.<p>I also firmly believe that commercializing models built on top of copyrighted works (which all works start off as) does not qualify as fair use (or at least shouldn&#x27;t) and that commercializing models build on copyrighted material is nothing more than license laundering. Companies that commercialize copyrighted work in this manner should be paying for a license to train with the data, or should stick to using the licenses that the content was released under.<p>I don&#x27;t think your example is valid either. The reason that AI models are generating content similar to other people&#x27;s work is because those models were explicitly trained to do that. That is literally what they are and how they work. That is very different than people having similar styles.</text></item><item><author>sandworm101</author><text>&gt;&gt; If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can&#x27;t use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content.<p>But we are allowed to use copyrighted content. We are not allowed to <i>copy</i> copyrighted content. We are allowed to view and consume it, to be influenced by it, and under many circumstances even outright copy it. If one doesn&#x27;t want anyone to see&#x2F;consume or be influenced by one&#x27;s copyrighted work, then lock it in a box and don&#x27;t show it to anyone.<p>I have some, but diminishing sympathy for artists screaming about how AI generates images too similar to their work. Yes, the output does look very similar to your work. But if I take your work and compare it to the millions of other people&#x27;s work, I&#x27;d bet I can find some preexisting human-made art that also looks similar to your stuff too.<p>This is why clothing doesn&#x27;t qualify for copyright. No matter how original you think your clothing seems, someone in the last many thousands of years of fashion has done it before. Visual art may be approaching a similar point. No matter how original you think your drawings are, someone out there has already done something similar. They may not have created exactly the same image, but neither does AI literally copy images. That reality doesn&#x27;t kill visual arts as it didn&#x27;t kill off the fashion industry.</text></item><item><author>madeofpalk</author><text>&gt; <i>But I can&#x27;t even</i> get <i>cartoons to most people for free now, without doing unpaid work for the profit-making companies who own the most use channels of communication</i><p>This is the sticking point for me. OpenAI isn&#x27;t a profit-making company, but it&#x27;s certainly a valuable company. A valuable company that is built from the work of content others created without transferring any value back to them. Regardless of legalities, that&#x27;s wrong to me.<p>Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI&#x27;s products have? If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can&#x27;t use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bluefirebrand</author><text>&gt; Why is art some special case that should be protected, when many other industries were not?<p>It shouldn&#x27;t be.<p>As soon as someone makes an AI that can produce it&#x27;s own artwork without requiring ingesting every piece of stolen artwork it can, then I&#x27;m on board.<p>But as long as it needs to be trained on the work of humans it should not be allowed to displace those people it relied on to get to where it is. Simple as that.</text></comment> |
21,139,271 | 21,139,048 | 1 | 2 | 21,137,729 | train | <story><title>US set to impose tariffs on $7.5B of EU exports in Airbus row</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49906815</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DuskStar</author><text>I think you misunderstand. We got the 737 Max <i>because</i> of competition from Airbus in the form of the A320neo series - otherwise Boeing would have taken a few more years and made a clean-sheet design.<p>EDIT: I&#x27;m not saying the 737 Max issues are Airbus&#x27;s fault. I&#x27;m saying that the existence of competition is why we ended up with the quick&amp;dirty stopgap solution instead of a better solution further in the future.</text></item><item><author>UncleOxidant</author><text>And we got the 737 Max out of it. If we continue to protect Boeing from competition, they&#x27;ll continue to do this.</text></item><item><author>ineedasername</author><text>Boeing has received approximately $90 billion in subsidies since 2000, from local, state and federal sources in the form of taxes, grants, and loan guarantees. [0]<p>[0] subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org&#x2F;parent&#x2F;boeing</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ordinaryradical</author><text>OR: Boeing went through the a series of merger consolidations in aerospace that effectively destroyed their engineering culture, blew up their competition, monopolized their markets, and removed the need to innovate and then when they got caught on their ass by Airbus they made a half-baked airplane that killed hundreds of people.<p>See: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mattstoller.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;the-coming-boeing-bailout" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mattstoller.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;the-coming-boeing-bailout</a></text></comment> | <story><title>US set to impose tariffs on $7.5B of EU exports in Airbus row</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49906815</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DuskStar</author><text>I think you misunderstand. We got the 737 Max <i>because</i> of competition from Airbus in the form of the A320neo series - otherwise Boeing would have taken a few more years and made a clean-sheet design.<p>EDIT: I&#x27;m not saying the 737 Max issues are Airbus&#x27;s fault. I&#x27;m saying that the existence of competition is why we ended up with the quick&amp;dirty stopgap solution instead of a better solution further in the future.</text></item><item><author>UncleOxidant</author><text>And we got the 737 Max out of it. If we continue to protect Boeing from competition, they&#x27;ll continue to do this.</text></item><item><author>ineedasername</author><text>Boeing has received approximately $90 billion in subsidies since 2000, from local, state and federal sources in the form of taxes, grants, and loan guarantees. [0]<p>[0] subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org&#x2F;parent&#x2F;boeing</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bitcharmer</author><text>Somehow your comment reads as if the crashes were Airbus&#x27; and not Boeing&#x27;s fault. Or am I missing something here?</text></comment> |
34,866,680 | 34,865,005 | 1 | 3 | 34,842,962 | train | <story><title>Childhoods of Exceptional People</title><url>https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CYN7swrefEss4e3Qe/childhoods-of-exceptional-people</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jhanschoo</author><text>I like how this author&#x27;s cursory research was so scientific that it fails to consider and control for all the other aristocratic children from those eras that his list is from who had tutors, connections, and apprenticeships and failed nevertheless to become &quot;exceptional&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jhanschoo</author><text>Add.: to substantiate, and argue against replies mentioning that this is a sufficient but not necessary condition, my impression is that that was the dominant form education took back then. Over half of Virginia Woolf, Lev Tolstoy, John von Neumann, Blaise Pascal, Alan Turing, Bertrand Russell, René Descartes, Mozart, and Bach were children before standardized testing (and schooling I think?) became widespread.<p>If the form of education we receive today was not widespread or present in their lives, and their dominant form of education did not have any statistically significant benefit in cultivating people to be exceptional, we would still see the same phenomenon that the post author has observed, that exceptional people mostly emerged from the dominant form of education system that they had.</text></comment> | <story><title>Childhoods of Exceptional People</title><url>https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CYN7swrefEss4e3Qe/childhoods-of-exceptional-people</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jhanschoo</author><text>I like how this author&#x27;s cursory research was so scientific that it fails to consider and control for all the other aristocratic children from those eras that his list is from who had tutors, connections, and apprenticeships and failed nevertheless to become &quot;exceptional&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>traject_</author><text>That could mean it is a necessary but not sufficient condition; I don&#x27;t think your observation by itself invalidates anything the author said.</text></comment> |
