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21,306,173 | 21,306,209 | 1 | 3 | 21,306,017 | train | <story><title>OpenAI's blog post about "solving the Rubik's cube" and what they actually did</title><url>https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1185679169360809984</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>amayne</author><text>How is OpenAI misleading? The entire post on OpenAI is about the physics of the problem (different sized cubes, materials, etc.)<p>When I saw the press release I understood the demonstration was about hand dexterity and not trying to use AI to solve a Rubik’s Cube pattern. That would be overkill IMHO. You don’t need a neural net to solve it and I never thought OpenAI was trying to mislead.<p>Side note: One of the commenters on the Twitter thread referred to Marcus as the James Randi of AI in jest. I worked for Randi for several years handling the Million-Dollar Paranormal Challenge and investigating unusual claims. I can tell you a lot about misleading claims...</text></comment> | <story><title>OpenAI's blog post about "solving the Rubik's cube" and what they actually did</title><url>https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1185679169360809984</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Animats</author><text>If they had to instrument the cube internally, that makes the result much less interesting. And if it&#x27;s only succeeding 20% of the time, that&#x27;s not good either.<p>Robot manipulation is hard. There are lots of systems that work some of the time. Few work well enough in an uncontrolled environment to be useful. Amazon is still looking for a robot picking system, and nothing works well enough yet.</text></comment> |
2,332,925 | 2,331,881 | 1 | 3 | 2,331,781 | train | <story><title>How The Kernel Manages Your Memory</title><url>http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/how-the-kernel-manages-your-memory</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>xpaulbettsx</author><text>One of the most important bits to pull out of this article, is that when you ask the kernel for memory, it doesn't actually do anything other than update its accounting of available memory and VA space - when you <i>touch the page</i>, you page fault and the kernel actually gives you a physical frame. The NT kernel (and I suspect any other production OS) works the same way.</text></comment> | <story><title>How The Kernel Manages Your Memory</title><url>http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/how-the-kernel-manages-your-memory</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zwieback</author><text>Great article, nice graphics. His other articles are very good too. I'd love to see someone explaining the details of memory management for the ARM Linux kernel with the same clarity.</text></comment> |
31,043,582 | 31,043,665 | 1 | 2 | 31,042,304 | train | <story><title>They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45</title><url>https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>heurisko</author><text>I like to think if I were alive during the Nazi era, I wouldn&#x27;t have become a Nazi.<p>But I know, chances are, I would have most likely ended up as one of those German citizens who would have gradually become part of the Nazi machine.<p>I think it&#x27;s perhaps safer to recognise the line between good and evil runs through every person, and not be presumptive to think of oneself as being part of a select group of virtuous people.<p>I can think of many recent occurrences where people who think they are acting virtuously, are in fact the perpetrators of harm, without knowing it; so convinced they are of their own virtue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cortesoft</author><text>This understanding of ourselves as being as flawed as everyone else is so important, I think.<p>One of my favorite sayings (even though I am not religious at all) is, “therefore but by the grace of god go I.” It is about realizing that so much of our behavior is dictated by circumstances. We don’t like to think of it that way, but it is true.<p>One of my favorite essays of all time is called “A muscular empathy” (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;national&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2011&#x2F;12&#x2F;a-muscular-empathy&#x2F;249984&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;national&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2011&#x2F;12&#x2F;a-muscu...</a>). It is about using this idea, and thinking about why we would behave the same way as all these people who we would like to believe we would have been better than if we were in their shoes. My favorite quote from it:<p>&gt; It is comforting to believe that we, through our sheer will, could transcend these bindings -- to believe that if we were slaves, our indomitable courage would have made us Frederick Douglass, or if we were slave masters, our keen morality would have made us Bobby Carter. We flatter ourselves, not out of malice, but out of instinct.<p>&gt; Still, we are, in the main, ordinary people living in plush times. We are smart enough to get by, responsible enough to raise a couple of kids, thrifty to sock away for a vacation, and industrious enough to keep the lights on. We like our cars. We love a good cheeseburger. We&#x27;d die without air-conditioning. In the great mass of humanity that&#x27;s ever lived, we are distinguished only by our creature comforts, and we are, on the whole, mediocre.<p>&gt; That mediocrity is oft-exemplified by the claim that though we are unremarkable in this easy world, something about enslavement, degradation and poverty would make us exemplary. We can barely throw a left hook--but surely we would have beaten Mike Tyson.</text></comment> | <story><title>They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45</title><url>https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>heurisko</author><text>I like to think if I were alive during the Nazi era, I wouldn&#x27;t have become a Nazi.<p>But I know, chances are, I would have most likely ended up as one of those German citizens who would have gradually become part of the Nazi machine.<p>I think it&#x27;s perhaps safer to recognise the line between good and evil runs through every person, and not be presumptive to think of oneself as being part of a select group of virtuous people.<p>I can think of many recent occurrences where people who think they are acting virtuously, are in fact the perpetrators of harm, without knowing it; so convinced they are of their own virtue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jl6</author><text>&gt; I can think of many recent occurrences where people who think they are acting virtuously, are in fact the perpetrators of harm, without knowing it; so convinced they are of their own virtue.<p>Case in point is that nearly every terrible political act in history has been perpetrated by someone proclaiming to be fighting the good fight. They all had their rationalisations. I can’t think of any examples of political groups that declare themselves pro-evil.<p>In a sense, this is encouraging. It means there is widespread low tolerance for transparently evil ideas.<p>In another sense, this indicates we have widespread low capability to determine which ideas are actually virtuous, and which merely have a veneer of virtue (masking great harm).</text></comment> |
11,505,583 | 11,505,041 | 1 | 2 | 11,503,910 | train | <story><title>Merkel Grants Turkish Request to Prosecute German Satirist</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-15/merkel-allows-probe-of-german-comedian-over-erdogan-satire</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kafkaesq</author><text><i>So she &quot;allows prosecution&quot;, as she also can&#x27;t ignore diplomatic implication of doing otherwise.</i><p>Sure she can. People snub each other in politics all the time (even when they&#x27;re joined at the hip). It&#x27;s called &quot;setting boundaries&quot;, and letting people know they can only count on so many indulgences from you. In fact, it is precisely through their willingness to take a stand (even at the cost of temporarily upsetting their allies or coalition partners) that stronger politicians distinguish themselves.<p>But even if she didn&#x27;t want to offend his sensibilities -- there are bigger issues at play, such as the fact that Erdoğan is not only acting like a bully in this case (as he normally does at home), but is expecting the German government to do his dirty work for him. And hence, tacitly, to take &quot;his&quot; side in the Great War of Values on openness, and freedom of expression.<p>That&#x27;s why Merkel got it wrong. What she needs to do is both act to abolish the law <i>and</i> exercise her discretion in declining to prosecute this case.</text></item><item><author>geff82</author><text>Nobody seems to see how Merkel got this thing very right.
1.) Law says: you may prosecute it. So she &quot;allows prosecution&quot;, as she also can&#x27;t ignore diplomatic implication of doing otherwise.
2.) She also declares that the government will get rid of this law.
3.) She will surely not pressure the justice system in this case...
4.) The case will get dismissed as there is no basis for punishment any more (in Germany, you are entitled to be punished under the lesser harsh law when the law changes, and when the law disappears, there will be no punishment).<p>I think this was an intelligent move. She complied with Erdogans request and in return says a big &quot;F<i></i>* Y<i></i>&quot; by eliminating the law and saving the comedian.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andyjohnson0</author><text>Regarding the decision she had to make, Merkel had two choices. If she declined to prosecute then she would be making a quasi-judicial decision in a county where judicial decisions are rightly made by the courts, not politicians. In passing the decision to the courts she is, in my opinion, making a clear statement of German values: <i>this is how we do things - with the rule of law</i>.<p>Which starkly contrasts with Erdoğan&#x27;s contempt for the rule of law and anything that gets in his way.<p>The German constitution guarantees freedom of expression and the case will undoubtedly be dismissed when it reaches the courts.<p>(And I agree that laws such as this should be abolished.)</text></comment> | <story><title>Merkel Grants Turkish Request to Prosecute German Satirist</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-15/merkel-allows-probe-of-german-comedian-over-erdogan-satire</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kafkaesq</author><text><i>So she &quot;allows prosecution&quot;, as she also can&#x27;t ignore diplomatic implication of doing otherwise.</i><p>Sure she can. People snub each other in politics all the time (even when they&#x27;re joined at the hip). It&#x27;s called &quot;setting boundaries&quot;, and letting people know they can only count on so many indulgences from you. In fact, it is precisely through their willingness to take a stand (even at the cost of temporarily upsetting their allies or coalition partners) that stronger politicians distinguish themselves.<p>But even if she didn&#x27;t want to offend his sensibilities -- there are bigger issues at play, such as the fact that Erdoğan is not only acting like a bully in this case (as he normally does at home), but is expecting the German government to do his dirty work for him. And hence, tacitly, to take &quot;his&quot; side in the Great War of Values on openness, and freedom of expression.<p>That&#x27;s why Merkel got it wrong. What she needs to do is both act to abolish the law <i>and</i> exercise her discretion in declining to prosecute this case.</text></item><item><author>geff82</author><text>Nobody seems to see how Merkel got this thing very right.
1.) Law says: you may prosecute it. So she &quot;allows prosecution&quot;, as she also can&#x27;t ignore diplomatic implication of doing otherwise.
2.) She also declares that the government will get rid of this law.
3.) She will surely not pressure the justice system in this case...
4.) The case will get dismissed as there is no basis for punishment any more (in Germany, you are entitled to be punished under the lesser harsh law when the law changes, and when the law disappears, there will be no punishment).<p>I think this was an intelligent move. She complied with Erdogans request and in return says a big &quot;F<i></i>* Y<i></i>&quot; by eliminating the law and saving the comedian.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zymhan</author><text>I mean, the main issue is that Germany even had a law allowing someone to be punished for this kind of speech. Merkel can&#x27;t (or won&#x27;t) let Erdogan get the chance to point out even the slightest hypocrisy when it comes to enforcing laws. If she gives him an inch by not enforcing this stupid one, he can make a mockery of the west when they say anything about the journalistic and civil rights abuses committed by his administration.<p>Not that they&#x27;re doing even close to a good job of that right now.</text></comment> |
16,051,722 | 16,050,487 | 1 | 2 | 16,049,944 | train | <story><title>Lensless camera creates detailed 3-D images without scanning</title><url>https://phys.org/news/2017-12-lensless-camera-d-images-scanning.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>crusso</author><text>It depends on your definition of &quot;lensless&quot;.<p>You know those kids&#x27; books that have the bumpy plastic coating and when you turn the book one way you see one image - look at it from a different angle and you see another image?<p>This is the same concept. They have a bumpy plastic coating that sends the incoming light in different directions. They do some processing on standard images to determine how the scattering works and then use that scattering pattern to reconstruct new images.<p>I would view the bumpy coating as a myriad of lenses that change the character of the incoming light.<p>We have one of those windows in our bathroom with the glass that is warped so that it breaks up the light so much that it gives you privacy. I&#x27;ve often thought that it would be a fun project to create a camera system that you could calibrate to decrypt that scattered image by placing a known image behind the window and pre-determining how the light waves are refracted. It&#x27;s cool to see that someone implemented something similar.</text></comment> | <story><title>Lensless camera creates detailed 3-D images without scanning</title><url>https://phys.org/news/2017-12-lensless-camera-d-images-scanning.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>alanfalcon</author><text>Brilliant and amazing. &quot;This is a very powerful direction for imaging, but requires designers with optical and physics expertise as well as computational knowledge.&quot; It’s a little crazy to me how much can be accomplished by tackling hard problems in one domain by leveraging ideas and expertise from a seemingly unrelated[1], unexpected domain. Specialization is at the same time super important and a potential bottleneck to innovation. This fascinates me.<p>[1]Not that physics expertise in imagery is unrelated, but I feel like it’s being used in very non-traditional ways here.</text></comment> |
34,162,951 | 34,162,937 | 1 | 2 | 34,161,214 | train | <story><title>Police, prosecutors used junk science to decide 911 callers were liars</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/911-call-analysis-fbi-police-courts</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>loteck</author><text>Folks don&#x27;t need to accept all the baggage that comes with the &quot;defund&quot; label. You can want rigorous oversight and oppose wasteful spending of public dollars by just being a normal person who always wants those things.</text></item><item><author>polygamous_bat</author><text>A big criticism that I have heard from &quot;defund the police&quot; folks is that a lot of police departments across the country have more money than sense and accountability. If you are inclined to believe this statement, it is inevitable that they are, in best case, swindled by hucksters selling snake oil, and in worst case, are dabbling in corruption to enrich themselves. Stories like these only add more evidence to that claim.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kasey_junk</author><text>The “defund” label is perhaps the worst marketing of any social movement ever. Nearly everyone would agree with the main nominal ideas - more oversight, less violent responses, more accountability and moving resources away from militarized police and towards social work, specifically psychological interventions.<p>It’s so bad the tinfoil hat me often thinks it’s an op by the military industrial complex to ensure one of their biggest cash cows never faces budget issues.</text></comment> | <story><title>Police, prosecutors used junk science to decide 911 callers were liars</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/911-call-analysis-fbi-police-courts</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>loteck</author><text>Folks don&#x27;t need to accept all the baggage that comes with the &quot;defund&quot; label. You can want rigorous oversight and oppose wasteful spending of public dollars by just being a normal person who always wants those things.</text></item><item><author>polygamous_bat</author><text>A big criticism that I have heard from &quot;defund the police&quot; folks is that a lot of police departments across the country have more money than sense and accountability. If you are inclined to believe this statement, it is inevitable that they are, in best case, swindled by hucksters selling snake oil, and in worst case, are dabbling in corruption to enrich themselves. Stories like these only add more evidence to that claim.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bnralt</author><text>Indeed. Just like you can be against waste in public schools, but if you start marching around with signs that say &quot;Defund Schools&quot; you shouldn&#x27;t be surprised if people take your sign at face value and don&#x27;t want to associate with you.</text></comment> |
30,306,431 | 30,306,730 | 1 | 3 | 30,302,079 | train | <story><title>Why won’t anyone teach me math?</title><url>https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2022/02/stem-intro-courses-humanites-exploration</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>QuercusMax</author><text>I took linear algebra the same semester as computer graphics - the first half of CG was all about 2D stuff - Bresenham&#x27;s line-drawing algorithm, things like that. First half of LA was pretty much everything I needed to know to understand matrix operations in OpenGL, which was the second half of CG. Worked great! I still remember most of the relevant stuff 20 years later.<p>The second half of linear algebra was a bunch of stuff about eigenvectors and eigenvalues. We never were given an explanation why you&#x27;d care about them, and I still have no idea why you&#x27;d care about them.</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>Here&#x27;s the class description for MAT 202, &quot;Linear Algebra with Applications&quot; at Princeton.[1] Here&#x27;s a problem set with answers.[2]<p>It&#x27;s painful to read. Problem 2: &quot;Find the matrix A describing the following linear transformation from R2 to R&#x27;2 : First rotate clockwise by π&#x2F;6, then scale by a factor of 2, then reflect about the x2 axis.&quot; Anyone who programs video games recognizes that as a stack of transformations. You set up the matrix for the rotate, the scale, and the reflection (which is a scale of -1 on one axis). You multiply the matrices to get the result. This is a pain to do with pencil and paper. GPUs have hardware for it.<p>Books on graphics programming cover this problem. But they usually do it much better, with graphical examples.
The presentation here is done very abstractly, without any motivation.
Most of linear algebra has graphical representations. It takes a useful and relatively easy area of math and makes it harder.<p>This is apparently on purpose. The class description says:<p><i>The calculations are relatively simple once you understand what you need to compute, but it can take time to master the abstract concepts well enough to understand what that might be. The challenge in 201 (a calculus class) is usually how to finish a problem as the technical complications mount, whereas in 202 the challenge is often in seeing how to start the problem.</i><p>Right. In calculus, problems usually involve trying to integrate something, where you get stuck and need to transform the problem in some non-obvious way to make forward progress. It&#x27;s puzzle-solving. In linear algebra, the actual operations are mostly matrix adds and multiplies. It&#x27;s setting up the problem that&#x27;s hard.<p>It&#x27;s annoying to see this for a useful area of applied math. If you&#x27;re headed for abstract algebra, where intuition breaks down, this approach might be useful. But if you want to use ordinary linear systems to get work done, which is common in engineering, it&#x27;s not.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.princeton.edu&#x2F;undergraduate&#x2F;placement&#x2F;MAT202" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.princeton.edu&#x2F;undergraduate&#x2F;placement&#x2F;MAT20...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.princeton.edu&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;2018-04&#x2F;MAT202Sample%20Problems.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.princeton.edu&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;2018-04&#x2F;M...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>klodolph</author><text>Eigenvectors and eigenvalues are (among other things) connected to something called diagonalization. In math, this is incredibly useful because it lets you describe a matrix as being put together from simpler, easy-to-understand matrixes.<p>Eigenvectors and eigenvalues are also a major focus of quantum mechanics. For example, when you measure the energy level of an electron in a quantum mechanical system, the measurement itself is a linear operator on the underlying wavefunction (linear operator = think &quot;like a matrix&quot;). The eigenvalues are the different energy levels of the electron, and the eigenvectors are the wavefunctions which are states of the electron with the corresponding energy level. You can experimentally verify that the eigenvalues correspond to spectral lines (the rainbow you see when you look at the substance through diffraction grating).<p>There are a ton of other things going on with eigenvalues and eigenvectors, they&#x27;re used all over the place. If you want to understand a Markov process, for example, it can be described in terms of linear equations, and if it has a steady-state, it&#x27;s an eigenvector.</text></comment> | <story><title>Why won’t anyone teach me math?</title><url>https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2022/02/stem-intro-courses-humanites-exploration</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>QuercusMax</author><text>I took linear algebra the same semester as computer graphics - the first half of CG was all about 2D stuff - Bresenham&#x27;s line-drawing algorithm, things like that. First half of LA was pretty much everything I needed to know to understand matrix operations in OpenGL, which was the second half of CG. Worked great! I still remember most of the relevant stuff 20 years later.<p>The second half of linear algebra was a bunch of stuff about eigenvectors and eigenvalues. We never were given an explanation why you&#x27;d care about them, and I still have no idea why you&#x27;d care about them.</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>Here&#x27;s the class description for MAT 202, &quot;Linear Algebra with Applications&quot; at Princeton.[1] Here&#x27;s a problem set with answers.[2]<p>It&#x27;s painful to read. Problem 2: &quot;Find the matrix A describing the following linear transformation from R2 to R&#x27;2 : First rotate clockwise by π&#x2F;6, then scale by a factor of 2, then reflect about the x2 axis.&quot; Anyone who programs video games recognizes that as a stack of transformations. You set up the matrix for the rotate, the scale, and the reflection (which is a scale of -1 on one axis). You multiply the matrices to get the result. This is a pain to do with pencil and paper. GPUs have hardware for it.<p>Books on graphics programming cover this problem. But they usually do it much better, with graphical examples.
The presentation here is done very abstractly, without any motivation.
Most of linear algebra has graphical representations. It takes a useful and relatively easy area of math and makes it harder.<p>This is apparently on purpose. The class description says:<p><i>The calculations are relatively simple once you understand what you need to compute, but it can take time to master the abstract concepts well enough to understand what that might be. The challenge in 201 (a calculus class) is usually how to finish a problem as the technical complications mount, whereas in 202 the challenge is often in seeing how to start the problem.</i><p>Right. In calculus, problems usually involve trying to integrate something, where you get stuck and need to transform the problem in some non-obvious way to make forward progress. It&#x27;s puzzle-solving. In linear algebra, the actual operations are mostly matrix adds and multiplies. It&#x27;s setting up the problem that&#x27;s hard.<p>It&#x27;s annoying to see this for a useful area of applied math. If you&#x27;re headed for abstract algebra, where intuition breaks down, this approach might be useful. But if you want to use ordinary linear systems to get work done, which is common in engineering, it&#x27;s not.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.princeton.edu&#x2F;undergraduate&#x2F;placement&#x2F;MAT202" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.princeton.edu&#x2F;undergraduate&#x2F;placement&#x2F;MAT20...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.princeton.edu&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;2018-04&#x2F;MAT202Sample%20Problems.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.princeton.edu&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;2018-04&#x2F;M...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>l33t2328</author><text>Eigenvectors tell you which vectors are taken to a scalar multiple of themselves via a linear map. Eigenvalues tell you what those scalars are. That means some subspace is fixed by your linear map.</text></comment> |
11,333,303 | 11,332,866 | 1 | 3 | 11,331,409 | train | <story><title>Universities Are Becoming Billion-Dollar Hedge Funds with Schools Attached</title><url>http://www.thenation.com/article/universities-are-becoming-billion-dollar-hedge-funds-with-schools-attached/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>andr3w321</author><text>I don&#x27;t really care if universities hire hedge managers to manage their endowment, but it&#x27;s absurd that schools with multibillion dollar endowments still charge tuition. Yale has ~12,000 students and a $26 billion endowment. Tuition is ~$45,000 per student. $45,000 * 12,000 = $540 million. They can&#x27;t spend 2%(540&#x2F;26,000) of their endowment per year on free tuition? What is this money for?<p>Of course this ignores financial aid so Yale&#x27;s operating costs are much less than $500 mil&#x2F;year. If you&#x27;re going to donate to a university your money will go much further at a small college that actually needs your money and will actually spend it rather than hoarding it. TMQ had some great articles about this topic back in the day. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;espn.go.com&#x2F;nfl&#x2F;story&#x2F;_&#x2F;page&#x2F;TMQWeekFour140930&#x2F;robert-griffin-iii-blaine-gabbert-why-mega-trades-work-nfl-tuesday-morning-quarterback" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;espn.go.com&#x2F;nfl&#x2F;story&#x2F;_&#x2F;page&#x2F;TMQWeekFour140930&#x2F;robert...</a> Halfway down.</text></comment> | <story><title>Universities Are Becoming Billion-Dollar Hedge Funds with Schools Attached</title><url>http://www.thenation.com/article/universities-are-becoming-billion-dollar-hedge-funds-with-schools-attached/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>inthewoods</author><text>I&#x27;ve been waiting for this article to surface on HN. The other problem here is that hedge funds, as an investment vehicle, really haven&#x27;t done that well. So it is essentially a transfer of donations to the hedge fund industry while the endowment could have done better avoiding them altogether. Obviously there are some hedge funds that have done well - but on the whole they are expensive and do not add alpha.<p>Back in the day, Harvard didn&#x27;t outsource to hedge funds but instead had the portfolio managers in-house. These folks were paid a small fraction of what they would make in the private hedge fund industry, but my understanding is that the Harvard community was up in arms at what they were making - so they quit&#x2F;got pushed out and then Harvard started outsourcing to hedge funds. The result was worse performance and higher fees.<p>Of course, it&#x27;s not all roses - Larry Summers famously made a terrible bet on interest rates that Harvard had to unwind at a large loss.</text></comment> |
25,959,126 | 25,958,920 | 1 | 3 | 25,954,539 | train | <story><title>Robinhood, in Need of Cash, Raises $1B from Its Investors</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/technology/robinhood-fundraising.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>015a</author><text>That&#x27;s an accurate enough analogy.<p>When you sell a stock on Robinhood, it takes ~2 days to &quot;clear&quot; the transaction. So, Robinhood credits your account, but Robinhood doesn&#x27;t see that money for 2 days. They don&#x27;t allow you to withdraw the money from Robinhood until its cleared, but you <i>can</i> purchase other stocks with the money, and if you do that, Robinhood now needs to send something to the seller. All brokerages, and the clearing houses they work with if they don&#x27;t self-clear (RH, IB, WeBull, etc do not self-clear; bigger banks do), maintain a level of &quot;float&quot; to handle these payments; its like grease which allows the system to move faster, and the bigger these pools of money, the less risk there is.<p>Robinhood is the #1 app on the App Store right now. EVERYONE is getting in on this. Many of these users likely joined with an invite code, and Robinhood will give out two random shares of stocks for each of these users ($$). After they&#x27;re in the app, they&#x27;re probably using the Instant Deposits feature to trade on up-to $1000 they&#x27;ve started transferring but which hasn&#x27;t cleared yet (pressure on the float). Many of these users are, in WSB terminology, paper hands; they bought GME @ 250, its at 320 now, they want their gains, so they sell immediately; more pressure on the float.<p>If that float hits zero, that&#x27;s basically like, imagine your company&#x27;s bank account hitting zero, its payday (because every single hour of every day is payday for a brokerage), and you have 50 million employees. People would sell stocks, and the number in their account wouldn&#x27;t go up. In fact, people couldn&#x27;t even buy or sell stocks, because that float is used to pay fees on every transaction to their clearing house. Now, people are scared; their faith in robinhood has been shook, and they want out. So, they try to sell stocks; they can&#x27;t. They&#x27;re angry. If they have settled funds, they pull those out, which just compounds the problem because now their balance sheets start looking weaker and weaker, which makes access to emergency credit lines harder. Basically, they would implode irrevocably. Even the hint of a liquidity crisis is enough to tarnish a firm&#x27;s reputation.<p>IMO, I think the biggest driver of this issue for Robinhood is their instant deposits functionality. That feature is insane, and in market runs like this, deadly. Robinhood hasn&#x27;t actually &quot;lost&quot; money (well, not enough to cause a liquidity crisis); its just the problem of not having enough money right right now to pay people who need to be paid.<p>But, the deeper issue is the US financial system and its molasses speed of moving money around. The Fed is making strides to improve this, but it will take a decade or more before we see real change.</text></item><item><author>posix_compliant</author><text>So you’re saying the issue is “what if the grocery goes insolvent before it can hand you the milk, but after you’ve paid”?<p>I’m still not understanding how robinhood lost money in the first place.</text></item><item><author>IG_Semmelweiss</author><text>The real reason is as follows:<p>You cannot use customer funds to cover dtcc collateral terms.<p>Your milk example does not work, because you are not settling up the milk buy 2 days after. You settle your milk purchase on the spot.</text></item><item><author>michaelt</author><text><i>&gt; Non-zero chance had they not haulted trading on those symbols they would&#x27;ve been insolvent by close of trading today, depending on the size of their credit line.</i><p>Perhaps you can help me understand something.<p>In the absence of margin trading, if I deposit $100 of cash at my brokerage, then I order my broker to buy $100 worth of Stock A, how does credit and the possibility of bankruptcy enter into the transaction at all?<p>After all, if I give my kid $5 and send him to the store to buy some milk, he doesn&#x27;t need to find &#x27;liquidity&#x27; or a &#x27;credit line&#x27; or risk bankruptcy.</text></item><item><author>ajsharp</author><text>&quot;To continue operating, it drew on a line of credit from six banks amounting to between $500 million and $600 million to meet higher margin, or lending, requirements from its central clearing facility for stock trades, known as the Depository Trust &amp; Clearing Corporation.&quot;<p>Non-zero chance had they not haulted trading on those symbols they would&#x27;ve been insolvent by close of trading today, depending on the size of their credit line.<p>I watched the CEO on CNN tonight, and while I found him pretty difficult to watch, this is a very difficult position to be in. If you admit on TV that your company is experiencing liquidity issues -- even if temporary in nature such as with clearing custodianship requirements -- you run the risk of triggering a greater panic through customer withdrawals&#x2F;redemptions.<p>This could turn into a run on the brokerage pretty quickly, and probably already has in some measure, especially after a day of massively lost customer trust. He certainly didn&#x27;t help it by going on TV and lying about their liquidity issues. They probably would&#x27;ve been better off by issuing a statement and keeping him off TV.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>IG_Semmelweiss</author><text>These are 2 different things<p>(1) Credit risk - this is what you describe<p>(2) Counterparty risk - this is collateral. This is different.<p>The 2 are interlinked insofar that the counterparty (2) may react to the perceived credit risk (1) , however these are 2 separate risks at play.<p>**
To go back to the milkman, the correct analogy would be:<p>Your son wants milk. You go to the farmer&#x27;s market - but you can&#x27;t hand over cash to farmer. Remember, his milk is spoiling, there&#x27;s a huge line to buy, and he just doesn&#x27;t have time to count bills, square exact change, or screen for potential fake bills. He only accepts bank transfers, and you dont have a bank acct. So you buy milk on credit, and agree to settle when he&#x27;s not too busy (as you have always done).<p>Now, the farmer has been noticing you are buying a lot of milk for your son, and the empty milk bottles you left with him on deposit (&quot;float&quot;) are not sufficient to carry all the milk you are buying....so he&#x27;s now asking for many more bottles, which are expensive. He refuses cash collateral - he will only take more bottles, because he&#x27;s concerned about all the cash you seem to be handling recently.<p>You don&#x27;t have extra cash of your own, for bottles. You can&#x27;t commingle funds. So therefore, you stop taking milk requests from son...and the other 10M children</text></comment> | <story><title>Robinhood, in Need of Cash, Raises $1B from Its Investors</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/technology/robinhood-fundraising.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>015a</author><text>That&#x27;s an accurate enough analogy.<p>When you sell a stock on Robinhood, it takes ~2 days to &quot;clear&quot; the transaction. So, Robinhood credits your account, but Robinhood doesn&#x27;t see that money for 2 days. They don&#x27;t allow you to withdraw the money from Robinhood until its cleared, but you <i>can</i> purchase other stocks with the money, and if you do that, Robinhood now needs to send something to the seller. All brokerages, and the clearing houses they work with if they don&#x27;t self-clear (RH, IB, WeBull, etc do not self-clear; bigger banks do), maintain a level of &quot;float&quot; to handle these payments; its like grease which allows the system to move faster, and the bigger these pools of money, the less risk there is.<p>Robinhood is the #1 app on the App Store right now. EVERYONE is getting in on this. Many of these users likely joined with an invite code, and Robinhood will give out two random shares of stocks for each of these users ($$). After they&#x27;re in the app, they&#x27;re probably using the Instant Deposits feature to trade on up-to $1000 they&#x27;ve started transferring but which hasn&#x27;t cleared yet (pressure on the float). Many of these users are, in WSB terminology, paper hands; they bought GME @ 250, its at 320 now, they want their gains, so they sell immediately; more pressure on the float.<p>If that float hits zero, that&#x27;s basically like, imagine your company&#x27;s bank account hitting zero, its payday (because every single hour of every day is payday for a brokerage), and you have 50 million employees. People would sell stocks, and the number in their account wouldn&#x27;t go up. In fact, people couldn&#x27;t even buy or sell stocks, because that float is used to pay fees on every transaction to their clearing house. Now, people are scared; their faith in robinhood has been shook, and they want out. So, they try to sell stocks; they can&#x27;t. They&#x27;re angry. If they have settled funds, they pull those out, which just compounds the problem because now their balance sheets start looking weaker and weaker, which makes access to emergency credit lines harder. Basically, they would implode irrevocably. Even the hint of a liquidity crisis is enough to tarnish a firm&#x27;s reputation.<p>IMO, I think the biggest driver of this issue for Robinhood is their instant deposits functionality. That feature is insane, and in market runs like this, deadly. Robinhood hasn&#x27;t actually &quot;lost&quot; money (well, not enough to cause a liquidity crisis); its just the problem of not having enough money right right now to pay people who need to be paid.<p>But, the deeper issue is the US financial system and its molasses speed of moving money around. The Fed is making strides to improve this, but it will take a decade or more before we see real change.</text></item><item><author>posix_compliant</author><text>So you’re saying the issue is “what if the grocery goes insolvent before it can hand you the milk, but after you’ve paid”?<p>I’m still not understanding how robinhood lost money in the first place.</text></item><item><author>IG_Semmelweiss</author><text>The real reason is as follows:<p>You cannot use customer funds to cover dtcc collateral terms.<p>Your milk example does not work, because you are not settling up the milk buy 2 days after. You settle your milk purchase on the spot.</text></item><item><author>michaelt</author><text><i>&gt; Non-zero chance had they not haulted trading on those symbols they would&#x27;ve been insolvent by close of trading today, depending on the size of their credit line.</i><p>Perhaps you can help me understand something.<p>In the absence of margin trading, if I deposit $100 of cash at my brokerage, then I order my broker to buy $100 worth of Stock A, how does credit and the possibility of bankruptcy enter into the transaction at all?<p>After all, if I give my kid $5 and send him to the store to buy some milk, he doesn&#x27;t need to find &#x27;liquidity&#x27; or a &#x27;credit line&#x27; or risk bankruptcy.</text></item><item><author>ajsharp</author><text>&quot;To continue operating, it drew on a line of credit from six banks amounting to between $500 million and $600 million to meet higher margin, or lending, requirements from its central clearing facility for stock trades, known as the Depository Trust &amp; Clearing Corporation.&quot;<p>Non-zero chance had they not haulted trading on those symbols they would&#x27;ve been insolvent by close of trading today, depending on the size of their credit line.<p>I watched the CEO on CNN tonight, and while I found him pretty difficult to watch, this is a very difficult position to be in. If you admit on TV that your company is experiencing liquidity issues -- even if temporary in nature such as with clearing custodianship requirements -- you run the risk of triggering a greater panic through customer withdrawals&#x2F;redemptions.<p>This could turn into a run on the brokerage pretty quickly, and probably already has in some measure, especially after a day of massively lost customer trust. He certainly didn&#x27;t help it by going on TV and lying about their liquidity issues. They probably would&#x27;ve been better off by issuing a statement and keeping him off TV.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hnrodey</author><text>Just my two cents.<p>I created a Robinhood account on Wednesday evening and transferred $1000 via Plaid. My account is still not active and AFAIK that $1000 is in limbo.<p>The app tells me &quot;We&#x27;re reviewing your application and your deposit is pending. Application approval may be delayed. We&#x27;ll notify you when you can begin trading.&quot;</text></comment> |
33,171,070 | 33,171,085 | 1 | 3 | 33,170,710 | train | <story><title>The Wikimedia Foundation spends Wikipedia donations on political activism</title><url>https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>version_five</author><text>This is a problem across charities it seems - political activism is not necessarily bad, but when it&#x27;s all generic woke stuff that has nothing to do with the charity&#x27;s mission, it becomes really frustrating. The ACLU is another obvious example (as is Canada&#x27;s equivalent the CCLA that I stopped supporting). But even a hospital I used to support has gotten into the business of pronouns and stuff, and regardless of the merit of that sort of thing, it&#x27;s not anywhere near the top of causes people expect their hospital donations to go to. It would be nice to see charities much better stick with their mandates and not have this creep that happens where the current thing is somehow automatically an issue for them<p>Edit: I&#x27;m also very interested in the way this story has been ranked on Hn. It&#x27;s had a lot of votes in a short time that would normally get it right up to the top, yet it&#x27;s currently on the second page. I know enough that there&#x27;s not some nefarious thing happening, though it&#x27;s curious whatever quirk of the algorithm &#x2F; moderation is keeping the story down in the ranking</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>greyface-</author><text>&gt; Edit: I&#x27;m also very interested in the way this story has been ranked on Hn.<p>It was submitted and flagkilled a few hours ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=33167393" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=33167393</a><p>I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if The Algorithm punished this for being a duplicate.</text></comment> | <story><title>The Wikimedia Foundation spends Wikipedia donations on political activism</title><url>https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>version_five</author><text>This is a problem across charities it seems - political activism is not necessarily bad, but when it&#x27;s all generic woke stuff that has nothing to do with the charity&#x27;s mission, it becomes really frustrating. The ACLU is another obvious example (as is Canada&#x27;s equivalent the CCLA that I stopped supporting). But even a hospital I used to support has gotten into the business of pronouns and stuff, and regardless of the merit of that sort of thing, it&#x27;s not anywhere near the top of causes people expect their hospital donations to go to. It would be nice to see charities much better stick with their mandates and not have this creep that happens where the current thing is somehow automatically an issue for them<p>Edit: I&#x27;m also very interested in the way this story has been ranked on Hn. It&#x27;s had a lot of votes in a short time that would normally get it right up to the top, yet it&#x27;s currently on the second page. I know enough that there&#x27;s not some nefarious thing happening, though it&#x27;s curious whatever quirk of the algorithm &#x2F; moderation is keeping the story down in the ranking</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vba616</author><text><p><pre><code> &gt;the business of pronouns and stuff, and regardless of the merit of that sort of
&gt;thing, it&#x27;s not anywhere near the top of causes people expect their hospital
&gt;donations to go to
</code></pre>
If I received a complaint along these lines, I would earnestly explain that we are looking into an electron recycling initiative to compensate for the extra letters in email signatures.</text></comment> |
4,074,494 | 4,072,976 | 1 | 2 | 4,072,873 | train | <story><title>Hacking an ATM</title><url>http://henryschwarz.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/black-hatted.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tptacek</author><text>Some backstory that isn't in this article: Barnaby Jack (who goes all the way back to the original eEye research team in the last '90s early '00s) did this ATM research while working as a researcher for Juniper Networks. I believe the original vendor he targeted was Tranax; they make the crappy free-standing ATMs you see in bodegas†.<p>Jack notified the vendor and (obviously) got his talk accepted and announced at Black Hat. The vendor complained to Juniper, and Juniper had the talk pulled††. Jack left Juniper for IOActive and gave the talk the following year. Last time I checked, I believe he was at McAfee.<p>† <i>Funny thing about Tranax: they managed to let Google crawl their maintenance manual a couple years ago, and the manual had their default maintenance code in it; a huge number of ATMs were found to be running with that default password, which allowed people to re-denominate the bills in the machine.</i><p>†† <i>This was probably a reasonable call, because Juniper has billions of dollars to lose to a negligence suit brought by an ATM company.</i></text></comment> | <story><title>Hacking an ATM</title><url>http://henryschwarz.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/black-hatted.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>twelvechairs</author><text>Its not very nice that the author turns a 'security researcher' (his words) who is effectively helping (if not actually doing) the authors job for him into a pantomime villain.<p>[edit: I do get that they became 'friends', which gives some levity to these descriptions, but it still strikes me as casting aspersions not just on the individual but more generally on the way he and others like choose to work]</text></comment> |
19,111,161 | 19,111,275 | 1 | 2 | 19,110,041 | train | <story><title>How does one appear in the Google News carousel?</title><url>https://char.gd/blog/2019/google-news-is-broken</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>boardwaalk</author><text>Speaking generally about Google News, it&#x27;s amazing that Apple of all companies has leap frogged Google News with Apple News in terms of customization on top of curation.<p>It&#x27;s infuriating when a redesign has half the functionality of the original. It&#x27;s not like it was feature-rich in the first place!<p>It&#x27;s silly not being able to remove entertainment (aka celebrity gossip) or sports (even if I was a sport fan, I probably wouldn&#x27;t care about <i>every</i> sport -- why can&#x27;t I filter to MotoGP or what have you?) and having science be mostly several times regurgitated pop-sci and health be mostly fearing mongering nonsense.<p>I also regularly notice failures where articles they group together are almost entirely unrelated.<p>In the end, I still do RSS (although support in certain areas of interest are pretty weak) and Twitter (in a read-only fashion) and go to Google News over Apple News only by habit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wtmt</author><text>I’ve looked at Apple News, and while its sources can be customized to some extent, the app is not yet available in all regions (though it’s been around for more than a couple of years). IIRC, it’s coming to Canada shortly. It also doesn’t allow one to follow sites that Apple doesn’t know about or care about, and if you change the region setting on the device, you’re no longer allowed to follow certain channels (even those that are not region specific or are smaller&#x2F;individual sites).<p>Apple is excruciatingly slow on this and a few other things, whereas Google News, for all its faults, is available in many countries and regions.<p>This is where, and why, RSS becomes a better option.</text></comment> | <story><title>How does one appear in the Google News carousel?</title><url>https://char.gd/blog/2019/google-news-is-broken</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>boardwaalk</author><text>Speaking generally about Google News, it&#x27;s amazing that Apple of all companies has leap frogged Google News with Apple News in terms of customization on top of curation.<p>It&#x27;s infuriating when a redesign has half the functionality of the original. It&#x27;s not like it was feature-rich in the first place!<p>It&#x27;s silly not being able to remove entertainment (aka celebrity gossip) or sports (even if I was a sport fan, I probably wouldn&#x27;t care about <i>every</i> sport -- why can&#x27;t I filter to MotoGP or what have you?) and having science be mostly several times regurgitated pop-sci and health be mostly fearing mongering nonsense.<p>I also regularly notice failures where articles they group together are almost entirely unrelated.<p>In the end, I still do RSS (although support in certain areas of interest are pretty weak) and Twitter (in a read-only fashion) and go to Google News over Apple News only by habit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>guelo</author><text>Apple News is broken in a crazier way, you need to own an iOS device to see it. I mean, what the hell?</text></comment> |
