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33,929,904 | 33,929,421 | 1 | 2 | 33,925,197 | train | <story><title>Fireship – Learn to Code Faster</title><url>https://fireship.io/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>opdahl</author><text>To be honest I see this new trend of squishing down longform information (such as books, courses etc) into short tidbits with the promise of «infusing you with information» a detriment to learning. There is a huge difference between being told something by e.g reading a sentence summarizing a point, in comparison to reading the longer form. This is because a big part of what is learning, or grokking rather, is that you ponder and think about the information you just received in context with something else. You need to simulate and build a mental model using the information as a jumping off point. Thats where longer form of content such as a «slow» book is beneficial. It might be slow and repeating itself, but in doing so it gives you the chance to actually understand what is being presented to you. These short summaries are giving you non of that, unless you actually stop and ponder every single sentence, and at that point you might as well be consuming the longer form since it will help you in that aspect.<p>I honestly believe we’re currently being too focused on productivity hacks, so we’re not seeing the forest for the trees. You reading and remembering a line from a book is not the same as you understanding that line, and in this example where they state they are giving you a 60 minute lesson in 5 minutes - how much understanding are you actually left with at the end?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jatins</author><text>&gt; see this new trend of squishing down longform information (such as books, courses etc) into short tidbits with the promise of «infusing you with information»<p>I see a general decline of attention spans around me and I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if more learning content takes this route.<p>There is also something to be said about the fact the I often remember things I saw in edu TikTok more than things I read in a book because it&#x27;s presented in a more engaging and visual manner. So, I assume it actually helps some people learn easier and lowers the &quot;activation energy&quot; threshold to get started.</text></comment> | <story><title>Fireship – Learn to Code Faster</title><url>https://fireship.io/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>opdahl</author><text>To be honest I see this new trend of squishing down longform information (such as books, courses etc) into short tidbits with the promise of «infusing you with information» a detriment to learning. There is a huge difference between being told something by e.g reading a sentence summarizing a point, in comparison to reading the longer form. This is because a big part of what is learning, or grokking rather, is that you ponder and think about the information you just received in context with something else. You need to simulate and build a mental model using the information as a jumping off point. Thats where longer form of content such as a «slow» book is beneficial. It might be slow and repeating itself, but in doing so it gives you the chance to actually understand what is being presented to you. These short summaries are giving you non of that, unless you actually stop and ponder every single sentence, and at that point you might as well be consuming the longer form since it will help you in that aspect.<p>I honestly believe we’re currently being too focused on productivity hacks, so we’re not seeing the forest for the trees. You reading and remembering a line from a book is not the same as you understanding that line, and in this example where they state they are giving you a 60 minute lesson in 5 minutes - how much understanding are you actually left with at the end?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>haswell</author><text>I think it’s important to recognize that there are multiple learning styles and not everyone goes through the same steps or finds value in the same places.<p>I think this is highly project and phase dependent as well, and sometimes the most valuable resource is a resource that can explain the essence of a thing in minutes thereby allowing you to make a decision about whether or not spending more time on the subject is warranted.</text></comment> |
34,735,620 | 34,735,594 | 1 | 2 | 34,734,655 | train | <story><title>Why big tech companies need so many people</title><url>https://thebuilderjr.substack.com/p/why-big-tech-companies-need-so-many</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rippercushions</author><text>This post seems kind of naive? A big part of why big tech companies need so many people is because <i>any</i> big company, especially one sitting on piles of money, becomes a target for all sorts of predators and has to defend itself. So it has to have armies of SOX compliance officers (because it&#x27;s still cheaper than getting sued by the SEC), travel expense auditors (because it&#x27;s still cheaper than shareholder suits after a VP whoops it up in Vegas and sends the bill to the company), mandatory diversity training educators (because it&#x27;s still cheaper than getting sued by various minorities), patent litigation departments (because it&#x27;s still cheaper than losing to patent trolls) etc etc, all of which feel like &quot;bullshit jobs&quot; to the average 3-man startup because the average 3-man startup doesn&#x27;t face any of these problems.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ethanbond</author><text>Ugh, it’s so much simpler than that.<p>Everyone’s number one objective in any company is to make <i>their</i> individual life easier. Full stop. The most obvious way to do that, if you have the ability&#x2F;budget, is to hire people to do your work for you.<p>Then you can brag about managing higher headcount, you do less work, and you flounder around as a very bad manager with no accountability so long as you keep your workload below the level of <i>your</i> manager (who, remember, hired you just to remove work from their own plate).<p>Now remember that everyone you hired has the exact same incentive.<p>It keeps going til the money runs out or until the company buckles under its own organizational complexity.</text></comment> | <story><title>Why big tech companies need so many people</title><url>https://thebuilderjr.substack.com/p/why-big-tech-companies-need-so-many</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rippercushions</author><text>This post seems kind of naive? A big part of why big tech companies need so many people is because <i>any</i> big company, especially one sitting on piles of money, becomes a target for all sorts of predators and has to defend itself. So it has to have armies of SOX compliance officers (because it&#x27;s still cheaper than getting sued by the SEC), travel expense auditors (because it&#x27;s still cheaper than shareholder suits after a VP whoops it up in Vegas and sends the bill to the company), mandatory diversity training educators (because it&#x27;s still cheaper than getting sued by various minorities), patent litigation departments (because it&#x27;s still cheaper than losing to patent trolls) etc etc, all of which feel like &quot;bullshit jobs&quot; to the average 3-man startup because the average 3-man startup doesn&#x27;t face any of these problems.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>threeseed</author><text>This comment is like a Fox News parody of what tech companies are like.<p>I&#x27;ve worked for a few and there definitely wasn&#x27;t 1000s of people in the Legal &amp; Compliance departments constantly getting sued and harassing managers and engineers about travel expenses or diversity training.<p>Instead, it is the exact same problems you see at every large company i.e. excess of middle managers each trying to grow their own fiefdom and duplicating capabilities across the organisation.<p>Or it&#x27;s too many poorly conceived and managed product and R&amp;D adventures.</text></comment> |