26,879,553 | 26,879,174 | 1 | 2 | 26,877,806 | train | <story><title>All-new iMac features the M1 chip</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/imac-features-all-new-design-in-vibrant-colors-m1-chip-and-45k-retina-display/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>codezero</author><text>Look how big the escape key is on that keyboard, finally, revenge for the touch bar!<p>I like the direction Apple is going here, I assume they will have higher end iMacs later this year or early next year, and that&#x27;s what I&#x27;ll be waiting for.<p>I&#x27;d like 27 inches of screen, at least 16GB of ram, but preferably 32, and that&#x27;s about all I&#x27;d ask for. My current workstation is a 2013 27&quot; iMac fully upgraded (fusion drive, 16gb, good dGPU for its time - still plays Kerbal Space Program fine), so looking forward to more upgrades on the internals.<p>I&#x27;ve already run into the old WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 as being bottlenecks and those are difficult to replace in an iMac by a normal person.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aphextron</author><text>&gt;Look how big the escape key is on that keyboard, finally, revenge for the touch bar!<p>Jony Ive&#x27;s departure is the best thing to happen for Apple products in a decade. They&#x27;re actually *gasp* <i>listening to their users</i> again. There&#x27;s news that the new 16 inch M1 MBP&#x27;s will even have physical function keys and more ports. I cannot wait.</text></comment> | <story><title>All-new iMac features the M1 chip</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/imac-features-all-new-design-in-vibrant-colors-m1-chip-and-45k-retina-display/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>codezero</author><text>Look how big the escape key is on that keyboard, finally, revenge for the touch bar!<p>I like the direction Apple is going here, I assume they will have higher end iMacs later this year or early next year, and that&#x27;s what I&#x27;ll be waiting for.<p>I&#x27;d like 27 inches of screen, at least 16GB of ram, but preferably 32, and that&#x27;s about all I&#x27;d ask for. My current workstation is a 2013 27&quot; iMac fully upgraded (fusion drive, 16gb, good dGPU for its time - still plays Kerbal Space Program fine), so looking forward to more upgrades on the internals.<p>I&#x27;ve already run into the old WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 as being bottlenecks and those are difficult to replace in an iMac by a normal person.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>frereubu</author><text>I can&#x27;t see what the arrow key layout is on the narrower (non-numeric-keypad) version because a hand is over it. It looks like there&#x27;s a big key where there would be space above the left &#x2F; right keys on the most recent one. I&#x27;ve got one of the interim ones where the left &#x2F; right keys are full size so it&#x27;s difficult to know where they are by touch, and I&#x27;m still irritated by that. I hope they haven&#x27;t gone back again.</text></comment> |
6,157,191 | 6,156,819 | 1 | 3 | 6,156,562 | train | <story><title>Video reveals NYC subway ride 108 years ago from Union Square to Grand Central</title><url>http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/video-reveals-108-year-old-subway-ride-article-1.1412802</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jballanc</author><text>As a (former) regular rider of the NYC subway, the thing that strikes me the most is just how <i>short</i> the platforms all are!<p>Anyone who&#x27;s ever had to turn an MVP into something that can serve millions of requests will appreciate some of the history of the MTA. At almost every station along the old IRT lines, you can pick out the boundaries of the &quot;old&quot; stations and where the platforms were later extended. As the article mentions, this was also the reason for the closing of some of the stations. For example the 91st St. station was closed because 96th St. was extended exclusively to the south, adding a new entrance between 92nd and 93rd St. (not much sense in having two station entrances one block apart).<p>Another related fun bit of trivia... If you&#x27;ve ever wondered why some NYC subway lines have numbers and some have letters, the numbers are the old IRT lines while the letters are the old BMT&#x2F;IND lines. Both sets of lines use the same gauge (width of the actual rails), but the BMT&#x2F;IND lines had wider cars. Since the stations had to be built to the width of the cars and not the gauge of the track, even today you can&#x27;t run the letters on the numbers or vice versa.</text></comment> | <story><title>Video reveals NYC subway ride 108 years ago from Union Square to Grand Central</title><url>http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/video-reveals-108-year-old-subway-ride-article-1.1412802</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>clicks</author><text>Reminds me of this video: <a href="http://www.wimp.com/sanfrancisco/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wimp.com&#x2F;sanfrancisco&#x2F;</a> -- uninterrupted San Francisco footage from 1905. Very surreal, extremely captivating.</text></comment> |
1,409,929 | 1,409,617 | 1 | 2 | 1,409,576 | train | <story><title>How I Built an Apartment Buzzer for Multiple Roommates</title><url>http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2010/06/how-i-built-a-multi-user-door-buzzer-for-our-apartment/</url><text>full disclosure - I work on Twilio, which I used for this</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>patio11</author><text>I love Twilio, let me count the ways. Doing flow control of an online or offline process from a phone is awesomely powerful. (Particularly cell phones.)<p>Here's a related example which I'm busy coding today: I wanted people to be able to record custom appointment reminders, but (following many years of supporting non-technical users) think microphones and MP3 encoding are probably beyond their ken. So instead, when you click "Send Mary Smith a custom reminder" on the site, it pops up a lightbox saying "Call 555-123-1234 and type in the code 1234", and when you do so the phone will say "Leave your custom message for Mary Smith's appointment on June 16th from 5:00 PM to 5:30 PM after the beep." Then, after doing so, your lightbox automatically closes and you get visual indication of success.<p>Bonus points: registering new numbers in Twilio is so cheap that I can trivially afford to give every customer their own call-in number, and tell them to put it on speed dial. Then I can use the same basic pattern for any number of tasks.</text></comment> | <story><title>How I Built an Apartment Buzzer for Multiple Roommates</title><url>http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2010/06/how-i-built-a-multi-user-door-buzzer-for-our-apartment/</url><text>full disclosure - I work on Twilio, which I used for this</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sstrudeau</author><text>This is really cool! When I was in the roommate situation, we just posted buzzer codes composed of dots &#38; dashes next to each name.</text></comment> |
15,004,707 | 15,004,598 | 1 | 2 | 15,002,842 | train | <story><title>Google Doesn't Want What's Best for Us</title><url>https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/sunday/google-tech-diversity-memo.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bhauer</author><text>&gt; <i>Peter Thiel, one of the ideological leaders in the Valley, wrote in 2009 on a blog affiliated with the Cato Institute that “since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”</i><p>&gt; <i>If women should not even have the vote, why should we worry about gender diversity in the engineering ranks?</i><p>These two paragraphs read as a microcosm of this whole episode. Think what you may about Peter Thiel, but the quote does not say or even suggest that &quot;women should not even have the vote.&quot; It merely points out that as the voting public has been broadened, it has been broadened to include sectors that are not (historically) as amenable to limited-government policies. Therefore, the relative popularity of limited-government policy among the totality of voters has diminished, suggesting that democracy and capitalism are presently at odds. Reading the quote with a reasonable level of charity suggests Thiel would prefer to convince these voters of the appeal of limited-government policy, not revoke their right to vote. Simultaneously, he is also presumably arguing, as many others have, that simply increasing voter turnout does not necessarily lead to better governance.