40,538,960 | 40,538,710 | 1 | 2 | 40,536,400 | train | <story><title>IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season</title><url>https://www.axios.com/2024/05/30/irs-taxes-direct-file-free-program</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dheera</author><text>I meat this is Y Combinator Hacker News, so I would expect &quot;software engineers in California&quot; to be a significant fraction of the user base here.</text></item><item><author>dmd</author><text>94% of Americans make less than $200k a year. Not everything is meant for &quot;software engineers in California&quot;.</text></item><item><author>dheera</author><text>sigh this is a baby step but<p>- Many if not most software engineers in California earn more than the $200K household limitation for using Direct File<p>- From my understanding there is no way auto-generate my state tax return from Direct File so I would have to do all the work twice even if I can use it<p>- Complicating my tax situation (legally) allows me to save more money, I would save far more than the price of TurboTax by using TurboTax instead of Direct File, as much as I hate it</text></item><item><author>macrael</author><text>It&#x27;s SUCH a win that they managed to roll this out to a small set of tax situations and states to start. Every government project I&#x27;ve been on has required creativity in defining an MVP that doesn&#x27;t include shipping to everyone. This was cited consistently as one of the great successes of this project, they were able to ship something that successfully filed 150k taxes b&#x2F;c they were able to scope things down to something doable in 9 months.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cududa</author><text>The problem is you&#x27;re exposing yourself as someone extremely self-centered, and someone that assumes their lived experience is equivalent of everyone else&#x27;s, and adjudicating the utility of this particular thing as if you are reflective of the larger population.<p>Saying the majority of engineers in California make at least $200k makes you even more out of touch. According to Glassdoor, over $200k for a SE in CA is 90th percentile. The average SE in CA makes $132,000<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ziprecruiter.com&#x2F;Salaries&#x2F;Software-Engineer-Salary--in-California" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ziprecruiter.com&#x2F;Salaries&#x2F;Software-Engineer-Sala...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season</title><url>https://www.axios.com/2024/05/30/irs-taxes-direct-file-free-program</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dheera</author><text>I meat this is Y Combinator Hacker News, so I would expect &quot;software engineers in California&quot; to be a significant fraction of the user base here.</text></item><item><author>dmd</author><text>94% of Americans make less than $200k a year. Not everything is meant for &quot;software engineers in California&quot;.</text></item><item><author>dheera</author><text>sigh this is a baby step but<p>- Many if not most software engineers in California earn more than the $200K household limitation for using Direct File<p>- From my understanding there is no way auto-generate my state tax return from Direct File so I would have to do all the work twice even if I can use it<p>- Complicating my tax situation (legally) allows me to save more money, I would save far more than the price of TurboTax by using TurboTax instead of Direct File, as much as I hate it</text></item><item><author>macrael</author><text>It&#x27;s SUCH a win that they managed to roll this out to a small set of tax situations and states to start. Every government project I&#x27;ve been on has required creativity in defining an MVP that doesn&#x27;t include shipping to everyone. This was cited consistently as one of the great successes of this project, they were able to ship something that successfully filed 150k taxes b&#x2F;c they were able to scope things down to something doable in 9 months.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>schmidtleonard</author><text>Your suggestion that we don&#x27;t &#x2F; shouldn&#x27;t care about anything other than ourselves is more than a little insulting, whether you intended that or not.<p>In any case, like the root of this comment tree says, the best way to make sure this program lives to reach us is to make sure it paces itself. If that means another year or two of TurboTax, that&#x27;s A-OK!</text></comment> |
3,036,389 | 3,036,251 | 1 | 3 | 3,035,954 | train | <story><title>Why Facebook's 'Frictionless Sharing' violates HTTP</title><url>http://andothernoise.blogspot.com/2011/09/why-facebooks-frictionless-sharing.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>skrebbel</author><text>This article is so typically dork-disconnected-from-world that it's a bit sad, really.<p>Any site that uses SOAP violates HTTP (use POST also for GET-style requests). Any site that has delete links (as opposed to buttons) violate HTTP (barring onclick ajax action, that is). The big mega bucketload of sites violating HTTP this way (GET having severe side effects) is the very reason offline browsing and prefetching never took off much. Every site that uses comet <i>very much</i> violates HTTP.<p>This is no "message to the future to Mark Zuckerberg". It's just using the available tools for the job to their limits.<p>Note, I'm just as much against the whole frictionless sharing thing as most people here. But the moment we allow geek nonsense like this to overtake the real arguments is the moment the world will stop taking it seriously. This is what happened to the net neutrality debate ("net neutrality"? who made up that term? how will i ever make my mom care about <i>that</i>?), let's not let it happen here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>almost</author><text>I agree with the rest of your comment but using SOAP-with-GET and non-javascript delete links as examples is a terrible argument. They're both stupid stupid ideas and can lead to bad things precisely because they violate HTTP. Comet is also a horrible hack but sometimes horrible hacks are needed.<p>But yeah, "it violates HTTP!" is hardly the best argument against "frictionless sharing" :)</text></comment> | <story><title>Why Facebook's 'Frictionless Sharing' violates HTTP</title><url>http://andothernoise.blogspot.com/2011/09/why-facebooks-frictionless-sharing.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>skrebbel</author><text>This article is so typically dork-disconnected-from-world that it's a bit sad, really.<p>Any site that uses SOAP violates HTTP (use POST also for GET-style requests). Any site that has delete links (as opposed to buttons) violate HTTP (barring onclick ajax action, that is). The big mega bucketload of sites violating HTTP this way (GET having severe side effects) is the very reason offline browsing and prefetching never took off much. Every site that uses comet <i>very much</i> violates HTTP.<p>This is no "message to the future to Mark Zuckerberg". It's just using the available tools for the job to their limits.<p>Note, I'm just as much against the whole frictionless sharing thing as most people here. But the moment we allow geek nonsense like this to overtake the real arguments is the moment the world will stop taking it seriously. This is what happened to the net neutrality debate ("net neutrality"? who made up that term? how will i ever make my mom care about <i>that</i>?), let's not let it happen here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rberdeen</author><text>Agreed. I can't imagine that any meaningful percentage of Facebook users care about the HTTP spec.<p>JavaScript in modern web apps has made the distinction between GET and other HTTP methods irrelevant to users. Simply changing these "frictionless sharing" apps to use POST instead of GET doesn't address anyone's concerns.</text></comment> |
1,570,437 | 1,570,350 | 1 | 2 | 1,570,085 | train | <story><title>Ghost of WWII: 1940's meticulously overlaid on modern day</title><url>http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/the-ghosts-of-world-war-iis</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jacquesm</author><text>The Euro-centric view is that Europe is the battlefield of the world, and that Poland is the battlefield of Europe, and during World War II that was more true than ever before or since.<p>The cities of Rotterdam ('the city without a heart') and Dresden still tell a pretty grim tale today if your eyes are open to it, and Warsaw and Poznan have plenty of places where the repair still hasn't caught up with the damage. There isn't a month that somebody doesn't dig up a piece of ordnance (in some cases very large bombs) when working on their houses or doing public works.<p>Be grateful for the world you live in and strive to minimise war, it wasn't always this peaceful and the chance is that it will not always be.<p>Europe is still quite anti-war (in spite of the apparent ease with which some countries, including mine joined the Iraq adventure) there are lots of older people here that still remember what it was like. But we tend to forget and when the last of them dies and stops reminding us how bad war really is the risk is very large that past stupidities will be repeated.</text></comment> | <story><title>Ghost of WWII: 1940's meticulously overlaid on modern day</title><url>http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/the-ghosts-of-world-war-iis</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>pvg</author><text><a href="http://sergey-larenkov.livejournal.com/" rel="nofollow">http://sergey-larenkov.livejournal.com/</a><p>Original source, also lists the locations.<p>There are also places in a number of these cities where limited amounts of the ww2 damage are left un-repaired, as a memorial and a live version of these composites.</text></comment> |
28,018,894 | 28,019,140 | 1 | 2 | 28,018,057 | train | <story><title>The recycling myth: A plastic waste solution littered with failure</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/environment-plastic-oil-recycling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trainsplanes</author><text>Have you gone to a beach lately?<p>I don&#x27;t live in the US but it&#x27;s certainly not a developing country. Beaches are absolutely covered in plastic waste and it&#x27;s noticeably worse each time I go. Forests are steadily becoming filled with plastic that either gets tossed there or blown there. Animals eat garbage and die. It&#x27;s horrible. Assuming I live a very long life and die in 70 years, that plastic will still be there. New plastic will be there as well.<p>America and the EU &quot;manage&quot; their plastic waste by literally shipping it to other countries, then blaming them for mismanaging it. Most was sent to China, then it was banned by China.[1] Now the EU and US ship it to other countries, claim they manage their plastic, and blame new countries. The US and EU have yet to manage their plastic, though. They&#x27;re just dumping it on their neighbor&#x27;s property.<p>My worry about paper bags is that, corporations doing what they do and going for the lowest bidder, they&#x27;ll be made with clear-cut rainforest wood from Indonesia and Malaysia instead of sustainable sources. I&#x27;m sure a lot are.<p>I just reuse bags and never use paper or anything unless it&#x27;s forced upon me. I bought some durable bags 5 years ago. I keep a couple in my vehicle, a few at home, and others in other places so I almost always have a bag with me.</text></item><item><author>relax88</author><text>One thing I’m always curious about is why we are so concerned with plastic waste.<p>My local grocery store recently switched to paper bags. So I got curious. Turns out you have to re-use a paper bag 43 times for the energy use to be the same as plastic grocery bags. This is impossible since they are made of paper. Aluminum and glass bottles require several hundred times more energy to produce as well (between 170-250x).<p>Then when you look at plastic pollution and see that for the most part North America is quite good at properly disposing of plastic you wonder why we are so obsessed with this as a problem.<p>Plastic waste really isn’t a big problem unless you’re talking about developing nations. North America is responsible for about 3% of mismanaged plastic waste. Asia and Africa account for 86% of it.<p>Don’t get me started on plastic straws. They make up 0.03% of plastic waste in the ocean.<p>If we want to make a difference here we should be helping developing nations to better manage their plastic waste so that it doesn’t end up in waterways.<p>The Yangtze and Ganges are releasing plastic into the ocean at a rate far greater than all of North America combined, and our response is to expend huge amounts of energy produced by fossil fuels trying to recycle our plastic instead of burying it in a landfill where it is unlikely to pose a major ecological threat.<p>Like many environmental initiatives I worry that we’re more concerned about making ourselves feel better than actually solving the problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crazygringo</author><text>I live in NYC, we actually have tons of beaches here in the metropolitan area, and they&#x27;re certainly <i>not</i> covered in plastic waste. Nor are our forests -- the hiking trails around here are great. And I&#x27;m talking about the single most populated metropolitan area in the US.<p>Sure there are a few strewn candy wrappers or something, but there really isn&#x27;t any big problem. It&#x27;s all quite nice.<p>What country do you live in that your beaches are so bad?</text></comment> | <story><title>The recycling myth: A plastic waste solution littered with failure</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/environment-plastic-oil-recycling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trainsplanes</author><text>Have you gone to a beach lately?<p>I don&#x27;t live in the US but it&#x27;s certainly not a developing country. Beaches are absolutely covered in plastic waste and it&#x27;s noticeably worse each time I go. Forests are steadily becoming filled with plastic that either gets tossed there or blown there. Animals eat garbage and die. It&#x27;s horrible. Assuming I live a very long life and die in 70 years, that plastic will still be there. New plastic will be there as well.<p>America and the EU &quot;manage&quot; their plastic waste by literally shipping it to other countries, then blaming them for mismanaging it. Most was sent to China, then it was banned by China.[1] Now the EU and US ship it to other countries, claim they manage their plastic, and blame new countries. The US and EU have yet to manage their plastic, though. They&#x27;re just dumping it on their neighbor&#x27;s property.<p>My worry about paper bags is that, corporations doing what they do and going for the lowest bidder, they&#x27;ll be made with clear-cut rainforest wood from Indonesia and Malaysia instead of sustainable sources. I&#x27;m sure a lot are.<p>I just reuse bags and never use paper or anything unless it&#x27;s forced upon me. I bought some durable bags 5 years ago. I keep a couple in my vehicle, a few at home, and others in other places so I almost always have a bag with me.</text></item><item><author>relax88</author><text>One thing I’m always curious about is why we are so concerned with plastic waste.<p>My local grocery store recently switched to paper bags. So I got curious. Turns out you have to re-use a paper bag 43 times for the energy use to be the same as plastic grocery bags. This is impossible since they are made of paper. Aluminum and glass bottles require several hundred times more energy to produce as well (between 170-250x).<p>Then when you look at plastic pollution and see that for the most part North America is quite good at properly disposing of plastic you wonder why we are so obsessed with this as a problem.<p>Plastic waste really isn’t a big problem unless you’re talking about developing nations. North America is responsible for about 3% of mismanaged plastic waste. Asia and Africa account for 86% of it.<p>Don’t get me started on plastic straws. They make up 0.03% of plastic waste in the ocean.<p>If we want to make a difference here we should be helping developing nations to better manage their plastic waste so that it doesn’t end up in waterways.<p>The Yangtze and Ganges are releasing plastic into the ocean at a rate far greater than all of North America combined, and our response is to expend huge amounts of energy produced by fossil fuels trying to recycle our plastic instead of burying it in a landfill where it is unlikely to pose a major ecological threat.<p>Like many environmental initiatives I worry that we’re more concerned about making ourselves feel better than actually solving the problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>burlesona</author><text>As an American, one of the things that shocked me the most in visits to Europe was how much litter there is. I lived in Italy, and it was astonishing how there was just trash everywhere, even though Italy is a wealthy nation. I’ve traveled all over Western Europe and the only part that felt relatively “clean” to me was London - clean as in comparable to NYC or other major US urban centers in terms of litter level.<p>By comparison, I’ve lived and traveled all over the US, cities and rural areas, beaches, forests, etc. Litter is rare. Where you will find it are freeway underpasses, neglected urban or near-urban waterways and railways: places where people aren’t really “supposed” to go, and are therefore loitered in and rarely cleaned.<p>There are many areas where the US lags Europe, but in my experience when it comes to litter, we have far less of it.</text></comment> |
8,792,413 | 8,792,435 | 1 | 2 | 8,791,791 | train | <story><title>In Defense of Inclusionism (2011)</title><url>http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>chris_wot</author><text>I am the Ta bu shi da yu who was noted in this article, and I am indeed the person who created the [citation needed] tag. I don&#x27;t think the issue is deletionism, it&#x27;s instead one of a total lack of respect for other editors.<p>Regrettably, I probably inadvertently helped with this culture as I <i>also</i> started the Administrators&#x27; notice board. Never have I seen such a cesspool of controversy, beaurocracy, wiki-lawyering and frankly power hungry people. I suffer from bouts of depression, so have left and returned a few times (actually I was made admin three times), but the last time (and believe me, the <i>very</i> last time) I tried to contribute I noticed the complete and utter lack of civility in the place. In a naive attempt to address this I tried to propose a policy where civility would be encouraged and incivility would be discouraged.<p>One of the key opponents, a user called Giano, went on the attack and I left the site - especially after I was told via email from Brad Fitzpatrick that I was unwelcome on Wikipedia.<p>I thought to myself: &quot;I spent 2 years researching and writing about the USA PATRIOT Act for this?!?&quot; [1]<p>And I left and never came back.<p>But, hey, if you want to see the discouragement that an average user sees - checkout my old user page. Even though it is a user page that very clearly says I have &quot;retired&quot; (more like sacked) there is wall to wall templates telling me I have committed a copyright violation (like hell!), or that images or articles will be deleted, etc. [2]<p>Further to this: deletionism is a massive problem. If you don&#x27;t believe me, look at the GNAA article - there were 17 different attempts to delete it! [3] Of course, Jimbo Wales supported the deletion for fairly spurious reasons in 2006. [4] I await the day that my article Exploding Whales is deleted.<p>1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Patriot_Act</a><p>Note that I did this because of the following article:<p><a href="http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_10_14.shtml#1098119066" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;volokh.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;archive_2004_10_14.shtml#10981190...</a><p>2. <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tbsdy_lives" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;User:Tbsdy_lives</a><p>3. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Nigger_Association_of_America" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gay_Nigger_Association_of_Amer...</a><p>4. <a href="https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-November/057193.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lists.wikimedia.org&#x2F;pipermail&#x2F;wikien-l&#x2F;2006-November...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>In Defense of Inclusionism (2011)</title><url>http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>codeflo</author><text>Among the people dedicated enough to become moderators in any online community, there seems to be a large subset that is very rule-focused, exclusionist and in general difficult to reason with. It&#x27;s not just Wikipedia, basically the same thing happened at StackOverflow, where all the interesting questions have been deleted, and also in several smaller online communities I used to participate in. Given enough time, those people invariably take over and destroy the community.<p>Reddit sort of avoids this because it&#x27;s so easy to create new subreddits that people can vote with their feet if a moderator is behaving unreasonably. Maybe a similar solution could work for Wikipedia, having sub-Wikipedias with different rules. But that would require the current powers to admit that there&#x27;s a problem, which is unlikely to happen.</text></comment> |
24,848,372 | 24,846,341 | 1 | 3 | 24,844,252 | train | <story><title>Mozilla Reaction to U.S. vs. Google</title><url>https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/10/20/mozilla-reaction-to-u-s-v-google/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>roody15</author><text>“ The ultimate outcomes of an antitrust lawsuit should not cause collateral damage to the very organizations – like Mozilla – best positioned to drive competition and protect the interests of consumers on the web.”<p>Or in other words ... “We need Google’s money” ... Firefox</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ashtonkem</author><text>The idea that a severance of Google’s alleged monopoly would cause a collapse of the competition actually undermines Mozilla’s point and strengthen’s the US’s point, ironically enough.</text></comment> | <story><title>Mozilla Reaction to U.S. vs. Google</title><url>https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/10/20/mozilla-reaction-to-u-s-v-google/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>roody15</author><text>“ The ultimate outcomes of an antitrust lawsuit should not cause collateral damage to the very organizations – like Mozilla – best positioned to drive competition and protect the interests of consumers on the web.”<p>Or in other words ... “We need Google’s money” ... Firefox</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>walrus01</author><text>Earlier in the day I read several news articles about the US V. Google lawsuit.<p>Before I even clicked the link, while hovering over it, I thought &quot;I wonder how close they&#x27;re going to come in this response to biting the hand that feeds them... How are they going to possibly handle this?&quot;<p>It is my understanding that something like 95% of mozilla&#x27;s gross revenue each year comes from the google search commission deal. If I am wrong on this somebody please correct me.</text></comment> |
25,872,415 | 25,870,486 | 1 | 3 | 25,844,686 | train | <story><title>Constructing an 8-bit relay computer from scratch</title><url>https://relaycomputer.co.uk/pages/overview.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kpgraham</author><text>In my senior year of high school (1968-69) Mike Sivy (Yes that Michael Sivy) and I tried to build some components of a digital computer out of military surplus relays. We took the bus and the subway down to Canal Street in NYC and bought a box of large 24 volt relays.
We designed a counter and we were able to get some parts working. It took 5 relays for each part, which Sivy was able to drop down to 4 by using a diode. I always thought that the diode was cheating and by using it we lost the purity of the concept, but we had a limited number of relays and we wanted to count to 8.
One of our problems was hysteresis and at various times the whole thing would start sparking and chattering like crazy. I remember trying to explain what we did to parents that wandered into the physics lab in the school&#x27;s open house. They were more impressed with the giant &quot;jabob&#x27;s ladder&quot; we built that eventually set the lab&#x27;s window moulding on fire.</text></comment> | <story><title>Constructing an 8-bit relay computer from scratch</title><url>https://relaycomputer.co.uk/pages/overview.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>superzamp</author><text>Clicked for the sound, was not disappointed.</text></comment> |
5,373,571 | 5,372,197 | 1 | 3 | 5,372,114 | train | <story><title>Seamless Transitioning from Google Reader to feedly</title><url>http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>greggman</author><text>Thanks but I don't want an APP. I use 14+ different browsers a day. I touch other machines as well. Any machine I'm on, even if it's not mine, I want to access my feeds. I have ZERO interest in an app. Thank you.</text></comment> | <story><title>Seamless Transitioning from Google Reader to feedly</title><url>http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bhauer</author><text>Interesting.<p>But PBSALTPH.<p>Product blogs should always link to product homes.</text></comment> |
15,172,616 | 15,172,618 | 1 | 2 | 15,171,771 | train | <story><title>Raddit: An open source alternative to Reddit</title><url>https://raddit.me/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>monokrome</author><text>I wonder if these people are aware that they didn&#x27;t need to write a Reddit clone?<p>Why would you write a Reddit clone in PHP when Reddit itself is a perfectly fine open source Python project? Is their license not permissive enough?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;reddit&#x2F;reddit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;reddit&#x2F;reddit</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Fizzer</author><text>Reddit just recently announced they&#x27;re no longer open source [1]. The last source dump could still be used, but I think they choose not to just out of a statement that they&#x27;re against the Reddit corporation.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;programming&#x2F;comments&#x2F;6xh3xp&#x2F;reddits_main_code_is_no_longer_opensource&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;programming&#x2F;comments&#x2F;6xh3xp&#x2F;reddits...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Raddit: An open source alternative to Reddit</title><url>https://raddit.me/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>monokrome</author><text>I wonder if these people are aware that they didn&#x27;t need to write a Reddit clone?<p>Why would you write a Reddit clone in PHP when Reddit itself is a perfectly fine open source Python project? Is their license not permissive enough?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;reddit&#x2F;reddit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;reddit&#x2F;reddit</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hilbertseries</author><text>Reddit is kind of a pain to run at small scale because it has so many dependences: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;reddit&#x2F;reddit&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dependencies" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;reddit&#x2F;reddit&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dependencies</a>.</text></comment> |
30,091,023 | 30,089,717 | 1 | 3 | 30,086,059 | train | <story><title>Google rewrites many page titles</title><url>https://zyppy.com/blog/google-title-rewrite-study/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stickfigure</author><text>I think you&#x27;ve got this wrong - they should <i>heavily editorialize</i> the titles.<p>Honest titles of search results:<p>* <i>Five pages of flowery text and images before two lines of instruction on how to boil rice</i><p>* <i>A bunch of tantalizing pictures of exactly what you&#x27;re looking for but zero further information about it</i><p>* <i>Product reviews machine-generated from public review sources with affiliate links. Top-rated product has the best affiliate revenue.</i><p>* <i>You won&#x27;t care about this solution to a problem you don&#x27;t have.</i><p>etc...</text></item><item><author>pavon</author><text>I think that is the worst reason for them to rewrite titles. If they left the title as-is, then I would be able to see in the search results that it was a spammy site and ignore it. Instead Google is helping to launder their SEO and present it as a more legitimate site. If Google thinks a site is gaming their algorithms they should de-prioritize it, not rewrite it.</text></item><item><author>xg15</author><text>&gt; <i>Many site owners find that the titles they carefully craft almost all get rewritten.</i><p>Yeah, I&#x27;m with Google on this one. I don&#x27;t see many reasons why a site owner would spend extraordinary amounts of time to &quot;carefully craft&quot; page titles other than SEO and optimizing for clickbaitness. As a user, I&#x27;m fine with Google counteracting this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>titanomachy</author><text>Ah, rice. The quintessential Asian grain, now consumed by billions around the world. When I was a child, my mixed-race family used to eat rice every day! Even today, the subtle aroma of rice wafting up from the kitchen brings a sense of nostalgia. It&#x27;s a sure sign that dinner is approaching, my favorite meal of the day...<p>[5 pages later]<p>1. Put rice and water in rice cooker<p>2. Press &quot;start&quot;</text></comment> | <story><title>Google rewrites many page titles</title><url>https://zyppy.com/blog/google-title-rewrite-study/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stickfigure</author><text>I think you&#x27;ve got this wrong - they should <i>heavily editorialize</i> the titles.<p>Honest titles of search results:<p>* <i>Five pages of flowery text and images before two lines of instruction on how to boil rice</i><p>* <i>A bunch of tantalizing pictures of exactly what you&#x27;re looking for but zero further information about it</i><p>* <i>Product reviews machine-generated from public review sources with affiliate links. Top-rated product has the best affiliate revenue.</i><p>* <i>You won&#x27;t care about this solution to a problem you don&#x27;t have.</i><p>etc...</text></item><item><author>pavon</author><text>I think that is the worst reason for them to rewrite titles. If they left the title as-is, then I would be able to see in the search results that it was a spammy site and ignore it. Instead Google is helping to launder their SEO and present it as a more legitimate site. If Google thinks a site is gaming their algorithms they should de-prioritize it, not rewrite it.</text></item><item><author>xg15</author><text>&gt; <i>Many site owners find that the titles they carefully craft almost all get rewritten.</i><p>Yeah, I&#x27;m with Google on this one. I don&#x27;t see many reasons why a site owner would spend extraordinary amounts of time to &quot;carefully craft&quot; page titles other than SEO and optimizing for clickbaitness. As a user, I&#x27;m fine with Google counteracting this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dheera</author><text>Would also be nice if they edited things to actually be true, e.g.<p>* e-bike with 10 miles of actual range even though they advertise 30 miles<p>* laptop with 2 hours of battery life at 100% CPU usage even though they advertise 10 hours<p>* median $450 flight even though they advertise it as $199</text></comment> |
39,208,254 | 39,207,263 | 1 | 2 | 39,201,643 | train | <story><title>Show HN: Twine – Open source multiplatform RSS app</title><url>https://github.com/msasikanth/twine</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fuddle</author><text>I think you should be more specific what multiplatform means in the project description. i.e iOS and Android</text></comment> | <story><title>Show HN: Twine – Open source multiplatform RSS app</title><url>https://github.com/msasikanth/twine</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>smcleod</author><text>Just tried it out and it doesn’t feel quite right on iOS. Almost like the app is just a website loading in a browser. It’s very flat and the UI feels too “thin” (I know that doesn’t really make sense but it’s the best description I of how it feels to me right now).<p>I guess it just doesn’t feel very native - more of a web wrapper?</text></comment> |
20,502,906 | 20,502,637 | 1 | 2 | 20,495,047 | train | <story><title>A Worrying Analysis of Recent Neural Recommendation Approaches</title><url>https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.06902</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mayank</author><text>Research code is generally an abomination, scraped together by MS&#x2F;PhD students who may never have had any industry exposure to best practices, norms, testing, etc. There may also be the fear of releasing buggy code, which if&#x2F;when discovered, will discredit the paper. Far safer to just not release the code, since it isn&#x27;t mandated (which should absolutely 100% change)<p>Source: am former producer&#x2F;publisher of abomination research code.</text></item><item><author>goostavos</author><text>Is there some background reason that academics generally don&#x27;t provide code in their papers? Hell, in a lot of papers I&#x27;ve tried looking at recently[0], there will be paragraphs and paragraphs of english text <i>describing</i> an algorithm rather than even just plunking down some pseudo code.<p>It makes pulling out the actual content of the papers such a slog.<p>[0] exhibit A: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ieeexplore.ieee.org&#x2F;document&#x2F;1017616" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ieeexplore.ieee.org&#x2F;document&#x2F;1017616</a></text></item><item><author>nkurz</author><text>Summarizing, they tried replicating the results of 18 recent papers, and determined that because of lack of available code or data, they were only able to attempt replications of 7 of them. Of these, they found that the &quot;improvements&quot; in 6 of them could also be achieved with a simpler non-machine learning approach (such as nearest neighbor). For the 7th (Mult-VAE), they were able to almost match the improvement with better tuning of one of the baselines used in that paper.<p>Does this mean that the published results are garbage? No! But what does it mean?<p>First, don&#x27;t miss the main claim: less than half the published papers have sufficient code and data available for replication. While one might argue exactly what the standards for availability should be, if journals and reviewers were to demand it, this number can definitely be improved. Greater availability of data and code makes for better science.<p>Second, my guess is that it means that paper authors are using excess &quot;puffery&quot; in an attempt to improve the chances that their papers are accepted for publication. They&#x27;ve decided that using a weak baseline and claiming a 50% improvement is more likely to result in publication than using a realistic baseline and claiming a 0-5% improvement. Unfortunately, they are probably right.<p>The useful change (in my opinion) would be to change the standards by which papers are judged to be publishable. Reviewers should push back against weak baselines, but be more accepting of results that make modest claims. You can still have a useful paper even if the degree of improvement is small --- or even nonexistent. Maybe it will inspire someone else, maybe it&#x27;s useful in an ensemble, or maybe it applies to a case where the baseline wouldn&#x27;t. It&#x27;s the puffery that&#x27;s the problem, not the publication. Creating a system that rewards authors who more honestly evaluate their work would be an overall win.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>khawkins</author><text>I disagree that it is a lack of industry exposure. &quot;Best practices, norms, testing, etc.&quot; is a waste of time when you develop well written code that doesn&#x27;t produce good results. After months of tweaking even a good foundation of code, it begins looking atrocious. But you get graduated for publications based on good results, not for code that someone else can use.</text></comment> | <story><title>A Worrying Analysis of Recent Neural Recommendation Approaches</title><url>https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.06902</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mayank</author><text>Research code is generally an abomination, scraped together by MS&#x2F;PhD students who may never have had any industry exposure to best practices, norms, testing, etc. There may also be the fear of releasing buggy code, which if&#x2F;when discovered, will discredit the paper. Far safer to just not release the code, since it isn&#x27;t mandated (which should absolutely 100% change)<p>Source: am former producer&#x2F;publisher of abomination research code.</text></item><item><author>goostavos</author><text>Is there some background reason that academics generally don&#x27;t provide code in their papers? Hell, in a lot of papers I&#x27;ve tried looking at recently[0], there will be paragraphs and paragraphs of english text <i>describing</i> an algorithm rather than even just plunking down some pseudo code.<p>It makes pulling out the actual content of the papers such a slog.<p>[0] exhibit A: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ieeexplore.ieee.org&#x2F;document&#x2F;1017616" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ieeexplore.ieee.org&#x2F;document&#x2F;1017616</a></text></item><item><author>nkurz</author><text>Summarizing, they tried replicating the results of 18 recent papers, and determined that because of lack of available code or data, they were only able to attempt replications of 7 of them. Of these, they found that the &quot;improvements&quot; in 6 of them could also be achieved with a simpler non-machine learning approach (such as nearest neighbor). For the 7th (Mult-VAE), they were able to almost match the improvement with better tuning of one of the baselines used in that paper.<p>Does this mean that the published results are garbage? No! But what does it mean?<p>First, don&#x27;t miss the main claim: less than half the published papers have sufficient code and data available for replication. While one might argue exactly what the standards for availability should be, if journals and reviewers were to demand it, this number can definitely be improved. Greater availability of data and code makes for better science.<p>Second, my guess is that it means that paper authors are using excess &quot;puffery&quot; in an attempt to improve the chances that their papers are accepted for publication. They&#x27;ve decided that using a weak baseline and claiming a 50% improvement is more likely to result in publication than using a realistic baseline and claiming a 0-5% improvement. Unfortunately, they are probably right.<p>The useful change (in my opinion) would be to change the standards by which papers are judged to be publishable. Reviewers should push back against weak baselines, but be more accepting of results that make modest claims. You can still have a useful paper even if the degree of improvement is small --- or even nonexistent. Maybe it will inspire someone else, maybe it&#x27;s useful in an ensemble, or maybe it applies to a case where the baseline wouldn&#x27;t. It&#x27;s the puffery that&#x27;s the problem, not the publication. Creating a system that rewards authors who more honestly evaluate their work would be an overall win.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dv_dt</author><text>I wonder if a journal could be established that emphasizes code integrated papers, something that might accept submissions as jupyter notebooks for example.<p>Edit: Perhaps one way to encourage this is via topic &quot;reuse&quot; papers, which present further detail on a previously published papers topic, but this time with code and more detailed discussion. It would at least help the situations in that the author gets some reuse of effort, but in a way that still shows new information and advances the field.</text></comment> |
38,650,954 | 38,650,992 | 1 | 2 | 38,642,651 | train | <story><title>Turing awardees republished key methods and ideas without credit</title><url>https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/ai-priority-disputes.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lacker</author><text>Whenever you cite papers just because you&#x27;re &quot;politically supposed to&quot;, even though you don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s really intellectually useful for anyone to be aware of the cited paper, you&#x27;re making the citations less useful for everybody.<p>Schmidhuber is only the worst of many abusers of the citation system. Everyone knows that anonymous reviewers are more likely to approve of people who cite their work. Someone is politically powerful? Better cite their paper, even though you don&#x27;t really think it&#x27;s a good paper and you didn&#x27;t use it.<p>Schmidhuber is cited far more often than he should be, because people just don&#x27;t want to deal with this crap, and the cost of sticking in one more citation is very low.</text></item><item><author>calf</author><text>But it is possible that he ought to have been cited as well? It doesn&#x27;t matter if he&#x27;s a hypocrite. The justification ultimately has to be, &quot;Our paper did not use your work in any substantial way therefore a citation is not needed.&quot;<p>I can see how citations can get very complex for the purposes of scientific credit, traditionally there&#x27;s a self-policed aspect to it in every academic community; however, in this century as advanced research gets more complex and globalized, it might be time for a more rigorous and neutral process of doing so.</text></item><item><author>SeanLuke</author><text>We published a paper a while back in a genetic programming conference, and before the paper had been published (only the title was announced) Schmidhuber guessed that we had not cited his work. He very publically put us through the wringer for not citing him as the inventor of the concept were were examining. In fact we had <i>not</i> cited him: but among our dozen or so previous examples, we had cited two <i>others</i> which long predated his work and were the actual seminal papers. He had failed to cite them himself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jahsome</author><text>&gt; Whenever you cite papers just because you&#x27;re &quot;politically supposed to&quot;, even though you don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s really intellectually useful for anyone to be aware of the cited paper, you&#x27;re making the citations less useful for everybody.<p>The audacity of deciding on behalf of readers whether information is valuable to them when publishing an academic paper is quite an interesting concept to me.<p>I&#x27;m not published in journals, but I do have a &quot;professional&quot; writing background. There&#x27;s only a few ways I can imagine to read into your statement. Either you think you&#x27;re above citation, or so much smarter than the reader you&#x27;re qualified to decide on their behalf whether it&#x27;s relevant, or simply hiding it for nefarious reasons.<p>Any of these options, or even the perception of them, is precisely the type of behavior fostering anti intellectualism and prejudice for academia.<p>It&#x27;s also quite ironic you repeatedly mention &quot;politics&quot; while your entire argument seems to hinge on seeking to deny empowering further those already in power. Isn&#x27;t that exercising political capital?</text></comment> | <story><title>Turing awardees republished key methods and ideas without credit</title><url>https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/ai-priority-disputes.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lacker</author><text>Whenever you cite papers just because you&#x27;re &quot;politically supposed to&quot;, even though you don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s really intellectually useful for anyone to be aware of the cited paper, you&#x27;re making the citations less useful for everybody.<p>Schmidhuber is only the worst of many abusers of the citation system. Everyone knows that anonymous reviewers are more likely to approve of people who cite their work. Someone is politically powerful? Better cite their paper, even though you don&#x27;t really think it&#x27;s a good paper and you didn&#x27;t use it.<p>Schmidhuber is cited far more often than he should be, because people just don&#x27;t want to deal with this crap, and the cost of sticking in one more citation is very low.</text></item><item><author>calf</author><text>But it is possible that he ought to have been cited as well? It doesn&#x27;t matter if he&#x27;s a hypocrite. The justification ultimately has to be, &quot;Our paper did not use your work in any substantial way therefore a citation is not needed.&quot;<p>I can see how citations can get very complex for the purposes of scientific credit, traditionally there&#x27;s a self-policed aspect to it in every academic community; however, in this century as advanced research gets more complex and globalized, it might be time for a more rigorous and neutral process of doing so.</text></item><item><author>SeanLuke</author><text>We published a paper a while back in a genetic programming conference, and before the paper had been published (only the title was announced) Schmidhuber guessed that we had not cited his work. He very publically put us through the wringer for not citing him as the inventor of the concept were were examining. In fact we had <i>not</i> cited him: but among our dozen or so previous examples, we had cited two <i>others</i> which long predated his work and were the actual seminal papers. He had failed to cite them himself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tnecniv</author><text>My godfather is an academic that does some arcane nonsense (I mean that in the nicest way possible) involving topology and number theory. He told me a story about how he and his coauthor had a paper in review for 3 years because the reviewer insisted on adding citations to what they assumed were his own work because they were not particularly relevant. My godfather after a round or two didn’t have the patience for it and said whatever let’s just put them in by his coauthor refused hence the three years of back and forth.</text></comment> |