26,921,498 | 26,921,518 | 1 | 2 | 26,919,197 | train | <story><title>Human-monkey chimera embryos created in lab</title><url>https://newatlas.com/science/human-monkey-chimera-embryos/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway5752</author><text>Alex Jones claimed 1) that the US Air Force attacked Texas with weather control weapons 2) that the majority of frogs in the US are now gay because the government is intentionally turning people homosexual for population control 3) that the most monstrous shooting in my lifetime, Sandy Hook, was a false flag and the bereaved families of the murdered first graders were crisis actors.<p>Alex Jones is an awful person. He lies about so much, some of it will end up being accidentally correct. What he says or thinks should be shunned by any decent human being, and he should not be brought up here.</text></item><item><author>sebmellen</author><text>I am by no means <i>whatsoever</i> an Alex Jones listener or fan. But he&#x27;s been laughed at for proclaiming that human&#x2F;animal hybrids are being &quot;developed&quot; for some time now (see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Sa9jXkVpnw0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Sa9jXkVpnw0</a>, for example).<p>It&#x27;s scary to see this article because it&#x27;s essentially &quot;proving&quot; Alex Jones right. This is a very bad precedent.<p>The issue at hand is serious, but it&#x27;s obscured because of the comedic&#x2F;crazy veil that Jones&#x27;s delivery and accompanying distortion&#x2F;exaggeration of the facts causes.<p>This reminds me of his erroneous &quot;they&#x27;re turning the friggin&#x27; frogs gay&quot; comment, which has links in a serious issue — atrazine feminizing male frogs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.berkeley.edu&#x2F;2010&#x2F;03&#x2F;01&#x2F;frogs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.berkeley.edu&#x2F;2010&#x2F;03&#x2F;01&#x2F;frogs&#x2F;</a>.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sebmellen</author><text>Yes, I don&#x27;t disagree.<p>My point here is that a lot of people who are not very informed, who may be susceptible to his conspiracy theories, will see this news come out and think, &quot;Oh, he was right. Maybe he&#x27;s right about something else.&quot;<p>IMO the problem is that it was ridiculed when he said it. Now he can look back and post a link to an NPR article stating that human-monkey chimera embryos have been created.<p>I make this comment only because a friend of mine sent me the NPR article [0] with a note saying &quot;man maybe Alex Jones is right about a lot of stuff, lol.&quot; I don&#x27;t know how common this sentiment is, but it&#x27;s another talking point lodged in Jones&#x27;s favor (to the detriment of all of us).<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;health-shots&#x2F;2021&#x2F;04&#x2F;15&#x2F;987164563&#x2F;scientists-create-early-embryos-that-are-part-human-part-monkey" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;health-shots&#x2F;2021&#x2F;04&#x2F;15&#x2F;9871645...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Human-monkey chimera embryos created in lab</title><url>https://newatlas.com/science/human-monkey-chimera-embryos/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway5752</author><text>Alex Jones claimed 1) that the US Air Force attacked Texas with weather control weapons 2) that the majority of frogs in the US are now gay because the government is intentionally turning people homosexual for population control 3) that the most monstrous shooting in my lifetime, Sandy Hook, was a false flag and the bereaved families of the murdered first graders were crisis actors.<p>Alex Jones is an awful person. He lies about so much, some of it will end up being accidentally correct. What he says or thinks should be shunned by any decent human being, and he should not be brought up here.</text></item><item><author>sebmellen</author><text>I am by no means <i>whatsoever</i> an Alex Jones listener or fan. But he&#x27;s been laughed at for proclaiming that human&#x2F;animal hybrids are being &quot;developed&quot; for some time now (see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Sa9jXkVpnw0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Sa9jXkVpnw0</a>, for example).<p>It&#x27;s scary to see this article because it&#x27;s essentially &quot;proving&quot; Alex Jones right. This is a very bad precedent.<p>The issue at hand is serious, but it&#x27;s obscured because of the comedic&#x2F;crazy veil that Jones&#x27;s delivery and accompanying distortion&#x2F;exaggeration of the facts causes.<p>This reminds me of his erroneous &quot;they&#x27;re turning the friggin&#x27; frogs gay&quot; comment, which has links in a serious issue — atrazine feminizing male frogs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.berkeley.edu&#x2F;2010&#x2F;03&#x2F;01&#x2F;frogs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.berkeley.edu&#x2F;2010&#x2F;03&#x2F;01&#x2F;frogs&#x2F;</a>.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eloff</author><text>&gt; Alex Jones is an awful person. He lies about so much, some of it will end up being accidentally correct.<p>Agreed.<p>&gt; What he says or thinks should be shunned by any decent human being, and he should not be brought up here.<p>No. He should not be a taboo topic. Let it out in the open where rational people can see for themselves how crazy he is and make up their own minds.<p>I really hate this whole cancel culture thing, I don&#x27;t even wish it on the Alex Joneses of the world.</text></comment> |