<p>Can the New York Times point to any quote from Thiel that justifies the implication they have made here: that Thiel believes women should not have the right to vote? Perhaps there is one; I really don&#x27;t know much about Thiel. But this quote alone isn&#x27;t it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gaurav_v</author><text>Not only that; in response controversy arising from the 2009 essay he explicitly stated that &quot;It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us.&quot;<p>See addendum to the essay at bottom:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cato-unbound.org&#x2F;2009&#x2F;04&#x2F;13&#x2F;peter-thiel&#x2F;education-libertarian" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cato-unbound.org&#x2F;2009&#x2F;04&#x2F;13&#x2F;peter-thiel&#x2F;educatio...</a><p>Lazy editing by the NYT.</text></comment> | <story><title>Google Doesn't Want What's Best for Us</title><url>https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/sunday/google-tech-diversity-memo.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bhauer</author><text>&gt; <i>Peter Thiel, one of the ideological leaders in the Valley, wrote in 2009 on a blog affiliated with the Cato Institute that “since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”</i><p>&gt; <i>If women should not even have the vote, why should we worry about gender diversity in the engineering ranks?</i><p>These two paragraphs read as a microcosm of this whole episode. Think what you may about Peter Thiel, but the quote does not say or even suggest that &quot;women should not even have the vote.&quot; It merely points out that as the voting public has been broadened, it has been broadened to include sectors that are not (historically) as amenable to limited-government policies. Therefore, the relative popularity of limited-government policy among the totality of voters has diminished, suggesting that democracy and capitalism are presently at odds. Reading the quote with a reasonable level of charity suggests Thiel would prefer to convince these voters of the appeal of limited-government policy, not revoke their right to vote. Simultaneously, he is also presumably arguing, as many others have, that simply increasing voter turnout does not necessarily lead to better governance.<p>Can the New York Times point to any quote from Thiel that justifies the implication they have made here: that Thiel believes women should not have the right to vote? Perhaps there is one; I really don&#x27;t know much about Thiel. But this quote alone isn&#x27;t it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>humanrebar</author><text>Also:<p>&gt; Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs.<p>This is a huge misrepresentation of the ideas of the memo.<p>This level of journalism, both from the writer and from the editors, is disappointing.</text></comment> |
5,452,508 | 5,452,003 | 1 | 3 | 5,451,084 | train | <story><title>Ƀ — Universal Bitcoin Logo Alternative</title><url>http://www.ecogex.com/bitcoin</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jws</author><text>That is Unicode U+0243 "Latin Capital Letter B with stroke". It is in the <i>Latin Extended-B</i> block, which contains among other mysteries, about half of the latin letters with strokes.<p>I'd love to see a "Unicode: What where they thinking?" page that documents why they thought a particular codepoint should be in the standard. I mean, capital A, B, and C with a stroke, but not capital D? A and C have their stroke diagonal, B has its horizontal, U also gets a horizontal stroke, but it is named a "bar". All very mysterious.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jrochkind1</author><text>The OP suggests that U+0243 B with stroke is a "capitalized alternate symbol for the voiced bilabial fricative in Americanist phonetic notation"<p>I would suspect that the other stroke capitals that are present were used in specific actual alphabets (and probably represented in some existing pre-unicode font or code block), whether 'Americanist phonetic alphabet', or other -- and the stroke capitals that are not present, were not.<p>In general, unicode codepoints are justified by actually existing use.<p>(There is an interesting metaphysical problem that arises as our lives become increasingly digitized -- things that are not present in unicode _won't_ be used, because they won't be _able_ to be used online... so how will new things be added justified by use, once all the existing pre-digital glyphs have been added? I dunno.)</text></comment> | <story><title>Ƀ — Universal Bitcoin Logo Alternative</title><url>http://www.ecogex.com/bitcoin</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jws</author><text>That is Unicode U+0243 "Latin Capital Letter B with stroke". It is in the <i>Latin Extended-B</i> block, which contains among other mysteries, about half of the latin letters with strokes.<p>I'd love to see a "Unicode: What where they thinking?" page that documents why they thought a particular codepoint should be in the standard. I mean, capital A, B, and C with a stroke, but not capital D? A and C have their stroke diagonal, B has its horizontal, U also gets a horizontal stroke, but it is named a "bar". All very mysterious.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dudus</author><text>I had my "What are they thinking?" moment when I found out about snowman.<p><a href="http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/index.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/index.htm</a><p>After that the only one to shock me was "Pile of poo"<p><a href="http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm</a></text></comment> |
35,057,369 | 35,055,931 | 1 | 2 | 35,055,417 | train | <story><title>Mailed asthma, cancer, erectile drugs are seized the most, despite opioid claims</title><url>https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/07/health/fda-drug-shipments-khn-partner/index.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gtop3</author><text>Our prescription drug system needs an overhaul. This isn&#x27;t a matter of all drugs are illegal to import because of quality control issues. You can import aspirin, if you are so inclined. This is asthma and cancer medication being seized because of an overly tight control of prescription drugs. I understand that some drugs sold overseas are not suitable for human consumption. I understand that some drugs require close supervision. I argue that many medications are quite safe to take without supervision and using doctors as gatekeepers functions primarily to increase the billings generated by sick people. I think the bar for what medications are prescription and which medications are OTC needs to be reevaluated. Perhaps the way in which we market drugs and disclose there risks should be reevaluated simultaneously.<p>Imagine taking away someone&#x27;s asthma medication and thinking you are making America a safer, better place.</text></comment> | <story><title>Mailed asthma, cancer, erectile drugs are seized the most, despite opioid claims</title><url>https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/07/health/fda-drug-shipments-khn-partner/index.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>runnerup</author><text>This is detailing a report from the FDA about packages they inspected. However, I wonder if there&#x27;s no overlap with packages inspected by the DEA and&#x2F;or CBP.<p>The FDA might not see many opiate packages if most of the &quot;hot leads&quot; for which packages likely contain opiates are routed to the DEA for inspection and the FDA never sees them. Similarly for any other Schedule 2&#x2F;3 drugs.<p>That could be why the FDA mostly sees &quot;asthma&quot; drugs. Though...I do believe that international orders would mirror domestic prevalence and lots of people need asthma medication. I myself have ordered asthma medications from India to save hundreds of dollars per month.<p>Anyways, the article states &quot;The FDA said it found 33 packages of opioids and no fentanyl sent by mail in 2022&quot;. This was out of 53,000 packages inspected. However, the CBP reports finding 239 mail parcels with fentanyl at just JFK airport alone in 2018[0]. It&#x27;s unclear how many packages the DEA has seized but it also sounds like a lot more than 33.<p>0: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbp.gov&#x2F;frontline&#x2F;crisis-control" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbp.gov&#x2F;frontline&#x2F;crisis-control</a></text></comment> |
18,502,218 | 18,502,216 | 1 | 2 | 18,501,825 | train | <story><title>The EU Terrorist Content Regulation – a threat to the ecosystem and user rights</title><url>https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2018/11/21/the-eu-terrorist-content-regulation-a-threat-to-the-ecosystem-and-our-users-rights/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>deugtniet</author><text>This proposal is very bad. But luckily it is only a proposal. The council and parliament will still vote for this, before it becomes European law. Both bodies will likely oppose, and the proposal will be significantly amended.