6,362,963 | 6,362,945 | 1 | 2 | 6,361,558 | train | <story><title>Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/10/apple-unveils-the-iphone-5s/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cheald</author><text>I&#x27;m not snarking at all. I&#x27;m observing that comments about the NSA are entirely <i>apropos</i> given the current climate we live in. Yes, you&#x27;re right, at this point, it would take something extremely radical to convince us that the NSA isn&#x27;t spying on us anymore. Therefore, we should expect comments about the NSA and spying to become a part of the common dialog regarding technology and personal information. Asking them to go away is just asking people to stick their head in the sand and ignore it.<p>The comments will go away when the issue goes away. The issue isn&#x27;t going to go away. Therefore, don&#x27;t expect the comments to, either. Welcome to the world we now live in.</text></item><item><author>stanleydrew</author><text>More snark. This isn&#x27;t helpful.<p>For those who want to believe it, I doubt there is any amount of information that could ever be released to convince them that the NSA <i>isn&#x27;t</i> spying on people anymore.</text></item><item><author>cheald</author><text>Probably when the NSA stops illegally spying on the citizens it is supposed to serve.</text></item><item><author>dev_jim</author><text>Urgh. When do we get to the point where I can read HN without a snarky NSA comment being voted to the top?</text></item><item><author>pilif</author><text>Now that we have to consider the iPhones to be backdoored by the NSA, I wonder whether I really want to give them my fingerprint together with the rest of my data. I&#x27;m also not so sure whether a fingerprint can&#x27;t still be easily faked (like it was possible on that Mythbusters episode for example).<p>Personally, I think I&#x27;d rather stay with my passcode.<p>Did you btw know that you can turn off &quot;simple passcode&quot; and then use a purely numeric longer passcode? In that case the iPhone will still show the big easy-to-hit numeric keyboard allowing you to type in the arbitrary length numeric code.<p>Yes. It&#x27;s not as safe as a long alphanumeric password, but this gets annoying SO quickly, I&#x27;d rather type in my 8 digits.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>melling</author><text>But you are accomplishing absolutely nothing here. Being annoying and ineffective doesn&#x27;t help your cause. Do you know that Jesus loves you and he wants to save your soul?<p>You might as we&#x27;ll be discussing religion or politics here. This is not the place. I heard your warning the first ten times.</text></comment> | <story><title>Apple Unveils The iPhone 5S</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/10/apple-unveils-the-iphone-5s/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cheald</author><text>I&#x27;m not snarking at all. I&#x27;m observing that comments about the NSA are entirely <i>apropos</i> given the current climate we live in. Yes, you&#x27;re right, at this point, it would take something extremely radical to convince us that the NSA isn&#x27;t spying on us anymore. Therefore, we should expect comments about the NSA and spying to become a part of the common dialog regarding technology and personal information. Asking them to go away is just asking people to stick their head in the sand and ignore it.<p>The comments will go away when the issue goes away. The issue isn&#x27;t going to go away. Therefore, don&#x27;t expect the comments to, either. Welcome to the world we now live in.</text></item><item><author>stanleydrew</author><text>More snark. This isn&#x27;t helpful.<p>For those who want to believe it, I doubt there is any amount of information that could ever be released to convince them that the NSA <i>isn&#x27;t</i> spying on people anymore.</text></item><item><author>cheald</author><text>Probably when the NSA stops illegally spying on the citizens it is supposed to serve.</text></item><item><author>dev_jim</author><text>Urgh. When do we get to the point where I can read HN without a snarky NSA comment being voted to the top?</text></item><item><author>pilif</author><text>Now that we have to consider the iPhones to be backdoored by the NSA, I wonder whether I really want to give them my fingerprint together with the rest of my data. I&#x27;m also not so sure whether a fingerprint can&#x27;t still be easily faked (like it was possible on that Mythbusters episode for example).<p>Personally, I think I&#x27;d rather stay with my passcode.<p>Did you btw know that you can turn off &quot;simple passcode&quot; and then use a purely numeric longer passcode? In that case the iPhone will still show the big easy-to-hit numeric keyboard allowing you to type in the arbitrary length numeric code.<p>Yes. It&#x27;s not as safe as a long alphanumeric password, but this gets annoying SO quickly, I&#x27;d rather type in my 8 digits.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>timr</author><text><i>&quot;Asking them to go away is just asking people to stick their head in the sand and ignore it.&quot;</i><p>I think what&#x27;s happening here is that <i>you</i> are being asked to go away. Your comments aren&#x27;t adding anything to this discussion about a new iPhone.</text></comment> |
41,219,130 | 41,215,413 | 1 | 2 | 41,215,201 | train | <story><title>Building data infrastructure that will last</title><url>https://seattledataguy.substack.com/p/why-your-data-stack-wont-last-and</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Terr_</author><text>I&#x27;ve come to believe the opposite, promoting it as &quot;Design for Deletion.&quot;<p>I used to think I could make a wonderful work of art which everyone will appreciate for the ages, crafted so that every contingency is planned for, every need met... But nobody predicts future needs that well. Someday whatever I make is going to be That Stupid Thing to somebody, and they&#x27;re going to be justified demolishing the whole mess, no matter how proud I may feel about it now.<p>So instead, put effort into making it <i>easy to remove</i>. This often ends up reducing coupling, but--crucially--it&#x27;s not the same as some enthusiastic young developer trying to decouple <i>all the things</i> through a meta-configurable framework. Sometimes a tight coupling is better when it&#x27;s easier to reason about.<p>The question isn&#x27;t whether You Ain&#x27;t Gonna Need It, the question is whether when you <i>do</i> need it will so much have changed that other design-aspects won&#x27;t be valid anymore. It also means a level of trust towards (or helpless acceptance of) a future steward of your code.</text></comment> | <story><title>Building data infrastructure that will last</title><url>https://seattledataguy.substack.com/p/why-your-data-stack-wont-last-and</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>weego</author><text><i>How do you ensure the data infrastructure you’re building doesn’t get replaced as soon as you leave in the future?</i><p>If this is a core conceit of the thinking then my answer is who cares?<p>Why do you want to try and influence a situation you&#x27;re not even involed in?<p>Taking it back to the best lesson I was ever given in software engineering &quot;don&#x27;t code for every future&quot;.<p>Do what you&#x27;re asked to and not get caught up in projecting your own biases into trying to make a &quot;solid base&quot; for the future when you can&#x27;t know the concerns of said future.</text></comment> |
18,288,097 | 18,287,882 | 1 | 2 | 18,287,187 | train | <story><title>Lack of progress exposed by the Canary MacGuffin</title><url>https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/10/23/idle/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>AndyNemmity</author><text>I&#x27;m likely in a Canary MacGuffin situation right now. What is the reason?<p>I&#x27;ve been given a task I don&#x27;t know how to do. So I&#x27;m working diligently on learning enough about it. But because I don&#x27;t know how to do it, there are an infinite number of concepts that may or may not be required to complete the task.<p>So, I am using the time productively in the sense of breaking apart each piece I don&#x27;t understand, building it myself, learning about it, and moving on to another one.<p>But I haven&#x27;t collected the key from the shop. Every day, I write down what I need to do again, and it changes and evolves as I learn things. I try again to complete the task, fail again, use it as an opportunity to learn about that piece.<p>If I had just got the key, maybe the task is complete, but I am no closer to being able to obtain a different key, or providing any value on that surface area.<p>So I&#x27;m optimizing for my ability to get keys in the future, not getting this particular key.<p>Is that good? Bad? Lots of arguments in both directions I think. Maybe my optimizations are 25% what they could be with direct help. But having experienced direct help, what it actually means is someone talks over my head no matter how much I say I don&#x27;t understand.<p>They don&#x27;t get just how far away I am. Given the constraints, all that can be done is to improve to the point where their help, is help.<p>Hopefully that made some level of sense.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bigiain</author><text>So communicate that back to the person who asked you to do the task.<p>I don&#x27;t mind discovering a task I&#x27;ve assigned someone is actually way more complicated and time consuming that I expected (although I&#x27;d appreciate an explanation so I can recalibrate my assumptions), and I don&#x27;t even mind finding out a team member I&#x27;ve assigned a task to is not yet skilled or experienced enough to understand the best way of doing it or to complete it in a reasonable timeframe.<p>What _does_ bug me (as RachelByTheBay alludes to) is the complete radio silence where I&#x27;ve been kinda expecting the job to pop out of the queue completed for the last few days&#x2F;weeks, only to finally after giving you the benefit of the doubt and not wanting to seem like I&#x27;m micromanaging you - discover it&#x27;s barely been started and doesn&#x27;t look like it&#x27;ll _ever_ get completed.<p>If it&#x27;s way more complex that I assumed? Tell me. If you&#x27;re way out of your depth? Tell me. If you think it&#x27;s a stupid task and you&#x27;re not going to do it and hope it goes away? Just fucking tell me!</text></comment> | <story><title>Lack of progress exposed by the Canary MacGuffin</title><url>https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/10/23/idle/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>AndyNemmity</author><text>I&#x27;m likely in a Canary MacGuffin situation right now. What is the reason?<p>I&#x27;ve been given a task I don&#x27;t know how to do. So I&#x27;m working diligently on learning enough about it. But because I don&#x27;t know how to do it, there are an infinite number of concepts that may or may not be required to complete the task.<p>So, I am using the time productively in the sense of breaking apart each piece I don&#x27;t understand, building it myself, learning about it, and moving on to another one.<p>But I haven&#x27;t collected the key from the shop. Every day, I write down what I need to do again, and it changes and evolves as I learn things. I try again to complete the task, fail again, use it as an opportunity to learn about that piece.<p>If I had just got the key, maybe the task is complete, but I am no closer to being able to obtain a different key, or providing any value on that surface area.<p>So I&#x27;m optimizing for my ability to get keys in the future, not getting this particular key.<p>Is that good? Bad? Lots of arguments in both directions I think. Maybe my optimizations are 25% what they could be with direct help. But having experienced direct help, what it actually means is someone talks over my head no matter how much I say I don&#x27;t understand.<p>They don&#x27;t get just how far away I am. Given the constraints, all that can be done is to improve to the point where their help, is help.<p>Hopefully that made some level of sense.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>protomyth</author><text>I know the feeling. I had a report (excuse me <i>business intelligence query with nice printing</i>) that I was working on that took up north of a couple of hundred hours. My problem was that I had to do the business logic (and gather a huge amount of domain knowledge) too. It was something of an effort, and I didn&#x27;t make it to the shop for the key for a long while.<p>The best you can do is document, almost diary style, all of things you are doing to get to the goal and hope you have a project manager that will provide support and resources to get it all done. Frankly, all of my notes (which eventually went on a wiki for our group) helped in doing so much more.<p>Honestly, I think the whole question of &quot;do you need domain knowledge to complete the task?&quot; should be something to consider. Many folks do programming that isn&#x27;t the same at each company and this tends to generate a different path that might not have a &#x27;Canary MacGuffin&#x27; until very late in the process.<p>I also think that the whole &quot;stupid task&quot; is often mixed in the whole need &#x2F; don&#x27;t need domain knowledge. Many &quot;stupid tasks&quot; are related to the business process and often colored by not having technical resources with domain knowledge.<p>I once ran into a developer who thought it was stupid that we wanted some calculated amounts stored in the database. He didn&#x27;t understand that other parts (oh, like the billing system) would have a problem redoing the calculation. Extreme, but one person&#x27;s stupid is another person&#x27;s ability to get paid.</text></comment> |
11,367,032 | 11,366,750 | 1 | 2 | 11,366,265 | train | <story><title>Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/opinion/andy-groves-warning-to-silicon-valley.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zanny</author><text>I think there is a significant confluence among those who find prosperity and purpose through jobs to conflate the concepts of employment and purpose. That to not have a job is to not have a purpose, and vice versa. If we had a planned economy built around peak employment, we would have many fewer entrepreneurs and many more, as you say, hole diggers.<p>Socially we already do that. We have created a gargantuan advertising industry that has zero net material gain for society, whose sole purpose is to redirect dollars already in circulation to their employers. We have dramatically expanded bureaucracy in almost every industry to micromanage risk at the cost of tremendous overhead in the time of human beings spent on it. We maintain many institutions in the service industry more-so because the marginal cost of having all the participants unemployed (and thus hungry, destitute, and dangerous) is worse than just paying them do to work nobody practically would need done if not for the negative impacts of simply dropping people out of the workforce.<p>But this is entirely the wrong way to approach economics. It is absolutely antithetical to the human condition to start from the presumption that people need to do something for someone else for their life to have meaning. That is where entrepreneurism comes from, and we need more of it going forward, not less, as we systemically eliminate the repetitious work in our lives through technological advancement. To aspire for peak employment is to aspire for the death of aspiration. Rather than seeing a &quot;problem&quot; of unemployment, when the practical cause is derived from the lack of anyone willing to pay people for their time considering the skills that they have, see it as an opportunity. If we have unemployment it means everything worth doing is being done, and we should be trying to enable those who are not needed to keep society running to improve that society through innovation than to fabricate busywork for them to do to keep all the cogs in the machine in tune with one another, even if a large segment of said cogs are redundant.<p>And probably the best example is how I imagine most people would read that previous sentence - but there is a ton of things <i>I</i> want done! But practically, capitalism does not care what <i>you</i> want, it cares about only what those with the dollars to make their voices heard want. The unemployed should be those free to listen to the wants of people rather than money, rather than those who society condemns to poverty.</text></item><item><author>luso_brazilian</author><text>&gt; &quot;There was room for improvement, he argued, for what he called “job-centric” economics and politics. In a job-centric system, job creation would be the nation’s No. 1 objective, with the government setting priorities and arraying the forces necessary to achieve the goal, and with businesses operating not only in their immediate profit interest but also in the interests of “employees, and employees yet to be hired.”&quot;<p>Although a valid concern putting &quot;job creation&quot; as a goal for governments can (and in a lot of occurrences in recent history, did) backfire spectacularly.<p>In the most reductive analogy it creates incentive for the government to create &quot;hole diggers&quot; and &quot;hole fillers&quot; type of jobs that, in aggregate, generate very few useful work while fulfilling this basic goal of job creation.<p>I believe this &quot;job creation as priority&quot; approach is inferior to both the &quot;laissez-faire&quot; capitalist alternative and the &quot;basic income&quot; social democratic one.<p>As an example of its dangers it suffices to see the kafkaesque process of fund allocation (and sourcing) for the public funded aerospace industry, both the military procurement (fighter jets, bombers) and the civilian NASA one.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hitekker</author><text>I am reminded of what George Orwelles wrote in &quot;Down and out in Paris and London&quot;:<p>&gt; Beggars do not work, it is said; but then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, bronchitis etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course — but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout-in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering.<p>EDIT: On a side note, I agreed halfway with what you&#x27;re writing but the second half of your comment seems a bit more unclear&#x2F;I&#x27;m not sure what you&#x27;re discussing there. Could you clarify what you mean?</text></comment> | <story><title>Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/opinion/andy-groves-warning-to-silicon-valley.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zanny</author><text>I think there is a significant confluence among those who find prosperity and purpose through jobs to conflate the concepts of employment and purpose. That to not have a job is to not have a purpose, and vice versa. If we had a planned economy built around peak employment, we would have many fewer entrepreneurs and many more, as you say, hole diggers.<p>Socially we already do that. We have created a gargantuan advertising industry that has zero net material gain for society, whose sole purpose is to redirect dollars already in circulation to their employers. We have dramatically expanded bureaucracy in almost every industry to micromanage risk at the cost of tremendous overhead in the time of human beings spent on it. We maintain many institutions in the service industry more-so because the marginal cost of having all the participants unemployed (and thus hungry, destitute, and dangerous) is worse than just paying them do to work nobody practically would need done if not for the negative impacts of simply dropping people out of the workforce.<p>But this is entirely the wrong way to approach economics. It is absolutely antithetical to the human condition to start from the presumption that people need to do something for someone else for their life to have meaning. That is where entrepreneurism comes from, and we need more of it going forward, not less, as we systemically eliminate the repetitious work in our lives through technological advancement. To aspire for peak employment is to aspire for the death of aspiration. Rather than seeing a &quot;problem&quot; of unemployment, when the practical cause is derived from the lack of anyone willing to pay people for their time considering the skills that they have, see it as an opportunity. If we have unemployment it means everything worth doing is being done, and we should be trying to enable those who are not needed to keep society running to improve that society through innovation than to fabricate busywork for them to do to keep all the cogs in the machine in tune with one another, even if a large segment of said cogs are redundant.<p>And probably the best example is how I imagine most people would read that previous sentence - but there is a ton of things <i>I</i> want done! But practically, capitalism does not care what <i>you</i> want, it cares about only what those with the dollars to make their voices heard want. The unemployed should be those free to listen to the wants of people rather than money, rather than those who society condemns to poverty.</text></item><item><author>luso_brazilian</author><text>&gt; &quot;There was room for improvement, he argued, for what he called “job-centric” economics and politics. In a job-centric system, job creation would be the nation’s No. 1 objective, with the government setting priorities and arraying the forces necessary to achieve the goal, and with businesses operating not only in their immediate profit interest but also in the interests of “employees, and employees yet to be hired.”&quot;<p>Although a valid concern putting &quot;job creation&quot; as a goal for governments can (and in a lot of occurrences in recent history, did) backfire spectacularly.<p>In the most reductive analogy it creates incentive for the government to create &quot;hole diggers&quot; and &quot;hole fillers&quot; type of jobs that, in aggregate, generate very few useful work while fulfilling this basic goal of job creation.<p>I believe this &quot;job creation as priority&quot; approach is inferior to both the &quot;laissez-faire&quot; capitalist alternative and the &quot;basic income&quot; social democratic one.<p>As an example of its dangers it suffices to see the kafkaesque process of fund allocation (and sourcing) for the public funded aerospace industry, both the military procurement (fighter jets, bombers) and the civilian NASA one.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ArkyBeagle</author><text>I&#x27;m not sure it&#x27;s an ... axiomatic ( meaning just made up out of whole cloth ) assumption that doing meaningful things for other people is part of a path to happiness.<p>It may have the advantage of being true.<p>It does not mean that it&#x27;s the only condition for happiness ( it is necessary but not sufficient ) , but I know of no good assault on this idea. Adam Smith&#x27;s &quot;to be loved and to be lovely&quot; exists, and is deeply imbedded.<p>The advertising&#x2F;media industrial complex problem is much more profound. But in order to propagate criticisms of it you&#x27;d sort of need the advertising&#x2F;media industrial complex to get those ideas out. Still, Adam Curtis documentaries exist, the work of Marshall MacLuhan and Vance Packard and others exist.<p>Of these, Adam Curtis seems to have taken the thing on most directly. And it was very funny watching &quot;Mad Men&quot; pull its punches.</text></comment> |
7,216,404 | 7,216,183 | 1 | 2 | 7,215,834 | train | <story><title>Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?</title><url>http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/9780/did-english-ever-have-a-formal-version-of-you</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fsck--off</author><text>Second person used to be:<p>Singular----|----Plural<p><pre><code> Thou Ye, You
Thee You
Thine Yours
Thy Your
</code></pre>
Which correspond to the nominative, objective, and possessive cases accordingly.<p>By the way, the &quot;Ye&quot; is not related to the &quot;Ye&quot; in store signs that say &quot;Ye Olde...&quot;. Y was sometimes used by typographers instead of the Old English letter Þ(Thorn), which makes a &quot;Th&quot; sound, so those store signs should be pronounced as &quot;<i>The</i> Old...&quot;<p>The usage of &quot;You&quot; instead of &quot;Thou&quot; began in the 14th century. It was originally used in token of respect when addressing a superior, and eventually began to be used when addressing equals.<p>EDIT: Removed part about &quot;you all&quot;, because some things I said were wrong and others I will have to look up.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davedx</author><text>Interesting. So the way we learned the Lord&#x27;s Prayer, it seems to use the informal: &quot;Thy will be done&quot;. But that doesn&#x27;t correlate with addressing God as &quot;LORD&quot;, does it?<p>Edit: I looked this up and found this page: <a href="http://brandplucked.webs.com/theeandye.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;brandplucked.webs.com&#x2F;theeandye.htm</a><p>It seems to infer that &quot;thou, thee&quot; etc. are only about distinguishing between singular and plural. There&#x27;s no mention of them being an informal form, at least not in the King James Bible.<p>Even more:<p>&quot;As William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in the early 16th century, he sought to preserve the singular and plural distinctions that he found in his Hebrew and Greek originals. Therefore, he consistently used thou for the singular and ye for the plural regardless of the relative status of the speaker and the addressee. By doing so, he probably saved thou from utter obscurity and gave it an air of solemnity that sharply distinguished it from its original meaning. Tyndale&#x27;s usage was imitated in the King James Bible, and remained familiar because of that translation.&quot;<p>Then more from Wikipedia - the plot thickens!<p>&quot;Early English translations of the Bible used thou and never you as the singular second-person pronoun, with the double effect of maintaining thou in usage and also imbuing it with an air of religious solemnity that is antithetical to its former sense of familiarity or disrespect.&quot;<p>Also, apparently French uses the informal (see &quot;toi&quot; in the Lord&#x27;s Prayer), whereas Dutch uses formal (U&#x2F;uw).</text></comment> | <story><title>Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?</title><url>http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/9780/did-english-ever-have-a-formal-version-of-you</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fsck--off</author><text>Second person used to be:<p>Singular----|----Plural<p><pre><code> Thou Ye, You
Thee You
Thine Yours
Thy Your
</code></pre>
Which correspond to the nominative, objective, and possessive cases accordingly.<p>By the way, the &quot;Ye&quot; is not related to the &quot;Ye&quot; in store signs that say &quot;Ye Olde...&quot;. Y was sometimes used by typographers instead of the Old English letter Þ(Thorn), which makes a &quot;Th&quot; sound, so those store signs should be pronounced as &quot;<i>The</i> Old...&quot;<p>The usage of &quot;You&quot; instead of &quot;Thou&quot; began in the 14th century. It was originally used in token of respect when addressing a superior, and eventually began to be used when addressing equals.<p>EDIT: Removed part about &quot;you all&quot;, because some things I said were wrong and others I will have to look up.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tikwidd</author><text>A couple of other English pronoun tidbits:<p>- The third person plural set (they, their, them) was borrowed from Scandinavian (it&#x27;s pretty uncommon for languages to borrow &#x27;core&#x27; vocabulary such as pronouns).<p>- Old English (Anglo-Saxon) also had dual forms of the pronoun. Those were lost by Chaucer&#x27;s time though. Not sure if they are reflexes of early PIE dual forms or a more recent development from Proto-Germanic.<p>[Sara Malton] [1] has some interesting ideas about how the you&#x2F;thee distinction developed in the semantic dimensions of power as well as familiarity in Early Modern English.<p>There are many new 2p. plural forms developing in English that vary regionally and socially, e.g y&#x27;all, you guys, yous, you&#x27;uns (-&gt; yinz), all y&#x27;all.<p>[1]: <a href="http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361Malton.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;homes.chass.utoronto.ca&#x2F;~cpercy&#x2F;courses&#x2F;6361Malton.ht...</a></text></comment> |
7,536,341 | 7,536,163 | 1 | 2 | 7,536,034 | train | <story><title>Primer: Shaders</title><url>http://notes.underscorediscovery.com/shaders-a-primer/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sillysaurus3</author><text>Part of the confusion is the confusing terminology. &quot;Shader&quot; is a bad name. How do you &quot;shade&quot; a vertex? That implies color, when in fact vertex &quot;shading&quot; is really about deforming the position of vertices. It has nothing to do with color!<p>&quot;Vertex program&quot; is a better term.<p>That brings us to &quot;pixel shader.&quot; That&#x27;s actually a good name in order for beginners to learn the concept, but it&#x27;s imprecise. OpenGL insists on calling it a &quot;fragment program&quot; because with certain forms of antialiasing, there are multiple &quot;fragments&quot; per pixel. &quot;Program&quot; is also a better name than &quot;shader&quot; because there are things you can do per-pixel other than change the color. For example you could change the depth written to the Z-buffer, or you could cause the pixel to be skipped based on some criteria, like whether the texture color is pink.<p>Anyway, it&#x27;s just a tiny program that executes either per-vertex or per-pixel. For example you could write a vertex program which moves each vertex in a sinewave pattern based on time. Or you could write a fragment program to change the color of each pixel from red to green and back based on time.<p>Then there are more advanced&#x2F;recent concepts like a &quot;geometry program,&quot; which lets you generate triangles based on vertices or edges.<p>Sometimes I wonder if it&#x27;s overly complicated, or if the problem domain is just complicated. It took me years as a kid to finally grok this, but once I learned it, it turned out to be very simple. Honestly it wasn&#x27;t until I got up enough courage to sit down with the OpenGL specs and read through them that everything clicked. They&#x27;re dry reading but not difficult.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ANTSANTS</author><text>Traditionally, lighting was calculated per vertex, not per pixel, and the results of those calculations were simply interpolated across the surface of the triangle. A &quot;shader&quot; is not the most general term they could have used for a GPU program, but you very well can &quot;shade&quot; a vertex.<p>Edit: Is this seriously being downvoted? &quot;How do you &quot;shade&quot; a vertex? That implies color, when in fact vertex &quot;shading&quot; is really about deforming the position of vertices. It has nothing to do with color!&quot; is factually inaccurate because you can, and many games do, calculate color and lighting information per-vertex.</text></comment> | <story><title>Primer: Shaders</title><url>http://notes.underscorediscovery.com/shaders-a-primer/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sillysaurus3</author><text>Part of the confusion is the confusing terminology. &quot;Shader&quot; is a bad name. How do you &quot;shade&quot; a vertex? That implies color, when in fact vertex &quot;shading&quot; is really about deforming the position of vertices. It has nothing to do with color!<p>&quot;Vertex program&quot; is a better term.<p>That brings us to &quot;pixel shader.&quot; That&#x27;s actually a good name in order for beginners to learn the concept, but it&#x27;s imprecise. OpenGL insists on calling it a &quot;fragment program&quot; because with certain forms of antialiasing, there are multiple &quot;fragments&quot; per pixel. &quot;Program&quot; is also a better name than &quot;shader&quot; because there are things you can do per-pixel other than change the color. For example you could change the depth written to the Z-buffer, or you could cause the pixel to be skipped based on some criteria, like whether the texture color is pink.<p>Anyway, it&#x27;s just a tiny program that executes either per-vertex or per-pixel. For example you could write a vertex program which moves each vertex in a sinewave pattern based on time. Or you could write a fragment program to change the color of each pixel from red to green and back based on time.<p>Then there are more advanced&#x2F;recent concepts like a &quot;geometry program,&quot; which lets you generate triangles based on vertices or edges.<p>Sometimes I wonder if it&#x27;s overly complicated, or if the problem domain is just complicated. It took me years as a kid to finally grok this, but once I learned it, it turned out to be very simple. Honestly it wasn&#x27;t until I got up enough courage to sit down with the OpenGL specs and read through them that everything clicked. They&#x27;re dry reading but not difficult.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pyalot2</author><text>The reason it&#x27;s not called vertex program is because the pipeline is defined in terms of stages (vertex -&gt; tessellation control -&gt; tessellation evaluation -&gt; geometry -&gt; rasterizer -&gt; fragment). Together they are a program. When talking about this structure the choice that OpenGL made is:<p>&quot;A shader program consists of a vertex shader (VS), tessellation control shader (TS control), tessellation evaluation shader (TS eval), geometry shader (GS) and fragment shader (FS).&quot;<p>You could instead say this, but it would be confusing:<p>A shader program consists of a vertex program, tessellation control program, tessellation evaluation program, geometry program and fragment program.<p>And it would even get more confusing if you drop the first shader:<p>&quot;A program consists of a vertex program, tessellation control program, tessellation evaluation program, geometry program and fragment program.&quot;<p>So for the sake of it being easy to talk about, a (shader) program is the whole thing, whenever somebody talks about a &quot;program&quot; it&#x27;s the whole assemblage. And when somebody talks about a shader, it means one of the programs tied to a stage.</text></comment> |
25,401,614 | 25,401,587 | 1 | 3 | 25,401,294 | train | <story><title>I Hacked into Facebook's Legal Department Admin Panel</title><url>https://alaa.blog/2020/12/how-i-hacked-facebook-part-one/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trav4225</author><text>I&#x27;ve always wondered, aren&#x27;t these types of bug investigations illegal? Aren&#x27;t the investigators concerned about criminal prosecution? Not being snarky; I&#x27;m asking sincerely.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jcims</author><text>In general you are on shaky legal ground.<p>However, some companies (including Facebook) have a bug bounty program that provides a prescribed safe harbor that you can operate within to discover vulnerabilities within their products or infrastructure in exchange for some kind of recognition or award.<p>The terms of Facebooks bounty are here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;whitehat" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;whitehat</a><p>Based on a cursory glance and the fact that this individual was awarded in their program, it appears they operated by the book.<p>Prosecuting activity that happens outside of these parameters has definitely happened in the past and will continue. It&#x27;s not always a cut and dried decision. It can be difficult&#x2F;expensive to effectively prosecute and you may find a lot of social backlash depending on the nature and impact of the activity.</text></comment> | <story><title>I Hacked into Facebook's Legal Department Admin Panel</title><url>https://alaa.blog/2020/12/how-i-hacked-facebook-part-one/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trav4225</author><text>I&#x27;ve always wondered, aren&#x27;t these types of bug investigations illegal? Aren&#x27;t the investigators concerned about criminal prosecution? Not being snarky; I&#x27;m asking sincerely.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>detaro</author><text>Places with a bug bounty program typically publicly state rules for what they think is ok for a researcher to do, specifically to avoid that problem. Without permission like that, yes, such an investigation can quickly move into legally dangerous areas, and not all companies have gotten the idea that if someone is willing to tell you about a problem you want them on your side, threatening or suing them just means the next time someone finds something you&#x27;re not told. (of course that&#x27;s not a free-for-all for researchers, if you start actually poking in private data or hack actual peoples accounts that&#x27;s a problem)</text></comment> |
15,527,456 | 15,527,337 | 1 | 2 | 15,526,929 | train | <story><title>Deep C (2011)</title><url>http://www.pvv.org/~oma/DeepC_slides_oct2011.pdf</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>GlitchMr</author><text>All the talk about `printf(&quot;%d\n&quot;, a);` and it&#x27;s invalid due to a certain part of a language. From list of undefined behaviours (J.2).<p>&gt; In a context requiring two function types to be compatible, they do not have compatible return types, or their parameters disagree in use of the ellipsis terminator or the number and type of parameters (after default argument promotion, when there is no parameter type list or when one type is specified by a function definition with an identifier list) (6.7.5.3).<p>&gt; disagree in use of the ellipsis terminator<p>printf is called with the following implicit type signature (due to not including stdio.h)<p><pre><code> int (char *, int);
</code></pre>
However, the actual printf signature is as follows.<p><pre><code> int (const char *, ...);
</code></pre>
While char * can be used where const char * is being used, int is not a valid replacement for ellipsis terminator. As such, the correct answer is that it&#x27;s undefined behaviour.<p>(of course, most implementations will allow this code, but strictly speaking as a language lawyer it is undefined behaviour)</text></comment> | <story><title>Deep C (2011)</title><url>http://www.pvv.org/~oma/DeepC_slides_oct2011.pdf</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>madhadron</author><text>I know most of this trivia except where it crossed to C++, which I don&#x27;t pretend to understand. And instead of a candidate having a deep knowledge of this, I would rather have the compiler refuse to compile most of the examples. Computers are good at repetitively checking things. Why should I have to?</text></comment> |
26,176,483 | 26,175,451 | 1 | 3 | 26,174,135 | train | <story><title>Functioning ‘mechanical gears’ seen in nature for the first time (2013)</title><url>https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/functioning-mechanical-gears-seen-in-nature-for-the-first-time</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fuckthemachine</author><text>This is not the first time, see the Flagellum Motor (which is far more complex) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Flagellum" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Flagellum</a>
(often used in ontological arguments)</text></comment> | <story><title>Functioning ‘mechanical gears’ seen in nature for the first time (2013)</title><url>https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/functioning-mechanical-gears-seen-in-nature-for-the-first-time</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>scottmcdot</author><text>This is exactly the same as a corkscrew [1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ikea.com&#x2F;au&#x2F;en&#x2F;images&#x2F;products&#x2F;idealisk-corkscrew-silver-colour-matt__0713023_PE729202_S5.JPG" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ikea.com&#x2F;au&#x2F;en&#x2F;images&#x2F;products&#x2F;idealisk-corkscre...</a></text></comment> |
20,139,776 | 20,138,810 | 1 | 3 | 20,132,263 | train | <story><title>For Men Who Hate Talking on the Phone, Games Keep Friendships Alive</title><url>https://kotaku.com/for-men-who-hate-talking-on-the-phone-games-keep-frien-1835277944</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>papeda</author><text>As for many things, there&#x27;s a nice Knausgaard quote about this:<p>&gt; That’s what distance does; when the time between conversations gets longer, intimacy diminishes, the little things connected to one’s daily life lose their place, it seems odd to talk about a shirt you just bought or to mention you’re thinking of leaving the dishes until morning when you haven’t spoken to a person for two weeks or a month, that absence would seem instead to call for more important topics, and once they begin to determine the conversation there’s no turning back, because then it’s two diplomats exchanging information about their respective realms in a conversation that needs to be started up from scratch, in a sense, every time, which gradually becomes tedious, and eventually it’s easier not to bother phoning at all, in which case it’s even harder the next time, and then suddenly it’s been half a year of silence.<p>I&#x27;m a guy and I like phone calls to friends, but I let them wander organically with little pressure. Of course, my friends and I have lives where it&#x27;s not a big deal to set aside an hour or two for meandering conversation, and not everybody does. But wandering conversation is such a high-utility activity for me that I&#x27;m happy to do so. At any rate, it beats watching Netflix or whatever by a mile -- I remain confused by how many people say they have no time for friends but also consume a <i>bunch</i> of solo entertainment. I guess if your free time comes in unpredictably scheduled half hour blocks it might simultaneously be hard to plan hangouts and easy to watch TV, but I don&#x27;t think most people have that kind of life, outside of maybe certain sets of parents of young children?</text></comment> | <story><title>For Men Who Hate Talking on the Phone, Games Keep Friendships Alive</title><url>https://kotaku.com/for-men-who-hate-talking-on-the-phone-games-keep-frien-1835277944</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>JeffL</author><text>I was playing a Moba with my brother almost every day, talking on voice while we played. I had to quit because the Moba was really sucking up all my drive and free time, but after quitting, I really missed talking with my brother. I started playing again for that reason, but had to quit again, because in the year and a half I was playing that game, I really got nothing done other than have lots of fun and piss off my wife. Of course I never call my brother on the phone otherwise, I have no reason to. I have a really hard time finding a middle ground, but the social aspect of gaming is definitely one of the strong positives for me.</text></comment> |
15,672,696 | 15,672,288 | 1 | 2 | 15,672,000 | train | <story><title>Equifax CEO to Congress: Not Sure We Are Encrypting Data</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/equifax-ceo-to-congress-not-sure-we-are-encrypting-data-1510180486?mod=yahoo_hs&yptr=yahoo</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tptacek</author><text>Encryption wouldn&#x27;t have mattered here. To a pretty good first approximation, none of the &quot;encryption&quot; done at scale at any Fortune 500 company in the US is more than a speed bump for attackers. Unless you&#x27;re using moon math --- nobody is --- enterprise backend encryption is hamstrung by the fact that you&#x27;re keeping the data because <i>automated business processes need to use it</i>, which means automated systems need to decrypt it.</text></comment> | <story><title>Equifax CEO to Congress: Not Sure We Are Encrypting Data</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/equifax-ceo-to-congress-not-sure-we-are-encrypting-data-1510180486?mod=yahoo_hs&yptr=yahoo</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mrguyorama</author><text>I don&#x27;t know which is worse: That Equifax is straight up lying about their infrastructure to hide malpractice, or that they don&#x27;t even know</text></comment> |
22,139,092 | 22,138,816 | 1 | 2 | 22,137,262 | train | <story><title>US Department of Justice Argues Assange Has No First Amendment Rights</title><url>https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/24/assa-j24.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SllX</author><text>Horseshit.<p>The Bill of Rights is descriptive of <i>some</i> of the natural rights of men, not prescriptive. The reason it exists at all was to satisfy people who quite rightly thought that without the extra legal insulation a malicious Congress or government would trample all over them.<p>Go read the 1st Amendment, it’s right here:<p>&gt; <i>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.</i><p>The first five words are “Congress shall make no law”, or basically, this isn’t a <i>grant</i> given to the people, this is a restriction on the type of laws Congress is allowed to pass, and if Congress can’t pass a law, then a President can’t enforce it because it doesn’t constitutionally exist!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>MereInterest</author><text>It&#x27;s also worth adding that this wording makes it extend beyond the US borders. If the US Constitution granted rights to individuals, it would only apply to individuals under the US Constitution. Instead, it makes a blanket assumption that the freedom of speech exists, and that while other governments may restrict it, Congress may not. For example, overseas funding for HIV&#x2F;AIDS may not be conditional on recipients having a strict anti-prostitution policy, as that would violate the free speech of the recipients[1].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Agency_for_International_Development_v._Alliance_for_Open_Society_International,_Inc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Agency_for_International_Devel...</a>.</text></comment> | <story><title>US Department of Justice Argues Assange Has No First Amendment Rights</title><url>https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/24/assa-j24.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SllX</author><text>Horseshit.<p>The Bill of Rights is descriptive of <i>some</i> of the natural rights of men, not prescriptive. The reason it exists at all was to satisfy people who quite rightly thought that without the extra legal insulation a malicious Congress or government would trample all over them.<p>Go read the 1st Amendment, it’s right here:<p>&gt; <i>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.</i><p>The first five words are “Congress shall make no law”, or basically, this isn’t a <i>grant</i> given to the people, this is a restriction on the type of laws Congress is allowed to pass, and if Congress can’t pass a law, then a President can’t enforce it because it doesn’t constitutionally exist!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saalweachter</author><text>It is also worth repeating, from time to time, the Ninth Amendment: &quot;The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.&quot;</text></comment> |
41,064,332 | 41,062,866 | 1 | 3 | 41,059,821 | train | <story><title>Show HN: NoteTech – Create personal automations by writing notes</title><url>https://www.simpltech.ai</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>skybrian</author><text>Could write some documentation with some examples of common commands?<p>Otherwise, it seems like “guess the verb” in a text adventure.<p>[Oops, edited before I saw the reply.]</text></comment> | <story><title>Show HN: NoteTech – Create personal automations by writing notes</title><url>https://www.simpltech.ai</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nbbaier</author><text>This is interesting. I assume you&#x27;re using an LLM to generate the code that runs these automations? Like &quot;compiling&quot; the prompt to code?</text></comment> |
28,089,357 | 28,086,586 | 1 | 3 | 28,084,907 | train | <story><title>Give to Thunderbird</title><url>https://give.thunderbird.net</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gnuarch</author><text>On GNU&#x2F;Linux Thunderbird ist my favourite GUI mail client, offering support for a variety of standards, including e.g. CalDAV (CardDAV in Beta), OpenPGP and S&#x2F;MIME.<p>Not sure whether Chat should be part of it, currently offering Google Talk, IRC, Odnoklassniki, and XMPP (Twitter finally gone). Support for Usenet News is appreciated, though I enjoy Pan.<p>On GNU&#x2F;Linux I thus consider GNOME Evolution as best alternative. (Haven&#x27;t looked at the KDE suite for some time with Akonadi being too heavy last time I tried it on my simple machine.) Neither Claws, Geary, Sylpheed, or others offer such broad support, although those are very nice GUI clients.<p>Further alternatives are listed in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Text-based_email_client" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Text-based_email_client</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Rd6n6</author><text>I tried a lot of alternatives to thunderbird on linux for mail&#x2F;calendar&#x2F;contacts. Every single one had a severe issue at some point with something (timeline problems, losing events, can’t sync contacts, privacy issue for one paid app). Thunderbird is just wonderful though and deserves support</text></comment> | <story><title>Give to Thunderbird</title><url>https://give.thunderbird.net</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gnuarch</author><text>On GNU&#x2F;Linux Thunderbird ist my favourite GUI mail client, offering support for a variety of standards, including e.g. CalDAV (CardDAV in Beta), OpenPGP and S&#x2F;MIME.<p>Not sure whether Chat should be part of it, currently offering Google Talk, IRC, Odnoklassniki, and XMPP (Twitter finally gone). Support for Usenet News is appreciated, though I enjoy Pan.<p>On GNU&#x2F;Linux I thus consider GNOME Evolution as best alternative. (Haven&#x27;t looked at the KDE suite for some time with Akonadi being too heavy last time I tried it on my simple machine.) Neither Claws, Geary, Sylpheed, or others offer such broad support, although those are very nice GUI clients.<p>Further alternatives are listed in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Text-based_email_client" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Text-based_email_client</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>_wldu</author><text>I&#x27;ve used Sylpheed since the early 2000s. It supports PGP. It also considers HTML email as harmful. I agree with that.</text></comment> |
36,132,341 | 36,132,544 | 1 | 3 | 36,128,618 | train | <story><title>Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?</title><text>Asking for myself and those who are looking for what good communities often provide: feeling of connection, purpose, a place to go, etc.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>donnfelker</author><text>A fitness community.