13,068,983 | 13,068,550 | 1 | 2 | 13,067,727 | train | <story><title>Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans</title><url>http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/11/28/our-closest-worm-kin-regrow-body-parts-raising-hopes-of-regeneration-in-humans/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xux</author><text>A lot of people are focusing on the mechanics, but it seems like humans don&#x27;t generate body parts just like cells don&#x27;t generate organelles. The entity is not _meant_ to exist by itself, but form a cohesive living group.<p>A cell doesn&#x27;t need to repair itself, it can simply clone itself and then die. A human being doesn&#x27;t need to regenerate itself because it can reproduce and be cleared away. Evolution evolved to ensure the survival of the species, not the individual.<p>The human being is constantly generating itself by multiplying cells. Similarly, the species is constantly generating itself by multiplying individuals.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>richardw</author><text>Those mechanisms are good enough to have brought us to this point, but that has no bearing on what kind of future we choose to create for ourselves.<p>Metals rust and seep into the ground, but we dig them up and build spacecraft from them. Metals aren&#x27;t _meant_ to do that, but we have some influence over our environment. We might end up having a similar influence over our cells.</text></comment> | <story><title>Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans</title><url>http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/11/28/our-closest-worm-kin-regrow-body-parts-raising-hopes-of-regeneration-in-humans/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xux</author><text>A lot of people are focusing on the mechanics, but it seems like humans don&#x27;t generate body parts just like cells don&#x27;t generate organelles. The entity is not _meant_ to exist by itself, but form a cohesive living group.<p>A cell doesn&#x27;t need to repair itself, it can simply clone itself and then die. A human being doesn&#x27;t need to regenerate itself because it can reproduce and be cleared away. Evolution evolved to ensure the survival of the species, not the individual.<p>The human being is constantly generating itself by multiplying cells. Similarly, the species is constantly generating itself by multiplying individuals.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>devoply</author><text>&gt; Evolution evolved to ensure the survival of the species, not the individual.<p>At some point in our evolutionary history the cells in our body made this choice. Evolution favors survival and potentially reproduction, because otherwise you are no longer in the game. So there was some evolutionary constraint that caused those genes not to regenerate parts.<p>It&#x27;s possible we can change things so that those genes are active again. But we don&#x27;t really understand these systems well enough to do that and won&#x27;t anytime soon. But science carries on and I am sure you can make lab mice to test hypotheses of how this might work in mammals. And we probably will very soon, if not here then in China.<p>Evolution is perfectly fine even if you don&#x27;t reproduce much, as long as you continue to survive in your environment. There are creatures out there that have changed very little and we know this because we have fossil records, and this is because they have been adapted to their environment and stayed adapted despite the environmental changes. And there are even immortal creature that die not because their bodies age and kill them but because they are eaten by other things, but still they don&#x27;t change much over time. I guess you could say they are better evolved than other creatures that have to constantly change. They made better evolutionary decisions than other creatures very early on.</text></comment> |
40,380,844 | 40,376,071 | 1 | 3 | 40,375,341 | train | <story><title>Some notes on Rust, mutable aliasing and formal verification</title><url>https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/312681.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>That&#x27;s a good article.<p>Having worked on program verification in the past, Rust looks like the most useful modern language to which formal methods can be applied. Rust&#x27;s rules eliminate so many of the cases that are hard to formalize.<p>Big remaining problems involve deadlock analysis, both in the thread sense and in the Rc&#x2F;borrow sense. Those are somewhat equivalent. I&#x27;d like to have static deadlock analysis in Rust. If you had that, I think you could get safe back-pointers, too. If you can prove that all borrow and upgrade calls can&#x27;t fail, you can eliminate most reference counts. That gives you free interior mutability when that&#x27;s possible.<p>The author&#x27;s comment on provers is interesting. The big problem with theorem provers is that they&#x27;re developed by people who like to prove theorems. They&#x27;re in love with the formalism. This leads to a UI disconnect with programmers.<p>You can knock off most things you have to prove with a SAT solver. But you&#x27;ll need something heavier for the hard problems. Coq is too manual. The author thinks ACL2 is too functional. Not sure what to do there, but I&#x27;ve been out of this for decades.<p>Machine learning may help in guiding theorem provers. Most programs aren&#x27;t that original in terms of control flow and data usage. So inferring a proof plan from other code may work.
ML systems can&#x27;t be trusted to <i>do</i> the proof, but may take over guiding the process.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nextaccountic</author><text>F* is this mythical language that proves stuff automatically (with an SMT solver, more powerful than SAT), but still lets you prove manually if the automated solver fails<p>The crypto routines in Firefox and Wireguard is actually written in F* (or more specifically Low<i>, a low level DSL embedded in F</i>), not in Rust, and is fully verified<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;project-everest.github.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;project-everest.github.io&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mitls.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mitls.org&#x2F;</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Some notes on Rust, mutable aliasing and formal verification</title><url>https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/312681.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>That&#x27;s a good article.<p>Having worked on program verification in the past, Rust looks like the most useful modern language to which formal methods can be applied. Rust&#x27;s rules eliminate so many of the cases that are hard to formalize.<p>Big remaining problems involve deadlock analysis, both in the thread sense and in the Rc&#x2F;borrow sense. Those are somewhat equivalent. I&#x27;d like to have static deadlock analysis in Rust. If you had that, I think you could get safe back-pointers, too. If you can prove that all borrow and upgrade calls can&#x27;t fail, you can eliminate most reference counts. That gives you free interior mutability when that&#x27;s possible.<p>The author&#x27;s comment on provers is interesting. The big problem with theorem provers is that they&#x27;re developed by people who like to prove theorems. They&#x27;re in love with the formalism. This leads to a UI disconnect with programmers.<p>You can knock off most things you have to prove with a SAT solver. But you&#x27;ll need something heavier for the hard problems. Coq is too manual. The author thinks ACL2 is too functional. Not sure what to do there, but I&#x27;ve been out of this for decades.<p>Machine learning may help in guiding theorem provers. Most programs aren&#x27;t that original in terms of control flow and data usage. So inferring a proof plan from other code may work.