I honestly don&#x27;t see the commissions reasoning on why this is a good proposal.
But I don&#x27;t see how the EU as an institution is bashed for this. This is a similar process as occurs in any other member state and other democracies. Not to mention the US, with it&#x27;s secret laws and national security letters.<p>My personal opinion is that illegal content (CP, inciting violence) should be moderated quickly, where failure to act has big consequences. What I don&#x27;t like about the proposal is that it is enforced by governments, and not some judiciary body. I hope the council and parliament will amend the proposal in such a way this is reflected in a final law.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Vinnl</author><text>Yes, in fact, that&#x27;s why it&#x27;s good that Mozilla&#x27;s on top of this early in the process. Let&#x27;s hope they manage to remove the problematic parts they outline in this post.<p>When you say &quot;quickly&quot;, do you also mean &quot;within the hour&quot;? If so, what about a small webhost that gets abused?<p>I think the shortest period that&#x27;s considered quick enough and would at least make somewhat sense is &quot;before something manages to spread widely&quot;, but that&#x27;s still murky and still has many problematic practical concerns.</text></comment> | <story><title>The EU Terrorist Content Regulation – a threat to the ecosystem and user rights</title><url>https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2018/11/21/the-eu-terrorist-content-regulation-a-threat-to-the-ecosystem-and-our-users-rights/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>deugtniet</author><text>This proposal is very bad. But luckily it is only a proposal. The council and parliament will still vote for this, before it becomes European law. Both bodies will likely oppose, and the proposal will be significantly amended.
I honestly don&#x27;t see the commissions reasoning on why this is a good proposal.
But I don&#x27;t see how the EU as an institution is bashed for this. This is a similar process as occurs in any other member state and other democracies. Not to mention the US, with it&#x27;s secret laws and national security letters.<p>My personal opinion is that illegal content (CP, inciting violence) should be moderated quickly, where failure to act has big consequences. What I don&#x27;t like about the proposal is that it is enforced by governments, and not some judiciary body. I hope the council and parliament will amend the proposal in such a way this is reflected in a final law.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>raxxorrax</author><text>It is normal political procedure to have an aweful initial proposal so that amendments seem like a lesser evil, while still being bad.<p>I doubt we really have a need to act on these issues in the first place and that was explicitly not the goal of those who initiated this proposal. You just need to take a look at who proposed it.<p>So the question about illegal content is completely misplaced.</text></comment> |
34,103,207 | 34,103,356 | 1 | 3 | 34,102,962 | train | <story><title>A book teaching assembly language programming on the ARM 64 bit ISA</title><url>https://github.com/pkivolowitz/asm_book</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Sirened</author><text>For all those learning (or even those who&#x27;ve learned :P), my favorite cheatsheet that I always pull up while writing ARMv8-A assembly is this one [1] from the University of Washington. ARMv8-A has a lot of fairly complex instructions and sometimes it&#x27;s hard to remember all the odds and ends.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;courses.cs.washington.edu&#x2F;courses&#x2F;cse469&#x2F;19wi&#x2F;arm64.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;courses.cs.washington.edu&#x2F;courses&#x2F;cse469&#x2F;19wi&#x2F;arm64....</a></text></comment> | <story><title>A book teaching assembly language programming on the ARM 64 bit ISA</title><url>https://github.com/pkivolowitz/asm_book</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>pmontra</author><text>Two notes to the author:<p>1. It would be nice to explain how to install an assembler (part of gcc?), how to run it on source code, how to run the program. Googled, not tested:<p><pre><code> as -o prog.o prog.s
ld -o prog prog.o
.&#x2F;prog
</code></pre>
2. Apparently GitHub accepts commits in the future because the last ones in this repo are timestamped Dec 23 2023.</text></comment> |
38,253,895 | 38,253,614 | 1 | 2 | 38,253,130 | train | <story><title>Forests with multiple tree species are more effective as carbon sinks</title><url>https://phys.org/news/2023-11-forests-multiple-tree-species-effective.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>progne</author><text>I&#x27;ve had a die off of the pinyon pine trees on my small lot, from bark beetles, and have lost about half of them. It&#x27;s been a big job to clear them out. During that I&#x27;ve noticed that they are more likely to survive when closely paired with the other common tree in the area, a shaggy bark juniper. The junipers are resistant to the beetles and seem to bestow some of that on nearby pines.<p>It was 50&#x2F;50 pine&#x2F;juniper, now it&#x27;s around 25&#x2F;75, all due to loses in pine. Without the juniper the loss could have been another half as much pine. So my yard is an example of multiple species resulting in more carbon capture.</text></comment> | <story><title>Forests with multiple tree species are more effective as carbon sinks</title><url>https://phys.org/news/2023-11-forests-multiple-tree-species-effective.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>11235813213455</author><text>Are there other forms of long term natural carbon storage than hydrocarbures or shale gas? Because a wood branch eventually decades and reemit the carbon, if it doesn&#x27;t get buried deep in (usually sea) ground</text></comment> |
5,885,375 | 5,885,402 | 1 | 3 | 5,885,217 | train | <story><title>“Whistleblower welcome in China”</title><url>http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2013-06/14/c_132455893.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>glurgh</author><text><i>a program which marks the bleakest moment yet in the history of the Internet </i><p>Writes someone from the other side of the Great Firewall.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Breakthrough</author><text>While I agree it was a bit odd to read this coming from someone in <i>China</i> (given the state of their own internet), I&#x27;m as surprised as you are to have read this.<p>However, you have to read between the lines:<p>&gt; <i>How do we make sense of the fact that the market and the state colluded in the abuse of private information via what represents the backbone of many modern day infrastructures? [...] How do we understand the one-sided cyber attack accusations the U.S. has poured upon China in the past few months?</i><p>After I read those two questions, I realized, there was a difference. People in China know about the firewall. Sure, they have no choice, but the government isn&#x27;t going behind their backs or allowing them unrestricted internet access and penalizing those who access &quot;disallowed&quot; content.<p>And I do, for one, agree with that last question; I hardly could believe that the US was just taking cyberattacks from China for <i>years</i> without at least attempting to get some revenge (and indeed, I know the US has the resources to fight back).<p>That being said, I admit I did laugh a bit to myself at this part:<p>&gt; <i>this force is acting in an unconstitutional manner and entirely contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights</i><p>And that&#x27;s when I started reading in-between the lines, because half of it&#x27;s the truth, and half of it&#x27;s probably state-ordered propaganda. The only difference this time is that this propaganda has some truth to it.</text></comment> | <story><title>“Whistleblower welcome in China”</title><url>http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2013-06/14/c_132455893.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>glurgh</author><text><i>a program which marks the bleakest moment yet in the history of the Internet </i><p>Writes someone from the other side of the Great Firewall.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>teawithcarl</author><text>The writer is an official (propaganda) editorial writer.<p>It&#x27;s important to understand Xinhua and CCTV are official mouthpieces of the CCP.</text></comment> |