This could be either a BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) place or even a CrossFit gym. I&#x27;ve done both and while I&#x27;m not here to promote CrossFit, I am here to say that a group fitness class is awesome for meeting other people and finding a community of people that do something similar as you, but have absolutely nothing to do with your work.<p>I workout with Police officers, Lawyers, Doctors, Dentists, Stay at home moms, Accountants, Students, other tech folks, etc, you name it they&#x27;re all there.<p>There&#x27;s something about &quot;shared misery&quot; that brings people together and builds a comrade. That turns into a community where you start to hang out with them out of the gym&#x2F;etc.<p>This happens at any group fitness place where the same people show up at the same time to do the same thing. It&#x27;s natural, organic and freeing.<p>I&#x27;ve moved across the country 3 times now and this is how I integrated into each area I moved into.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>juujian</author><text>Yup. I joined a climbing gym. Hanging out with a lot of people both older and younger than you is refreshing. Not much shared misery though when it comes to climbing, always had a blast.</text></comment> | <story><title>Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?</title><text>Asking for myself and those who are looking for what good communities often provide: feeling of connection, purpose, a place to go, etc.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>donnfelker</author><text>A fitness community.
This could be either a BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) place or even a CrossFit gym. I&#x27;ve done both and while I&#x27;m not here to promote CrossFit, I am here to say that a group fitness class is awesome for meeting other people and finding a community of people that do something similar as you, but have absolutely nothing to do with your work.<p>I workout with Police officers, Lawyers, Doctors, Dentists, Stay at home moms, Accountants, Students, other tech folks, etc, you name it they&#x27;re all there.<p>There&#x27;s something about &quot;shared misery&quot; that brings people together and builds a comrade. That turns into a community where you start to hang out with them out of the gym&#x2F;etc.<p>This happens at any group fitness place where the same people show up at the same time to do the same thing. It&#x27;s natural, organic and freeing.<p>I&#x27;ve moved across the country 3 times now and this is how I integrated into each area I moved into.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tsumnia</author><text>&gt; There&#x27;s something about &quot;shared misery&quot; that brings people together and builds a comrade. That turns into a community where you start to hang out with them out of the gym&#x2F;etc.<p>Agreed; my outside work community IS my martial arts community. There are the brief moments while waiting that you end up chatting with your partners. Eventually you learn what they do, if they have kids, etc. and since you see them weekly you often times get to share their experiences. When I was in college, it was pretty regular to ask the other people what they were up to that weekend. Next thing you know, you&#x27;re grabbing food, going out for beers, seeing Marvel movies (personal experience there), or other things.<p>The shared misery scares people away, but you end up becoming invested in your partners&#x27; progress as well. When new students join you also get to serve as a peer mentor because just 6 months ago YOU were in their shoes.<p>As a counter argument I recently heard, some people dislike the hierarchal structure of martial arts. I can understand, but at least from my experience I enjoy it.</text></comment> |
3,956,617 | 3,955,684 | 1 | 2 | 3,954,874 | train | <story><title>Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?</title><url>http://ninjasandrobots.com/google-ive-had-enough-how-about-a-compromise</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>ben1040</author><text>I had no idea retargeting even was a thing, until one particular ad kept repeatedly showing up.<p>When my grandmother died last year we looked up the website for a cremation service to find their phone number. Then for the next week or so I kept seeing banner ads for the same cremation service all over the web, on completely unrelated sites.<p>I would expect to see a cremation service ad on an obituary page, maybe a local newspaper, etc. I would not expect to see it on, say, a tech blog or an Android user forum. And I could consistently refresh threads on that forum and keep seeing that particular ad from that same company. Maybe it was the nature of the service advertised and my frame of mind at the time I was seeing it, but I was really creeped out.<p>I cleared cookies and it stopped. At that point I realized that the advertiser was doing something in particular to tell Google that I visited their site and to start throwing ads at me elsewhere. I checked out the AdWords docs to see how they were doing this and figure out how to opt out.<p>I don't know how long this has been a service offered by Google. Up until that one instance I likely had countless ads retargeted at me, and I may have even clicked such ads. And it works great until one instance where I'm creeped the heck out and I push back.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>FuzzyDunlop</author><text>What makes this worse is that you'll get the same ad used across the entire page. If one wasn't enough, why not have another in the middle of a paragraph, and at the top of the page, and down the sidebar, and at the bottom, and above the comments?<p>Why not show me <i>several</i> retargeted ads? If I don't click one, I'm not going to click one of the other dozen copies on the page, so why not put something else relevant there?<p>As it stands, viewing a retargeted advert on an ad-heavy page is like being mithered by an annoying child. "Buy this buy this buy this buy this!"<p>(Curiously I appear to have opted out, but I still get this retargeting stuff.)</text></comment> | <story><title>Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?</title><url>http://ninjasandrobots.com/google-ive-had-enough-how-about-a-compromise</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>ben1040</author><text>I had no idea retargeting even was a thing, until one particular ad kept repeatedly showing up.<p>When my grandmother died last year we looked up the website for a cremation service to find their phone number. Then for the next week or so I kept seeing banner ads for the same cremation service all over the web, on completely unrelated sites.<p>I would expect to see a cremation service ad on an obituary page, maybe a local newspaper, etc. I would not expect to see it on, say, a tech blog or an Android user forum. And I could consistently refresh threads on that forum and keep seeing that particular ad from that same company. Maybe it was the nature of the service advertised and my frame of mind at the time I was seeing it, but I was really creeped out.<p>I cleared cookies and it stopped. At that point I realized that the advertiser was doing something in particular to tell Google that I visited their site and to start throwing ads at me elsewhere. I checked out the AdWords docs to see how they were doing this and figure out how to opt out.<p>I don't know how long this has been a service offered by Google. Up until that one instance I likely had countless ads retargeted at me, and I may have even clicked such ads. And it works great until one instance where I'm creeped the heck out and I push back.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>larrik</author><text>Me too. We had considered using one of the sites for finding a babysitter, and I was haunted by their ads for months.<p>Of course, it replaced seeing EVE Online ads everywhere for years (literally).</text></comment> |
21,561,101 | 21,560,203 | 1 | 2 | 21,559,918 | train | <story><title>Why 50 Ohms?</title><url>https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/why-fifty-ohms</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>phkamp</author><text>The choice of 75 Ohm is documented in ultimate detail in Bell Systems Technical Journal.<p>Here is a 1934 article as an example, long before anybody had even named microwaves:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;bstj13-4-532" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;bstj13-4-532</a><p>75Ohm gave the lowest loss and thus the longest distance between repeater-amplifiers on the trans-continental carrier-telephony coax-cables.<p>These same cables (and their brethern: microwave links) also carried television, thus enabling the first &quot;television networks&quot; as opposed to &quot;television stations&quot;.<p>In many cases even the stand-alone television stations paid AT&amp;T to connect their down-town studios to the hill-top transmitter.<p>So television uses 75Ohm because AT&amp;T did.<p>And AT&amp;T did to minimize the number of repeater amplifiers across USA, because 75Ohm has the lowest loss.</text></comment> | <story><title>Why 50 Ohms?</title><url>https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/why-fifty-ohms</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>IndrekR</author><text>There is also another story [1]. That standard air-core coax lines were built using regular plumbing pipes in US. As the impedance of a coax is proportional to <i>log(inner diameter of the shield&#x2F;outer diameter of the core)</i> this generated standard impedance around 50 ohms for many different tube configurations.<p>(10 minutes later)<p>However, I just calculated this for standard copper tubing size [2] and this probably is just a myth, except for few specific tube sizes like 1&#x2F;4+5&#x2F;8 or 1.5+3.5 inches.<p>For some reason, tubing is still mostly given in inches and neither its OD nor ID correspond to tube size. OD is always 0.125in larger than tube size.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rfcafe.com&#x2F;references&#x2F;electrical&#x2F;history-of-50-ohms.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rfcafe.com&#x2F;references&#x2F;electrical&#x2F;history-of-50-oh...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.petersenproducts.com&#x2F;Copper-Tubing-Sizes-s&#x2F;1979.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.petersenproducts.com&#x2F;Copper-Tubing-Sizes-s&#x2F;1979....</a></text></comment> |
36,067,028 | 36,066,081 | 1 | 2 | 36,063,943 | train | <story><title>The brand new Thunderbird logo</title><url>https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/introducing-the-brand-new-thunderbird-logo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>timetraveller26</author><text>I liked the old one vibe more and the way it was carrying the envelope.<p>This post makes some very good points about it
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;@KelvinShadewing&#x2F;110424262996045829" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;@KelvinShadewing&#x2F;110424262996045829</a></text></item><item><author>samwillis</author><text>Really lovely redesign.<p>Designer John Hicks post about this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;@jonhicks&#x2F;110424132785208582" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;@jonhicks&#x2F;110424132785208582</a><p>&gt; <i>It&#x27;s inevitable that throughout my career, I&#x27;ve watched as work gets replaced and updated by others. It&#x27;s rare to be asked to redesign old work, which is why I leapt at the chance when @thunderbird asked if I could design a contemporary update to the Thunderbird logo. The one I designed 19 years ago!</i><p>More images here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;drive.google.com&#x2F;file&#x2F;d&#x2F;1lRkSA9YyHduCmDe2Fucv2DK2l9aRD7wj&#x2F;view" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;drive.google.com&#x2F;file&#x2F;d&#x2F;1lRkSA9YyHduCmDe2Fucv2DK2l9a...</a><p>Based on that file being &quot;v7&quot; I&#x27;m really hoping John does a post detailing the design process. I always love to see how these things evolve.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sodapopcan</author><text>Ha, interesting points, but it&#x27;s all a matter of perspective.<p>I would much rather that the bird delivering my mail is a badass who can protect it at all costs. Perhaps the protective &quot;MINE&quot; body language is aimed at someone trying to intercept my mail, not at me. This is a much better scenario than a fake-ass overly friendly bird.<p>Also, the old logo always made me a little uncomfortable—it looks like the bird is mid flight, but the moment it flaps its wings up it&#x27;s dropping that letter!!!</text></comment> | <story><title>The brand new Thunderbird logo</title><url>https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/introducing-the-brand-new-thunderbird-logo/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>timetraveller26</author><text>I liked the old one vibe more and the way it was carrying the envelope.<p>This post makes some very good points about it
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;@KelvinShadewing&#x2F;110424262996045829" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;@KelvinShadewing&#x2F;110424262996045829</a></text></item><item><author>samwillis</author><text>Really lovely redesign.<p>Designer John Hicks post about this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;@jonhicks&#x2F;110424132785208582" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.social&#x2F;@jonhicks&#x2F;110424132785208582</a><p>&gt; <i>It&#x27;s inevitable that throughout my career, I&#x27;ve watched as work gets replaced and updated by others. It&#x27;s rare to be asked to redesign old work, which is why I leapt at the chance when @thunderbird asked if I could design a contemporary update to the Thunderbird logo. The one I designed 19 years ago!</i><p>More images here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;drive.google.com&#x2F;file&#x2F;d&#x2F;1lRkSA9YyHduCmDe2Fucv2DK2l9aRD7wj&#x2F;view" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;drive.google.com&#x2F;file&#x2F;d&#x2F;1lRkSA9YyHduCmDe2Fucv2DK2l9a...</a><p>Based on that file being &quot;v7&quot; I&#x27;m really hoping John does a post detailing the design process. I always love to see how these things evolve.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>romwell</author><text>Good points? Whoever made that post reads too much into things that aren&#x27;t even true:<p>* Long, sharp beaks are characterestic of <i>nectar feeders</i>, e.g. hummingbird, not &quot;lethal predators&quot;.<p>* Hawk&#x27;s beak is neither large nor particularly sharp; and while hawk <i>is</i> a deadly predator, and the new logo is hawk-like, I can&#x27;t see the hawk as a bad thing;<p>* Everything else is purely subjective, too. &quot;Dead white eyes convey malice&quot;? OK.<p>Finally, re:&quot;Message is mine, not yours&quot;? Well, that&#x27;s the <i>entire point</i> of an email client. It <i>keeps the mail</i>, it doesn&#x27;t live on the server.<p>If that comes through the logo, then it&#x27;s a job well done.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dkfindout.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;animals-and-nature&#x2F;birds&#x2F;types-beak&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dkfindout.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;animals-and-nature&#x2F;birds&#x2F;types-...</a></text></comment> |
7,555,903 | 7,555,612 | 1 | 2 | 7,555,418 | train | <story><title>Rails 4.1.0 released</title><url>http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2014/4/8/Rails-4-1/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>losvedir</author><text>My company is still on Rails 3.2. We had been waiting for the first minor release of Rails 4 to give folks a chance to work out issues, so maybe now it&#x27;s time to look at upgrading.<p>Anyone have major issues going from 3.2 -&gt; 4? I&#x27;ve heard horror stories about 2 -&gt; 3, but I didn&#x27;t pick up Rails myself until 3.x so I don&#x27;t have firsthand experience.<p>The biggest change I see is attr_accessible to strong_parameters. Does that mean I need to go through and rewrite all our models and controllers before we can update?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>awj</author><text>It went comparatively smooth for us. 2 to 3 was a nightmare, 3 to 4 wasn&#x27;t too awful. Some of the things that bit us:<p>* Strong parameters means you&#x27;re going to have to figure out what everything needs for params or break down and call permit! where acceptable. If anyone got crazy with attribute metaprogramming bullshittery, you&#x27;re in for fun.<p>* The deep_munge part of strong parameters has some strong opinions about how it should do its job. The code is there to prevent attacks where unusual user input is handed directly to ActiveRecord and interpreted by it. One special case to look out for is that it will rewrite a (JSON-supplied) empty array into nil, which makes life fun if your API happens to put some semantic meaning on nil vs. empty arrays.<p>* The new restrictions on routing verbs are good stuff, but I can almost guarantee that something was getting away with using the wrong verb before.<p>* XML parameter parsing has been extracted to a plugin. For some reason XML generation wasn&#x27;t, but if people are sending you XML data you&#x27;ll need this: <a href="https://github.com/rails/actionpack-xml_parser" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rails&#x2F;actionpack-xml_parser</a><p>That&#x27;s all I can think of off the top of my head.<p>In response to this:<p>&gt; Does that mean I need to go through and rewrite all our models and controllers before we can update?<p>Not really, no. As a first step we rewrote all of our attr_accessible usage into model class-level constants we could run through strong_parameters. Eventually those moved out of the model, but it was good enough to get going. Example:<p># Rails 3.2<p>class Foo &lt; ActiveRecord::Base<p><pre><code> attr_accessible :name, :bar, :whatever
attr_accessible :name, :bar, :whatever, :approved, :as =&gt; :admin
</code></pre>
end<p># Rails 4.0<p>class Foo &lt; ActiveRecord::Base<p><pre><code> UPDATEABLE_ATTRIBUTES = [:name, :bar, :whatever]
ADMIN_UPDATEABLE_ATTRIBUTES = UPDATEABLE_ATTRIBUTES + [:approved]
</code></pre>
end</text></comment> | <story><title>Rails 4.1.0 released</title><url>http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2014/4/8/Rails-4-1/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>losvedir</author><text>My company is still on Rails 3.2. We had been waiting for the first minor release of Rails 4 to give folks a chance to work out issues, so maybe now it&#x27;s time to look at upgrading.<p>Anyone have major issues going from 3.2 -&gt; 4? I&#x27;ve heard horror stories about 2 -&gt; 3, but I didn&#x27;t pick up Rails myself until 3.x so I don&#x27;t have firsthand experience.<p>The biggest change I see is attr_accessible to strong_parameters. Does that mean I need to go through and rewrite all our models and controllers before we can update?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kyleashipley</author><text>3.2 -&gt; 4 is an order of magnitude easier than 2 -&gt; 3.<p>The upgrade guide is pretty solid, and I imagine it mostly applies for Rails 4.1 as well: <a href="http://guides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html#upgrading-from-rails-3-2-to-rails-4-0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;guides.rubyonrails.org&#x2F;upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html#u...</a><p>I spent most of my time updating app config. For several of my 3.2 apps, I started using strong_parameters, so it wasn&#x27;t a leap for me. Another app I have on 4.0 is using the <a href="https://github.com/rails/protected_attributes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rails&#x2F;protected_attributes</a> to retain the existing attr_accessible behavior until I get time to update.<p>Hope that helps!</text></comment> |
15,947,685 | 15,947,651 | 1 | 2 | 15,947,039 | train | <story><title>A RAM Edition of Dirty Coding Tricks</title><url>https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/310660/Memory_Matters_A_special_RAM_edition_of_Dirty_Coding_Tricks.php</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mattnewport</author><text>A pretty common trick that was part of game programmer lore back in the PS2 &#x2F; Xbox era was to have a large static array hidden away in some code file somewhere. When days before shipping you couldn&#x27;t quite fit the release build in to memory this allowed a heroic programmer to miraculously &#x27;find&#x27; a few hundred extra kilobytes of memory by reducing the size of the array by just enough to fit.<p>There was a less common variant of this for finding some extra performance by reducing the iterations of a loop doing no-ops somewhere in the main game loop.</text></comment> | <story><title>A RAM Edition of Dirty Coding Tricks</title><url>https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/310660/Memory_Matters_A_special_RAM_edition_of_Dirty_Coding_Tricks.php</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>k__</author><text>&quot;When finishing a level, the game would reboot the console and restart itself with a command-line argument(the name of the level to start) ... into the next level. Voila, the perfect(?) way to clear all memory between levels.&quot;<p>Well, that&#x27;s basically how most websites work, lol</text></comment> |
7,578,006 | 7,577,994 | 1 | 2 | 7,577,872 | train | <story><title>Excerpt from ‘Flash Boys’ about Serge Aleynikov and Goldman Sachs</title><url>http://cryptome.org/2014/04/goldman-sachs-code-thief.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dm2</author><text>I&#x27;m guessing that there isn&#x27;t any legal recourse (monetary) for him from Goldman Sachs and the FBI ruining his life.<p>Should there be?<p>Goldman Sachs had every right to request that he be prosecuted, but no matter how the case turned out, his life would be ruined. I don&#x27;t know of a good solution to this issue, but it just seems very wrong. I&#x27;m sure there have been countless instances of this happening though.<p>Maybe a good solution would be to lessen the penalties for this type of crime.<p>Maybe a legal requirement for a public apology and for the prosecutor to have to pay back legal costs? A portion of this restitution should come out of that courts budget or the department that perused the case without doing their due diligence.<p>Did Sergey sign something saying that he could never remove code from the building or use it in another project? I&#x27;m not sure that it simply being company policy is enough, in my opinion.<p>Has anyone here ever taken code from one employer with the intent of using it again if needed, simply to save time and not having to duplicate research? Should you be considered a criminal for that? Should you have to pay back the time the company paid you to write that code?<p>It seems like the lessons are:<p>1) Don&#x27;t talk to police, even if you did nothing wrong and they tell you they are on your side. Lawyer up.<p>2) Don&#x27;t steal code, but if you do then encrypt it and put it on a portable media device. Uploading to a foreign SVN repository using the companies network wasn&#x27;t very smart, don&#x27;t do that.<p>3) Ensure that your employees know the company&#x27;s policy on removing code from the premises. It seems pretty obvious but I believe that Sergey honestly didn&#x27;t think he was doing anything wrong.</text></item><item><author>ntakasaki</author><text>Continuing the story from his Wiki page:<p>In March 2011, Aleynikov appealed the conviction, asking the Second Circuit to review the District Court&#x27;s decision denying his original motion to dismiss the indictment for failure to state a claim.[9]<p>On February 16, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard oral argument on his appeal and, later that same day, unanimously ordered his conviction reversed and a judgment of acquittal entered, with opinion to follow.[10] Aleynikov was released from custody the next day.<p>On April 11, 2012, Dennis Jacobs, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals, published a unanimous decision in a written opinion[10] stating:<p>On appeal, Aleynikov argues, inter alia, that his conduct did not constitute an offense under either statute. He argues that: [1] the source code was not a &quot;stolen&quot; &quot;good&quot; within the meaning of the NSPA, and [2] the source code was not “related to or included in a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce” within the meaning of the EEA. We agree, and reverse the judgment of the district court.[9]<p>In the course of these events, Aleynikov has spent 11 months in prison. Aleynikov has divorced, lost his savings, and his career is ruined.[11]<p>The government did not seek reconsideration of the Second Circuit&#x27;s ruling, thus ending federal action against Aleynikov.[12]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pmorici</author><text>If there are no consequences to wrongly prosecuting someone just to hassle them then wouldn&#x27;t that encourage people like Goldman Sachs to use that tool to extract revenge on people?</text></comment> | <story><title>Excerpt from ‘Flash Boys’ about Serge Aleynikov and Goldman Sachs</title><url>http://cryptome.org/2014/04/goldman-sachs-code-thief.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dm2</author><text>I&#x27;m guessing that there isn&#x27;t any legal recourse (monetary) for him from Goldman Sachs and the FBI ruining his life.<p>Should there be?<p>Goldman Sachs had every right to request that he be prosecuted, but no matter how the case turned out, his life would be ruined. I don&#x27;t know of a good solution to this issue, but it just seems very wrong. I&#x27;m sure there have been countless instances of this happening though.<p>Maybe a good solution would be to lessen the penalties for this type of crime.<p>Maybe a legal requirement for a public apology and for the prosecutor to have to pay back legal costs? A portion of this restitution should come out of that courts budget or the department that perused the case without doing their due diligence.<p>Did Sergey sign something saying that he could never remove code from the building or use it in another project? I&#x27;m not sure that it simply being company policy is enough, in my opinion.<p>Has anyone here ever taken code from one employer with the intent of using it again if needed, simply to save time and not having to duplicate research? Should you be considered a criminal for that? Should you have to pay back the time the company paid you to write that code?<p>It seems like the lessons are:<p>1) Don&#x27;t talk to police, even if you did nothing wrong and they tell you they are on your side. Lawyer up.<p>2) Don&#x27;t steal code, but if you do then encrypt it and put it on a portable media device. Uploading to a foreign SVN repository using the companies network wasn&#x27;t very smart, don&#x27;t do that.<p>3) Ensure that your employees know the company&#x27;s policy on removing code from the premises. It seems pretty obvious but I believe that Sergey honestly didn&#x27;t think he was doing anything wrong.</text></item><item><author>ntakasaki</author><text>Continuing the story from his Wiki page:<p>In March 2011, Aleynikov appealed the conviction, asking the Second Circuit to review the District Court&#x27;s decision denying his original motion to dismiss the indictment for failure to state a claim.[9]<p>On February 16, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard oral argument on his appeal and, later that same day, unanimously ordered his conviction reversed and a judgment of acquittal entered, with opinion to follow.[10] Aleynikov was released from custody the next day.<p>On April 11, 2012, Dennis Jacobs, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals, published a unanimous decision in a written opinion[10] stating:<p>On appeal, Aleynikov argues, inter alia, that his conduct did not constitute an offense under either statute. He argues that: [1] the source code was not a &quot;stolen&quot; &quot;good&quot; within the meaning of the NSPA, and [2] the source code was not “related to or included in a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce” within the meaning of the EEA. We agree, and reverse the judgment of the district court.[9]<p>In the course of these events, Aleynikov has spent 11 months in prison. Aleynikov has divorced, lost his savings, and his career is ruined.[11]<p>The government did not seek reconsideration of the Second Circuit&#x27;s ruling, thus ending federal action against Aleynikov.[12]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>karmajunkie</author><text>Should there be recourse for facilitating malicious prosecution? It&#x27;s a travesty if there isn&#x27;t.</text></comment> |
14,233,520 | 14,233,564 | 1 | 2 | 14,232,499 | train | <story><title>Reverse engineering the 76477 “Space Invaders” sound effect chip from die photos</title><url>http://www.righto.com/2017/04/reverse-engineering-76477-space.html?m=1</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dorfsmay</author><text>Pretty amazing! Reminds the article from 2002 which had to be one of the biggest Slashdot moment for me, from somebody who wrote code to play music from a scanned image of an LP.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.huji.ac.il&#x2F;~springer&#x2F;DigitalNeedle&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.huji.ac.il&#x2F;~springer&#x2F;DigitalNeedle&#x2F;index.html</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Reverse engineering the 76477 “Space Invaders” sound effect chip from die photos</title><url>http://www.righto.com/2017/04/reverse-engineering-76477-space.html?m=1</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>squarefoot</author><text>I played with that chip as a kid, probably still have it somewhere but not in good condition as I recall it becoming very hot during operation.