ML systems can&#x27;t be trusted to <i>do</i> the proof, but may take over guiding the process.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rtpg</author><text>I think that Coq&#x2F;Agda&#x2F;Lean and friends are really going to be the winners in the proof space. Interactivity is a pretty good model for the feedback loop, and they&#x27;re systems that exist and work, without a lost of asterisks.<p>The biggest thing I think these tools are missing out of the box is, basically, &quot;run quickcheck on my proof for me&quot;. It&#x27;s too easy to have some code, and try to prove some property that isn&#x27;t true, and rip your hair out thinking &quot;why can&#x27;t I get the proof working!&quot;<p>If halfway through your proof you end up in a thing that seems nonsensical, it would be nice for these tools to just have a &quot;try to generate a counter-example from here&quot; command that spits out a thing.<p>Proofs are so path-dependent, and it&#x27;s not trivial to do in general. But I think they are all very close to greatness, and every time I&#x27;ve gone through the effort to formally verify a thing, it&#x27;s been pretty illuminating. Just... if you&#x27;re trying to prove some code, the process should take into account the idea that your code might be buggy.</text></comment> |
11,405,446 | 11,405,079 | 1 | 3 | 11,404,590 | train | <story><title>Apple at 40: The forgotten founder who gave it all away</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35940300</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>personlurking</author><text>I always wonder how true that last statement is - to the tune of &quot;Find something you love so much that if you do it you&#x27;ll never work a day in your life.&quot;<p>I&#x27;ve enjoyed things that, when they became an obligation, I stopped enjoying. Though I think it says more about myself than the actual veracity of the quote.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fmavituna</author><text>That&#x27;s pretty much bullshit for the pure reason that a job very rarely can only include the things you love. I love programming but I hate polishing up the same features for days, but that&#x27;s what&#x27;s necessary to make a good app. I hate testing, but it&#x27;s part of the game.<p>How photographers really spend their time : <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cambyte.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;piechart.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cambyte.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;piechart.j...</a><p>Having said that I&#x27;m sure, some people in some industries reach that dream but I can&#x27;t think of any...</text></comment> | <story><title>Apple at 40: The forgotten founder who gave it all away</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35940300</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>personlurking</author><text>I always wonder how true that last statement is - to the tune of &quot;Find something you love so much that if you do it you&#x27;ll never work a day in your life.&quot;<p>I&#x27;ve enjoyed things that, when they became an obligation, I stopped enjoying. Though I think it says more about myself than the actual veracity of the quote.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mod</author><text>I loved poker until I played it professionally. I love programming, but not when I&#x27;m at work. I&#x27;m growing a garden, but I know I&#x27;d hate being a farmer.<p>The only job I truly loved was working with children, but there was no (financial) future in it. I didn&#x27;t have to work, but I wouldn&#x27;t have been able to live either.</text></comment> |
15,552,646 | 15,552,971 | 1 | 2 | 15,550,243 | train | <story><title>China temporarily shuts down thousands of factories in pollution crackdown</title><url>https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-shuts-down-tens-of-thousands-of-factories-in-widespread-pollution-crackdown/ar-AAtZIqD</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nopinsight</author><text>A less mentioned reason for pollution curb is that China wants to attract their top talents back home, as well as global up-and-comers who wish for more accommodative research funding. Most top Chinese students who studied abroad are currently residing in the US, working in major tech companies and academia.<p>They created the Thousand Talents program for promising and distinguished researchers, Chinese or otherwise, to work and stay in the country with salary comparable to the West, in nominal terms, and many extra privileges. [1]<p>Pollution is a major concern among those who are interested and this gives additional urgency to the government.<p>Basically, they understand very well that top talents are essential for developing advanced technologies they need, and they are pushing very hard to develop native talents and attract promising ones from other countries. This is the Singapore playbook that has propelled their two universities into major institutions in engineering and other fields within a few decades. (Engineering programs in both Singaporean universities are now ranked in the top 10 or 20 in the world. Also, both Tsinghua and Beijing are ranked in the world&#x27;s top 10 in AI publications recently, but they plan for more universities to move up in more fields.)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Thousand_Talents_Program_(China)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Thousand_Talents_Program_(Ch...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bustrakcan</author><text>&gt; Basically, they understand very well that top talents are essential for developing advanced technology they need<p>Because companies around the world are now aware of the fact that Chinese government steals technologies. Also, Chinese government is too late trying to get talents back.<p>Most of the laowais (expats) that were in Guangzhou, that were in technology, have left in recent years. The only foreigners left are africans trying to eek out a living and English teachers who can&#x27;t make it anywhere else. You can imagine the reasons why: poisonous air that will give you cancer, poisonous food that will give you cancer, dirty water that will give you cancer, horrendous traffic (and everyone driving around honking and disregarding rules), bad mannered locals (imagine jackhammering at 4am, spitting, elbowing, cutting in lines), censorship, foreigners getting arrested without a reason, expensive rent (compared to quality), no way to be connected to the western internet without VPN (and recently, VPN have been failing as well), no way to talk to families overseas. And this is in the top province in China. Imagine tier 88 or even tier 2 cities. (shudder)<p>There&#x27;s no reason to be in China other than to make money, then get the hell out. And that seems to be even harder now with the economy stagnating and everyone blowing bubbles into the real estate.<p>Thank god I got out of China. Many already have.</text></comment> | <story><title>China temporarily shuts down thousands of factories in pollution crackdown</title><url>https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-shuts-down-tens-of-thousands-of-factories-in-widespread-pollution-crackdown/ar-AAtZIqD</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nopinsight</author><text>A less mentioned reason for pollution curb is that China wants to attract their top talents back home, as well as global up-and-comers who wish for more accommodative research funding. Most top Chinese students who studied abroad are currently residing in the US, working in major tech companies and academia.<p>They created the Thousand Talents program for promising and distinguished researchers, Chinese or otherwise, to work and stay in the country with salary comparable to the West, in nominal terms, and many extra privileges. [1]<p>Pollution is a major concern among those who are interested and this gives additional urgency to the government.<p>Basically, they understand very well that top talents are essential for developing advanced technologies they need, and they are pushing very hard to develop native talents and attract promising ones from other countries. This is the Singapore playbook that has propelled their two universities into major institutions in engineering and other fields within a few decades. (Engineering programs in both Singaporean universities are now ranked in the top 10 or 20 in the world. Also, both Tsinghua and Beijing are ranked in the world&#x27;s top 10 in AI publications recently, but they plan for more universities to move up in more fields.)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Thousand_Talents_Program_(China)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Thousand_Talents_Program_(Ch...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TomK32</author><text>&gt; Also, both Tsinghua and Beijing are ranked in the world&#x27;s top 10 in AI publications recently, but they plan for more universities to move up in more fields<p>Sure they moved up in number of publications, but as with so many things in China, what&#x27;s with the quality of this research? Only a few days ago we had a post here on fraud in China scientific work: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15473719" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15473719</a></text></comment> |