16,817,743 | 16,817,630 | 1 | 2 | 16,817,222 | train | <story><title>Atlantic Ocean's Circulation Is Weakest in 1,600 Years</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/slow-motion-ocean-atlantics-circulation-is-weakest-in-1-600-years/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hoodoof</author><text>Becoming a doomsday prepper edges further away from &quot;flat out crazy&quot; with every day of weird, weird weather.<p>Our climate has been extremely stable for a long time and I&#x27;m not expert but it is my understanding that chaotic systems can suddenly flip from stable to extremely unstable.<p>I think there will be a time, hopefully a long time away but possibly close, when the world realises that there&#x27; going to be disaster on an unprecedented scale and we all have reason to be very, very concerned.<p>If the entire Antarctic eastern shelf melts, there is enough ice there to raise sea levels by <i>more than 70 meters</i>. Some say this is 100 years away.... but ice doesn&#x27;t melt all at once. I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if it comes alot sooner and what that world&#x2F;civilization looks like I cannot imagine.<p>And if you have children, then 100 years away sounds very very soon because you know this is the world they will live in.</text></comment> | <story><title>Atlantic Ocean's Circulation Is Weakest in 1,600 Years</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/slow-motion-ocean-atlantics-circulation-is-weakest-in-1-600-years/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>smartbit</author><text>Two excellent talks from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) at 34c3<p>A hacker&#x27;s guide to Climate Change - What do we know and how do we know it? An introduction to the basics of climate research and what we can do about climate change <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.ccc.de&#x2F;v&#x2F;34c3-9184-a_hacker_s_guide_to_climate_change_-_what_do_we_know_and_how_do_we_know_it" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.ccc.de&#x2F;v&#x2F;34c3-9184-a_hacker_s_guide_to_climate...</a><p>Simulating the future of the global agro-food system. Cybernetic models analyze scenarios of interactions between future global food consumption, agriculture, landuse, and the biogeochemical cycles of water, nitrogen and carbon. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.ccc.de&#x2F;v&#x2F;34c3-8935-simulating_the_future_of_the_global_agro-food_system" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.ccc.de&#x2F;v&#x2F;34c3-8935-simulating_the_future_of_th...</a></text></comment> |
16,317,283 | 16,316,804 | 1 | 2 | 16,316,004 | train | <story><title>Reason ML toolchain</title><url>https://khoanguyen.me/reasonml-toolchain/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kbenson</author><text>I was looking into ReasonML a few weeks back because the promise of whatr it offered was so great. Write in one language, and run on the server and on the client, but allow the server to be compiled natively for speed. This really appealed to me, especially because there are some times that I really wish I had some utilities I had written on the back-end available on the front end.<p>Unfortunately, what you appear to have currently is that a lot of the tools and utilities you would want to use in ReasonML are written in either JS of Ocaml, and reply on the interop when you target that platform. Want an ORM? There&#x27;s a couple, but they are all targeted at Ocaml, so you either compile to native and link or try to port the Ocaml source of it to ReasonML (maybe automatically?) and maintain it. Want a web router&#x2F;framework? There&#x27;s a lot written in JS, but you&#x27;ll be configuring and writing some JS most likely to get it to work, and no compiling that natively. This is a recurring theme. Most robust larger packages are in one language or another, which causes problems for anyone wanting to leverage the inherent advantages of both target formats.<p>What it seems to come down to is that Reason needs a whole lot more software written in Reason so it&#x27;s more flexible. Being able to use Ocaml and JS packages is a feature and liberating, nut <i>having</i> to use Ocaml or JS packages ends up putting constraints on your project. ReasonML has a lot of promise, but at least for what I was excited about, it can&#x27;t deliver. <i>Yet</i>.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lilactown</author><text>I understand what you&#x27;re saying. Many native OCaml libs are not portable to JS, and you definitely can&#x27;t port a JS lib to OCaml with the current toolset, which prevents the <i>dream</i> of being able to not care at all about runtime. It&#x27;s the same dream I&#x27;ve been chasing on the Clojure(Script) side lately as well.<p>I believe you can get close in ReasonML by making a clear distinction between client (JS) and server (native), and then maintaining a common module of business logic and utilities that you would want to share between the two. This works well up to the point where you want to server-render some HTML, at which point you become sad because you&#x27;d love to use the nice ReasonReact component abstraction, but it is not at all portable to native.<p>Jared Forsythe has been doing a lot of work on making portable applications and libraries in ReasonML, and I do believe that the native compilation story will receive enough love that more people start taking it more seriously - right now the majority of time + energy of the ReasonML team seems to be focusing on honing JS application development, so most of the community is orbiting that use case.</text></comment> | <story><title>Reason ML toolchain</title><url>https://khoanguyen.me/reasonml-toolchain/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kbenson</author><text>I was looking into ReasonML a few weeks back because the promise of whatr it offered was so great. Write in one language, and run on the server and on the client, but allow the server to be compiled natively for speed. This really appealed to me, especially because there are some times that I really wish I had some utilities I had written on the back-end available on the front end.<p>Unfortunately, what you appear to have currently is that a lot of the tools and utilities you would want to use in ReasonML are written in either JS of Ocaml, and reply on the interop when you target that platform. Want an ORM? There&#x27;s a couple, but they are all targeted at Ocaml, so you either compile to native and link or try to port the Ocaml source of it to ReasonML (maybe automatically?) and maintain it. Want a web router&#x2F;framework? There&#x27;s a lot written in JS, but you&#x27;ll be configuring and writing some JS most likely to get it to work, and no compiling that natively. This is a recurring theme. Most robust larger packages are in one language or another, which causes problems for anyone wanting to leverage the inherent advantages of both target formats.<p>What it seems to come down to is that Reason needs a whole lot more software written in Reason so it&#x27;s more flexible. Being able to use Ocaml and JS packages is a feature and liberating, nut <i>having</i> to use Ocaml or JS packages ends up putting constraints on your project. ReasonML has a lot of promise, but at least for what I was excited about, it can&#x27;t deliver. <i>Yet</i>.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thangngoc89</author><text>Hey author here,<p>I think I failed to explain about this in the article. OCaml and ReasonML is the SAME language with different syntax. You don&#x27;t need to worry whether the library is written in OCaml or ReasonML as long as your build tool support both ReasonML and OCaml.</text></comment> |