One day I built the full demonstration circuit similar to the one in this pic.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;4&#x2F;42&#x2F;76477_Demo_Circuit-D.JPG" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;4&#x2F;42&#x2F;76477_De...</a><p>It took forever to finish as I wasn&#x27;t that skilled at the time and the number of switches and pots was simply beyond everything I had soldered before, but I managed to succeed it and spent some good evenings playing with its effects.</text></comment> |
29,542,762 | 29,542,651 | 1 | 3 | 29,542,166 | train | <story><title>Facebook exec blames society for COVID misinformation</title><url>https://www.axios.com/facebook-bosworth-covid-misinformation-89a751dc-6875-4ad3-8103-33cd10b9972c.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maerF0x0</author><text>&gt; The problem is that Facebook is giving the village idiot a megaphone<p>While you&#x27;re not wrong that it&#x27;s giving the idiot a megaphone, it&#x27;s missing the greater picture. it&#x27;s giving _everyone_ a megaphone. The real question is why can&#x27;t people discern the difference between the idiot and the non-idiot?<p>I&#x27;d also note that a big issue now is trust -- trust in &quot;elites&quot; (technocrats, wealthy, those in positions of power) has been declining for a long time. i think people are not so much seeking out the village idiot, but massively discounting &quot;experts&quot;.<p>A list of things that come to mind which have broken trust: 60&#x27;s saw hippies which wanted to break norms of their parents&#x2F;grandparents, 70s saw vietnam war, breaking gold standard, 80s greed is good, iran contra etc, 90s tough on crime policies, y2k fears, 00s - iraq&#x2F;afghanistan, 9&#x2F;11 attacks, governmental data dragnet, manning&#x2F;snowden&#x2F;asange, Covid statements which did not pan out as planned...<p>People have good reasons to be skeptical of elites, but I think anti-corruption work is more important than trying to silence the idiot.</text></item><item><author>mbesto</author><text>He&#x27;s right in some sense, but the context is important. The problem is that Facebook is giving the village idiot a megaphone. Facebook can&#x27;t say:<p>- Amplify your commercial business message to billions of people worldwide.<p>AND at the same time<p>- Well its your individual choice whether or not to listen to the village idiot.<p>You guys gave them a megaphone, how do you expect society to behave?!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>d1sxeyes</author><text>That&#x27;s also missing the greater picture. It&#x27;s giving _everyone_ a megaphone... but giving the loudest megaphones to the people who can get most people to listen to them.<p>You&#x27;ll have noticed on the internet that there&#x27;s a tendency to prioritise engaging with things you disagree with (hell, half of my HN comments are because I felt motivated to write something to disagree with some OP at some point - even this one).<p>What that means is the traditional small-c conservative &#x27;village elders&#x27;, &#x27;parish priests&#x27;, and &#x27;elected officials&#x27;, who hold authoritative positions not because they&#x27;re controversial, but because they historically represented positions of neutrality and consensus end up with quiet megaphones, and the madmen claiming the world is flat and there&#x27;s a paedophile ring run out of a pizza shop end up with the loudest megaphones.<p>Half of the population is below average intelligence, and giving the wrong people the loudest megaphones has a devastating effect on society.</text></comment> | <story><title>Facebook exec blames society for COVID misinformation</title><url>https://www.axios.com/facebook-bosworth-covid-misinformation-89a751dc-6875-4ad3-8103-33cd10b9972c.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maerF0x0</author><text>&gt; The problem is that Facebook is giving the village idiot a megaphone<p>While you&#x27;re not wrong that it&#x27;s giving the idiot a megaphone, it&#x27;s missing the greater picture. it&#x27;s giving _everyone_ a megaphone. The real question is why can&#x27;t people discern the difference between the idiot and the non-idiot?<p>I&#x27;d also note that a big issue now is trust -- trust in &quot;elites&quot; (technocrats, wealthy, those in positions of power) has been declining for a long time. i think people are not so much seeking out the village idiot, but massively discounting &quot;experts&quot;.<p>A list of things that come to mind which have broken trust: 60&#x27;s saw hippies which wanted to break norms of their parents&#x2F;grandparents, 70s saw vietnam war, breaking gold standard, 80s greed is good, iran contra etc, 90s tough on crime policies, y2k fears, 00s - iraq&#x2F;afghanistan, 9&#x2F;11 attacks, governmental data dragnet, manning&#x2F;snowden&#x2F;asange, Covid statements which did not pan out as planned...<p>People have good reasons to be skeptical of elites, but I think anti-corruption work is more important than trying to silence the idiot.</text></item><item><author>mbesto</author><text>He&#x27;s right in some sense, but the context is important. The problem is that Facebook is giving the village idiot a megaphone. Facebook can&#x27;t say:<p>- Amplify your commercial business message to billions of people worldwide.<p>AND at the same time<p>- Well its your individual choice whether or not to listen to the village idiot.<p>You guys gave them a megaphone, how do you expect society to behave?!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>matwood</author><text>&gt; The real question is why can&#x27;t people discern the difference between the idiot and the non-idiot?<p>And here is the real problem with FB, the algorithmic feed. Normal life is pretty boring day-to-day, and doesn&#x27;t trigger &#x27;engagement&#x27;. Conspiracies, etc... cause an enormous amount of engagement. When a person is fed conspiracies all day by the engagement algorithm, even the most critical thinkers will start to drift. It works for the same reason advertising works, familiarity and repetition. The solution is never use FB, but that ship has sailed for most.</text></comment> |
19,463,807 | 19,462,834 | 1 | 3 | 19,462,269 | train | <story><title>Rust in Production (2018)</title><url>https://www.figma.com/blog/rust-in-production-at-figma/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>leshow</author><text>Things that have changed:<p>- NLL (non lexical lifetimes) are now in stable, so working with lifetimes and references is a bit easier<p>- stack traces: failure is still around, it&#x27;s got a fairly large group using it, it seems. I prefer the std error handling route most times.<p>- async is hard: it&#x27;s still pretty hard</text></comment> | <story><title>Rust in Production (2018)</title><url>https://www.figma.com/blog/rust-in-production-at-figma/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>faitswulff</author><text>Anyone know if the first con listed has improved with the introduction of non-lexical lifetimes?</text></comment> |
21,181,593 | 21,181,397 | 1 | 2 | 21,179,713 | train | <story><title>List of open source applications for macOS</title><url>https://github.com/serhii-londar/open-source-mac-os-apps</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bananasquash</author><text>freeware and people like you have killed indie development. Great software should be paid for. Unless or cures cancer or solves humanity’s issues, it should not he made available for free. Otherwise the author of a paid version is forced into office jobs because some idiot makes a free clone just to have something on their cv.</text></item><item><author>kache_</author><text>Every time I come across a paid 30 dollar version of software being sold for macos, I can find a free open source alternative that often works better pretty quickly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>totaldude87</author><text>VLC - though it doesn&#x27;t cure cancer or anything , its a cure for video player industry(if one exist).. cant think of any other open source video players with billions of installs, and FREE.. calling someone who does opensource as idiot is just ridiculous..</text></comment> | <story><title>List of open source applications for macOS</title><url>https://github.com/serhii-londar/open-source-mac-os-apps</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bananasquash</author><text>freeware and people like you have killed indie development. Great software should be paid for. Unless or cures cancer or solves humanity’s issues, it should not he made available for free. Otherwise the author of a paid version is forced into office jobs because some idiot makes a free clone just to have something on their cv.</text></item><item><author>kache_</author><text>Every time I come across a paid 30 dollar version of software being sold for macos, I can find a free open source alternative that often works better pretty quickly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mhd</author><text>Meh, if the proprietary software has a good UI, it&#x27;s going to do well -- open source tends to suck on that front, quite often because it&#x27;s cross-platform and that doesn&#x27;t favor the OS X look.<p>Sure, for programmers and command line users there will be alternatives, but that still leaves a large market.<p>Y&#x27;know what&#x27;s going to kill Apple indie development in our reality? Apple. A lot of the paid shareware has a long pedigree, and the upcoming de-Carbonization will put an end to many small-shop software.</text></comment> |
8,999,492 | 8,999,395 | 1 | 2 | 8,998,269 | train | <story><title>Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard</title><url>http://www.vikingcodeschool.com/posts/why-learning-to-code-is-so-damn-hard</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lelandbatey</author><text>That is absolutely something that irritates me. I&#x27;ve just inherited a large RoR application, and the amount of &quot;magic&quot; and things by convention is driving me crazy. There should be answers to questions like &quot;why is this the way it is?!&quot;<p>On a side note, if anyone has some great resources for RoR, I&#x27;d love to have them linked. I suspect my inexperience is the source of my problems, and I&#x27;m welcome to any assistance any one would like to give.</text></item><item><author>SilasX</author><text>Unless you&#x27;re doing Rails, in which case it&#x27;ll be read as a magic method and guess what you meant :-P<p>Seriously, that was a major sticking point for me having programmed for a long time: going from &quot;if you have not declared that identifier, game over&quot; to &quot;magic happens&quot;.</text></item><item><author>rcthompson</author><text>When I was in college, one CS professor explained the difficulty of coding to me in terms of discreteness vs continuity. In the real world, things are continuous. If you accidentally build your structure with 9 supports instead of 10, then you only lose 10% of the strength of the structure, more or less. The strength varies continuously with the amount of support. But if you&#x27;re writing a 10-line program and you forget one of the lines (or even one character), the program isn&#x27;t 10% wrong, it&#x27;s 100% wrong. (For example, instead of compiling and running correctly, it doesn&#x27;t compile at all. Completely different results.)<p>Of course this logic doesn&#x27;t hold up all the time. Sometimes you can remove a critical support and collapse a structure, and sometimes removing a line of code has little to no effect, but the point is that in programming, a small change can have an unboundedly large effect, which is the definition of discontinuity.<p>(I believe it was this professor, who was my teacher for discrete math: <a href="http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~jck/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.virginia.edu&#x2F;~jck&#x2F;</a> )</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grey-area</author><text>The guides on the ror website are pretty good:<p><a href="http://guides.rubyonrails.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;guides.rubyonrails.org&#x2F;</a><p>Which bits did you find were magic? The bits of convention I can think of you&#x27;d have to know about are:<p>DB naming conventions - these are used so that it can do joins etc easily behind the scenes, they&#x27;re pretty simple so not a huge problem I find.<p>Rendering at the end of controller actions - it&#x27;ll render the template with the same path as your route - again relatively straightforward.<p>Class loading - lots of things are loaded at startup time, so that you don&#x27;t have to include files - I have mixed feelings about this, it feels easy and simple at first, but could leave you unsure where code comes from or which methods you can use in which files (e.g. view helpers). Definitely more magic.<p>One other area which does lead to real problems is that rails sites often use a lot of libraries in the form of gems - this leads to unknown, sometimes poorly maintained or inappropriate code being pulled in at runtime, and makes it far harder to reason about things like say authentication if using a gem. This is my biggest complaint with rails - lack of transparency of code paths when using gems like devise, paperclip etc but it is unfortunately quite common in web frameworks<p>They actually got rid of quite a few bits of method_missing madness I think recently so that magic is gone at least (all those magic find_by_ methods are deprecated or removed, not sure which as I never used them). I haven&#x27;t found the conventions get in the way much as it&#x27;s something you learn once and can apply anywhere, but completely understand why someone might object to some of the magic setup for helpers&#x2F;rendering.</text></comment> | <story><title>Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard</title><url>http://www.vikingcodeschool.com/posts/why-learning-to-code-is-so-damn-hard</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lelandbatey</author><text>That is absolutely something that irritates me. I&#x27;ve just inherited a large RoR application, and the amount of &quot;magic&quot; and things by convention is driving me crazy. There should be answers to questions like &quot;why is this the way it is?!&quot;<p>On a side note, if anyone has some great resources for RoR, I&#x27;d love to have them linked. I suspect my inexperience is the source of my problems, and I&#x27;m welcome to any assistance any one would like to give.</text></item><item><author>SilasX</author><text>Unless you&#x27;re doing Rails, in which case it&#x27;ll be read as a magic method and guess what you meant :-P<p>Seriously, that was a major sticking point for me having programmed for a long time: going from &quot;if you have not declared that identifier, game over&quot; to &quot;magic happens&quot;.</text></item><item><author>rcthompson</author><text>When I was in college, one CS professor explained the difficulty of coding to me in terms of discreteness vs continuity. In the real world, things are continuous. If you accidentally build your structure with 9 supports instead of 10, then you only lose 10% of the strength of the structure, more or less. The strength varies continuously with the amount of support. But if you&#x27;re writing a 10-line program and you forget one of the lines (or even one character), the program isn&#x27;t 10% wrong, it&#x27;s 100% wrong. (For example, instead of compiling and running correctly, it doesn&#x27;t compile at all. Completely different results.)<p>Of course this logic doesn&#x27;t hold up all the time. Sometimes you can remove a critical support and collapse a structure, and sometimes removing a line of code has little to no effect, but the point is that in programming, a small change can have an unboundedly large effect, which is the definition of discontinuity.<p>(I believe it was this professor, who was my teacher for discrete math: <a href="http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~jck/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.virginia.edu&#x2F;~jck&#x2F;</a> )</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>quetzthecoatl</author><text>Convention over configuration is awesome, if you know the conventions. If you don&#x27;t, it&#x27;s all magic. At least with configurations, you can read them and get some pointers.</text></comment> |
8,914,337 | 8,914,097 | 1 | 2 | 8,912,639 | train | <story><title>The Whole Haystack: The N.S.A. claims it needs access to all our phone records</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/whole-haystack</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CHY872</author><text>I&#x27;m not saying your conclusion isn&#x27;t wrong, but your argument probably is - largely because there are many costs of terrorism beyond simply loss of life - it&#x27;s an incredibly efficient way to disrupt a nation.<p>For example, some estimates of the cost of 9&#x2F;11 (I think including the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan) suggest that each American is out to the tune of $10,000 [0]. If the NSA were able to prevent one 9&#x2F;11 style event, they&#x27;d in one step justify their budget for 300 years (if you ignore Iraq and Afghanistan, it goes down to 75 years, but in many ways at least Afghanistan was very much caused by 9&#x2F;11).<p>[0] - <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-reckoning/cost-graphic.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;interactive&#x2F;2011&#x2F;09&#x2F;08&#x2F;us&#x2F;sept-11-rec...</a></text></item><item><author>burke</author><text>Further, even assuming that number is correct, how many people do you figure die in the average successful terrorist plot? Let&#x27;s say 100 as a high average.<p>That means 300,000,000 Americans (and billions of foreigners) are having their rights violated and wallets emptied via taxation every day to save 5400 lives over the course of 14 years.<p>Admittedly, it&#x27;s 55% more likely than getting struck by lightning, but...</text></item><item><author>jobu</author><text>The NSA keeps using this &quot;54 terror plots thwarted&quot; rhetoric, but there has never been any information released to back up that claim.<p>From Sen. Patrick Leahy, after reading the full classified list:<p><i>“We&#x27;ve heard over and over again the assertion that 54 terrorist plots were thwarted” by the two programs, Leahy told Alexander at the Judiciary Committee hearing this month. “That&#x27;s plainly wrong, but we still get it in letters to members of Congress, we get it in statements. These weren&#x27;t all plots and they weren&#x27;t all thwarted. The American people are getting left with the inaccurate impression of the effectiveness of NSA programs.”</i>
(<a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/claim-on-attacks-thwarted-by-nsa-spreads-despite-lack-of-evidence" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.propublica.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;claim-on-attacks-thwarted-...</a>)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>&gt; <i>it&#x27;s an incredibly efficient way to disrupt a nation</i><p>As other commenters pointed out, it&#x27;s only efficient at disrupting a nation if the nation itself decides to disrupt itself.<p>The right way to react to a terrorist attack is to <i>ignore it</i>. Simple as that. You chase the perpetrators like ordinary members of an organized crime group. Anything above that is achieving the terrorists&#x27; plan.<p>All the money America spends on &quot;War on Terror&quot;, including NSA, is actually <i>the cost</i> of 9&#x2F;11. If the US wanted to really effectively prevent further terrorist attacks, it would <i>defund</i> the NSA. Right now all that counterterrorism measures are only <i>actively inviting</i> further attacks - everyone can see that it takes only a bunch of civilian casualties to make the nation go completely nuts and drive itself to destruction.</text></comment> | <story><title>The Whole Haystack: The N.S.A. claims it needs access to all our phone records</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/whole-haystack</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CHY872</author><text>I&#x27;m not saying your conclusion isn&#x27;t wrong, but your argument probably is - largely because there are many costs of terrorism beyond simply loss of life - it&#x27;s an incredibly efficient way to disrupt a nation.<p>For example, some estimates of the cost of 9&#x2F;11 (I think including the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan) suggest that each American is out to the tune of $10,000 [0]. If the NSA were able to prevent one 9&#x2F;11 style event, they&#x27;d in one step justify their budget for 300 years (if you ignore Iraq and Afghanistan, it goes down to 75 years, but in many ways at least Afghanistan was very much caused by 9&#x2F;11).<p>[0] - <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-reckoning/cost-graphic.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;interactive&#x2F;2011&#x2F;09&#x2F;08&#x2F;us&#x2F;sept-11-rec...</a></text></item><item><author>burke</author><text>Further, even assuming that number is correct, how many people do you figure die in the average successful terrorist plot? Let&#x27;s say 100 as a high average.<p>That means 300,000,000 Americans (and billions of foreigners) are having their rights violated and wallets emptied via taxation every day to save 5400 lives over the course of 14 years.<p>Admittedly, it&#x27;s 55% more likely than getting struck by lightning, but...</text></item><item><author>jobu</author><text>The NSA keeps using this &quot;54 terror plots thwarted&quot; rhetoric, but there has never been any information released to back up that claim.<p>From Sen. Patrick Leahy, after reading the full classified list:<p><i>“We&#x27;ve heard over and over again the assertion that 54 terrorist plots were thwarted” by the two programs, Leahy told Alexander at the Judiciary Committee hearing this month. “That&#x27;s plainly wrong, but we still get it in letters to members of Congress, we get it in statements. These weren&#x27;t all plots and they weren&#x27;t all thwarted. The American people are getting left with the inaccurate impression of the effectiveness of NSA programs.”</i>
(<a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/claim-on-attacks-thwarted-by-nsa-spreads-despite-lack-of-evidence" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.propublica.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;claim-on-attacks-thwarted-...</a>)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacquesm</author><text>You can&#x27;t really blame the terrorists for the response. Spain, France, Norway and Germany have all dealt with terrorism over the last decades and not a single one of them has invaded other countries in response to such an attack.<p>And to say that Afghanistan was caused by 9&#x2F;11 is a total reversal of what actually happened, 9&#x2F;11 happened because of CIA involvement in Afghanistan.</text></comment> |
41,290,594 | 41,286,249 | 1 | 3 | 41,282,574 | train | <story><title>The Expert Mind [pdf] (2006)</title><url>https://personal.utdallas.edu/~otoole/CGS2301_S09/15_expert.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cyberax</author><text>One thing that is becoming more and more clear, is that memorization is absolutely a required part of becoming an expert.<p>But it&#x27;s not fun, it&#x27;s boring, and it takes up a lot of your time. You can&#x27;t really train your memory with a nice Youtube video, and it&#x27;s incompatible with the &quot;learn while playing&quot; concept.<p>So schools in the US tend to sideline it by handwaving that &quot;they teach how to think&quot; instead. And I think we&#x27;re now seeing the result, with the ever-declining test results. The NAEP scores in the US peaked in 2014 and have been declining ever since: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nationsreportcard.gov&#x2F;ushistory&#x2F;results&#x2F;scores&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nationsreportcard.gov&#x2F;ushistory&#x2F;results&#x2F;scores&#x2F;</a><p>It&#x27;s also interesting that there&#x27;s no similar decline in China, where rote memorization is unavoidable because of the writing system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dhc02</author><text>As a second-career middle and high school math teacher, I have a working theory.<p>In previous eras in the US, we taught primarily procedure and facts, and assigned lots of practice work. The average kid did _all_ the practice work, for societal reasons that have eroded but are still present in other cultures.<p>In the course of grappling with all the practice work, the human brain couldn&#x27;t help but recognize patterns and start to make broader conceptual connections, which led to deep understanding.<p>Today in the US, teaching facts and procedure first doesn&#x27;t work, because very few kids get enough practice to start to draw deeper connections. So we are teaching conceptual understanding first, and then layering procedure on top.<p>But I don&#x27;t think this is worse. There is some research showing that it works better than the alternatives, and in my experience the top 10% of students (the ones who would have learned well the old way) are still doing quite well and honestly just getting to the &quot;math is fun and interesting&quot; part of the journey a lot earlier in their school careers.</text></comment> | <story><title>The Expert Mind [pdf] (2006)</title><url>https://personal.utdallas.edu/~otoole/CGS2301_S09/15_expert.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cyberax</author><text>One thing that is becoming more and more clear, is that memorization is absolutely a required part of becoming an expert.<p>But it&#x27;s not fun, it&#x27;s boring, and it takes up a lot of your time. You can&#x27;t really train your memory with a nice Youtube video, and it&#x27;s incompatible with the &quot;learn while playing&quot; concept.<p>So schools in the US tend to sideline it by handwaving that &quot;they teach how to think&quot; instead. And I think we&#x27;re now seeing the result, with the ever-declining test results. The NAEP scores in the US peaked in 2014 and have been declining ever since: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nationsreportcard.gov&#x2F;ushistory&#x2F;results&#x2F;scores&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nationsreportcard.gov&#x2F;ushistory&#x2F;results&#x2F;scores&#x2F;</a><p>It&#x27;s also interesting that there&#x27;s no similar decline in China, where rote memorization is unavoidable because of the writing system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>godelski</author><text><p><pre><code> &gt; One thing that is becoming more and more clear, is that memorization is absolutely a required part of becoming an expert.
</code></pre>
Has this ever been in question?<p>I don&#x27;t think any serious expert in ML that is pushing against LLMs is making a claim that memorization and&#x2F;or compression isn&#x27;t a necessary part of intelligence. Rather that there&#x27;s more to it.<p>Too much memorization is a bad thing, it&#x27;s called over fitting. Bringing up schools is a good example. I&#x27;m sure many here have met people who can answer questions really well when in specific contexts but not in others. People who do well on tests but not in the lab. The difficulty of word problems is a meme, but are just generalization.<p>If you ask me, what makes humans and animal brains special is the fuzziness. It&#x27;s this seemingly contradictory nature of well defined understanding through rules (such as physics) but also understanding that resolution is far from perfect. In our quest to become more precise it is recognizing the impossibility of precision and finding balance.<p>What I&#x27;d say is wrong with both the US and China is failing to teach how to think. The truth is that this is exceptionally difficult to test, if not impossible. It&#x27;s difficult to distinguish from memorization when the questions are not clearly novel. But how do you continually generate sufficiently novel questions when not teaching at bleeding edge?</text></comment> |
35,953,305 | 35,953,396 | 1 | 2 | 35,948,491 | train | <story><title>Stories We’ve Seen Too Often</title><url>http://strangehorizons.com/submit/fiction-submission-guidelines/stories-weve-seen-too-often/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsder</author><text>&gt; When that happens, the creatives are faced with the choice to change that ending or just deal with the twists and turns getting spoiled.<p>I disagree wholeheartedly.<p>The big problem with every single writer nowadays is a complete and total inability to <i>stick the ending</i>.<p>I&#x27;m really trying <i>very</i> hard to come up with a TV show, book or movie that I thought really stuck the ending in the last 10 years (I&#x27;m being generous--in reality I&#x27;d even say 30 years). A whole host of the fan theories are <i>WAY</i> better than what practically all current writers crap out.<p>If I&#x27;m being charitable, I&#x27;ll describe the problem as writers lack varied life experience. If I&#x27;m being uncharitable, it&#x27;s that most writers are just not very intelligent.</text></item><item><author>slg</author><text>This is a big problem for serialized stories now that fan theorizing on the internet is so common. A good plot shouldn&#x27;t be completely predictable to your audience, but events need to flow from one to the other because characters and their worlds should have consistency. This creates predictability and means some small percentage of your audience can now guess what is going to happen.<p>That was fine a decade or two ago when a person might guess the ending to a TV show and blurt it out to their partner on the couch. However, now that small group that guesses the plot correctly will share their predictions on the relevant subreddit which will be picked up by blogs and suddenly everyone knows where you were going.<p>When that happens, the creatives are faced with the choice to change that ending or just deal with the twists and turns getting spoiled. Westworld is a memorable example of the creators changing the show because fans guessed what was happening next. The end result was that the show didn&#x27;t make any sense because it prioritized unpredictability over all else and eventually the world and characters didn&#x27;t make any sense anymore.</text></item><item><author>gregmac</author><text>Something that stuck out to me was a side-note:<p>&gt; Note that we do like endings that we didn&#x27;t expect, as long as they derive naturally from character action.<p>This, to me, is probably the biggest thing that makes me hate a story:<p>The character is faced with a situation and reacts in a way contrary to the way we&#x27;d expect them to act based on what we&#x27;ve seen so far. It soon becomes obvious they made that decision only to move the plot to a specific ending or scene.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>erehweb</author><text>I recommend The Good Place throughout, particularly the ending.</text></comment> | <story><title>Stories We’ve Seen Too Often</title><url>http://strangehorizons.com/submit/fiction-submission-guidelines/stories-weve-seen-too-often/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsder</author><text>&gt; When that happens, the creatives are faced with the choice to change that ending or just deal with the twists and turns getting spoiled.<p>I disagree wholeheartedly.<p>The big problem with every single writer nowadays is a complete and total inability to <i>stick the ending</i>.<p>I&#x27;m really trying <i>very</i> hard to come up with a TV show, book or movie that I thought really stuck the ending in the last 10 years (I&#x27;m being generous--in reality I&#x27;d even say 30 years). A whole host of the fan theories are <i>WAY</i> better than what practically all current writers crap out.<p>If I&#x27;m being charitable, I&#x27;ll describe the problem as writers lack varied life experience. If I&#x27;m being uncharitable, it&#x27;s that most writers are just not very intelligent.</text></item><item><author>slg</author><text>This is a big problem for serialized stories now that fan theorizing on the internet is so common. A good plot shouldn&#x27;t be completely predictable to your audience, but events need to flow from one to the other because characters and their worlds should have consistency. This creates predictability and means some small percentage of your audience can now guess what is going to happen.<p>That was fine a decade or two ago when a person might guess the ending to a TV show and blurt it out to their partner on the couch. However, now that small group that guesses the plot correctly will share their predictions on the relevant subreddit which will be picked up by blogs and suddenly everyone knows where you were going.<p>When that happens, the creatives are faced with the choice to change that ending or just deal with the twists and turns getting spoiled. Westworld is a memorable example of the creators changing the show because fans guessed what was happening next. The end result was that the show didn&#x27;t make any sense because it prioritized unpredictability over all else and eventually the world and characters didn&#x27;t make any sense anymore.</text></item><item><author>gregmac</author><text>Something that stuck out to me was a side-note:<p>&gt; Note that we do like endings that we didn&#x27;t expect, as long as they derive naturally from character action.<p>This, to me, is probably the biggest thing that makes me hate a story:<p>The character is faced with a situation and reacts in a way contrary to the way we&#x27;d expect them to act based on what we&#x27;ve seen so far. It soon becomes obvious they made that decision only to move the plot to a specific ending or scene.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>slg</author><text>I could give you a list of endings that I thought were great, but if you can’t think of a single ending that you found satisfying, that sounds more like a you problem than all of humanity simply stopped writing good endings.</text></comment> |
11,867,957 | 11,867,965 | 1 | 3 | 11,867,672 | train | <story><title>Passwords for 32M Twitter accounts may have been hacked and leaked</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/08/twitter-hack/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Olscore</author><text>Question: From my understanding bcrypt is designed for security even when the hashed data is leaked. Each piece of data is uniquely salted and hashed to perhaps varying degrees of difficulty. So for a thought experiment, let&#x27;s say a site made the password column of their user database public. Given an entirely public password column, even with associated usernames, would this have any use or decrease the security of those user accounts at all, aside from the obvious that their username is known?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andrewmunsell</author><text>It would allow you to bruteforce the passwords without any sort of rate limiting. So, if you used a dictionary, you probably could get quite a few weak passwords in a short amount of time relative to a system that had proper rate limiting to prevent these kinds of attacks.</text></comment> | <story><title>Passwords for 32M Twitter accounts may have been hacked and leaked</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/08/twitter-hack/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Olscore</author><text>Question: From my understanding bcrypt is designed for security even when the hashed data is leaked. Each piece of data is uniquely salted and hashed to perhaps varying degrees of difficulty. So for a thought experiment, let&#x27;s say a site made the password column of their user database public. Given an entirely public password column, even with associated usernames, would this have any use or decrease the security of those user accounts at all, aside from the obvious that their username is known?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>drrob</author><text>I suppose the main danger is the possibility that someone might, at some point in the future if processing power should suddenly take a leap forward, come up with a way to crack them.</text></comment> |
5,806,526 | 5,805,255 | 1 | 2 | 5,803,943 | train | <story><title>CUDA grep</title><url>http://bkase.github.io/CUDA-grep/finalreport.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>scott_s</author><text>Interesting work! But I'm unclear on the end-to-end performance comparison, which includes the cost of copying data to and from the device.<p>I know you guys are eyeballs deep in your data, so what's obvious to you may not be obvious to a reader. From what I can tell, your performance numbers are reported as an average per regex. But you're calculating that without including the string copying cost; you're only timing the cost of performing the computation on the GPU.<p>You show the overhead in absolute numbers. It seems small compared to the cost of processing the whole file, but I need to know the cost for grep to process that whole file as well. Basically, you show me a number, but you don't explain the significance of this number.<p>In my experience, the best way to deal with such issues is to always report entire-application performance. (This can be in addition to other numbers, of course.) That way I can say "Ah, calling grep took <i>x</i> seconds on average, calling their program took <i>y</i> seconds on average, and <i>y</i> &#60; <i>x</i>, so they've improved performance." If you report entire-application performance, your reader doesn't need to understand the particulars to at least determine if your technique is a performance win.</text></comment> | <story><title>CUDA grep</title><url>http://bkase.github.io/CUDA-grep/finalreport.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bkase</author><text>Well I woke up to a nice surprise!<p>Since people seem really interested in this, mburman and I are going to spend the day fixing up this project.<p>This was a final project for 15-418 in Spring of 2012 (that was a great class). We need to update it for the newer versions of CUDA, and we'll probably clean up some of our code since we're both better programmers now.<p>Pull-requests always welcome!</text></comment> |
41,746,450 | 41,746,552 | 1 | 2 | 41,745,181 | train | <story><title>Max Schrems wins privacy case against Meta over data on sexual orientation</title><url>https://apnews.com/article/facebook-meta-schrems-privacy-80fd4e6c59f48a3b583d6665af3ede86</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jfengel</author><text>Huh. I would have expected the company to go with &quot;we didn&#x27;t say gay and we didn&#x27;t use external information. We just noticed that users who like X page buy a lot of copies of Playgirl so we hooked you up&quot;.<p>Sounds like he managed to prove more in his case than is apparent from the article.</text></comment> | <story><title>Max Schrems wins privacy case against Meta over data on sexual orientation</title><url>https://apnews.com/article/facebook-meta-schrems-privacy-80fd4e6c59f48a3b583d6665af3ede86</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>crazygringo</author><text>&gt; <i>Schrems had complained that Facebook had processed personal data including information about his sexual orientation to target him with online advertising, even though he had never disclosed on his account that he was gay. The only time he had publicly revealed this fact was during a panel discussion.</i><p>But processed <i>what</i> personal data? Where would Facebook even get reliable data on users&#x27; sexual orientation in bulk? It&#x27;s not like you can buy that the way you can get credit scores or geographic locations. (Or can you? I&#x27;ve never heard of it.)<p>I&#x27;m very curious for the actual details here. And just because you get ads for products that seem to be marketed to the gay population, what leads the court to determine FB &quot;identified&quot; him as gay? My YouTube regularly has random ads in Spanish probably just because of some bug. <i>Most</i> ads seem to mistarget me, in fact.</text></comment> |
26,961,125 | 26,959,537 | 1 | 2 | 26,957,215 | train | <story><title>Mighty Makes Google Chrome Faster</title><url>https://www.mightyapp.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Liron</author><text>&gt; And I fail to see why anyone would use this, you need high speed internet capable of streaming 4k for one and if you have access to that, then chances are you also have access to a sufficiently powerful computer capable of running chrome locally.<p>Plenty of people who can’t afford a fast computer currently have access to a fast internet connection. The ability to substitute internet bandwidth for CPU and RAM will be very valuable for them.</text></item><item><author>IceWreck</author><text>The Cloud is just someone else&#x27;s computer.<p>As a self hoster, nothing irks me more that more software that takes control from the user to some random third party.<p>And I fail to see why anyone would use this, you need high speed internet capable of streaming 4k for one and if you have access to that, then chances are you also have access to a sufficiently powerful computer capable of running chrome locally.<p>Coming to security, this is a complete disaster. All your traffic including passwords are going to a third party server and you have to trust that server to not do anything shady.<p>This cant be economical either, or will be too expensive.<p>And the testimonial on the website, I find it hard to believe that a CEO of a company cannot afford a powerful computer but can afford a (presumably expensive) subscription service giving them access to a video stream of a browser running on powerful hardware.<p>Like another user said VNC can already do this, and much more without the electron wrapper.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>firebaze</author><text>I&#x27;m not sure people who cannot afford a fast computer will be able to spend their money on a service like this.<p>I&#x27;m quite probably overlooking something and I&#x27;d be curious to learn what.</text></comment> | <story><title>Mighty Makes Google Chrome Faster</title><url>https://www.mightyapp.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Liron</author><text>&gt; And I fail to see why anyone would use this, you need high speed internet capable of streaming 4k for one and if you have access to that, then chances are you also have access to a sufficiently powerful computer capable of running chrome locally.<p>Plenty of people who can’t afford a fast computer currently have access to a fast internet connection. The ability to substitute internet bandwidth for CPU and RAM will be very valuable for them.</text></item><item><author>IceWreck</author><text>The Cloud is just someone else&#x27;s computer.<p>As a self hoster, nothing irks me more that more software that takes control from the user to some random third party.<p>And I fail to see why anyone would use this, you need high speed internet capable of streaming 4k for one and if you have access to that, then chances are you also have access to a sufficiently powerful computer capable of running chrome locally.<p>Coming to security, this is a complete disaster. All your traffic including passwords are going to a third party server and you have to trust that server to not do anything shady.<p>This cant be economical either, or will be too expensive.<p>And the testimonial on the website, I find it hard to believe that a CEO of a company cannot afford a powerful computer but can afford a (presumably expensive) subscription service giving them access to a video stream of a browser running on powerful hardware.<p>Like another user said VNC can already do this, and much more without the electron wrapper.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mfer</author><text>Most people don&#x27;t need a fast computer. For many a 5 year old average computer is good enough in terms of hardware.<p>What makes this hardware not great is the many developers who have fast machines who are ok using a lot of it with the software they develop. This makes the experience on older systems slow. It&#x27;s unplanned obsolescence.<p>For chrome stuff and using the web I shouldn&#x27;t need a killer system. No one should.</text></comment> |
9,185,110 | 9,184,517 | 1 | 2 | 9,183,847 | train | <story><title>Adopting Microservices at Netflix</title><url>http://nginx.com/blog/adopting-microservices-at-netflix-lessons-for-team-and-process-design/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>matthewmacleod</author><text><i>Netflix doesn’t have an HR manual. There is a single guideline: “Act in NetFlix’s best interest.” The idea is that if an employee can’t figure out how to interpret the guideline in a given situation, he or she doesn’t have enough judgment to work there. If you don’t trust the judgment of the people on your team, you have to ask why you’re employing them. It’s true that you’ll have to fire people occasionally for violating the guideline. Overall, the high level of mutual trust among members of a team, and across the company as a whole, becomes a strong binding force.</i><p>Christ on a bike, that sounds horrific.<p>All this approach can do is replace codified guidelines with unknown, arbitrary ones. Who defines what &quot;NetFlix&#x27;s best interest&quot; is? In an organisation of that size, conflicts of interest must happen all the time.<p>Is this just a fancy way of saying &quot;If we don&#x27;t like you, you&#x27;re out of the door?&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brendangregg</author><text>G&#x27;Day, I work at Netflix, and we hire what&#x27;s been called &quot;fully formed adults&quot;. Here&#x27;s a quote that can explain it better than I (also see the full article):<p>Source <a href="https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr/ar/1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;how-netflix-reinvented-hr&#x2F;ar&#x2F;1</a>:<p>&quot;Hire, Reward, and Tolerate Only Fully Formed Adults<p>Over the years we learned that if we asked people to rely on logic and common sense instead of on formal policies, most of the time we would get better results, and at lower cost. If you’re careful to hire people who will put the company’s interests first, who understand and support the desire for a high-performance workplace, 97% of your employees will do the right thing. Most companies spend endless time and money writing and enforcing HR policies to deal with problems the other 3% might cause. Instead, we tried really hard to not hire those people, and we let them go if it turned out we’d made a hiring mistake.&quot;<p>I trust myself, and everyone on my team to act in Netflix&#x27;s best interest. Throughout my career, I&#x27;ve worked with many professional engineers who could have been trusted to work in the company&#x27;s best interest. But there have been many times when we&#x27;ve been prevented to do so, due to process. So I&#x27;ve been fascinated at how Netflix is operating, and it&#x27;s been great working here.<p>It&#x27;s important to know that a key role of management is to provide context to employees: what problems exist, what challenges we are facing, what opportunities might exist, what&#x27;s important to Netflix right now. So that we know what to do, and how to exercise judgement.<p>I&#x27;ve written about working at Netflix earlier this year on my blog (someone else posted a link).</text></comment> | <story><title>Adopting Microservices at Netflix</title><url>http://nginx.com/blog/adopting-microservices-at-netflix-lessons-for-team-and-process-design/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>matthewmacleod</author><text><i>Netflix doesn’t have an HR manual. There is a single guideline: “Act in NetFlix’s best interest.” The idea is that if an employee can’t figure out how to interpret the guideline in a given situation, he or she doesn’t have enough judgment to work there. If you don’t trust the judgment of the people on your team, you have to ask why you’re employing them. It’s true that you’ll have to fire people occasionally for violating the guideline. Overall, the high level of mutual trust among members of a team, and across the company as a whole, becomes a strong binding force.</i><p>Christ on a bike, that sounds horrific.<p>All this approach can do is replace codified guidelines with unknown, arbitrary ones. Who defines what &quot;NetFlix&#x27;s best interest&quot; is? In an organisation of that size, conflicts of interest must happen all the time.<p>Is this just a fancy way of saying &quot;If we don&#x27;t like you, you&#x27;re out of the door?&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>caw</author><text>This other quote seem horrific as well.<p>&gt; A single specialist in Java distributed systems is managing the entire configuration without any commercial storage tools or help from engineers specializing in storage, SAN, or backup.<p>So this person is either a genius who has specialized knowledge in these areas, or it&#x27;s been abstracted by the platforms people to the point where it&#x27;s only Java knowledge. Either way, it sounds like this person never gets to take a vacation or be not on-call. Hopefully there&#x27;s not just 1 person responsible for all of the configuration, it just takes 1 person to run it.<p>&gt; Process prevents problems. At many companies, the standard response to something going wrong is to add a preventative step to the relevant procedure.<p>The linked section goes on to talk about HR process with the &quot;Act in NetFlix&#x27;s best interest&quot;. It totally avoids the concept of technical processes. I&#x27;m betting &quot;best interest&quot; is a bit more formal on the tech side. Bad process is process for process&#x27;s sake. Good process serves a very important role for offloading what people have to remember, as well as knowledge transfer. From time to time, steps of a process become irrelevant because of other changes and it has to be pruned. Sometimes companies forget about this step.<p>If Netflix has ever seen a problem with their builds&#x2F;deploys and added a test to check against that problem, guess what--they followed the standard response to update the procedure. It&#x27;s not necessarily a bad thing.</text></comment> |