4,820,698 | 4,820,666 | 1 | 3 | 4,819,832 | train | <story><title>Student Suspended for Refusing to Wear a School-Issued RFID Tracker</title><url>http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/student-suspension/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Evbn</author><text>Privacy is not a legal right in general, beyond some particilar subclasses like searches and seizures.</text></item><item><author>nhebb</author><text>A judge has granted her a reprieve [1] based on freedom of speech and freedom of religion grounds. The student claimed it violated her religious beliefs. I don't begrudge anyone the right to practice their religion, but I do wish it had been based on her right to privacy.<p>[1] <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/22/christian-student-wins-reprieve-in-forced-tracking-chip-case/" rel="nofollow">http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/22/christian-student-wins-rep...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rquantz</author><text>There absolutely is a right to privacy. See the earlier response about Griswold v. Connecticut. I see people frequently saying privacy or things are not rights because they are not enumerated in the Constitution. Please note, however, the Ninth Amendement:<p><i>The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.</i><p>In other words, the people have rights other than those in the Bill of Rights. Courts have determined a number of rights that are not in the Constitution, among them the right to privacy, often based on the fact that people have reserved that right and not been denied it in the past. Some people, for instance, believe that, while the individual right to bear arms is not in the Constitution, there is a strong Ninth Amendment case for it[1].<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms#cite_note-Espohl_97-53" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms#cit...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Student Suspended for Refusing to Wear a School-Issued RFID Tracker</title><url>http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/student-suspension/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Evbn</author><text>Privacy is not a legal right in general, beyond some particilar subclasses like searches and seizures.</text></item><item><author>nhebb</author><text>A judge has granted her a reprieve [1] based on freedom of speech and freedom of religion grounds. The student claimed it violated her religious beliefs. I don't begrudge anyone the right to practice their religion, but I do wish it had been based on her right to privacy.<p>[1] <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/22/christian-student-wins-reprieve-in-forced-tracking-chip-case/" rel="nofollow">http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/22/christian-student-wins-rep...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alayne</author><text>Many people believe that privacy is a fundamental human right. The UN lists it in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.</text></comment> |
33,402,004 | 33,401,688 | 1 | 2 | 33,397,093 | train | <story><title>Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W1JBAfV4Io</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RC_ITR</author><text>The first famous autopilot crash was because a white semi-truck was washed out by the sun and confused for an overhead sign.<p>That&#x27;s literally trivial for a car with radar to detect.<p>Amazing how people talk about stuff they have no idea about when it comes to Tesla.</text></item><item><author>stefan_</author><text>This thread is unhelpfully mixing radar and ultrasonic sensors. Ultrasonic sensors, as your video explains, are primarily used as a parking aid; they are tuned for too low a distance to be helpful in just about any kind of driving scenario at speed.<p>Meanwhile, <i>radar</i> is the principal sensor used in systems like automatic emergency braking across the industry. It has no intersection with any of the parking stuff because it generally has to ignore stationary objects to be useful (hence the whole &quot;Teslas crashing full speed into stopped vehicles&quot; thing).</text></item><item><author>judge2020</author><text>Munro’s cost breakdown is much more informative in just how much it’ll save in terms of parts&#x2F;labor. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;LS3Vk0NPFDE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;LS3Vk0NPFDE</a><p>In general the ‘harm to consumers’ is really just making it more likely they damage the car in a parking lot or their garage, which tells you where their priorities are (sales, Automotive gross profit). Assuming occupancy network works, the only real blind spot left is if something in front of the car changes in between it turning off and on (assuming occupancy will &#x27;remember&#x27; the map around it when it goes to sleep).<p>Also, Tesla’s strategy for safety is seemingly “excel in industry standard tests, ie. IIHS and EuroNCAP”, so this might be a case of the measure becoming a target.</text></item><item><author>flashgordon</author><text>That was hilarious. Basically (unless this needs a reframing&#x2F;realignment&#x2F;repositioning&#x2F;reorienting):<p>Q: &quot;are less sensors less safe&#x2F;effective?&quot;<p>A: &quot;well more sensors are costly to the organization and add more tech debt so safety is orthogonal and not worth answering&quot;.</text></item><item><author>CharlesW</author><text>I thought it was telling that Andrej immediately &quot;reframed&quot; the question because Lex asked the &quot;wrong question&quot;. This is a classic evasion technique one learns from experience and&#x2F;or media training. Lex&#x27;s comment immediately after was a clever and gentle dig at Andrej&#x27;s response.<p>It seemed like all the &quot;full cost&quot; negatives Andrej mentioned were related to Tesla&#x27;s ability to execute, and not what would actually produce better results. Tesla would have to be able to reliably procure parts, write reliable firmware, create designs and processes that won&#x27;t increase unexpected assembly line stops, etc.<p>Regarding results, the best Andrej can do is, &quot;In this case, we looked at using it and not using it, and the delta was not massive.&quot; In other words, the results are better, but not enough to make up for the fact that Telsa can&#x27;t support additional sensors without incurring a prohibitive amount of additional risk <i>to Tesla</i>. Risk to passengers doesn&#x27;t appear to be a consideration.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Reason077</author><text>&gt; <i>”The first famous autopilot crash was because a white semi-truck was washed out by the sun and confused for an overhead sign.<p>That&#x27;s literally trivial for a car with radar to detect.”</i><p>That crash occurred on a car which <i>was</i> using radar. Automotive radar generally doesn’t help to detect stationary objects.<p>Further, that crash occurred on a vehicle with the original autopilot version (AP1), which was based on Mobileye technology with Tesla’s autopilot software layered on top. Detection capabilities would have been similar to any vehicle using Mobileye for AEB at the time.</text></comment> | <story><title>Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W1JBAfV4Io</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RC_ITR</author><text>The first famous autopilot crash was because a white semi-truck was washed out by the sun and confused for an overhead sign.