27,771,098 | 27,771,042 | 1 | 3 | 27,770,414 | train | <story><title>US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57751918</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chrisco255</author><text>Not only is it possible but the worst heat waves on record were experienced in the 1930s:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.weather.gov&#x2F;arx&#x2F;heat_jul36" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.weather.gov&#x2F;arx&#x2F;heat_jul36</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>necrotic_comp</author><text>What I don&#x27;t understand is what people who argue against climate change stand to gain.<p>The argument for climate change is: &quot;humans are polluting the planet and it&#x27;s causing a change in the environment and will have a disastrous effect on the climate.&quot; The arguments I hear against climate change always seem to concede that humans are polluting the planet, but argue in different ways (natural cycle&#x2F;not really happening&#x2F;etc.) that this pollution has no effect.<p>Even if this were true, why would it be a bad idea to reduce the level of pollution in the environment ? We know we&#x27;re screwing up, why don&#x27;t we do our best to clean it and make it usable for the next generations ?</text></comment> | <story><title>US-Canada heatwave 'virtually impossible' without warming</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57751918</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chrisco255</author><text>Not only is it possible but the worst heat waves on record were experienced in the 1930s:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.weather.gov&#x2F;arx&#x2F;heat_jul36" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.weather.gov&#x2F;arx&#x2F;heat_jul36</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jameshart</author><text>The dust bowl heatwaves are not a good argument against the idea that human activity can have dramatic climate impacts in a short time, though.</text></comment> |
28,769,505 | 28,768,581 | 1 | 2 | 28,767,700 | train | <story><title>Statement from Mark Zuckerberg</title><url>https://www.facebook.com/login/web/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wpietri</author><text>The person who mentions the banality of evil, dannykwells, has an excellent point.<p>But there&#x27;s more at play here. I briefly worked on Twitter&#x27;s anti-abuse engineering. Many of the people <i>on that team</i> cared a lot about protecting people. I sure did. But we didn&#x27;t have the necessary power to actually solve the problem.<p>The people who did have that power were senior execs. They might say that they cared. In their heart of hearts, perhaps they even did. But their behavior demonstrated that they cared about other things much more.<p>My boss&#x27;s boss, for example, was an engineering leader who had a climber&#x27;s resume: quickly advancing through positions of more and more power. In my view, he cared about that a great deal, and did not give a shit about the actual harm to users. As soon as he got the chance, he pushed out my boss, laid off the team&#x27;s managers, me included, and scattered the people to the wind.<p>I presume the same was true about the senior execs. They were aware Twitter was causing harm to people. If they wanted to know the details, we had plenty of research and they could have ordered more. Did they care? Impossible to know. But what they focused on was growth and revenue. Abuse was a big deal internally only as long as it was a big deal in the press.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>I&#x27;m having a hard time reconciling all this right now. On the one hand, from the outside, I can see the actions that Facebook takes and they seem awfully guilty of what they are accused of. But on the other hand, I personally know and have previously worked with some of the people who work on trust and safety, specifically for kids. Good people who have kids of their own and who care about protecting people, especially children.<p>The best I can come up with is that Facebook is so big that the &quot;evil&quot; is an emergent property of all the different things that are happening. It&#x27;s so big no one can comprehend the big picture of it all, so while the individuals involved have good intentions with what they are working on, the sum total of all employees&#x27; intentions ends up broken.<p>So maybe Zuck is telling the truth here, that they are trying to fix all this. But no one can see the forrest from the trees.<p>I can&#x27;t reconcile it any other way.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>whakim</author><text>I think this hits the nail on the head. It&#x27;s not that Facebook or the many people who work there don&#x27;t care about kids or a deleterious political climate. They do care. It&#x27;s just about what happens when those concerns conflict with other concerns, such as maximizing user engagement. In my opinion Haugen&#x27;s testimony and Zuckerberg&#x27;s response simply confirm this: Haugen talks a lot about the research that was done and <i>how that research was ignored</i>; Zuckerberg points out a lot of (somewhat lacking in context) facts about the size of Facebook&#x27;s investments in trust and integrity or openness to regulation.</text></comment> | <story><title>Statement from Mark Zuckerberg</title><url>https://www.facebook.com/login/web/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wpietri</author><text>The person who mentions the banality of evil, dannykwells, has an excellent point.<p>But there&#x27;s more at play here. I briefly worked on Twitter&#x27;s anti-abuse engineering. Many of the people <i>on that team</i> cared a lot about protecting people. I sure did. But we didn&#x27;t have the necessary power to actually solve the problem.<p>The people who did have that power were senior execs. They might say that they cared. In their heart of hearts, perhaps they even did. But their behavior demonstrated that they cared about other things much more.<p>My boss&#x27;s boss, for example, was an engineering leader who had a climber&#x27;s resume: quickly advancing through positions of more and more power. In my view, he cared about that a great deal, and did not give a shit about the actual harm to users. As soon as he got the chance, he pushed out my boss, laid off the team&#x27;s managers, me included, and scattered the people to the wind.<p>I presume the same was true about the senior execs. They were aware Twitter was causing harm to people. If they wanted to know the details, we had plenty of research and they could have ordered more. Did they care? Impossible to know. But what they focused on was growth and revenue. Abuse was a big deal internally only as long as it was a big deal in the press.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>I&#x27;m having a hard time reconciling all this right now. On the one hand, from the outside, I can see the actions that Facebook takes and they seem awfully guilty of what they are accused of. But on the other hand, I personally know and have previously worked with some of the people who work on trust and safety, specifically for kids. Good people who have kids of their own and who care about protecting people, especially children.<p>The best I can come up with is that Facebook is so big that the &quot;evil&quot; is an emergent property of all the different things that are happening. It&#x27;s so big no one can comprehend the big picture of it all, so while the individuals involved have good intentions with what they are working on, the sum total of all employees&#x27; intentions ends up broken.<p>So maybe Zuck is telling the truth here, that they are trying to fix all this. But no one can see the forrest from the trees.<p>I can&#x27;t reconcile it any other way.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kbenson</author><text>I don&#x27;t necessarily subscribe to the Gervais Principle[1] other than thinking it&#x27;s an interesting lens through which to reexamine motives and motivations of coworkers, but sometimes the terminology is <i>damn apt</i> (at least for one group...).<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ribbonfarm.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ribbonfarm.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;the-gervais-principle-...</a></text></comment> |