16,673,221 | 16,672,760 | 1 | 2 | 16,672,203 | train | <story><title>Medium suspended our account and blocked access to all our published stories</title><url>https://mastodon.xyz/@Liberapay/99744324870271197</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>srslack</author><text>&gt;the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons<p>They threw out their integrity as a publishing platform when they updated their ToS a month ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16431403" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16431403</a><p>Indeed, there is not much of a point to their existence when they throw this away, other than being a virtue signalling magazine with unpaid authors that doesn&#x27;t even follow their own vague ToS.<p>This week has been horrible for speech and freedom on the web. But surely a much needed reminder that suppressing speech does not work. The remedy is more speech, not less: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;prospect.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;remedy-more-speech" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;prospect.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;remedy-more-speech</a><p>Without holding this uncompromising stance, I&#x27;m of the opinion that one cannot call themselves a liberal, in a liberal democracy. It is the cornerstone of a functioning, modern liberal democracy, and the recent trend of this self-censorship by big technology companies is worrying.</text></item><item><author>greyman</author><text>&gt; You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience.<p>While this is certainly true, the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons, or will do so only if the content is clearly illegal or disturbing. If they will freely censor people, there&#x27;s not much point of their existence.</text></item><item><author>smg</author><text>A blanket statement like &#x27;Medium is bad&#x27; does not have enough nuance. Medium is for profit centralized service. You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience. It is for you to decide if this tradeoff is profitable.<p>For me, having Medium as the sole repository of my content does not seem like the right tradeoff. Maintaining a static site with a CDN costs less than 5$ a month. Having complete control over the content is far more valuable than the audience that Medium brings. Mirroring posts to Medium can still allow me to reach that audience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>djflutt3rshy</author><text>If more speech was the remedy to hate speech, then we would expect platforms with the most speech and least censorship would have the least hate. But compare well moderated social discussion sites like MetaFilter, HN, Fark to &quot;anything goes&quot; places like Twitter, 4chan, Reddit, etc. and the opposite is true.</text></comment> | <story><title>Medium suspended our account and blocked access to all our published stories</title><url>https://mastodon.xyz/@Liberapay/99744324870271197</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>srslack</author><text>&gt;the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons<p>They threw out their integrity as a publishing platform when they updated their ToS a month ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16431403" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16431403</a><p>Indeed, there is not much of a point to their existence when they throw this away, other than being a virtue signalling magazine with unpaid authors that doesn&#x27;t even follow their own vague ToS.<p>This week has been horrible for speech and freedom on the web. But surely a much needed reminder that suppressing speech does not work. The remedy is more speech, not less: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;prospect.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;remedy-more-speech" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;prospect.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;remedy-more-speech</a><p>Without holding this uncompromising stance, I&#x27;m of the opinion that one cannot call themselves a liberal, in a liberal democracy. It is the cornerstone of a functioning, modern liberal democracy, and the recent trend of this self-censorship by big technology companies is worrying.</text></item><item><author>greyman</author><text>&gt; You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience.<p>While this is certainly true, the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons, or will do so only if the content is clearly illegal or disturbing. If they will freely censor people, there&#x27;s not much point of their existence.</text></item><item><author>smg</author><text>A blanket statement like &#x27;Medium is bad&#x27; does not have enough nuance. Medium is for profit centralized service. You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience. It is for you to decide if this tradeoff is profitable.<p>For me, having Medium as the sole repository of my content does not seem like the right tradeoff. Maintaining a static site with a CDN costs less than 5$ a month. Having complete control over the content is far more valuable than the audience that Medium brings. Mirroring posts to Medium can still allow me to reach that audience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>&gt; more speech, not less<p>When speech can be automated, this turns into a question of who has the largest promotional bot army. True speech can be drowned out with an infinite array of conflicting lies.</text></comment> |
17,723,884 | 17,722,962 | 1 | 2 | 17,721,601 | train | <story><title>New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/business/media/new-york-times-earnings-subscriptions.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joekrill</author><text>&gt; They also show ads even if you have a subscription, which sounds very backward to me.<p>So are you also cancelling your cable subscription, any magazine subscriptions, physical newspaper subscriptions, no longer driving on toll roads with billboard...?<p>I&#x27;m not saying it&#x27;s right, or good, or valid--but the standard practice, for as long as I can remember, for most mediums, is to still show ads for things you pay for. So I&#x27;m not sure how that makes it &quot;backwards&quot;.</text></item><item><author>ehsankia</author><text>I canceled mine last week exactly because of those dark patterns. They also show ads even if you have a subscription, which sounds very backward to me. I&#x27;d love to support them, but those practices don&#x27;t belong in 2018.<p>EDIT: Oh, looks like the cancellation didn&#x27;t go through and they charged me for one more month, sweet. I might just go to my bank and tell them to block the source. Or even better, I may have found a trick. You can switch your payment to Paypal, and then Paypal let&#x27;s you block&#x2F;cancel reccuring payment. Let&#x27;s see if that works.</text></item><item><author>TheAceOfHearts</author><text>It&#x27;s surprising to see how small they are. Only 3.8 million subscribers, and you have to imagine that some percentage of that barely reads their content.<p>I wonder if there&#x27;s public numbers estimating how many people in total read the New York Times, and how it compares to emerging forms of media and entertainment like YouTube.<p>One criticism of New York Times that I&#x27;ve read online is that they won&#x27;t allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I&#x27;m not sure if that has changed recently, but that&#x27;s a pretty questionable dark pattern.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>criddell</author><text>A lot of people have cancelled their cable subscription and get by with ad-free services like Netflix and Hulu, MLB.tv, etc...<p>The other things you mention - magazines, newspapers, and billboards - usually don&#x27;t track you and build a profile on you so they are less objectionable.</text></comment> | <story><title>New York Times Co. Reports $24M Profit, Thanks to Digital Subscribers</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/business/media/new-york-times-earnings-subscriptions.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joekrill</author><text>&gt; They also show ads even if you have a subscription, which sounds very backward to me.<p>So are you also cancelling your cable subscription, any magazine subscriptions, physical newspaper subscriptions, no longer driving on toll roads with billboard...?<p>I&#x27;m not saying it&#x27;s right, or good, or valid--but the standard practice, for as long as I can remember, for most mediums, is to still show ads for things you pay for. So I&#x27;m not sure how that makes it &quot;backwards&quot;.</text></item><item><author>ehsankia</author><text>I canceled mine last week exactly because of those dark patterns. They also show ads even if you have a subscription, which sounds very backward to me. I&#x27;d love to support them, but those practices don&#x27;t belong in 2018.<p>EDIT: Oh, looks like the cancellation didn&#x27;t go through and they charged me for one more month, sweet. I might just go to my bank and tell them to block the source. Or even better, I may have found a trick. You can switch your payment to Paypal, and then Paypal let&#x27;s you block&#x2F;cancel reccuring payment. Let&#x27;s see if that works.</text></item><item><author>TheAceOfHearts</author><text>It&#x27;s surprising to see how small they are. Only 3.8 million subscribers, and you have to imagine that some percentage of that barely reads their content.<p>I wonder if there&#x27;s public numbers estimating how many people in total read the New York Times, and how it compares to emerging forms of media and entertainment like YouTube.<p>One criticism of New York Times that I&#x27;ve read online is that they won&#x27;t allow you to cancel your digital subscription through their website. They force you to call them. I&#x27;m not sure if that has changed recently, but that&#x27;s a pretty questionable dark pattern.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>r3bl</author><text>Because you can open a private&#x2F;incognito&#x2F;porn tab and view the same article without actually paying for it, and a premium should offer you something worth a constant amount of money draining from your account.<p>Paying 15 euros per month to get a daily crossword + cooking section (or 9 euros per month to <i>not</i> get them) is something not a lot of people are interested in.</text></comment> |
7,791,268 | 7,791,369 | 1 | 2 | 7,790,743 | train | <story><title>Surface Pro 3</title><url>http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/05/23/surface-pro-3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hyperliner</author><text>It has to be really frustrating to be an engineer working on Surface and having to deal with the HN echo chamber, or MS bashing (some from Apple fanboys), or totally unrelated comments.<p>Maybe it should be a rule that these folks below post their own product for review. Hopefully they have something significant that can be open to critique.<p>Of course, that would not be too much fun.<p>- nivla: &quot;Seriously, I am starting to believe that these tiny screwups are their signature.&quot;<p>- rasz_pl: &quot;...rock solid product.. notice the number 3 in the name of said product? and still not good enough. Not to mention UI lags. 2014 and GUI is lagging. Someone needs to get shot.&quot;<p>- justin66 &quot;&gt; Windows 8 tries to be too many things at once
That is a very, very generous description of Windows 8.&quot;<p>- jodrellblank: &quot;2014, Intel Core i5, SSD and stutters when &#x27;browsing files&#x27; in PS. shakes head&quot;<p>- carlio: &quot;I feel a little cynical by saying this, but does Microsoft really care about artists as much as they care about the audience they&#x27;re reaching via Penny Arcade?&quot;<p>- enraged_camel: &quot;It&#x27;s the execution that is lacking significantly. I&#x27;ve always said that Microsoft is really, really good at engineering, and really, really bad at UX and usability. After reading Gabe&#x27;s review, I&#x27;m disappointed that this is still the case.&quot;<p>[EDIT: Software to &quot;product&quot; + line breaks]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>This isn&#x27;t elementary school where everyone gets an &quot;A&quot; for effort. Microsoft has demonstrated with the Surface line an institutional inability to execute. From Surface RT shipping with a buggy beta of Office to continuing major deficiencies in Windows Phone (no forward button in IE until 8.1?) to the schizo nature of Windows 8 that only makes sense if you look from the engineering side and realize that its schizo only because it would be too hard to make everything run in Metro. Yes, there are engineering compromises that have to be made, but they shouldn&#x27;t result in what the user perceives to be a compromised product.<p>Sometimes its better to not do something unless you can do it right. E.g. Surface RT shouldn&#x27;t have shipped without a final version of Office. It featured prominently in every rewview, and almost nobody went back and updated theirs. E.g. Surface Pro shouldn&#x27;t have shipped without Haswell. E.g. Surface Pro 2 shouldn&#x27;t have shipped without the major firmware update that improved battery life by 20%. E.g. Apple has wisely avoided shipping a Retina MBA because they can&#x27;t do it yet without regressing battery life.<p>Microsoft is playing in Apple&#x27;s price range, and is late to the game. What it lacks is Apple&#x27;s ability to take on limited ambitious, but (usually) execute those without major flaws.</text></comment> | <story><title>Surface Pro 3</title><url>http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/05/23/surface-pro-3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hyperliner</author><text>It has to be really frustrating to be an engineer working on Surface and having to deal with the HN echo chamber, or MS bashing (some from Apple fanboys), or totally unrelated comments.<p>Maybe it should be a rule that these folks below post their own product for review. Hopefully they have something significant that can be open to critique.<p>Of course, that would not be too much fun.<p>- nivla: &quot;Seriously, I am starting to believe that these tiny screwups are their signature.&quot;<p>- rasz_pl: &quot;...rock solid product.. notice the number 3 in the name of said product? and still not good enough. Not to mention UI lags. 2014 and GUI is lagging. Someone needs to get shot.&quot;<p>- justin66 &quot;&gt; Windows 8 tries to be too many things at once
That is a very, very generous description of Windows 8.&quot;<p>- jodrellblank: &quot;2014, Intel Core i5, SSD and stutters when &#x27;browsing files&#x27; in PS. shakes head&quot;<p>- carlio: &quot;I feel a little cynical by saying this, but does Microsoft really care about artists as much as they care about the audience they&#x27;re reaching via Penny Arcade?&quot;<p>- enraged_camel: &quot;It&#x27;s the execution that is lacking significantly. I&#x27;ve always said that Microsoft is really, really good at engineering, and really, really bad at UX and usability. After reading Gabe&#x27;s review, I&#x27;m disappointed that this is still the case.&quot;<p>[EDIT: Software to &quot;product&quot; + line breaks]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gisenberg</author><text>Comments like these genuinely make me wonder if a non-trivial chunk of the crowd here is paid marketers and&#x2F;or folks not being honest about full disclosure.<p>Touting the HN echo chamber in the context of the Surface is hard to take in good faith. Frustrated Surface engineers? As someone who waited in line on launch day and returned their Surface within a week, how about frustrated Surface customers? After reading a review where the device sounds like a strong step back and was developed in isolation without customer feedback, I think your sympathies are misplaced.</text></comment> |
11,184,247 | 11,184,326 | 1 | 2 | 11,183,208 | train | <story><title>Raspberry Pi 3 Model B confirmed, with onboard BT LE and WiFi</title><url>https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/ViewExhibitReport.cfm?mode=Exhibits&calledFromFrame=N&application_id=Ti%2FYleaJNSl%2BTR5mL5C0WQ%3D%3D&fcc_id=2ABCB-RPI32</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nfriedly</author><text>Comparing the photos to my Pi 2, it doesn&#x27;t seem very different. There&#x27;s an extra IC near the microsd card, a connector beneath the HDMI port, and a few other small changes.<p>But nothing that looks like an antenna. Any idea where that might be?<p>Edit: as lovelearning pointed out, there is a small ceramic-looking piece in the upper-left of the top side, near the GPIO pins and LVDS display connector. That might be it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>casylum</author><text>Look for a cutaway ground plane as a hint to where the antenna may be.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;z9bDR" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;z9bDR</a><p>Wifi antenna and chip set highlighted.</text></comment> | <story><title>Raspberry Pi 3 Model B confirmed, with onboard BT LE and WiFi</title><url>https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/ViewExhibitReport.cfm?mode=Exhibits&calledFromFrame=N&application_id=Ti%2FYleaJNSl%2BTR5mL5C0WQ%3D%3D&fcc_id=2ABCB-RPI32</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nfriedly</author><text>Comparing the photos to my Pi 2, it doesn&#x27;t seem very different. There&#x27;s an extra IC near the microsd card, a connector beneath the HDMI port, and a few other small changes.<p>But nothing that looks like an antenna. Any idea where that might be?<p>Edit: as lovelearning pointed out, there is a small ceramic-looking piece in the upper-left of the top side, near the GPIO pins and LVDS display connector. That might be it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Squonk42</author><text>That is it, and the connector beneath the HDMI port is the same (but mounted) JTAG connector as the RPi2.<p>I don&#x27;t know what is the chip, though.<p>Also noticed a 2-pin header between the 40-pin one and the upper USB ones: it looks like the &quot;RUN&quot; from the Rpi Zero.<p>EDIT: The 2-pin &quot;RUN&quot; header already existed on the RPi2, where the ceramic antenna is now located on the RPi3.</text></comment> |
14,084,211 | 14,080,869 | 1 | 3 | 14,079,026 | train | <story><title>When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged</title><url>http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/06/482952588/when-people-ate-people-a-strange-disease-emerged</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>YCode</author><text>I understand prion diseases are rare and it&#x27;s more likely I&#x27;ll die in a car accident or something, but the persistence of prions is just a horrifying concept.<p>Highly resistant to heat, radiation, proteases, enzymes... Basically if you&#x27;ve got a prion disease it&#x27;s just a matter of time before they end you.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spangry</author><text>They really are terrifying. It&#x27;s hard to say exactly why this is so, but I think it has something to do with how they can occur (some protein randomly misfolding) and that they aren&#x27;t really &quot;alive&quot;, in the same sense that viruses and bacteria are.<p>You can kinda forgive viruses and bacteria: they&#x27;re just looking to survive and multiply, just like us. In some cases they monopolise so much of their hosts&#x27; resources, or some really critical resource, that the host dies. But Prions, uhhhhh.... They&#x27;re just kinda these <i>unnatural things</i> that go wrong and then kill you in pretty awful ways. Though not because they necessarily need to out-compete you for resources. Indeed, they don&#x27;t seem to have any innate preference for existing or not existing, or thriving or not thriving. But they kill you anyway....<p>Also, just to scare you a little more, one of the more popular (perhaps dominant) theories about Alzheimer-family diseases is that they are initially caused by Prions, that migrate into your brain and start forming amaloid plaques, and then it&#x27;s all down-hill from there.<p>On the upside, I vaguely remember reading some research on a &#x27;almost ready&#x27; drug, initially developed to lessen the negative side-effects of chemo-therapy, that might be effective at stopping the progression of these plaques as they spread throughout the brain. If it actually works, we might have a treatment of AD-family diseases on the market in a year or so (the chemo folks have already gone through the lengthy human safety testing part of the exercise).<p>Not a cure, but at least it might halt or significantly slow progression of symptoms.</text></comment> | <story><title>When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged</title><url>http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/06/482952588/when-people-ate-people-a-strange-disease-emerged</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>YCode</author><text>I understand prion diseases are rare and it&#x27;s more likely I&#x27;ll die in a car accident or something, but the persistence of prions is just a horrifying concept.<p>Highly resistant to heat, radiation, proteases, enzymes... Basically if you&#x27;ve got a prion disease it&#x27;s just a matter of time before they end you.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>quantumhobbit</author><text>What would a cure for prion diseases even look like? Are prions targeted by the immune system at all? That to me is what is scary about them.</text></comment> |
17,736,610 | 17,736,284 | 1 | 2 | 17,735,229 | train | <story><title>Brazil sets new record for homicides</title><url>https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/a-devastating-scenario-brazil-sets-new-record-for-homicides-at-63880-deaths/ar-BBLIXQc?OCID=ansmsnnews11</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bennicholes</author><text>Where did you live in Brazil? As an American I visit the interior of São Paulo and Belo Horizonte often and have never experienced anything like this, nor does it seem my Brazilian friends live in constant anxiety.</text></item><item><author>goshx</author><text>You never know when you are going to be targeted, so you live in this constant fear. Ask anyone who lives in Brazil what they do if they see two guys in a motorcycle coming their way.<p>I&#x27;ve been robbed at gun point; I&#x27;ve woken up with someone inside my bedroom stealing my laptop; I&#x27;ve been followed home; The bus from the public transport system I used to take
was stopped by criminals and set on fire; and so on.<p>It used to affect only the life of those living in the metropolitan areas, but now it is spreading.<p>The main reason why I moved to the US was because I was living in such a state that I was always tense. When I was robbed at gun point I almost got shot because the guy thought I was too calm and suspected I was a cop.<p>Living in the US I realized how much that was affecting my daily life and how life without worrying feels like.<p>That&#x27;s how it affects your life.</text></item><item><author>MrEfficiency</author><text>Whats this like for civilians that are not involved?<p>I hear about the crime in my country, but it seems unreal to me because in my area you&#x27;d never know there were dozens of murders last weekend.<p>Does this affect your life?</text></item><item><author>rvr_</author><text>Brazilian here. Our criminality numbers are _probably_ higher than the official numbers. The country is huge and diverse, but even the most pacific states and cities are in a bad shape if compared to almost any other country.
More than 70% of the deaths are related to gang conflicts.<p>Drugs are not the only problem. We also have a lot of cargo&#x2F;truck stealing, street-level robbery, an enormous black market of stolen mobile phones, etc.<p>We have some affluent startup hubs, there are innovation in e-commerce, payments, banking, HR and many more, but our tech elite is complete out-of-sync with our major problem: violence. Maybe a fresh HN discussion can put some light on the issue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hugocbp</author><text>I&#x27;m from Belo Horizonte now living in Canada... Mostly moved because couldn&#x27;t take the anxiety of being in fear every single time I had to leave home.<p>Most people just play the numbers game. I, for example, have been robbed at gunpoint, with a knife, with 4 teenagers threatening to beat me up when I was 14 and I was even &quot;lightning kidnapped&quot; (I don&#x27;t even know the term in English, but I was put in a car and bandits kept me for 8 hours and drove me around waiting for the banking hours to reset the withdraw money from ATM to take more form my account).<p>A lot of my friends, though, have never been robbed at all.<p>In general, we all know we are subject to that, but in the end it is mostly just bad or good luck. Just being in the wrong place in the wrong time.<p>From all the people I know, those that have never been through this just live life mostly normally. But once you&#x27;ve suffered that at least once, you can never really fully rest again.<p>The homicides problem on that news is actually not that relevant in that context because, as others have said, it is really concentrated in poor neighborhoods or slums, where the State basically is nonexistent.<p>For example, in a lot of violent slums, criminals take and sell access to pirated cable TV, energy and water, to the point where the official employees can be made to fix stuff when they go there to try and cut signals. That is how absent the state is in those places.<p>But when you see homicides numbers like that go up, probably the random crimes to the whole population is going up as well.</text></comment> | <story><title>Brazil sets new record for homicides</title><url>https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/a-devastating-scenario-brazil-sets-new-record-for-homicides-at-63880-deaths/ar-BBLIXQc?OCID=ansmsnnews11</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bennicholes</author><text>Where did you live in Brazil? As an American I visit the interior of São Paulo and Belo Horizonte often and have never experienced anything like this, nor does it seem my Brazilian friends live in constant anxiety.</text></item><item><author>goshx</author><text>You never know when you are going to be targeted, so you live in this constant fear. Ask anyone who lives in Brazil what they do if they see two guys in a motorcycle coming their way.<p>I&#x27;ve been robbed at gun point; I&#x27;ve woken up with someone inside my bedroom stealing my laptop; I&#x27;ve been followed home; The bus from the public transport system I used to take
was stopped by criminals and set on fire; and so on.<p>It used to affect only the life of those living in the metropolitan areas, but now it is spreading.<p>The main reason why I moved to the US was because I was living in such a state that I was always tense. When I was robbed at gun point I almost got shot because the guy thought I was too calm and suspected I was a cop.<p>Living in the US I realized how much that was affecting my daily life and how life without worrying feels like.<p>That&#x27;s how it affects your life.</text></item><item><author>MrEfficiency</author><text>Whats this like for civilians that are not involved?<p>I hear about the crime in my country, but it seems unreal to me because in my area you&#x27;d never know there were dozens of murders last weekend.<p>Does this affect your life?</text></item><item><author>rvr_</author><text>Brazilian here. Our criminality numbers are _probably_ higher than the official numbers. The country is huge and diverse, but even the most pacific states and cities are in a bad shape if compared to almost any other country.
More than 70% of the deaths are related to gang conflicts.<p>Drugs are not the only problem. We also have a lot of cargo&#x2F;truck stealing, street-level robbery, an enormous black market of stolen mobile phones, etc.<p>We have some affluent startup hubs, there are innovation in e-commerce, payments, banking, HR and many more, but our tech elite is complete out-of-sync with our major problem: violence. Maybe a fresh HN discussion can put some light on the issue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mrisoli</author><text>I&#x27;m from Belo Horizonte and the constant anxiety is real, of course it&#x27;s not a problem every moment but shows up in every situation.<p>Waiting for the bus every day of the week for 15-30min, you&#x27;re very exposed, and should be careful with your phone out, and some people learn your commute time, follow you, it&#x27;s rare, but if you&#x27;re not paying attention, it can happen.<p>I personally used to(don&#x27;t live there anymore) double check every corner I step into to make sure there&#x27;s nothing suspicious.<p>It&#x27;s anecdotal of course but I&#x27;ve had three of my friends having their cellphone stolen in the same day, and at least one per day for a two week span.<p>My parents moved into a gated community which is supposed to be safer, only to have their house robbed their first month there, robbers get in facilitated by the staff.<p>I could go on with anecdotes for a long time, and just for the last year.</text></comment> |
946,010 | 945,869 | 1 | 3 | 945,846 | train | <story><title>My app ShoveBox is on NYTimes.com for some reason</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2009/11/16/16gigaom-shovebox-for-the-mac-and-iphone-helps-keep-your-s-23340.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tlrobinson</author><text>It looks like NYT syndicates GigaOm, like how the Washington Post syndicates TechCrunch.<p>When we're on TechCrunch I make sure to send my friends and family the Washington Post URLs, since it looks a little more impressive to people not familiar with TechCrunch ;)</text></comment> | <story><title>My app ShoveBox is on NYTimes.com for some reason</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2009/11/16/16gigaom-shovebox-for-the-mac-and-iphone-helps-keep-your-s-23340.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>grinich</author><text>I'd be really interested in hearing how MacHeist has affected your sales, this press included.</text></comment> |
31,630,841 | 31,630,950 | 1 | 3 | 31,630,148 | train | <story><title>Spotify podcasters are making $18k a month with nothing but white noise</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-01/how-to-make-money-on-spotify-a-white-noise-podcast-could-bring-you-big-bucks</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>raesene9</author><text>One thing I didn&#x27;t realise till recently, is you don&#x27;t need spotify to generate white noise if you have an iPhone&#x2F;iPad, as it&#x27;s an in-built function under accessibility --&gt; Audio&#x2F;Visual and background sounds.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mft_</author><text>Thanks - really good to discover this!<p>Interesting to note the size of the samples that Apple is using:<p>* Balanced noise: 1.8MB<p>* Bright noise: 1.8MB<p>* Dark noise: 1.8MB<p>* Ocean: 62.4MB<p>* Rain: 63.7MB<p>* Stream: 72.1MB<p>That&#x27;s a lot of effort to ensure your background water sounds are (presumably) high fidelity and non-repeating!</text></comment> | <story><title>Spotify podcasters are making $18k a month with nothing but white noise</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-01/how-to-make-money-on-spotify-a-white-noise-podcast-could-bring-you-big-bucks</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>raesene9</author><text>One thing I didn&#x27;t realise till recently, is you don&#x27;t need spotify to generate white noise if you have an iPhone&#x2F;iPad, as it&#x27;s an in-built function under accessibility --&gt; Audio&#x2F;Visual and background sounds.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gyan</author><text>FFmpeg has a colored noise generator.
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ffmpeg.org&#x2F;ffmpeg-filters.html#anoisesrc" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ffmpeg.org&#x2F;ffmpeg-filters.html#anoisesrc</a></text></comment> |
6,709,227 | 6,708,993 | 1 | 2 | 6,708,758 | train | <story><title>Moscow subway sells free tickets for 30 sit-ups</title><url>http://english.pravda.ru/news/russia/08-11-2013/126095-moscow_subway-0/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>anonymfus</author><text>As Russian I want to share my first association:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C-jcCWu31s" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5C-jcCWu31s</a><p>Westerners could try to understand it by watching entire movie:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-dza-dza" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kin-dza-dza</a><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I47CNxwlt9U" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=I47CNxwlt9U</a><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eti9Qn4bZDg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=eti9Qn4bZDg</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Moscow subway sells free tickets for 30 sit-ups</title><url>http://english.pravda.ru/news/russia/08-11-2013/126095-moscow_subway-0/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jdmitch</author><text>According to the BBC coverage of this story(and what is actually shown in the video), it was squats rather than situps:<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24873180" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;world-europe-24873180</a></text></comment> |
14,180,776 | 14,180,408 | 1 | 2 | 14,178,397 | train | <story><title>Uber CEO Plays with Fire</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanick-pushes-uber-and-himself-to-the-precipice.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sgustard</author><text>&gt;If it&#x27;s free for you, you&#x27;re the product.<p>So hypothetically, if you paid $5 a month for this service, you would be confident they were NOT selling your information?<p>Since the answer is obviously no (and in fact, purchasing behavior is the juiciest stuff to sell, be it Comcast, Target, etc), then this tired trope is meaningless.</text></item><item><author>rosser</author><text>From their own site: &quot;Unroll.Me is a <i>free service</i>&quot;, emphasis added.<p>If it&#x27;s free for you, <i>you&#x27;re</i> the product.</text></item><item><author>cocktailpeanuts</author><text>Wow I think this unroll.me thing is the real scandal here.<p>I am an unroll.me user, but had no idea they sell user data to companies this way.<p>Their whole value proposition is to help people control their own privacy and now I kind of feel betrayed..</text></item><item><author>ErikAugust</author><text>Buried lede here:<p>&quot;They spent much of their energy one-upping rivals like Lyft. Uber devoted teams to so-called competitive intelligence, purchasing data from an analytics service called Slice Intelligence. Using an email digest service it owns named Unroll.me, Slice collected its customers’ emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber. Uber used the data as a proxy for the health of Lyft’s business. (Lyft, too, operates a competitive intelligence team.)&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>goflyapig</author><text><i>So hypothetically, if you paid $5 a month for this service, you would be confident they were NOT selling your information?</i><p>No. A statement&#x27;s truth doesn&#x27;t imply its inverse [1].<p>It simply means if a company has employees, and they&#x27;re receiving paychecks, and the money is <i>not</i> coming from you, then it&#x27;s <i>definitely</i> coming from someone else.<p>If you <i>are</i> giving them money, it doesn&#x27;t mean they&#x27;re not also getting money from somewhere else. But they&#x27;re less likely to <i>need</i> to do that, especially if it would upset their paying customers.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Denying_the_antecedent" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Denying_the_antecedent</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Uber CEO Plays with Fire</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanick-pushes-uber-and-himself-to-the-precipice.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sgustard</author><text>&gt;If it&#x27;s free for you, you&#x27;re the product.<p>So hypothetically, if you paid $5 a month for this service, you would be confident they were NOT selling your information?<p>Since the answer is obviously no (and in fact, purchasing behavior is the juiciest stuff to sell, be it Comcast, Target, etc), then this tired trope is meaningless.</text></item><item><author>rosser</author><text>From their own site: &quot;Unroll.Me is a <i>free service</i>&quot;, emphasis added.<p>If it&#x27;s free for you, <i>you&#x27;re</i> the product.</text></item><item><author>cocktailpeanuts</author><text>Wow I think this unroll.me thing is the real scandal here.<p>I am an unroll.me user, but had no idea they sell user data to companies this way.<p>Their whole value proposition is to help people control their own privacy and now I kind of feel betrayed..</text></item><item><author>ErikAugust</author><text>Buried lede here:<p>&quot;They spent much of their energy one-upping rivals like Lyft. Uber devoted teams to so-called competitive intelligence, purchasing data from an analytics service called Slice Intelligence. Using an email digest service it owns named Unroll.me, Slice collected its customers’ emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber. Uber used the data as a proxy for the health of Lyft’s business. (Lyft, too, operates a competitive intelligence team.)&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gdulli</author><text>If X then Y doesn&#x27;t imply anything about not-X, but that doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s less useful for describing X.<p>It&#x27;s moot anyway because the answer is out there publicly and no heuristic is needed to resolve it.</text></comment> |
21,212,357 | 21,212,096 | 1 | 3 | 21,208,485 | train | <story><title>Pair Locking Your iPhone</title><url>https://arkadiyt.com/2019/10/07/pair-locking-your-iphone-with-configurator-2/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vinay427</author><text>It&#x27;s still, at least on paper, freer than many&#x2F;most other Western countries in most ways AFAIK. I agree that this is a very absurd counterexample, however.</text></item><item><author>kmlx</author><text>land of the so-called free.</text></item><item><author>david-s</author><text>It&#x27;s absurd</text></item><item><author>rendall</author><text>You are both correct.<p>Incidentally, the &quot;border&quot; for legal purposes extends 100 miles into the interior.</text></item><item><author>igammarays</author><text>&gt; If you are a US citizen, you can&#x27;t be turned away at the border or forced to unlock the device.<p>A warrant is not required. Federal agents can search your phone at the US border, even if you&#x27;re a US citizen [1]. If they can&#x27;t unlock it, they can seize it [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;can-us-border-agents-search-your-phone-at-the-airport-2017-2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;can-us-border-agents-search-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;tech&#x2F;2019&#x2F;05&#x2F;01&#x2F;u-s-customs-can-seize-your-phone-when-you-return-home-abroad&#x2F;3632116002&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;tech&#x2F;2019&#x2F;05&#x2F;01&#x2F;u-s-customs-c...</a></text></item><item><author>noident</author><text>If you want to keep your phone secure, enable a long passcode, turn on full device encryption, and turn it off. If you are a US citizen, you can&#x27;t be turned away at the border or forced to unlock the device. If you&#x27;re not a US citizen or don&#x27;t want to be harrassed by customs, bring a burner phone.<p>Tools like Cellebrite can and do take advantage of security vulnerabilities. Turning off pair locking lulls users into a false sense of security and is therefore harmful. Further, only restricting CBP searches to &quot;manual&quot; searches isn&#x27;t enough and does plenty of damage to your privacy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BigJ1211</author><text>That would really depend on how you define freedom, if you look at it theoratically like &quot;free to do whatever you want&quot;. Then <i>maybe</i>, if you look at it from the perspective of &quot;an individual can garner freedoms through work&quot; they are far more likely to do that in most <i>other</i> western countries.<p>You are far more likely to not have to worry about things like healthcare in european countries than you are in the US for example. You are far less likely to have to work multiple jobs to sustain your life. &#x27;Class&#x27;mobility is far is better in most other western countries as well.<p>So if your definition is &quot;free to do whatever&quot;, this also means other people and corporations are free to screw you over. And you would be right that in that regard the USA is freer than other western countries, but it infringes upon personal freedom, and in my opinion, that is the kind of freedom the USA gneerally says they&#x27;re all about.</text></comment> | <story><title>Pair Locking Your iPhone</title><url>https://arkadiyt.com/2019/10/07/pair-locking-your-iphone-with-configurator-2/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vinay427</author><text>It&#x27;s still, at least on paper, freer than many&#x2F;most other Western countries in most ways AFAIK. I agree that this is a very absurd counterexample, however.</text></item><item><author>kmlx</author><text>land of the so-called free.</text></item><item><author>david-s</author><text>It&#x27;s absurd</text></item><item><author>rendall</author><text>You are both correct.<p>Incidentally, the &quot;border&quot; for legal purposes extends 100 miles into the interior.</text></item><item><author>igammarays</author><text>&gt; If you are a US citizen, you can&#x27;t be turned away at the border or forced to unlock the device.<p>A warrant is not required. Federal agents can search your phone at the US border, even if you&#x27;re a US citizen [1]. If they can&#x27;t unlock it, they can seize it [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;can-us-border-agents-search-your-phone-at-the-airport-2017-2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;can-us-border-agents-search-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;tech&#x2F;2019&#x2F;05&#x2F;01&#x2F;u-s-customs-can-seize-your-phone-when-you-return-home-abroad&#x2F;3632116002&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;tech&#x2F;2019&#x2F;05&#x2F;01&#x2F;u-s-customs-c...</a></text></item><item><author>noident</author><text>If you want to keep your phone secure, enable a long passcode, turn on full device encryption, and turn it off. If you are a US citizen, you can&#x27;t be turned away at the border or forced to unlock the device. If you&#x27;re not a US citizen or don&#x27;t want to be harrassed by customs, bring a burner phone.<p>Tools like Cellebrite can and do take advantage of security vulnerabilities. Turning off pair locking lulls users into a false sense of security and is therefore harmful. Further, only restricting CBP searches to &quot;manual&quot; searches isn&#x27;t enough and does plenty of damage to your privacy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jw1224</author><text>Can you give a few examples of ways in which a US citizen is more free than I, a UK citizen, am?</text></comment> |
4,452,205 | 4,451,353 | 1 | 3 | 4,449,680 | train | <story><title>37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady</title><url>http://www.fastcompany.com/3000852/37signals-earns-millions-each-year-its-ceo%E2%80%99s-model-his-cleaning-lady</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whalesalad</author><text>"I won’t name names. I used to name names. But I think all you have to do is read TechCrunch. Look at what the top stories are, and they’re all about raising money, how many employees they have, and these are metrics that don’t matter. What matters is: Are you profitable? Are you building something great? Are you taking care of your people? Are you treating your customers well? In the coverage of our industry as a whole, you’ll rarely see stories about treating customers well, about people building a sustainable business. TechCrunch to me is the great place to look to see the sickness in our industry right now."<p>I love this quote. It reflects my sentiments to a T.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pg</author><text>The reason the press writes about funding rather than revenues is not some kind of conspiracy to focus on the wrong things, but simply because reporters know about funding rounds and not about revenues.<p>It's clear that the press would write about revenues if they could, because they write a lot about the revenues of public companies. They're able to do that because public companies have to disclose their revenues.<p>Private companies never publish their revenues. Including 37signals. So if Jason really believes this is a terrible problem and wants to set things on the right course, he should set an example and start publishing 37signals' revenue numbers.</text></comment> | <story><title>37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady</title><url>http://www.fastcompany.com/3000852/37signals-earns-millions-each-year-its-ceo%E2%80%99s-model-his-cleaning-lady</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whalesalad</author><text>"I won’t name names. I used to name names. But I think all you have to do is read TechCrunch. Look at what the top stories are, and they’re all about raising money, how many employees they have, and these are metrics that don’t matter. What matters is: Are you profitable? Are you building something great? Are you taking care of your people? Are you treating your customers well? In the coverage of our industry as a whole, you’ll rarely see stories about treating customers well, about people building a sustainable business. TechCrunch to me is the great place to look to see the sickness in our industry right now."<p>I love this quote. It reflects my sentiments to a T.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wamatt</author><text>Jason Fried's article feels a bit preachy TBH, and the last paragraph about the cleaning lady being so awesome, seems rather cliched/trite.<p>I'm sure he's trying to tell us he values the little-guy/gal. Great!, we do too, but then don't pretend her job is more exciting than a whole industry, and you're just sitting around in gushy anticipation of your fresh flowers. ugh :p<p>Also, painting the valley as "sick" and "disgusting", feels one sided.<p>Sure there are problems with some startups being over-hyped, but bubble or not, companies are getting real shit done here, and it's pretty unique place, simply in terms of raw tech innovation density. Giving credit where due, doesn't need to take away from all the rest of the good stuff that goes on elsewhere in the world too, like at 37 Signals, Chicago IL.</text></comment> |
14,719,443 | 14,718,118 | 1 | 2 | 14,717,684 | train | <story><title>All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011)</title><url>http://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>titzer</author><text>We are not only being colonized by machines, we are becoming machines, and gladly. We are already acting like and being treated like idiots by our technology. In the car it is turn by turn navigation, on foot it is stumbling with our phones in our faces, for music it is auto-tuned, formulaic pop songs, for dance it is the robotic pop-and-lock dubstep moves that amaze us...we defend our heads with noise-canceling headphones the size of earmuffs, are interrupted every moment by smartwatches...we bumble from one mediated moment to the next, always alone, always accompanied by no one--just the glow of a screen or a hum, a talisman. We&#x27;re not sane without checking our notifications, need entertainment...can&#x27;t stand not watching something, can&#x27;t stand dead space, can&#x27;t stand our own thoughts, can&#x27;t stand our own minds.<p>Please take my mind over, AI, we constantly beg. Put us out of our misery and upload us to the digital nirvana.<p>&#x2F;yea I know hackernews ain&#x27;t exactly the right place to blah that out there, but couldn&#x27;t. stop. --karma</text></comment> | <story><title>All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011)</title><url>http://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>brudgers</author><text><p><pre><code> I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
-- Richard Brautigen</code></pre></text></comment> |