<p>That&#x27;s literally trivial for a car with radar to detect.<p>Amazing how people talk about stuff they have no idea about when it comes to Tesla.</text></item><item><author>stefan_</author><text>This thread is unhelpfully mixing radar and ultrasonic sensors. Ultrasonic sensors, as your video explains, are primarily used as a parking aid; they are tuned for too low a distance to be helpful in just about any kind of driving scenario at speed.<p>Meanwhile, <i>radar</i> is the principal sensor used in systems like automatic emergency braking across the industry. It has no intersection with any of the parking stuff because it generally has to ignore stationary objects to be useful (hence the whole &quot;Teslas crashing full speed into stopped vehicles&quot; thing).</text></item><item><author>judge2020</author><text>Munro’s cost breakdown is much more informative in just how much it’ll save in terms of parts&#x2F;labor. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;LS3Vk0NPFDE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;LS3Vk0NPFDE</a><p>In general the ‘harm to consumers’ is really just making it more likely they damage the car in a parking lot or their garage, which tells you where their priorities are (sales, Automotive gross profit). Assuming occupancy network works, the only real blind spot left is if something in front of the car changes in between it turning off and on (assuming occupancy will &#x27;remember&#x27; the map around it when it goes to sleep).<p>Also, Tesla’s strategy for safety is seemingly “excel in industry standard tests, ie. IIHS and EuroNCAP”, so this might be a case of the measure becoming a target.</text></item><item><author>flashgordon</author><text>That was hilarious. Basically (unless this needs a reframing&#x2F;realignment&#x2F;repositioning&#x2F;reorienting):<p>Q: &quot;are less sensors less safe&#x2F;effective?&quot;<p>A: &quot;well more sensors are costly to the organization and add more tech debt so safety is orthogonal and not worth answering&quot;.</text></item><item><author>CharlesW</author><text>I thought it was telling that Andrej immediately &quot;reframed&quot; the question because Lex asked the &quot;wrong question&quot;. This is a classic evasion technique one learns from experience and&#x2F;or media training. Lex&#x27;s comment immediately after was a clever and gentle dig at Andrej&#x27;s response.<p>It seemed like all the &quot;full cost&quot; negatives Andrej mentioned were related to Tesla&#x27;s ability to execute, and not what would actually produce better results. Tesla would have to be able to reliably procure parts, write reliable firmware, create designs and processes that won&#x27;t increase unexpected assembly line stops, etc.<p>Regarding results, the best Andrej can do is, &quot;In this case, we looked at using it and not using it, and the delta was not massive.&quot; In other words, the results are better, but not enough to make up for the fact that Telsa can&#x27;t support additional sensors without incurring a prohibitive amount of additional risk <i>to Tesla</i>. Risk to passengers doesn&#x27;t appear to be a consideration.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eightysixfour</author><text>Not a fan of Tesla removing the sensors but a vehicle on a highway that isn’t moving the same direction as the car is not “trivial” with radar. No AEBs that use radar look for completely stopped objects after a certain speed because the number of false positives is so high.</text></comment> |
13,634,264 | 13,634,035 | 1 | 3 | 13,633,395 | train | <story><title>Oroville Dam: Feds and state officials ignored warnings 12 years ago</title><url>http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/12/oroville-dam-feds-and-state-officials-ignored-warnings-12-years-ago/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yread</author><text>I was just wondering about it the other day while researching the topic: why are there so many dam failures in the states?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_failures" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_...</a><p>Since 19th century US has the most (well, at least a lot) dam failures.<p>Is it because there are so many? Are they privately owned and the owners just count on declaring bankruptcy if it fails? Is it the engineering, the geology, the maintenance?<p>EDIT: Even such a major project like Hoover Dam was not done properly (it seems grouting curtains were not often used elsewhere)
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.mst.edu&#x2F;~rogersda&#x2F;hoover_dam&#x2F;Grout%20Curtain%20Failure-Hoover%20Dam.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.mst.edu&#x2F;~rogersda&#x2F;hoover_dam&#x2F;Grout%20Curtain%20Fa...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brentdax</author><text>The US is #2 in large dams with about 9,000. China is #1 with nearly 24,000, but their dam construction has almost all been since 1949. So my guess is that it&#x27;s a combination of the US having many dams, and having had them for many years.<p>Source: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.icold-cigb.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;GB&#x2F;world_register&#x2F;general_synthesis&#x2F;number-of-dams-by-country-members" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.icold-cigb.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;GB&#x2F;world_register&#x2F;general_...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Oroville Dam: Feds and state officials ignored warnings 12 years ago</title><url>http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/12/oroville-dam-feds-and-state-officials-ignored-warnings-12-years-ago/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yread</author><text>I was just wondering about it the other day while researching the topic: why are there so many dam failures in the states?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_failures" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_...</a><p>Since 19th century US has the most (well, at least a lot) dam failures.<p>Is it because there are so many? Are they privately owned and the owners just count on declaring bankruptcy if it fails? Is it the engineering, the geology, the maintenance?<p>EDIT: Even such a major project like Hoover Dam was not done properly (it seems grouting curtains were not often used elsewhere)
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.mst.edu&#x2F;~rogersda&#x2F;hoover_dam&#x2F;Grout%20Curtain%20Failure-Hoover%20Dam.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.mst.edu&#x2F;~rogersda&#x2F;hoover_dam&#x2F;Grout%20Curtain%20Fa...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wallace_f</author><text>I don&#x27;t know. However, construction projects with ridiculous levels of corruption are not unknown in America.(1)<p>1 - <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.workers.org&#x2F;2006&#x2F;us&#x2F;big-dig-0831&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.workers.org&#x2F;2006&#x2F;us&#x2F;big-dig-0831&#x2F;</a></text></comment> |
26,743,367 | 26,741,524 | 1 | 3 | 26,739,220 | train | <story><title>Ask HN: Why is the Linux community struggling to implement hibernation?</title><text>Today I have found out that hibernation is by default disabled in my Ubuntu 18.04 distribution. After this, I found this 11 month old post <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discourse.ubuntu.com&#x2F;t&#x2F;re-visiting-hibernate-on-ubuntu&#x2F;15953" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discourse.ubuntu.com&#x2F;t&#x2F;re-visiting-hibernate-on-ubun...</a> where I realized that the Linux community does not seem to be able to implement a working implementation of hibernate. Is there any reason why this is a difficult problem? I would like to have an option in my OS like VM&#x27;s have where everything that is currently running is saved on disk and can be resumed later without issues.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>deckard1</author><text>It&#x27;s going to depend on your hardware and probably your distro.<p>I have a ThinkPad running Archlinux. I have suspend-then-hibernate mode enabled, which means when I close my laptop lid it suspends for 2 hours (configurable) and then puts itself into hibernate. If I decide to open the laptop within 2 hours, it&#x27;s available instantly. Otherwise, it takes maybe 20 seconds to reanimate from hibernation. People often say, why not just shutdown and reboot? The obvious answer is that I don&#x27;t want to close out a dozen Chrome tabs, close all my terminals, all my files, and open everything up every time I need to walk away from the computer.