19,700,129 | 19,697,666 | 1 | 2 | 19,689,319 | train | <story><title>Utah Bans Police from Searching Digital Data Without a Warrant, Closes Loophole</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2019/04/16/utah-bans-police-from-searching-digital-data-without-a-warrant-closes-fourth-amendment-loophole/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>deftturtle</author><text>It&#x27;s my opinion that there never should have been a loophole and that the 1970s SCOTUS cases ruled incorrectly about our expectations of privacy for the &quot;third-party doctrine.&quot; So this law, in my view, simply restores the 4th amendment protections guaranteed by the US constitution. I&#x27;m glad they did it, but as noted in the article, Chief Justice Roberts had to take more complicated positions for Carpenter vs United States, a recent case about cell phone surveillance.<p>He said cell phone location information &quot;does not fit neatly under existing precedents,&quot; but I think the court should just re-evaluate the 1970s cases and come to a place of consistent reasoning about our data, so everything can fit neatly under the protection of the 4th amendment. When we use products or buy things, we expect our data to be private. I don&#x27;t expect my banker to give away my personal financial information. Nor do I expect my cell phone carrier to share my call history. We do have an expectation of privacy, and the 1970s rulings are hugely flawed, especially in light of today&#x27;s digital world.</text></comment> | <story><title>Utah Bans Police from Searching Digital Data Without a Warrant, Closes Loophole</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2019/04/16/utah-bans-police-from-searching-digital-data-without-a-warrant-closes-fourth-amendment-loophole/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>thaumasiotes</author><text>&gt; In a concession to law enforcement, the act will let police obtain location-tracking information or subscriber data without a warrant if there’s an “imminent risk” of death, serious physical injury, sexual abuse, livestreamed sexual exploitation, kidnapping, or human trafficking.<p>A fairly reasonable exception which is then randomly extended to also cover prostitution and porn. Oh well.<p>I do have to question why they needed a specific emergency exemption for &quot;livestreamed sexual exploitation&quot; when that &quot;exploitation&quot; would not qualify as &quot;sexual abuse&quot;. (If it were abuse, then it would already be covered under the exemption for sexual abuse!)</text></comment> |
38,871,507 | 38,871,405 | 1 | 2 | 38,869,672 | train | <story><title>Show HN: Bring phone calls into the browser (SIP-to-WebRTC)</title><url>https://github.com/pion/example-webrtc-applications/tree/master/sip-to-webrtc</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tracerbulletx</author><text>In 2015 I wrote a whole Contact Management app for a business that let their entire sales team of like 50 reps pick up phone calls from the browser or from their desk phone using Twilios SIP trunk service. It was pretty cool, it routed the calls to both our internal Asterisk server, and worked flawlessly with Twilios WebRTC libraries in the web app. It was really cool and surprisingly easy, also all of the call recordings instantly became available in the web app and they could initiate calls from their call calendar in the app.</text></comment> | <story><title>Show HN: Bring phone calls into the browser (SIP-to-WebRTC)</title><url>https://github.com/pion/example-webrtc-applications/tree/master/sip-to-webrtc</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Sean-Der</author><text>Really exciting times for WebRTC in general right now!<p>If you are new to WebRTC and want to learn more about the protocol check out [0] (would love peoples feedback). It is used in lots of unexpected places like streaming (added to OBS)[1] and Embedded [2].<p>I am especially excited with new implementations popping up like [3] and [4].<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;webrtcforthecurious.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;webrtcforthecurious.com</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Glimesh&#x2F;broadcast-box">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Glimesh&#x2F;broadcast-box</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sepfy&#x2F;libpeer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sepfy&#x2F;libpeer</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;algesten&#x2F;str0m">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;algesten&#x2F;str0m</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;elixir-webrtc&#x2F;ex_webrtc">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;elixir-webrtc&#x2F;ex_webrtc</a></text></comment> |
40,740,507 | 40,737,767 | 1 | 2 | 40,736,577 | train | <story><title>Free software hijacked Philip Hazel's life</title><url>https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/978463/608c876c1153fd31/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>arp242</author><text>Connecting qualified would-be maintainers with projects looking for a maintainer is a tricky problem. Who here even knew PCRE2 was looking for a new maintainer?<p>I took over some fairly widely used Go projects, but only <i>after</i> they were archived. I had no idea they were looking for someone to maintain it.<p>There&#x27;s a bit of a catch-22 here:<p>- If a project is already well-maintained then no one really needs to contribute anything.<p>- If a project is poorly maintained due to lack of interest or time, then this will also discourage contributions – the first think I check before contributing is whether previous PRs are actually getting merged.<p>For larger projects where there&#x27;s always something to do, like Exim, this usually isn&#x27;t a big issue. But for smaller more narrowly scoped projects like PCRE2 this is more of an issue. I&#x27;m not surprised he&#x27;s having a harder time with PCRE2.</text></comment> | <story><title>Free software hijacked Philip Hazel's life</title><url>https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/978463/608c876c1153fd31/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>neilv</author><text>I&#x27;m not sure this is correct, but I made a quick guess at which is the most representative Debian package for PCRE, and got this order of magnitude of direct and indirect dependencies for it:<p><pre><code> $ apt-cache --recurse rdepends libpcre2-8-0 | tr -d &#x27; |&#x27; | sort | uniq | wc -l
52160</code></pre></text></comment> |