19,638,000 | 19,637,983 | 1 | 3 | 19,637,219 | train | <story><title>Rust 1.34.0</title><url>https://blog.rust-lang.org/2019/04/11/Rust-1.34.0.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>korethr</author><text>Hmm, fn before_exec strikes me as a thing that should be gotten rid of entirely in favor of unsafe fn before_exec if the former indeed turned out to actually have the potential to cause undefined behavior. But that&#x27;d probably be a breaking change which would require a major version number bump, so deprecation is absolutely the right thing IMO. And it also sets the stage to get rid of it outright come the next major version bump.<p>This is the first such instance of &quot;oops, turns out that wasn&#x27;t safe after all, that should have been unsafe&quot; that I&#x27;ve heard of in Rust. Is that because this is the first such mistake since the 1.0 milestone (the rest of `unsafe` having been nailed down before 1.0), or have there been other such mistakes that I didn&#x27;t hear about because I haven&#x27;t read the notes for all of the prior releases of Rust?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>steveklabnik</author><text>We can’t get rid of it because we have a commitment to not breaking users’ code. There will not be a Rust 2.0.<p>There have been some small soundness holes in the typesystem that we have fixed, resulting in breakage, but since that’s in the language, that’s the only way. A library API is different. There haven’t been many of these though. We did have some point releases which immediately fixed some library errors that were introduced by a release, see 1.15.1. But that was in a new API, and so the chance of breakage was extremely low. This API has been around for years. It is also not used much, given it’s a *NIX specific extension you have to explicitly import.<p>Note that upon using it, you’ll get a warning, so everyone will at least be notified.</text></comment> | <story><title>Rust 1.34.0</title><url>https://blog.rust-lang.org/2019/04/11/Rust-1.34.0.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>korethr</author><text>Hmm, fn before_exec strikes me as a thing that should be gotten rid of entirely in favor of unsafe fn before_exec if the former indeed turned out to actually have the potential to cause undefined behavior. But that&#x27;d probably be a breaking change which would require a major version number bump, so deprecation is absolutely the right thing IMO. And it also sets the stage to get rid of it outright come the next major version bump.<p>This is the first such instance of &quot;oops, turns out that wasn&#x27;t safe after all, that should have been unsafe&quot; that I&#x27;ve heard of in Rust. Is that because this is the first such mistake since the 1.0 milestone (the rest of `unsafe` having been nailed down before 1.0), or have there been other such mistakes that I didn&#x27;t hear about because I haven&#x27;t read the notes for all of the prior releases of Rust?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sanxiyn</author><text>There has been other instances. One is as_mut_slice, which resulted in 1.15.1 patch release. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.rust-lang.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;09&#x2F;Rust-1.15.1.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.rust-lang.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;09&#x2F;Rust-1.15.1.html</a> Another is borrow checker bug, which resulted in 1.26.2 patch release. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.rust-lang.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;05&#x2F;Rust-1.26.2.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.rust-lang.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;05&#x2F;Rust-1.26.2.html</a></text></comment> |
16,974,170 | 16,972,366 | 1 | 3 | 16,968,362 | train | <story><title>Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Heaviest Burden</title><url>https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/01/606588504/americans-are-a-lonely-lot-and-young-people-bear-the-heaviest-burden</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arthurmerlin</author><text>What do you do when your friends don&#x27;t pick up, or if they aren&#x27;t willing to go on outings with you? I think the biggest contributor to my loneliness is that no one seems to like me. I reach out to hang out, and usually, get rejected.</text></item><item><author>fogzen</author><text>Best thing I did for my social life was stop working in tech and using tech as much as possible. I visit the same cafe every morning and now know all the regulars. I stopped buying groceries online and go to the store now. I call friends instead of texting and plan outings. I ride a bike and stop to chat with people wherever I go. I don’t watch TV, or play video games. I go the bookstore (only one left in my city) instead of Amazon, and I chat with people in the bookstore.<p>I now deeply regret working as a software engineer in my 20s, as I’ve realized it contributed massively to my loneliness. Which is sad because I used to be so excited about technology and now I see it as the biggest trend in reducing quality of life.<p>It seems the more interactions that are mediated by technology the less human contact we have.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stillsut</author><text>This will seem counter-intuitive but work on opening up <i>strangers</i> in public places, and your friends will end up gravitating towards you.<p>Gladwell observed in <i>Tipping Point</i> that most peoples&#x27; social circle is usually created by one high connection &quot;maven&quot; who connects many low connection end nodes. You want to try to move closer to how that maven operates.<p>Concretely: If you go out with a friend, and end up becoming buddies with the waitress, and then also know of an after party you can bring the friend to, by virtue of your network, you will constantly be getting solicited to hang out. Even more quantitatively: if you can average +2 casual connections per day when you try, you&#x27;ll be doing very well. But two connections in a day is very difficult for most people on HN; you&#x27;ll have to work and experiment on how to achieve that.</text></comment> | <story><title>Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Heaviest Burden</title><url>https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/01/606588504/americans-are-a-lonely-lot-and-young-people-bear-the-heaviest-burden</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arthurmerlin</author><text>What do you do when your friends don&#x27;t pick up, or if they aren&#x27;t willing to go on outings with you? I think the biggest contributor to my loneliness is that no one seems to like me. I reach out to hang out, and usually, get rejected.</text></item><item><author>fogzen</author><text>Best thing I did for my social life was stop working in tech and using tech as much as possible. I visit the same cafe every morning and now know all the regulars. I stopped buying groceries online and go to the store now. I call friends instead of texting and plan outings. I ride a bike and stop to chat with people wherever I go. I don’t watch TV, or play video games. I go the bookstore (only one left in my city) instead of Amazon, and I chat with people in the bookstore.<p>I now deeply regret working as a software engineer in my 20s, as I’ve realized it contributed massively to my loneliness. Which is sad because I used to be so excited about technology and now I see it as the biggest trend in reducing quality of life.<p>It seems the more interactions that are mediated by technology the less human contact we have.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>majormajor</author><text>The only answer I ever found to this was &quot;find different friends&quot; - or, more directly, &quot;find real friends who do like you more.&quot;<p>But it&#x27;s very, very hard.</text></comment> |
4,007,512 | 4,006,245 | 1 | 3 | 4,006,017 | train | <story><title>Bootstrapped GitHub Now Raising a Round from Andreessen Horowitz</title><url>http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/21/bootstrapped-github-now-raising-a-round-from-andreessen-horowitz/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hemancuso</author><text>I think it's easy to over-estimate the success and ubiquity of GitHub if you spend all day on HN. The real money-make for SCM is still Perforce, according to schacon at a somewhat recent drink-up in Boston.<p>These questions about GitHub vs. Pinterest are revealing in that I think many folk on HN don't realize what a relatively small community of developers this is. Relative to the tens of millions of folk on Pinerest. Heck, GitHub's front page reveals they have only 1.6 million users.<p>I wonder if their growth curve has started to flatten out. I hope they have a great plan/vision for what to do with the money, because running GitHub ad infinitum as an immensely successful small software company would seem to be a dream to me.</text></comment> | <story><title>Bootstrapped GitHub Now Raising a Round from Andreessen Horowitz</title><url>http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/21/bootstrapped-github-now-raising-a-round-from-andreessen-horowitz/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>markerdmann</author><text>I'm surprised by this. Tom Preston-Werner's talk at Startup School 2010, which had a strong influence on me and many of my friends (we still refer to it often), was very anti-VC.<p>Here is a link to the talk, and a relevant quote from the introduction:<p><a href="http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272031754" rel="nofollow">http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272031754</a><p>"But for me, I don't have to worry about these things, because GitHub has never taken any funding, ever. So I want to talk a little bit about how you can avoid this mess of VC, if you so choose, by telling you a little bit of my story."</text></comment> |
28,031,165 | 28,031,271 | 1 | 2 | 28,015,866 | train | <story><title>The Day the Good Internet Died</title><url>https://www.theringer.com/2021/7/21/22586870/google-reader-ode-end-of-the-good-internet</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dangrossman</author><text>Some things I miss:<p>- A webring at the bottom of every website<p>- Websites having &quot;awards&quot; pages, full of random little picture awards given out by other random websites<p>- Hand-curated directories of everything imagineable<p>- When internet ads were just static 468x60 banners placed on individual sites by individual advertisers<p>- &quot;Guided tours&quot; in AOL chat rooms, where a host guided everyone in a live chat on a split-screen tour of their favorite websites<p>- MUDs<p>- Stumbleupon&#x27;s stumble toolbar</text></comment> | <story><title>The Day the Good Internet Died</title><url>https://www.theringer.com/2021/7/21/22586870/google-reader-ode-end-of-the-good-internet</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Syonyk</author><text>The 2012-2013 timeframe matches my general timeline for things as well, though mine is a bit hazier as it&#x27;s a transition timeframe, not an event.<p>The 2012 era was when we really started to see the weaponization of attention take off. Smartphones weren&#x27;t <i>that</i> terrible (Crackberry jokes aside) pre-2012, at least in terms of being attention vampires. In app purchases had become a thing a year or two before, and people were figuring out how to make it work - with 2012 being around the time they figured it out.<p>The variable reward &quot;drive your users crazy&quot; stuff hit around then, and with it, the wave of &quot;algorithmic feeds&quot; - not just chronologically ordered stuff.<p>Facebook moved to a more heavily algorithmic feed in 2011, mobile apps stared more actively driving their users crazy, etc.<p>So that timeframe was when the internet went from &quot;Everyone sees the same thing on the same site, and you easily hit the end of new content if you care&quot; to &quot;It&#x27;s a slot machine, and it&#x27;s in your pocket, and there&#x27;s a notification to get you back into the slot machine.&quot;<p>And it&#x27;s just been downhill from there. :(</text></comment> |
38,614,425 | 38,613,548 | 1 | 2 | 38,612,585 | train | <story><title>NASA says SpaceX’s next Starship flight could test refueling tech</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/12/nasa-wants-to-see-gas-stations-in-space-but-so-far-its-tanks-are-empty/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>martythemaniak</author><text>I read a good analysis of Artemis a while back that essentially calculated the cost per hour of time-on-moon and in that sense it was easy to see that the program was a significant upgrade over Apollo and the costs weren&#x27;t that bad when calculated per hour. Achieving a 10x improvement over the previous generation usually can&#x27;t be done without doing <i>something</i> new and different that hasn&#x27;t been done before, and in-orbit refuelling fits right in. Gemini and Apollo had to work out and develop far more tech to do what they needed to do.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danbruc</author><text>How does this work out? Instead of one rocket they will have to launch a dozen or so rockets for one visit to the moon. Why did they choose this option to begin with? And is cost per time on moon not a bit misleading, just stay longer and this cost goes down? You obviously have to bring more food and air and so on, but is that really a significant amount? Or are there other limiting factors that prevent you from staying say a month?</text></comment> | <story><title>NASA says SpaceX’s next Starship flight could test refueling tech</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/12/nasa-wants-to-see-gas-stations-in-space-but-so-far-its-tanks-are-empty/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>martythemaniak</author><text>I read a good analysis of Artemis a while back that essentially calculated the cost per hour of time-on-moon and in that sense it was easy to see that the program was a significant upgrade over Apollo and the costs weren&#x27;t that bad when calculated per hour. Achieving a 10x improvement over the previous generation usually can&#x27;t be done without doing <i>something</i> new and different that hasn&#x27;t been done before, and in-orbit refuelling fits right in. Gemini and Apollo had to work out and develop far more tech to do what they needed to do.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChicagoBoy11</author><text>What&#x27;s also fascinating is that they are going with, in VERY BROAD strokes, the concept that was Von Braun&#x27;s preferred method to achieve this back in the day too, but it was abandoned in favor of the lunar orbit rendesvouz.<p>For a critique of the current method, I found the SmarterEveryDay lecture on it gave some good food for thought!</text></comment> |
16,134,562 | 16,134,491 | 1 | 3 | 16,133,646 | train | <story><title>'The desire to have a child never goes away': The Involuntarily Childless</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/02/the-desire-to-have-a-child-never-goes-away-how-the-involuntarily-childless-are-forming-a-new-movement</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yodsanklai</author><text>42, I don&#x27;t want kids. People keep telling me that:
I&#x27;d be happier if I had one, that they thought like me until they had one, that they wished they had them sooner, or more of them and so on...<p>I like my life as it is now and don&#x27;t feel the appeal for kids. Should I take the risk because everybody says so?</text></item><item><author>Dunan</author><text>Wasn&#x27;t especting to see this kind of article referenced on HN, and it hit me hard. I&#x27;m 41, partner is too, and would give absolutely anything to have a child of my own. She was never ready until just recently.<p>I can&#x27;t even go an hour without thinking about it...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aidenn0</author><text>Two words: Hell No.<p>I&#x27;m saying that despite having kids and being glad that I made that decision. I&#x27;ve seen way too many relationships destroyed because one or both of the couple were pressured into having kids that they didn&#x27;t want. It&#x27;s not pretty.</text></comment> | <story><title>'The desire to have a child never goes away': The Involuntarily Childless</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/02/the-desire-to-have-a-child-never-goes-away-how-the-involuntarily-childless-are-forming-a-new-movement</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yodsanklai</author><text>42, I don&#x27;t want kids. People keep telling me that:
I&#x27;d be happier if I had one, that they thought like me until they had one, that they wished they had them sooner, or more of them and so on...<p>I like my life as it is now and don&#x27;t feel the appeal for kids. Should I take the risk because everybody says so?</text></item><item><author>Dunan</author><text>Wasn&#x27;t especting to see this kind of article referenced on HN, and it hit me hard. I&#x27;m 41, partner is too, and would give absolutely anything to have a child of my own. She was never ready until just recently.<p>I can&#x27;t even go an hour without thinking about it...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paulcole</author><text>No! Why would you do something just because other people want you to do it, especially something that can&#x27;t be undone like having a kid.<p>Misery loves company.<p>There&#x27;s a discussion about the regret of having kids here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16132955" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16132955</a></text></comment> |
20,985,910 | 20,985,861 | 1 | 2 | 20,984,731 | train | <story><title>EasyDNS threatened with criminal complaint if client data not disclosed</title><url>https://easydns.com/blog/2019/09/16/fechner-law-of-germany-threatens-to-bring-criminal-complaint-for-shielding-client-privacy/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>cj</author><text>I&#x27;ve been harrassed by law firms in connection with photograph copyright claims.<p>In my case it was a law firm in France who also had a presence in the US.<p>It was a minor claim (they demanded $500). We took the image down immediately, but they continued to demand their cash &quot;settlement&quot; with multiple letters over a year (1 letter every 1-2 months, each one with increasingly aggressive wording).<p>I eventually got on the phone with the person sending the letters, and turns out they weren&#x27;t licensed to practice law (in any jurisdiction). I pointed out that it&#x27;s illegal to misrepresent yourself as an attorney. They hung up and I never received another letter after that.<p>Good on EasyDNS for refusing to turn over customer data. If they did, I assume their customer would be harassed in a similar manner.</text></comment> | <story><title>EasyDNS threatened with criminal complaint if client data not disclosed</title><url>https://easydns.com/blog/2019/09/16/fechner-law-of-germany-threatens-to-bring-criminal-complaint-for-shielding-client-privacy/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nickodell</author><text>EasyDNS&#x27;s Plain English Terms of Service make them seem like a really unprofessional company:<p>&gt;We are NOT a DDoS Mitigation Service. [...] If you come on this system knowingly bringing a DDoS on your heels we shut down service (we may also wildcard your DNS to localhost and set the TTL on your zone out to a year. You’ve been warned).<p>or<p>&gt;Guilt-by-Association: not only do we terminate any domains or websites which violate our policies, we ferret out every other domain you have on the system under different names, accounts, etc and we terminate those too (don’t worry, we can tell). There is no appeal.<p>I&#x27;m not looking for a DNS provider, because I&#x27;m perfectly happy with my current one, but sheesh.</text></comment> |
13,419,374 | 13,419,372 | 1 | 2 | 13,417,037 | train | <story><title>Did Pixar accidentally delete Toy Story 2 during production? (2012)</title><url>https://www.quora.com/Pixar-company/Did-Pixar-accidentally-delete-Toy-Story-2-during-production/answer/Oren-Jacob</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>libria</author><text>Surely you&#x27;ve heard of at least these arguments:<p>- Employee was error prone and this mistake was just the biggest one to make headlines. Could be from incompetence or apathy.<p>- Impacted clients demanded the employee at-fault be terminated.<p>- Deterrence: fire one guy, everyone else knows to take that issue seriously. Doesn&#x27;t Google do this? If you leak something to press, you&#x27;re fired, then a company email goes out &quot;Hey we canned dude for running his mouth...&quot;<p>It&#x27;s better to engage the known and perhaps questionable justifications than to &quot;never understand&quot;.</text></item><item><author>lokedhs</author><text>I never understood the attitude of some companies to fire an employee immediately if they make a mistake such as accidentally deleting some files. If you keep this employee, then you can e pretty sure he&#x27;ll never made that mistake again. If you fire him and hire someone else, that person might not have had the learning experience of completely screwing up a system.<p>I think that employees actually makes less mistakes and are more productive if they don&#x27;t have be worried about being fired for making a mistake.</text></item><item><author>woliveirajr</author><text>The biggest difference, I think, was leaving the hunting for a head for a second moment, or even not doing it at all.<p>Commitment would be very different if people were being asked to help while some heads were rolling. Because you&#x27;re a real team when everybody is going in the same direction. Any call on &quot;people, work hard do recover while we&#x27;re after the moron who deleted everything&quot; wouldn&#x27;t have done it.<p>You just commit to something when you know that you won&#x27;t be under the fire if you do something wrong without knowing it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>morkalot</author><text>Case 1: It&#x27;s fine to fire individuals for ongoing performance issues. (though you must make clear to those who remain that the number and types issues the individual already had, and the steps that had been taken to help the individual rectify their performance issue.)<p>Case 2: no competent manager would fire an employee who made a mistake to satisfy clients. They may move the employee to a role away from that client, but it would be insanity to allow the most unreasonable clients to dictate who gets fired. Any manager who does what you suggest should expect to have lost all credibility in the eyes of their team.<p>Case 3a: A leak to the press is a purposeful action. Firing for cause is perfectly reasonable. Making a mistake is not a purposeful action.<p>Case 3b: If you want to convey that a particular type of mistake is serious, don&#x27;t do so by firing people. Do so with investments in education, process, and other tools that reduce the risk of the mistake occurring, and the harm when the mistake occurs. Firing somebody will backfire badly, as many of your best employees will self-select away from your most important projects, and away from your company, as they won&#x27;t want to be in a situation where years of excellent performance can be erased with a single error.</text></comment> | <story><title>Did Pixar accidentally delete Toy Story 2 during production? (2012)</title><url>https://www.quora.com/Pixar-company/Did-Pixar-accidentally-delete-Toy-Story-2-during-production/answer/Oren-Jacob</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>libria</author><text>Surely you&#x27;ve heard of at least these arguments:<p>- Employee was error prone and this mistake was just the biggest one to make headlines. Could be from incompetence or apathy.<p>- Impacted clients demanded the employee at-fault be terminated.<p>- Deterrence: fire one guy, everyone else knows to take that issue seriously. Doesn&#x27;t Google do this? If you leak something to press, you&#x27;re fired, then a company email goes out &quot;Hey we canned dude for running his mouth...&quot;<p>It&#x27;s better to engage the known and perhaps questionable justifications than to &quot;never understand&quot;.</text></item><item><author>lokedhs</author><text>I never understood the attitude of some companies to fire an employee immediately if they make a mistake such as accidentally deleting some files. If you keep this employee, then you can e pretty sure he&#x27;ll never made that mistake again. If you fire him and hire someone else, that person might not have had the learning experience of completely screwing up a system.<p>I think that employees actually makes less mistakes and are more productive if they don&#x27;t have be worried about being fired for making a mistake.</text></item><item><author>woliveirajr</author><text>The biggest difference, I think, was leaving the hunting for a head for a second moment, or even not doing it at all.<p>Commitment would be very different if people were being asked to help while some heads were rolling. Because you&#x27;re a real team when everybody is going in the same direction. Any call on &quot;people, work hard do recover while we&#x27;re after the moron who deleted everything&quot; wouldn&#x27;t have done it.<p>You just commit to something when you know that you won&#x27;t be under the fire if you do something wrong without knowing it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Griffinsauce</author><text>If you&#x27;re going to let your clients decide when you fire someone you&#x27;re having some enormous issues. Take the person off their account, sure, but how in hell does a client make your HR decisions?</text></comment> |
41,269,979 | 41,270,174 | 1 | 3 | 41,269,514 | train | <story><title>Family poisoned after using AI-generated mushroom identification book</title><url>https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1etko9h/family_poisoned_after_using_aigenerated_mushroom/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Do we believe this story? It&#x27;s a Reddit &quot;LegalAdvice&quot; thread. It&#x27;s not morel season in the UK right now; false morels are also March-May produce.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paulgb</author><text>I generally distrust Reddit threads, but it&#x27;s entirely plausible to me. I was once gifted a cookbook on Amazon that was full of pre-LLM &quot;sludge&quot; of suspect internet-collected recipes along with a stock photo of an author with fake credentials (her author page is still up, although her books have been pulled and apparently she&#x27;s a man now <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;stores&#x2F;author&#x2F;B0716Q2Y4Z&#x2F;about" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;stores&#x2F;author&#x2F;B0716Q2Y4Z&#x2F;about</a>)<p>When I left a negative review pointing out that the author was a stock photo (entire content: &quot;The author of this book is a fraud. There is no Tina B. Baker, she is a stock photo.&quot;), Amazon pulled the review saying it violated their guidelines.</text></comment> | <story><title>Family poisoned after using AI-generated mushroom identification book</title><url>https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1etko9h/family_poisoned_after_using_aigenerated_mushroom/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Do we believe this story? It&#x27;s a Reddit &quot;LegalAdvice&quot; thread. It&#x27;s not morel season in the UK right now; false morels are also March-May produce.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>madaxe_again</author><text>The bit where they say Amazon demanded that they return the book by special delivery or face having their entire Amazon account terminated is where the point at which it became clear to me that this is ragebait - Amazon simply do not work that way in the U.K. - returns are via prepaid label that they provide, and they don’t terminate your account if you fail to return a product, you just don’t get refunded.</text></comment> |
40,701,358 | 40,701,321 | 1 | 2 | 40,700,586 | train | <story><title>Maintaining large-scale AI capacity at Meta</title><url>https://engineering.fb.com/2024/06/12/production-engineering/maintaining-large-scale-ai-capacity-meta/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nomilk</author><text>Meta is going hard into AI (both hardware and software), which is great to see. Something that&#x27;s not super obvious is what specific features of existing apps require AI, that is, how will Meta get return on investment?<p>Two uses I can think of are i) text and image content moderation on fb and instagram (won&#x27;t need as many human reviewers if bots are as&#x2F;more effective), and ii) chatbots for businesses (businesses could provide their business documentation to a meta LLM which could handle customer inquiries via messenger and whatsapp).<p>Anything else?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aprilthird2021</author><text>Meta actually has a whole separate, existing AI research and use case for targeting ads that has seen much better results as their AI capabilities have improved. I don&#x27;t think gen AI is used for this in the way most commenters think, but the improvements in AI architecture &#x2F; infra, training, etc. are all helpful to the AI which helps ad targeting while simultaneously building more powerful Gen AI</text></comment> | <story><title>Maintaining large-scale AI capacity at Meta</title><url>https://engineering.fb.com/2024/06/12/production-engineering/maintaining-large-scale-ai-capacity-meta/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nomilk</author><text>Meta is going hard into AI (both hardware and software), which is great to see. Something that&#x27;s not super obvious is what specific features of existing apps require AI, that is, how will Meta get return on investment?<p>Two uses I can think of are i) text and image content moderation on fb and instagram (won&#x27;t need as many human reviewers if bots are as&#x2F;more effective), and ii) chatbots for businesses (businesses could provide their business documentation to a meta LLM which could handle customer inquiries via messenger and whatsapp).<p>Anything else?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>candiddevmike</author><text>Fake profiles to boost engagement&#x2F;DAU? Grandma is lonely on FB now that no one is on there anymore.</text></comment> |
4,477,576 | 4,477,526 | 1 | 3 | 4,477,361 | train | <story><title>Gmail as a Facade</title><url>http://jackg.org/gmail-as-a-facade</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>leemhoffman</author><text>If your gmail is slow there is a simple and effective solution. I've had gmail for years and actually pay for my google apps account. Like the author I assumed my growing mailbox size and filters were the reason for the increasing slowness. So I contacted support and after some investigation they noticed that I had tons of polling requests that were slowing down my account from connected apps (think greplin). They suggested I remove them. I was skeptical, but I did. Immediately gmail was BLAZING fast again. If your gmail or google apps is slow I highly recommend removing all connected apps ASAP:<p><a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/IssuedAuthSubTokens" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/accounts/IssuedAuthSubTokens</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Gmail as a Facade</title><url>http://jackg.org/gmail-as-a-facade</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kevinconroy</author><text>Hmm, I don't doubt that the facade solution is working, but can't say that the slowness is necessary systemic.<p>I have two Gmail accounts - 1 work email on Google Apps at 10GB, 1 personal on normal Gmail at 3GB. Can't see any performance differences. Are others experiencing this?</text></comment> |
11,572,698 | 11,571,557 | 1 | 2 | 11,570,763 | train | <story><title>Singapore Is Taking the ‘Smart City’ to a New Level</title><url>http://www.wsj.com/articles/singapore-is-taking-the-smart-city-to-a-whole-new-level-1461550026</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rfreytag</author><text>&gt; “The big, big elephant in the room is protection of privacy and ensuring security,” says Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s foreign affairs minister and minister-in-charge of Smart Nation.<p>The idea that Singapore will protect the privacy of its citizens (or their access to information) is not credible in light of:<p>* <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;banyan&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;regulating-singapores-internet" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;banyan&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;regulating-sin...</a><p>and<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sg.news.yahoo.com&#x2F;-smart-nation--singapore-will-be-watching-you-105712193.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sg.news.yahoo.com&#x2F;-smart-nation--singapore-will-be-w...</a><p>The ruling party uses power to eliminate opposition:<p>* <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.csmonitor.com&#x2F;1990&#x2F;0731&#x2F;eross.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.csmonitor.com&#x2F;1990&#x2F;0731&#x2F;eross.html</a><p>and<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.questia.com&#x2F;newspaper&#x2F;1P2-33363045&#x2F;suppression-in-singapore-the-government-restricts" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.questia.com&#x2F;newspaper&#x2F;1P2-33363045&#x2F;suppression-i...</a><p>Many, many other examples can be found with minimal searching.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>altern8tif</author><text>Bottom line is: Singapore is not for everyone. If you&#x27;re willing to give up some civil liberties for an efficiently-run nation where you can generally walk around without fear of getting stabbed or robbed, then it&#x27;s the perfect place for you.</text></comment> | <story><title>Singapore Is Taking the ‘Smart City’ to a New Level</title><url>http://www.wsj.com/articles/singapore-is-taking-the-smart-city-to-a-whole-new-level-1461550026</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rfreytag</author><text>&gt; “The big, big elephant in the room is protection of privacy and ensuring security,” says Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s foreign affairs minister and minister-in-charge of Smart Nation.<p>The idea that Singapore will protect the privacy of its citizens (or their access to information) is not credible in light of:<p>* <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;banyan&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;regulating-singapores-internet" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;banyan&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;regulating-sin...</a><p>and<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sg.news.yahoo.com&#x2F;-smart-nation--singapore-will-be-watching-you-105712193.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sg.news.yahoo.com&#x2F;-smart-nation--singapore-will-be-w...</a><p>The ruling party uses power to eliminate opposition:<p>* <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.csmonitor.com&#x2F;1990&#x2F;0731&#x2F;eross.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.csmonitor.com&#x2F;1990&#x2F;0731&#x2F;eross.html</a><p>and<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.questia.com&#x2F;newspaper&#x2F;1P2-33363045&#x2F;suppression-in-singapore-the-government-restricts" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.questia.com&#x2F;newspaper&#x2F;1P2-33363045&#x2F;suppression-i...</a><p>Many, many other examples can be found with minimal searching.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>toni</author><text>Also a recent must-see documentary about Singapore repressive ruling party is Jason Soo&#x27;s &quot;1987: Untracing the Conspiracy&quot;[1]<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theonlinecitizen.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;interview-jason-soo-director-1987-untracing-conspiracy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theonlinecitizen.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;interview-jason-soo-...</a><p>&quot;In 1987, 22 people were arrested under Singapore’s Internal Security Act (ISA) in a security exercise known as Operation Spectrum.<p>Accused of being involved in a Marxist conspiracy to establish a communist state, many detainees were tortured and then coerced into implicating themselves and their friends on public television.&quot;</text></comment> |
6,413,739 | 6,413,859 | 1 | 2 | 6,413,395 | train | <story><title>If You're Programming a Cell Phone Like a Server, You're Doing it Wrong</title><url>http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/9/18/if-youre-programming-a-cell-phone-like-a-server-youre-doing.html#</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>canthonytucci</author><text>&gt; Every decision you make should be based on minimizing the number of times the radio powers up.<p>This is lunacy. Ok, lunacy is a bit strong. But I disagree with this and am throwing a &quot;premature optimization&quot; flag.<p>Modern phone batteries last plenty long, and the radio being on is nothing compared to the big bright screen.<p>&#x2F;edit
Given the opportunity to chose, I know I would gladly sacrifice a few minutes per charge battery life for a better user experience, especially since my phone never gets below 20%.<p>Your users will be better served by you fixing bugs or adding features. Really, unless you&#x27;re a huge team with a huge budget, there&#x27;s other stuff to worry about in your app experience before &quot;maximizing battery life&quot; should be a responsibility you want to help the OS&#x2F;device maker with.(If you&#x27;re one of the lucky ones who has the time and money to do both, by all means, go nuts.)<p>Being conservative with resource usage is sound advice. Making battery usage the prime concern for most apps is overkill.<p>Games and other applications that you know users will have open for extended periods of time, and&#x2F;or that are already eating up battery should give this issue some thought, everyone else, really, don&#x27;t worry about it.</text></comment> | <story><title>If You're Programming a Cell Phone Like a Server, You're Doing it Wrong</title><url>http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/9/18/if-youre-programming-a-cell-phone-like-a-server-youre-doing.html#</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>DougWebb</author><text>The last thing I&#x27;d want is for my apps to each be downloading several MB of data they think I might need in the next few minutes. I can easily control how much battery life is remaining on my phone by plugging it in. I can&#x27;t control how much of my data plan an app is using, except by uninstalling the app.<p>Besides, in my experience the biggest drains on battery life aren&#x27;t data transfers, they&#x27;re (a) having the screen on, especially when bright, and (b) being slightly out of range of a cell tower, and constantly dropping and reacquiring a 3G connection. The latter turns my phone into a hand-warmer and chews up my power.</text></comment> |
26,182,973 | 26,182,852 | 1 | 3 | 26,178,523 | train | <story><title>The Fantasy of Opting Out</title><url>https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-fantasy-of-opting-out/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zeta0134</author><text>This is something I wish was noted more often. When I&#x27;m searching for something on Amazon, I have intentionally visited that storefront and am willfully handing them my data (in the form of search and browsing history); of <i>course</i> Amazon is going to keep that and use it to personalize my results. Frankly that&#x27;s part of their value add, so this is neither surprising nor particularly upsetting.<p>What&#x27;s surprising to most people (and should be the focus of any litigation, imho) is precisely this third-party data sharing. It&#x27;s partly why the cookie law drives me nuts, since it&#x27;s made all tracking the bogeyman, and in reality, most first party &quot;tracking&quot; is completely benign. If companies would agree not to sell or share my data with third parties (law enforcement serving a warrant being the major exception) then I have no real issue with the tech. The blatant sharing, and especially <i>ad networks</i> make my blood boil.</text></item><item><author>simonh</author><text>This is silly, we are all observed by other people almost all of our lives, but that&#x27;s fine because they don&#x27;t conspire behind our backs to create a comprehensive record that&#x27;s handed over to the government. I don&#x27;t mind if the building security records me entering the building, or the bank records me using the ATM, or that London Transport videos me on the train. What I object to is if all of those are stitched together and handed over to advertising agencies or my employer.<p>Likewise I don&#x27;t care that Google knows what I searched for, or that Twitter knows what I tweeted, or that LinkedIn has my employment history. What I don&#x27;t want is all of that being sold to Cambridge Analytica to then aggregate and sell on to someone else for goodness knows what purposes.<p>An awful lot of my life and interests are easily searchable. My handle here is basically just my name, and I use the same handle or even more complete versions everywhere I can. When I&#x27;m out in public, the public can see me. When I post in public, the public can read what I say. That&#x27;s fine, that&#x27;s why I said it.<p>However my private correspondences with my wife and kids on iMessage or WhatsApp are nobody else&#x27;s business. My bank transactions and online shopping likewise, that latter is mainly between me and Amazon. Where I would get upset is if Amazon sold that data to Google to show me &#x27;relevant ads&#x27;, or show my purchases to my friends. Remember Facebook Beacon? There need to be clear, hard lines in the sand.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Jgoure</author><text>Anecdotally, I purchased a heated blanket from Amazon for my father and had it shipped to his address. When I went to look at order details, Amazon advertised to me other things the person I shipped this item to may like. Men Diapers, Pet treats etc... I don&#x27;t own a pet due to allergies and I am very young to be searching for adult diapers. I found it very rude and unprofessional of Amazon to share such a personal suggestion with me.<p>I called Amazons customer service to complain about their suggestions. The representative said that their suggestions are based on my searches and purchases. I believe the suggestions are also based on the purchases made for that address.<p>My father doesn&#x27;t even get an option to opt out of Amazon suggesting things he&#x27;s purchased, to other people to purchase for him. There isn&#x27;t an option for privacy.</text></comment> | <story><title>The Fantasy of Opting Out</title><url>https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-fantasy-of-opting-out/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zeta0134</author><text>This is something I wish was noted more often. When I&#x27;m searching for something on Amazon, I have intentionally visited that storefront and am willfully handing them my data (in the form of search and browsing history); of <i>course</i> Amazon is going to keep that and use it to personalize my results. Frankly that&#x27;s part of their value add, so this is neither surprising nor particularly upsetting.<p>What&#x27;s surprising to most people (and should be the focus of any litigation, imho) is precisely this third-party data sharing. It&#x27;s partly why the cookie law drives me nuts, since it&#x27;s made all tracking the bogeyman, and in reality, most first party &quot;tracking&quot; is completely benign. If companies would agree not to sell or share my data with third parties (law enforcement serving a warrant being the major exception) then I have no real issue with the tech. The blatant sharing, and especially <i>ad networks</i> make my blood boil.</text></item><item><author>simonh</author><text>This is silly, we are all observed by other people almost all of our lives, but that&#x27;s fine because they don&#x27;t conspire behind our backs to create a comprehensive record that&#x27;s handed over to the government. I don&#x27;t mind if the building security records me entering the building, or the bank records me using the ATM, or that London Transport videos me on the train. What I object to is if all of those are stitched together and handed over to advertising agencies or my employer.<p>Likewise I don&#x27;t care that Google knows what I searched for, or that Twitter knows what I tweeted, or that LinkedIn has my employment history. What I don&#x27;t want is all of that being sold to Cambridge Analytica to then aggregate and sell on to someone else for goodness knows what purposes.<p>An awful lot of my life and interests are easily searchable. My handle here is basically just my name, and I use the same handle or even more complete versions everywhere I can. When I&#x27;m out in public, the public can see me. When I post in public, the public can read what I say. That&#x27;s fine, that&#x27;s why I said it.<p>However my private correspondences with my wife and kids on iMessage or WhatsApp are nobody else&#x27;s business. My bank transactions and online shopping likewise, that latter is mainly between me and Amazon. Where I would get upset is if Amazon sold that data to Google to show me &#x27;relevant ads&#x27;, or show my purchases to my friends. Remember Facebook Beacon? There need to be clear, hard lines in the sand.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Wowfunhappy</author><text>Counterpoint: Many of the tech giants are so big and all-encompassing that they are practically their own third party. Google can take your location history from Google Maps and use it to recommend videos on Youtube.<p>Perhaps more importantly, restricting third-party but not first-party sharing creates bad incentives. If Google could share search data with first-party services like Google Reviews, but not third-party ones like Yelp, what does that mean for Yelp? We&#x27;d just be encouraging the largest companies to bring even more of the world in-house.</text></comment> |
14,704,402 | 14,703,292 | 1 | 3 | 14,700,784 | train | <story><title>EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products</title><url>http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/durable-products.47bf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lumberjack</author><text>Wages have gone up and consumer goods have gone down in price and build quality. It&#x27;s not feasible to have a repair business any more. Growing up, there were still loads of repair businesses around. You could fix anything.<p>If build quality and price go up, you can revert to an economy where you would fix your broken appliance once or twice before you replacing it.<p>But what&#x27;s the incentive for the manufacturers?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Someone</author><text>If there was a clear incentive, the EU parliament probably wouldn&#x27;t ask for one to be created (<i>&quot;Europe&#x27;s Parliament called on the Commission, Member States and producers Tuesday to take measures to ensure consumers can enjoy durable, high-quality products that can be repaired and upgraded.&quot;</i>)<p>If followed up, this could end up the same as with lead-free soldering. There weren&#x27;t good incentives for manufacturers to remove lead from soldering until the EU passed the RoHS directive (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...</a>) and, subsequently, laws were introduced to implement it throughout the EU.</text></comment> | <story><title>EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products</title><url>http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/durable-products.47bf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lumberjack</author><text>Wages have gone up and consumer goods have gone down in price and build quality. It&#x27;s not feasible to have a repair business any more. Growing up, there were still loads of repair businesses around. You could fix anything.<p>If build quality and price go up, you can revert to an economy where you would fix your broken appliance once or twice before you replacing it.<p>But what&#x27;s the incentive for the manufacturers?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>patkai</author><text>If they changed to a service model they would have an incentive. If they leased a dishwasher 5€&#x2F;month suddenly it wouldn&#x27;t break for 15 years. Ten years ago I talked to a person in aerospace, he said they would change to a service model similar to jet engines, but since customers don&#x27;t push them, they will wait it out.</text></comment> |
37,763,081 | 37,759,924 | 1 | 2 | 37,758,788 | train | <story><title>Passive Solar Water Desalination</title><url>https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/passive-solar-water-desalination/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joshe</author><text>Advances are always welcome, but it&#x27;s worth noting that desalination works economically right now.<p>In the last 15 years large scale desalination has become practical. It&#x27;s one of the great engineering feats of our time.<p>We can now generate it at scale for less than $.01 per 6.4 gallons. This includes the cost of the electricity, which is about half the expense.<p>San Francisco charges $.02&#x2F;gallon to residents, 12 times that price. It&#x27;s now cost effective for any coastal city in America to supply residential water this way.<p>Lots of people still think desalination is still impractical, because it was 20 years ago. They just haven&#x27;t learned about the new tech.<p>The tech:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.energymonitor.ai&#x2F;tech&#x2F;can-desalination-save-a-drying-world&#x2F;?cf-view" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.energymonitor.ai&#x2F;tech&#x2F;can-desalination-save-a-dr...</a><p>Residential rates:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sfpuc.org&#x2F;accounts-services&#x2F;water-power-sewer-rates&#x2F;2023-rates-frequently-asked-questions" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sfpuc.org&#x2F;accounts-services&#x2F;water-power-sewer-rates&#x2F;...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sandworm101</author><text>Residential water is not the issue, not even commercial water. Desalination still doesn&#x27;t work for the vast majority of users: agriculture. 0.02$&#x2F;gallon is far to expensive when farmers need acre-feet of water (300,000 gallons). Delivery of such quantities from the ocean to inland farms is also impractical, and cannot conceivably be made so.