<p>I have secure boot turned on. Hibernation is done to a swap file (I can simply delete the file if I need the space). I have LUKS encryption enabled. I&#x27;m dual booting with Windows. And yes, it all does work perfectly fine.<p>You can have your cake and eat it too. It just takes a bit of research and a bit of time to setup.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lorenzhs</author><text>Because you mentioned secure boot and encryption: Matthew Garrett wrote an interesting blog post a while ago on making hibernation work with lockdown mode, i.e. verifying that the hibernation image wasn&#x27;t tampered with. Otherwise it might be possible to get around the whole secure boot chain by writing a compromised kernel to a hibernation image. It&#x27;s quite interesting to think about, even if it isn&#x27;t necessarily something you as a user should need to think about (distros should probably handle it): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mjg59.dreamwidth.org&#x2F;55845.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mjg59.dreamwidth.org&#x2F;55845.html</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Ask HN: Why is the Linux community struggling to implement hibernation?</title><text>Today I have found out that hibernation is by default disabled in my Ubuntu 18.04 distribution. After this, I found this 11 month old post <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discourse.ubuntu.com&#x2F;t&#x2F;re-visiting-hibernate-on-ubuntu&#x2F;15953" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discourse.ubuntu.com&#x2F;t&#x2F;re-visiting-hibernate-on-ubun...</a> where I realized that the Linux community does not seem to be able to implement a working implementation of hibernate. Is there any reason why this is a difficult problem? I would like to have an option in my OS like VM&#x27;s have where everything that is currently running is saved on disk and can be resumed later without issues.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>deckard1</author><text>It&#x27;s going to depend on your hardware and probably your distro.<p>I have a ThinkPad running Archlinux. I have suspend-then-hibernate mode enabled, which means when I close my laptop lid it suspends for 2 hours (configurable) and then puts itself into hibernate. If I decide to open the laptop within 2 hours, it&#x27;s available instantly. Otherwise, it takes maybe 20 seconds to reanimate from hibernation. People often say, why not just shutdown and reboot? The obvious answer is that I don&#x27;t want to close out a dozen Chrome tabs, close all my terminals, all my files, and open everything up every time I need to walk away from the computer.<p>I have secure boot turned on. Hibernation is done to a swap file (I can simply delete the file if I need the space). I have LUKS encryption enabled. I&#x27;m dual booting with Windows. And yes, it all does work perfectly fine.<p>You can have your cake and eat it too. It just takes a bit of research and a bit of time to setup.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rektide</author><text>I haven&#x27;t been diligent about secure boot. I could imlrove. With regard to hibernation, I avoided hibernation for years under the assumption that it was untrustworthy. Sleep felt &quot;sufficient&quot;, safe.<p>But at some point I noticed that laptops I&#x27;d left for a long time without power would wake up &amp; resume. I&#x27;d expected they had run out of juice while asleep &amp; I&#x27;d have to boot fresh.<p>Turns out systemd (in my Debian OSes at least) was set up to hibernate at a very low critical % of power remaining. The laptop would rouse from sleep &amp; hibernate, at the last minute (and change). And it was working fine.<p>After seeing it happen a bunch of times I decided to try to embrace hibernation, &amp; remapped my power button from sleep to hibernate. Everything worked great! Now my computers drain no battery when not active. I love it. Been this way for half a decade now. Works great.<p>Bonus, one of my laptops would, when it woke up from sleep, &quot;lose&quot; it&#x27;s wifi card. With hibernate, that laptop&#x27;s wifi card shows up again, even if it had lost the card to sleep before. Hibernate, contrary to my expectations, was even safer than sleep.</text></comment> |
18,967,474 | 18,966,369 | 1 | 3 | 18,965,729 | train | <story><title>Show HN: Convert article in current tab to readable form and upload it to IPFS</title><url>https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2read/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rglullis</author><text>Interesting to see something like this here. I&#x27;ve been scratching my own itch and writing a self-hosted hybrid of alternative to pocket + IPFS archiver as well. Source is here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bitbucket.org&#x2F;lullis&#x2F;nofollow" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bitbucket.org&#x2F;lullis&#x2F;nofollow</a>. A browser extension to make link submission easier would be very handy</text></comment> | <story><title>Show HN: Convert article in current tab to readable form and upload it to IPFS</title><url>https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2read/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zerotolerance</author><text>I wonder what IP lawyers think about republishing works without permission into a network where nothing can be deleted.</text></comment> |
4,282,427 | 4,282,347 | 1 | 3 | 4,281,630 | train | <story><title>Machine learning for the impatient: algorithms tuning algorithms</title><url>http://www.aelag.com/147952673</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brador</author><text>Question: Why is the data for machine learning split into a training dataset and a test dataset? Wouldn't using the entire dataset to build the model result in greater accuracy of the predictions?</text></item><item><author>scottfr</author><text>Such aggressive usage of the test data set in determining the tuning parameters in effect makes your test data set part of your training data set.<p>The more times you go back to your test data set to evaluate the effectiveness of a model, the more optimistic your error predictions will be and the greater your chance of overfitting. Several iterations of his loop will probably improve the model, but if you keep repeating it eventually the true model performance will start to degrade.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>reginaldo</author><text>When you develop a model, for instance, when implementing a classifier, you supposedly want to apply the developed model to <i>other</i> data, i.e., data you don't have available during development.<p>In many situations, it doesn't make sense to test your model <i>only</i> when it's put to make or influence decisions in the real world (although you have to test in the real world too). You'll want to test the predictions of your model on data you already have the <i>actual</i> results for. To test your model you'll split your data into data you know <i>and will let the model know about</i> (training dataset), and data you know <i>but the model can't know about</i> (test dataset). That way you can use the data the model doesn't know about to make controlled experiments and compare models (and, if your data is really representative of the real world, your mofrl comparison and the performance of your chosen model will hold).<p>The moral of the story is: if you don't split your data, you won't have any idea of how it performs in the real world, you'll only know how it performs with data it already knew about.</text></comment> | <story><title>Machine learning for the impatient: algorithms tuning algorithms</title><url>http://www.aelag.com/147952673</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brador</author><text>Question: Why is the data for machine learning split into a training dataset and a test dataset? Wouldn't using the entire dataset to build the model result in greater accuracy of the predictions?</text></item><item><author>scottfr</author><text>Such aggressive usage of the test data set in determining the tuning parameters in effect makes your test data set part of your training data set.<p>The more times you go back to your test data set to evaluate the effectiveness of a model, the more optimistic your error predictions will be and the greater your chance of overfitting. Several iterations of his loop will probably improve the model, but if you keep repeating it eventually the true model performance will start to degrade.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>numlocked</author><text>To prevent overfitting. A common technique is to use cross-validation, where you train some percentage of the data (90%) and test on the remaining (10%), and cycle through which 10% you use as test (each train/test split is called a "fold"). Once you've identified a model that resists overfitting, you can train on all of the data.<p>edit: As noted in the other reply, having a truly blind validation set is still ideal.</text></comment> |