18,896,134 | 18,895,534 | 1 | 2 | 18,895,064 | train | <story><title>A decade-long boom is ending as consumers hang on to devices for longer</title><url>https://www.economist.com/business/2019/01/12/apple-succumbs-to-the-smartphone-malaise</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hnruss</author><text>As a software developer, people tend to assume that I’m really into hardware as well. They’re usually surprised when I tell them that I prefer to buy older hardware and keep it running for longer. I often skip multiple generations of devices.<p>I just bought a new TV with Roku built in. My last TV was a tube TV.<p>I’m writing this on a iPhone SE, which I upgraded to for $100 when my 5S stopped working. I kept the same phone case. I’ll probably buy another iPhone when they release a new one with the same size screen. I might get a new phone case then, too.<p>I was playing Zelda on the original Wii earlier. It’s the newest game console that I own.<p>Don’t get me wrong, I think new stuff is cool, too. I’d just rather go on a trip than have the newest cool thing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ekianjo</author><text>Honestly people who buy new hardware every year are not &quot;into hardware&quot;, they are into wasting their money and finding a pretense to justifying it. Most of them are probably just bored or treat it like fashion.</text></comment> | <story><title>A decade-long boom is ending as consumers hang on to devices for longer</title><url>https://www.economist.com/business/2019/01/12/apple-succumbs-to-the-smartphone-malaise</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hnruss</author><text>As a software developer, people tend to assume that I’m really into hardware as well. They’re usually surprised when I tell them that I prefer to buy older hardware and keep it running for longer. I often skip multiple generations of devices.<p>I just bought a new TV with Roku built in. My last TV was a tube TV.<p>I’m writing this on a iPhone SE, which I upgraded to for $100 when my 5S stopped working. I kept the same phone case. I’ll probably buy another iPhone when they release a new one with the same size screen. I might get a new phone case then, too.<p>I was playing Zelda on the original Wii earlier. It’s the newest game console that I own.<p>Don’t get me wrong, I think new stuff is cool, too. I’d just rather go on a trip than have the newest cool thing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>a11595</author><text>I&#x27;m a little different, but same result. I buy the best thing out at the time, then use it till it dies. It&#x27;s because it&#x27;s a tool, and these modern tools take a while to set up, and that&#x27;s a task. Had a nexus 6, rooted, custom rom with unneeded crap disabled. It died last year when I finally broke the screen. It was running fine, and the battery got me through the day w&#x2F;o a top-off.<p>I picked the max config pixel2xl for over thousand bucks, put a custom rom on it w&#x2F;o google crap, and that&#x27;s going to last me till it physically dies.<p>My boss on the other hand, gets both the pixel and the iphone refresh every year, and fiddles with each for an hour each day for weeks. Screw that. End result though - both you and me aren&#x27;t as good a customer as companies want - they want my boss.<p>To address your point, which I cannot relate to. If money is the limiting factor and you still think the new stuff is cool - why not just buy a $200 phone every 3 years? the top of the line stuff is overpriced, but the margins are close to zero on everything else, and specs and features, at least for android, are pretty much the same.</text></comment> |
39,574,464 | 39,573,420 | 1 | 2 | 39,572,718 | train | <story><title>Scenes from the last operational Morse-code radio station in North America</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/ann-hermes-morse-code/677468/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wrs</author><text>This reminds me of the fantastic Connections Museum in Seattle [0] that maintains historical telephone switching equipment in (mostly) working condition with an all-volunteer staff. When I first visited, I was surprised to see that all the volunteers were about half the age I expected! You can see some of them on the YouTube channel [1].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telcomhistory.org&#x2F;connections-museum-seattle&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telcomhistory.org&#x2F;connections-museum-seattle&#x2F;</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtube.com&#x2F;@ConnectionsMuseum" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtube.com&#x2F;@ConnectionsMuseum</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Scenes from the last operational Morse-code radio station in North America</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/ann-hermes-morse-code/677468/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ddol</author><text>KPH receiving station is 45 miles north of San Francisco, without bridge traffic you can make it in a little over an hour.<p>My father-in-law was an engineer in the navy and loved seeing the morse &amp; radio equipment.<p>But the trip was fun for all the family; the driveway up to the reviving station building is lined with Monterey cypress trees, which have grown into a tunnel. [0] It’s a beautiful scene, my wife and mother-in-law were really taken aback.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nps.gov&#x2F;places&#x2F;point-reyes-cypress-tree-tunnel.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nps.gov&#x2F;places&#x2F;point-reyes-cypress-tree-tunnel.h...</a></text></comment> |
2,913,831 | 2,912,816 | 1 | 3 | 2,912,600 | train | <story><title>This is CoffeeScript</title><url>http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/9251081564/coffeescript-spartan-javascript</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Spyro7</author><text>I am a recent coffeescript convert. When I first heard about coffeescript I dismissed it offhand as a pointless abstraction over javascript, which I judged to already be a high level language. (In retrospect, I am ashamed to say it, but I think that I found the syntax to be intimidating.) I then went on to continue, happily, writing thousands of lines of javascript.<p>Somewhere along the way, I came across Paul Grahams essay "Succinctness is Power" ( <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/power.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/power.html</a> ), and I thought about how my productivity could be increased if I had access to a language that offered me the ability to do more with less. That was when I decided to revisit Coffeescript.<p>For my first task, I decided to rewrite some of my simpler javascript code into Coffeescript just to get a feel for it. Initially, the things that had initially repulsed me were somewhat irritating:<p>* The lack of parenthesis and brackets - I doubted that it would be possible to maintain code readability without them<p>* The reliance on indentation<p>* The overall "strangeness" of the appearance of coffeescript code (to someone with a predominantly java background)<p>Here's the thing though. All of those objections are only surface deep. Once I actually started to code in Coffeescript, I found that I became completely comfortable with the syntax. As a matter of fact, I don't think that I could ever go back to conventional javascript again. Especially because I would lose (among other things):<p>* An elegant syntax for writing classes using javascript<p>* List comprehensions<p>* Elegant string interpolation (it's the little things that count)<p>It is easy to be skeptical about coffeescript if you natural lean away from things that are surrounded by hype, but, take it from me, coffeescript really is an extremely valuable tool that no web developer should be without. It is more than just a way to write pretty javascript. It is a powerful, flexible, and elegant language in its own right. Don't be turned off by its syntax, give it a try today!</text></comment> | <story><title>This is CoffeeScript</title><url>http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/9251081564/coffeescript-spartan-javascript</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>akdetrick</author><text>I don't subscribe to the notion that you can write code faster with less keystrokes (vi/emacs, anyone?). I do however, understand that a cleaner syntax would lend some readability and simplicity to your code once you learn said syntax.
Ultimately, I find that the problems that CoffeeScript solves, and solves quite well, are not really that big of a deal for me given that I've been working with Javascript enough to get used to the quirks.
I'm not sure if I'll ever use it myself, but I can't blame anyone who would; this article does a good job explaining some of the benefits.</text></comment> |
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