That&#x27;s why they draw from rivers and aquifers.</text></comment> | <story><title>Passive Solar Water Desalination</title><url>https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/passive-solar-water-desalination/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joshe</author><text>Advances are always welcome, but it&#x27;s worth noting that desalination works economically right now.<p>In the last 15 years large scale desalination has become practical. It&#x27;s one of the great engineering feats of our time.<p>We can now generate it at scale for less than $.01 per 6.4 gallons. This includes the cost of the electricity, which is about half the expense.<p>San Francisco charges $.02&#x2F;gallon to residents, 12 times that price. It&#x27;s now cost effective for any coastal city in America to supply residential water this way.<p>Lots of people still think desalination is still impractical, because it was 20 years ago. They just haven&#x27;t learned about the new tech.<p>The tech:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.energymonitor.ai&#x2F;tech&#x2F;can-desalination-save-a-drying-world&#x2F;?cf-view" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.energymonitor.ai&#x2F;tech&#x2F;can-desalination-save-a-dr...</a><p>Residential rates:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sfpuc.org&#x2F;accounts-services&#x2F;water-power-sewer-rates&#x2F;2023-rates-frequently-asked-questions" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sfpuc.org&#x2F;accounts-services&#x2F;water-power-sewer-rates&#x2F;...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>depressedpanda</author><text>For the international audience who don&#x27;t use freedom units, 6.4 (US) gallons is ~24.2 liters.</text></comment> |
23,841,690 | 23,841,329 | 1 | 2 | 23,840,364 | train | <story><title>Passbolt: Self hostable, open source, password manager for teams</title><url>https://www.passbolt.com</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>smartbit</author><text>Pros<p><pre><code> - free open source
- group management can be delegated
- works fine with mac, linux &amp; windows browsers
- maintenance free self hosted on k8s for 2 years
- lack of mobile apps has not been issue
- UX is ok, no complaints
- requires little end-user support</code></pre>
Cons<p><pre><code> - only password field is encrypted
- no warning that Notes are not encrypted
- promises ‘Secure files &amp; notes (Coming soon)’
for more than year
- password generator has no complexity options
- requires browser plugin
- user passwords have no minimum entropy requirements
- no helm chart, used our own
</code></pre>
Experience based on free version with ~75 users. Plan to switch to paid version when <i>Secure files &amp; notes</i> become available.<p>Noticed that former lead developer <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;markstory" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;markstory</a> now works on Sentry. Sentry has same list of <i>Pros</i> as above: it ’<i>just works</i>’ without maintenance or support, running self hosted on k8s for free.</text></comment> | <story><title>Passbolt: Self hostable, open source, password manager for teams</title><url>https://www.passbolt.com</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>verandaguy</author><text>I like this a lot. I&#x27;ve been a Bitwarden user for the past few months and I&#x27;m not looking back, but I&#x27;m so happy there&#x27;s reasonable competition:<p>- It&#x27;s still OSS, so you can self-host, which is a big selling point for me<p>- There&#x27;s a managed&#x2F;hosted option, which is a big selling point for probably <i>most</i> users<p>- It&#x27;s got a browser plugin à la BitWarden&#x2F;1Password, which is a crucial feature for any well-polished password manager (and hopefully it also comes with Android autofill integration)<p>Hopefully Passbolt, BitWarden and others can keep eachother on their toes and help this be an innovative and widely accessible space!<p>Expanding on that last point: I&#x27;m a <i>huge</i> fan of the general idea of having the option of self-hosting with a business model revolving around a paid, managed option, for password managers or otherwise.</text></comment> |
35,413,536 | 35,412,312 | 1 | 2 | 35,410,886 | train | <story><title>Work-from-home is the new normal in Canada</title><url>https://nationalpost.com/opinion/work-from-home-new-normal-in-canada</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>afavour</author><text>A reasonably levelled FAANG engineer working a 9-5 is absolutely rich by any objective standard. Applies to plenty of other industries as well.</text></item><item><author>tempaccount420</author><text>Rich? No one who works a 9-5 is rich. It&#x27;s also definitely not a small subset.</text></item><item><author>ghiculescu</author><text>Yeah, it might be the new normal for a small rich subset of society. To say it’s the new normal full stop, is to ignore most of the working class. Ironically the group that’s usually wagging its finger at everyone else about privilege, does not realize its own privilege.</text></item><item><author>afavour</author><text>As someone who has been working from home since the pandemic and preferring it these articles still bug me: the new normal <i>for who</i>? Not for retail workers, agricultural workers, manufacturing, first responders, those who work in trades etc etc etc.<p>It’s a very notable shift for office workers. It just so happens that every newspaper opinion writer is in the exact socio-economic group most affected and way too often it’s talked about as if it’s universal.<p>It also leads to under coverage of important side effects: for example, here in NYC the economics of the subway system have been messed up since the start of the pandemic. If every office worker works from home the system suddenly loses a ton of revenue. But if they cut back on service it’ll disproportionately affect the (typically lower income) workers that still depend on it. Not unsolvable but rarely talked about.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>3vidence</author><text>These comments always irk me.<p>I am a &quot;reasonably leveled FAANG eng&quot; in Canada.<p>I have enough money to do the following:<p>- rent a 2 bedroom apartment in a smaller city.<p>- Order food from time to time.<p>Things that are difficult to afford:<p>- Any level of a car (currently car share).
- I don&#x27;t even look at house prices almost anywhere in my province.<p>My effective tax rate is around 48% and with the way things keep increasing in price I will likely never own a home.<p>Returning to the original question .... Am I rich?</text></comment> | <story><title>Work-from-home is the new normal in Canada</title><url>https://nationalpost.com/opinion/work-from-home-new-normal-in-canada</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>afavour</author><text>A reasonably levelled FAANG engineer working a 9-5 is absolutely rich by any objective standard. Applies to plenty of other industries as well.</text></item><item><author>tempaccount420</author><text>Rich? No one who works a 9-5 is rich. It&#x27;s also definitely not a small subset.</text></item><item><author>ghiculescu</author><text>Yeah, it might be the new normal for a small rich subset of society. To say it’s the new normal full stop, is to ignore most of the working class. Ironically the group that’s usually wagging its finger at everyone else about privilege, does not realize its own privilege.</text></item><item><author>afavour</author><text>As someone who has been working from home since the pandemic and preferring it these articles still bug me: the new normal <i>for who</i>? Not for retail workers, agricultural workers, manufacturing, first responders, those who work in trades etc etc etc.<p>It’s a very notable shift for office workers. It just so happens that every newspaper opinion writer is in the exact socio-economic group most affected and way too often it’s talked about as if it’s universal.<p>It also leads to under coverage of important side effects: for example, here in NYC the economics of the subway system have been messed up since the start of the pandemic. If every office worker works from home the system suddenly loses a ton of revenue. But if they cut back on service it’ll disproportionately affect the (typically lower income) workers that still depend on it. Not unsolvable but rarely talked about.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sologoub</author><text>That depends on tenure - if this hypothetical person has been in that position for many years AND has saved a significant part of their income, they may be “rich”.<p>However, FAANG really exploded in size only recently (and then hit layoffs), FAANG jobs are concentrated in VHCOL locations, so savings aren’t great for all. So while their W2 may look impressive, it’s far from a foregone conclusion that they are “rich”.<p>To me “rich” implies independence and the ability to stop working 9-5. That doesn’t describe the vast majority of FAANG (or otherwise) employees. There certainly are outliers and success stories, but it’s not the default case.</text></comment> |
26,245,632 | 26,245,319 | 1 | 2 | 26,240,692 | train | <story><title>Add experimental fuzz test support for Go 1.17</title><url>https://github.com/golang/go/issues/44551</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>latch</author><text>I never understood their reason for the verbose and unfriendly ergonomics:<p>if a != b {
t.Errorf(&quot;expected %s to be equal to %s&quot;, a, b)
}<p>Instead of something like:<p>t.Expect(a).To.Equal(b)<p>And, of course, it gets uglier when you&#x27;re trying to test a function that returns a error,value tuple, which, again, is something that a more friendly testing library can help with.</text></item><item><author>benhoyt</author><text>Go tests and benchmarks are so easy to write and run: just add TestFoo and BenchmarkFoo functions to a bar_test.go file, and &quot;go test&quot; does the rest. It&#x27;s currently doable, but it requires a 3rd party library (go-fuzz) and a bit of fluffing around. This will make fuzz testing an equally first-class citizen with standard Go tooling (just add FuzzFoo), and as such we&#x27;ll probably see a lot more people testing with fuzzing.<p>I used go-fuzz in GoAWK and it found several bugs (see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;benhoyt.com&#x2F;writings&#x2F;goawk&#x2F;#fuzz-testing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;benhoyt.com&#x2F;writings&#x2F;goawk&#x2F;#fuzz-testing</a>), and almost everyone who&#x27;s done fuzz testing has similar reports. Certainly go-fuzz has found many, many bugs in Go itself: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dvyukov&#x2F;go-fuzz#trophies" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dvyukov&#x2F;go-fuzz#trophies</a><p>For what it&#x27;s worth, I wrote an article for LWN about the upcoming support for built-in fuzzing in Go: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lwn.net&#x2F;Articles&#x2F;829242&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lwn.net&#x2F;Articles&#x2F;829242&#x2F;</a> (of course, if you want full details, read the full proposal).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>benhoyt</author><text>It&#x27;s because the Go philosophy is &quot;tests are code&quot;, so you use the standard language features like != instead of a whole new domain-specific language that you have to learn. I&#x27;ve written more about that here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lwn.net&#x2F;Articles&#x2F;821358&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lwn.net&#x2F;Articles&#x2F;821358&#x2F;</a><p>Personally I find the &quot;cutesy&quot; names like Expect(a).To.Equal(b) and It(&quot;should ...&quot;) patronizing and too English-like (code is not a human language). Similarly, I wouldn&#x27;t like a language that made you write:<p><pre><code> Please.Print(1.Plus.2)
Log.To(Console).Text(&quot;did something&quot;)
</code></pre>
The vanilla Go approach can get a bit verbose when you&#x27;re doing lots of asserts. In that case, you can use standard language features like refactoring things to variables or helper functions, or table-driven tests.<p>But if you really want assert-style code, I like the <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;labix.org&#x2F;gocheck" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;labix.org&#x2F;gocheck</a> approach:<p><pre><code> c.Assert(a, Equals, b)
</code></pre>
Because there&#x27;s only one function (Assert) and a bunch of comparator names to learn.</text></comment> | <story><title>Add experimental fuzz test support for Go 1.17</title><url>https://github.com/golang/go/issues/44551</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>latch</author><text>I never understood their reason for the verbose and unfriendly ergonomics:<p>if a != b {
t.Errorf(&quot;expected %s to be equal to %s&quot;, a, b)
}<p>Instead of something like:<p>t.Expect(a).To.Equal(b)<p>And, of course, it gets uglier when you&#x27;re trying to test a function that returns a error,value tuple, which, again, is something that a more friendly testing library can help with.</text></item><item><author>benhoyt</author><text>Go tests and benchmarks are so easy to write and run: just add TestFoo and BenchmarkFoo functions to a bar_test.go file, and &quot;go test&quot; does the rest. It&#x27;s currently doable, but it requires a 3rd party library (go-fuzz) and a bit of fluffing around. This will make fuzz testing an equally first-class citizen with standard Go tooling (just add FuzzFoo), and as such we&#x27;ll probably see a lot more people testing with fuzzing.<p>I used go-fuzz in GoAWK and it found several bugs (see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;benhoyt.com&#x2F;writings&#x2F;goawk&#x2F;#fuzz-testing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;benhoyt.com&#x2F;writings&#x2F;goawk&#x2F;#fuzz-testing</a>), and almost everyone who&#x27;s done fuzz testing has similar reports. Certainly go-fuzz has found many, many bugs in Go itself: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dvyukov&#x2F;go-fuzz#trophies" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;dvyukov&#x2F;go-fuzz#trophies</a><p>For what it&#x27;s worth, I wrote an article for LWN about the upcoming support for built-in fuzzing in Go: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lwn.net&#x2F;Articles&#x2F;829242&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lwn.net&#x2F;Articles&#x2F;829242&#x2F;</a> (of course, if you want full details, read the full proposal).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lhorie</author><text>The fluent API flavor is how jest works in javascript-land, and while it makes the code read ok, it makes for some lousy assertion failure messages.<p>Typically, you get some autogenerated variation of &quot;expected 3, got 5&quot; - which in a large codebase is kinda useless because you don&#x27;t necessarily have context on what the error refers to without going back to the test source code to see where the failure originated from. This is especially problematic with table-based tests or tests with large numbers of assertions where the closest human-readable label might have been described too generically.<p>I much prefer to be able write out &quot;foo broke in such such way: expected %s, got %s&quot; than have the team rely on a machine attempting to generate a description and getting a bad description because the human is encouraged to be too lazy to write a proper description and the test framework is not smart enough to write a proper one for them.</text></comment> |
41,595,900 | 41,595,924 | 1 | 2 | 41,593,809 | train | <story><title>FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies</title><url>https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-staff-report-finds-large-social-media-video-streaming-companies-have-engaged-vast-surveillance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>digging</author><text>&gt; and people are ok with that<p>I&#x27;ve seen no evidence of this. People mostly either don&#x27;t understand it for feel powerless against it.</text></item><item><author>orthecreedence</author><text>Snowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger. It was a huge shame, but a cultural sign that the US is descending into a surveillance hell hole <i>and people are ok with that</i>. As someone who was (and still is) vehemently against PRISM and NSLs and all that, it was hard to come to terms with. I&#x27;m going to keep building things that circumvent the &quot;empire&quot; and hope people start caring eventually.</text></item><item><author>flycaliguy</author><text>I think Snowden was bang on when in 2013 he warned us of a last chance to fight for some basic digital privacy rights. I think there was a cultural window there which has now closed.</text></item><item><author>vundercind</author><text>Behind the ball by 15 years to start taking this seriously and beginning to <i>think about</i> pushing back, but better late than never.<p>Next please reign in the CRAs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dylan604</author><text>There&#x27;s also a vast amount of people that were just too young to be aware of Snowden&#x27;s revelations. These people are now primarily on TikTok what not, and I doubt there&#x27;s much in those feeds to bring them to light while directly feeding the beast of data hoarding.</text></comment> | <story><title>FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies</title><url>https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-staff-report-finds-large-social-media-video-streaming-companies-have-engaged-vast-surveillance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>digging</author><text>&gt; and people are ok with that<p>I&#x27;ve seen no evidence of this. People mostly either don&#x27;t understand it for feel powerless against it.</text></item><item><author>orthecreedence</author><text>Snowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger. It was a huge shame, but a cultural sign that the US is descending into a surveillance hell hole <i>and people are ok with that</i>. As someone who was (and still is) vehemently against PRISM and NSLs and all that, it was hard to come to terms with. I&#x27;m going to keep building things that circumvent the &quot;empire&quot; and hope people start caring eventually.</text></item><item><author>flycaliguy</author><text>I think Snowden was bang on when in 2013 he warned us of a last chance to fight for some basic digital privacy rights. I think there was a cultural window there which has now closed.</text></item><item><author>vundercind</author><text>Behind the ball by 15 years to start taking this seriously and beginning to <i>think about</i> pushing back, but better late than never.<p>Next please reign in the CRAs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davisr</author><text>&gt; I&#x27;ve seen no evidence of this<p>Over 99% of Americans point a camera at themselves while they take a shit.</text></comment> |
35,812,379 | 35,812,541 | 1 | 2 | 35,811,741 | train | <story><title>Scaling up the Prime Video audio/video monitoring service and reducing costs</title><url>https://www.primevideotech.com/video-streaming/scaling-up-the-prime-video-audio-video-monitoring-service-and-reducing-costs-by-90</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>boxed</author><text>I built a little microservice on the side of my monolith for PDF creation. It used headless chrome and ghostscript to render html to a nice PDF. The problem I had with having that code inside the monolith was that it increased my docker image creation for deploys by <i>a lot</i>. And that code pretty much never changed anyway.<p>I did feel a bit embarrassed having to make a microservice after having argued against them so much over the years. Hopefully I can stop producing PDFs soon so I can delete the entire thing :P</text></item><item><author>The_Colonel</author><text>I agree, my intuition would put it to 1% vs. 99% (difficult to quantify of course).<p>I haven&#x27;t yet seen a project&#x2F;product which would need microservice architecture for technical reasons. If you need to scale, you can just scale monoliths (perhaps serving in different roles).<p>The use case for microservice architecture is IMHO an organizational &#x2F; high level architecture driven. I&#x27;ve worked in a big company (20K employees) which was completely redesigning its back-office IT solution which ended up as a mesh of various microservices serving various needs (typically consumed by purpose built frontends), worked on by different teams. There monolith didn&#x27;t make sense, because there was no single purpose, no single product.<p>But if I&#x27;m building a product, I will choose monolith every time. Maaaaybe in some very special cases, I will build some auxiliary services serving the monolith, but there needs to be a very good reason to do so.</text></item><item><author>bawolff</author><text>I&#x27;m pretty convinced that microservices are one of those things that make sense 5% of the time and the other 95% is cargo culting.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>The_Colonel</author><text>That honestly seems like a reasonable use case for (what I call) auxiliary services serving the monolith. As I imagine, there&#x27;s no real business logic, no data storage &#x2F; transactions, no authentication&#x2F;authorization (besides the service being hidden in the private network probably).</text></comment> | <story><title>Scaling up the Prime Video audio/video monitoring service and reducing costs</title><url>https://www.primevideotech.com/video-streaming/scaling-up-the-prime-video-audio-video-monitoring-service-and-reducing-costs-by-90</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>boxed</author><text>I built a little microservice on the side of my monolith for PDF creation. It used headless chrome and ghostscript to render html to a nice PDF. The problem I had with having that code inside the monolith was that it increased my docker image creation for deploys by <i>a lot</i>. And that code pretty much never changed anyway.<p>I did feel a bit embarrassed having to make a microservice after having argued against them so much over the years. Hopefully I can stop producing PDFs soon so I can delete the entire thing :P</text></item><item><author>The_Colonel</author><text>I agree, my intuition would put it to 1% vs. 99% (difficult to quantify of course).<p>I haven&#x27;t yet seen a project&#x2F;product which would need microservice architecture for technical reasons. If you need to scale, you can just scale monoliths (perhaps serving in different roles).<p>The use case for microservice architecture is IMHO an organizational &#x2F; high level architecture driven. I&#x27;ve worked in a big company (20K employees) which was completely redesigning its back-office IT solution which ended up as a mesh of various microservices serving various needs (typically consumed by purpose built frontends), worked on by different teams. There monolith didn&#x27;t make sense, because there was no single purpose, no single product.<p>But if I&#x27;m building a product, I will choose monolith every time. Maaaaybe in some very special cases, I will build some auxiliary services serving the monolith, but there needs to be a very good reason to do so.</text></item><item><author>bawolff</author><text>I&#x27;m pretty convinced that microservices are one of those things that make sense 5% of the time and the other 95% is cargo culting.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>foepys</author><text>That&#x27;s exactly what my team did at a former company. We generated reports through a legacy document engine because some customers cannot switch&#x2F;update their report templates and so we moved the logic out of the monolith into a service to get rid of a large portion of our dependencies.<p>Moved the monolith to .NET Core, kept the report service on .NET Framework. A win for everybody.</text></comment> |
16,959,398 | 16,959,505 | 1 | 2 | 16,958,818 | train | <story><title>Python Environment</title><url>https://xkcd.com/1987/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>scrollaway</author><text>Man it&#x27;s frustrating to see this comic and read the comments here, because it&#x27;s all so true. Python, in its noble quest for backwards compatibility, has accumulated so many different ways of packaging, distributing and installing libraries and apps that it&#x27;s rivaling Google&#x27;s chat apps.<p>Pipenv is the most promising solution <i>today</i> but is still very, very new. It&#x27;s modeled after yarn and has been officially blessed as &quot;The One True Way&quot; of installing stuff by the Python documentation. It has a way to go still to be as good as yarn (especially in terms of speed). The Python ecosystem has never had proper declarative packages like package.json (setup.cfg can be used to have fully declarative package metadata, but I seem to be the only one using it that way), which is a problem for package managers.<p>To those suggesting it, Docker is great but you&#x27;re still dealing with a package manager inside Docker, so that&#x27;s a moot point. It avoids the need for virtualenv, kind of, but so does pipenv and it does so more reliably and reproducibly (pipenv implements lockfiles).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wintorez</author><text>For a language that has &quot;There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.&quot; as part of its core philosophy, this is very ironic.</text></comment> | <story><title>Python Environment</title><url>https://xkcd.com/1987/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>scrollaway</author><text>Man it&#x27;s frustrating to see this comic and read the comments here, because it&#x27;s all so true. Python, in its noble quest for backwards compatibility, has accumulated so many different ways of packaging, distributing and installing libraries and apps that it&#x27;s rivaling Google&#x27;s chat apps.<p>Pipenv is the most promising solution <i>today</i> but is still very, very new. It&#x27;s modeled after yarn and has been officially blessed as &quot;The One True Way&quot; of installing stuff by the Python documentation. It has a way to go still to be as good as yarn (especially in terms of speed). The Python ecosystem has never had proper declarative packages like package.json (setup.cfg can be used to have fully declarative package metadata, but I seem to be the only one using it that way), which is a problem for package managers.<p>To those suggesting it, Docker is great but you&#x27;re still dealing with a package manager inside Docker, so that&#x27;s a moot point. It avoids the need for virtualenv, kind of, but so does pipenv and it does so more reliably and reproducibly (pipenv implements lockfiles).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alexbecker</author><text>Pipenv solves a very real problem, but it has a lot of problems of its own:<p>- It&#x27;s very slow: re-locking after updating 1 dependency often takes me ~1 minute.<p>- It has lots of bugs. To name a few in 11.6.9: clobbers comments in the Pipfile, inconsistently includes dependencies for other build environments in Pipfile.lock, stores the wrong index in Pipfile.lock for packages not on PyPI.<p>- They release multiple times per day, often breaking things in patch releases.<p>- Kenneth Reitz is quite unpleasant to deal with in GitHub issues, which I often have to because of the previous 2 issues.<p>From what I&#x27;ve heard, Pipenv &quot;has been officially blessed&quot; only insofar as its maintainer got commit access to PyPA&#x27;s documentation and inserted a recommendation.</text></comment> |
1,445,895 | 1,445,513 | 1 | 2 | 1,445,500 | train | <story><title>How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen</title><url>http://sivers.org/how2hire</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>city41</author><text>I am the developer in this situation right now. I was hired by a small company as their sole developer to write them a program. So far, I have to say I pretty much disagree with everything said here.<p>I think the developer really needs to know the details of the domain and problem space. The company I am working for is a workforce management consulting firm. The first week on the job I interviewed 10+ consultants with the company. Got to know their tasks, goals, accomplishments, needs and pain points. I also shadowed in on one consultant for a day, and read a lot of literature. I know an awful lot now what it means to do work force management and workforce management consulting. This is helpful, very helpful. I become a knowledgeable user of the very system I am creating. Imagine if Adobe's developers had no clue about image editing, Photoshop would have been a disaster.<p>This feeds into my other point. Don't give the developer detailed descriptions of every click, button, error, etc. Give them the exact opposite. Tell them what the system needs to accomplish, and let them design it. For one, they will almost certainly design a simpler and easier to manage system than you will (maybe not easier to user, because let's face it, that's not usually a programmer's forte). Since the developer now knows the domain pretty well, they can use that knowledge to help design an effective solution. let the developer arrive at your goal with as minimal amount of code and work as possible. That way you can see your vision in the flesh, use it, and actually start to understand what it does. Only once a feature is actually implemented and put to use do you really start to understand what it needs to do.<p>Maintain a dialog with your developer. Give feedback often and have the two of you work together on where the project is going.<p>Basically all I am saying boils down to what most agile development processes ascribe to.<p>I do however totally agree with doing the "simple" version 1.0 release first.</text></comment> | <story><title>How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen</title><url>http://sivers.org/how2hire</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sivers</author><text>Assuming most HN readers don't need this advice for themselves.<p>But if you disagree with it or think I left out something important, please consider leaving a reply in the comments on that page, so future readers will see your suggestions, too.</text></comment> |
15,750,975 | 15,750,977 | 1 | 2 | 15,750,785 | train | <story><title>Bitcoin Is Creeping into Real Estate Deals</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-is-creeping-into-real-estate-deals-1511265600</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>paulgb</author><text>This article seems to conflate using the block chain to verify title transfers, with using Bitcoin to buy&#x2F;rent property, as it discusses both without really drawing a distinction.<p>Can anyone make sense of what&#x27;s going on here, and in particular why a municipality would prefer a block chain to a public database of digitally signed records?</text></comment> | <story><title>Bitcoin Is Creeping into Real Estate Deals</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-is-creeping-into-real-estate-deals-1511265600</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>badloginagain</author><text>In Canada, buying&#x2F;selling Bitcoin is subject to capital gains in the same way buying&#x2F;selling stocks are. I wonder if you have to pay capital gains if using Bitcoin directly as a currency- as in through the purchase of a house or other expensive asset.</text></comment> |
6,380,440 | 6,380,666 | 1 | 3 | 6,379,833 | train | <story><title>Your name is way too long for your ID</title><url>http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/12/janice-lokelani-keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NP_Top_Stories+%28National+Post+-+Top+Stories%29</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mhb</author><text><i>It never occurred to either of us that a ten character last name with a space in the middle would be problem</i><p>Really? Because a space is commonly used as the delimiter between first, middle and last names. Wouldn&#x27;t you think that, at a minimum, there would be some ambiguity about whether Jones was (one of) her middle name(s) or the first part of her last name?</text></item><item><author>esw</author><text>My wife took my surname when we married, but rather than hyphenate she decided to go with a space. Although the names are each quite short (e.g. &quot;Jones&quot; and &quot;Smith&quot;), this has proven to be a significant challenge for our bank, and even on her drivers license (which compressed her name to JONESSMITH). It never occurred to either of us that a ten character last name with a space in the middle would be problem to anyone other than people who want to cite her research.</text></item><item><author>grannyg00se</author><text>But should we really worry about the 0.01% outlier who has seven different names, each consisting of some kind of personal scribble that changes depending on the phase of the moon?<p>More on topic, why should official systems allow for names of arbitrary length? Obviously your 1800 character preference for last name is not going to fit on all standard forms of identification. A standards-compliant name should be issued and you can use your preferred name for personal matters.</text></item><item><author>cstross</author><text>See also &quot;Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names&quot;: <a href="http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kalzumeus.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;06&#x2F;17&#x2F;falsehoods-programmers-b...</a> (This falls under point #6)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pavlov</author><text>There are plenty of European family names that have one or more spaces in the middle. Some examples:<p>de la Chapelle<p>von Braun<p>zu Guttenberg<p>af Slestad<p>A computer system that assumes that Wernher von Braun&#x27;s middle name was &quot;von&quot; is ridiculous.</text></comment> | <story><title>Your name is way too long for your ID</title><url>http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/12/janice-lokelani-keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NP_Top_Stories+%28National+Post+-+Top+Stories%29</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mhb</author><text><i>It never occurred to either of us that a ten character last name with a space in the middle would be problem</i><p>Really? Because a space is commonly used as the delimiter between first, middle and last names. Wouldn&#x27;t you think that, at a minimum, there would be some ambiguity about whether Jones was (one of) her middle name(s) or the first part of her last name?</text></item><item><author>esw</author><text>My wife took my surname when we married, but rather than hyphenate she decided to go with a space. Although the names are each quite short (e.g. &quot;Jones&quot; and &quot;Smith&quot;), this has proven to be a significant challenge for our bank, and even on her drivers license (which compressed her name to JONESSMITH). It never occurred to either of us that a ten character last name with a space in the middle would be problem to anyone other than people who want to cite her research.</text></item><item><author>grannyg00se</author><text>But should we really worry about the 0.01% outlier who has seven different names, each consisting of some kind of personal scribble that changes depending on the phase of the moon?<p>More on topic, why should official systems allow for names of arbitrary length? Obviously your 1800 character preference for last name is not going to fit on all standard forms of identification. A standards-compliant name should be issued and you can use your preferred name for personal matters.</text></item><item><author>cstross</author><text>See also &quot;Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names&quot;: <a href="http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kalzumeus.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;06&#x2F;17&#x2F;falsehoods-programmers-b...</a> (This falls under point #6)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>iaskwhy</author><text>Here&#x27;s mine: &quot;[FirstName] [SecondName] e [FirstFamilyName] [SecondFamilyName]&quot;. That article (&quot;e&quot;) in the middle gives me trouble all the time. First time I went to NYC I got asked by the passport guy what that &quot;e&quot; meant. I told him it was just an article connecting the first part of the name to the second. He didn&#x27;t really believe me and started asking if it meant something like Edward. After a couple of minutes trying to explain it&#x27;s not that rare in my country he let me go.</text></comment> |
7,465,220 | 7,465,011 | 1 | 2 | 7,464,372 | train | <story><title>A decentralized anonymous marketplace</title><url>https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2014-March/013304.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>runeks</author><text>As far as I can see, the essential problem with decentralized anonymous marketplaces is that reviews need to cost money. Plain and simple. Good reviews have great value, so they need to have a non-zero price. A vendor&#x27;s review history is the indicator by which you assess whether a vendor is trustworthy or not, and a vendor should have to pay to achieve a trustworthy reputation - if good reviews are free, and you can make money from good reviews, they would have little value.<p>This is the reason spam emails are so frequent: you can make money from something that costs very little. If reviews were near-free, good reviews would be as plentiful as spam emails.<p>Free reviews means vendors can make sock-puppet accounts, fake a transaction, and leave a five-star review to themselves. With Silk Road, they take <i>x</i>% of the value of each transaction (or if not, that&#x27;s at least how it should be), so if a vendor seeks to inflate their review score, they will pay a price for it.<p>In fact, a good overall review score for a vendor - as far as I can tell - is the sum of all the review &quot;values&quot; (1 to five stars) multiplied by the value of the transaction in question. So a vendor with 10 five-star reviews on 10 orders of a value of 1 BTC each, would have the same score as a vendor with a single five-star review on a single transaction with a value of 10 BTC. Both these vendors would have paid the same amount of money to get this, equal, review score.<p>I&#x27;ve thought a bit about this, and I don&#x27;t see how this can be solved in a decentralized market, with no middleman to tax transactions, and make sure that vendors can&#x27;t get free reviews.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ap22213</author><text>It doesn&#x27;t help me to know that an anonymous person had tipped an anonymous vendor. That doesn&#x27;t add much value.<p>However, it would be sufficient if I could somehow determine that someone that I knew had tipped the vendor.<p>Of course, I don&#x27;t want my friends to see that I had tipped someone, or all of those of whom I have tipped. I just want it to be possible that they can see my tip, within an aggregate poll, only if and when dealing with that vendor.</text></comment> | <story><title>A decentralized anonymous marketplace</title><url>https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2014-March/013304.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>runeks</author><text>As far as I can see, the essential problem with decentralized anonymous marketplaces is that reviews need to cost money. Plain and simple. Good reviews have great value, so they need to have a non-zero price. A vendor&#x27;s review history is the indicator by which you assess whether a vendor is trustworthy or not, and a vendor should have to pay to achieve a trustworthy reputation - if good reviews are free, and you can make money from good reviews, they would have little value.<p>This is the reason spam emails are so frequent: you can make money from something that costs very little. If reviews were near-free, good reviews would be as plentiful as spam emails.<p>Free reviews means vendors can make sock-puppet accounts, fake a transaction, and leave a five-star review to themselves. With Silk Road, they take <i>x</i>% of the value of each transaction (or if not, that&#x27;s at least how it should be), so if a vendor seeks to inflate their review score, they will pay a price for it.<p>In fact, a good overall review score for a vendor - as far as I can tell - is the sum of all the review &quot;values&quot; (1 to five stars) multiplied by the value of the transaction in question. So a vendor with 10 five-star reviews on 10 orders of a value of 1 BTC each, would have the same score as a vendor with a single five-star review on a single transaction with a value of 10 BTC. Both these vendors would have paid the same amount of money to get this, equal, review score.<p>I&#x27;ve thought a bit about this, and I don&#x27;t see how this can be solved in a decentralized market, with no middleman to tax transactions, and make sure that vendors can&#x27;t get free reviews.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hendzen</author><text>You can use proof-of-sacrifice to give reviews a cost. Look up OP_RETURN in relation to bitcoin.</text></comment> |
11,947,050 | 11,946,157 | 1 | 3 | 11,945,271 | train | <story><title>“But he does good work.”</title><url>https://medium.com/@violetblue/but-he-does-good-work-6710df9d9029#.axjt9r4e2</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>danso</author><text>I typed this response to a comment that called the OP &quot;mostly bullshit&quot; and that if someone does wrong, it is incumbent upon the victim to file charges or forever hold their peace. The comment was flagged so I couldn&#x27;t submit what I typed, so I&#x27;ve pasted it here.<p>I agree that it&#x27;s hard to find black and white in accusations...but I&#x27;d argue that even the judicial system leaves more than enough gray to argue over. And because of that, I don&#x27;t believe that things are ever as simple &quot;if something is wrong, file charges&quot; -- just like it&#x27;s never as easy as &quot;if you love someone, put a ring on it.&quot;<p>I&#x27;ll likely have the privilege of never having to file charges for rape, but once I had to file charges as a victim of armed robbery. Even though I had plenty of evidence, in hand and forthcoming (Android location tracing)...I had a hell of a time convincing a detective that I wasn&#x27;t faking a robbery for insurance purposes, just because I wasn&#x27;t clear exactly what block i was on when it happened. I can&#x27;t even fucking imagine what it is like convincing the system that sexual assault (or even harassment) has happened, but I imagine the friction is enough to deter people from taking necessary action until it&#x27;s too late. It seems that some of these victims are able to talk themselves out of thinking that a colleague truly did wrong, and when others step up, they realize their mistake in being quiet.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joyeuse6701</author><text>It should be difficult to convince the system, it should not be easy. If it were people would &#x27;hack it&#x27; to there benefit. See welfare.<p>True, a victim will face the emotional hurdle and trauma. The system is unfeeling.<p>People these days mostly avoid confrontation. Going to the police is confrontation by proxy, and when it takes convincing to get them to take action, a beaten down victim has quite a battle to face.<p>The world is unpleasant, it will always be so, it will always be full of suffering. We strive to do our best as a people to improve our lot in life, but that doesn&#x27;t mean lowering your defenses. Always advocate peace, always prepare for war. Many rely on the system or &#x27;it won&#x27;t happen to me&#x27; mentality as to why they don&#x27;t or won&#x27;t protect themselves. You shouldn&#x27;t have to train in self defense but you must. You shouldn&#x27;t have to be aware of the situation, but you must. You shouldn&#x27;t have to note the exit signs in an enclosed structure, but you must. You shouldn&#x27;t have to cover your drink but you must. You shouldn&#x27;t have to blend in so as to not draw attention from a threat, but you must. Our world is dangerous, we like to think it isn&#x27;t, and it&#x27;s so much easier to tell ourselves that we&#x27;re a victim and deserve sympathy than to ask ourselves what we could have done to prevent this and defend ourselves. We want someone else to do it for us. A higher up, police, lawyers... do it yourself, defend yourself and your friends.</text></comment> | <story><title>“But he does good work.”</title><url>https://medium.com/@violetblue/but-he-does-good-work-6710df9d9029#.axjt9r4e2</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>danso</author><text>I typed this response to a comment that called the OP &quot;mostly bullshit&quot; and that if someone does wrong, it is incumbent upon the victim to file charges or forever hold their peace. The comment was flagged so I couldn&#x27;t submit what I typed, so I&#x27;ve pasted it here.<p>I agree that it&#x27;s hard to find black and white in accusations...but I&#x27;d argue that even the judicial system leaves more than enough gray to argue over. And because of that, I don&#x27;t believe that things are ever as simple &quot;if something is wrong, file charges&quot; -- just like it&#x27;s never as easy as &quot;if you love someone, put a ring on it.&quot;<p>I&#x27;ll likely have the privilege of never having to file charges for rape, but once I had to file charges as a victim of armed robbery. Even though I had plenty of evidence, in hand and forthcoming (Android location tracing)...I had a hell of a time convincing a detective that I wasn&#x27;t faking a robbery for insurance purposes, just because I wasn&#x27;t clear exactly what block i was on when it happened. I can&#x27;t even fucking imagine what it is like convincing the system that sexual assault (or even harassment) has happened, but I imagine the friction is enough to deter people from taking necessary action until it&#x27;s too late. It seems that some of these victims are able to talk themselves out of thinking that a colleague truly did wrong, and when others step up, they realize their mistake in being quiet.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mordocai</author><text>Not to mention that this guy would apparently blackmail and&#x2F;or destroy you if you tried to spread the word (no mention of filing charges that I saw, but I imagine a similar story).</text></comment> |
39,243,019 | 39,243,093 | 1 | 2 | 39,241,825 | train | <story><title>The engineering behind Figma's vector networks (2019)</title><url>https://alexharri.com/blog/vector-networks</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>matroid</author><text>It looks like Vector Networks is based on Boris Dalstein&#x27;s work (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.borisdalstein.com&#x2F;research&#x2F;phd" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.borisdalstein.com&#x2F;research&#x2F;phd</a>). He even has a startup (VGC) for Vector Graphic Editing tool based on these concepts. It is pretty cool!<p>P.S. I have no affiliation with his work, although I did contribute 10$ to his Kickstarter Campaign back in the day.</text></comment> | <story><title>The engineering behind Figma's vector networks (2019)</title><url>https://alexharri.com/blog/vector-networks</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>doubloon</author><text>pretty awesome.<p>i really feel like Geometric Algebra, specifically the concepts of wedge product and bivectors, could save everyone a lot of time if it was put into the curriculum. because people keep &quot;rediscovering&quot; it all the time and calling it different names. (here &quot;determinant&quot;)</text></comment> |
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