41,731,850 | 41,731,435 | 1 | 2 | 41,730,415 | train | <story><title>Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public</title><url>https://blog.cloudflare.com/patent-troll-sable-pays-up/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zeroCalories</author><text>Copyright, patents, it doesn&#x27;t matter. It&#x27;s all IP and our enemies do not respect it. We need to move forward with that reality.</text></item><item><author>AlbertCory</author><text>copyrights are different from patents.</text></item><item><author>ikekkdcjkfke</author><text>Hopefully the powers that be will look at it from a national security perspective, in that other countries do not respect US copyright law and may be pulling ahead</text></item><item><author>textlapse</author><text>This is great. I do worry that a future more sinister malicious patent troll could read all the wonderful strategy Cloudflare used and work around them. Hopefully Cloudflare legal team got stronger!<p>Kudos to the likes of Cloudflare and (yesteryears’) Newegg that fought these trolls.<p>I shudder at the thought of how many of the existing legacy industries outside the computer space are still riddled with these patent portfolio companies :(</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>datadrivenangel</author><text>The US used to ignore IP laws when we were an underdog.</text></comment> | <story><title>Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public</title><url>https://blog.cloudflare.com/patent-troll-sable-pays-up/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zeroCalories</author><text>Copyright, patents, it doesn&#x27;t matter. It&#x27;s all IP and our enemies do not respect it. We need to move forward with that reality.</text></item><item><author>AlbertCory</author><text>copyrights are different from patents.</text></item><item><author>ikekkdcjkfke</author><text>Hopefully the powers that be will look at it from a national security perspective, in that other countries do not respect US copyright law and may be pulling ahead</text></item><item><author>textlapse</author><text>This is great. I do worry that a future more sinister malicious patent troll could read all the wonderful strategy Cloudflare used and work around them. Hopefully Cloudflare legal team got stronger!<p>Kudos to the likes of Cloudflare and (yesteryears’) Newegg that fought these trolls.<p>I shudder at the thought of how many of the existing legacy industries outside the computer space are still riddled with these patent portfolio companies :(</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>macintux</author><text>Patents are explicitly open for anyone to see. I don&#x27;t know that we need more help there: you can get a product banned from import if someone uses your patent without recompense.</text></comment> |
19,923,597 | 19,923,013 | 1 | 3 | 19,922,432 | train | <story><title>Sourcehut Q1 2019 financial report</title><url>https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-discuss/%[email protected]%3E</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ddevault</author><text>Thanks for posting this, Robert! For those interested, I also posted the monthly &quot;what&#x27;s cooking&quot; today, which should give you an idea of the pace of feature development and cool stuff since you last checked out sr.ht:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lists.sr.ht&#x2F;~sircmpwn&#x2F;sr.ht-announce&#x2F;%3C20190515160338.GA6166%40homura.localdomain%3E" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lists.sr.ht&#x2F;~sircmpwn&#x2F;sr.ht-announce&#x2F;%3C201905151603...</a><p>I&#x27;m always available to answer questions, either here or at [email protected].</text></comment> | <story><title>Sourcehut Q1 2019 financial report</title><url>https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-discuss/%[email protected]%3E</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zorked</author><text>FWIW: sr.ht is pretty cool, has a nice no-nonsense UI, and the build system is really simple and powerful. It&#x27;s not &quot;done&quot; but it works and is going in the right direction. It&#x27;s a very nice corner of the Internet. I&#x27;ve been using it for personal repos and I&#x27;m really happy.</text></comment> |
3,938,360 | 3,937,551 | 1 | 3 | 3,936,225 | train | <story><title>Ask HN: My wife needs something to do from home to make money...</title><text>My wife is a stay at home Mom and is bored - unfortunately she doesn't have the best formal education credentials but she is far from stupid. However this does heavily impact her ability to get a job that pays much more than minimum wage, usually labor intensive. She has a herniated bulging disc in her lower back, so I'd prefer her not do a lot of manual labor all day. I wanted to hear from you guys what sort of entrepreneurial endeavors she might embark on with my programming/web expertise and a little bit of cash backing her. The catch is, she needs to be able to do it from home. She doesn't need to get rich - even earning ~$1000/mo would be acceptable as long as the man(woman) hours to money earned ratio is reasonable. Ideas?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>prbuckley</author><text>Skype for the sick, create a service that does scheduled calls (ideally video calls) to the elderly and infirm for a fee.<p>I had this idea because my father suffers from Parkinsons disease and gets quite lonely in the house during the day. He lives in Florida and I life in California and I can't call him as much as I would like to given the time difference. I know he gets lonely and would love to just have a conversation with someone during the day. I would pay to have someone skype him for 20-30 minutes in the middle of the day just to provide some conversation.<p>I am guessing that there are many other people who are in my situation with sick or elderly relatives. I know I would pay for a service like this and you would be bringing happiness into peoples lives.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>manmal</author><text>That's not only for the sick and elderly, but for all lonely people. I have actually thought about such a service a while ago, because I read about those online leeches who pretend to be poor girls from a developing country (actually they are mostly middle aged men). They keep in contact for years, urging their "host" to send them money to support them, and sometimes even help the host find a job when he is fired. The hosts readily send even huge sums just so they can connect to somebody emotionally. This clearly shows there is a lack of warmth and connection for people in our society, and I can think of better ways to help them than through online leeches.</text></comment> | <story><title>Ask HN: My wife needs something to do from home to make money...</title><text>My wife is a stay at home Mom and is bored - unfortunately she doesn't have the best formal education credentials but she is far from stupid. However this does heavily impact her ability to get a job that pays much more than minimum wage, usually labor intensive. She has a herniated bulging disc in her lower back, so I'd prefer her not do a lot of manual labor all day. I wanted to hear from you guys what sort of entrepreneurial endeavors she might embark on with my programming/web expertise and a little bit of cash backing her. The catch is, she needs to be able to do it from home. She doesn't need to get rich - even earning ~$1000/mo would be acceptable as long as the man(woman) hours to money earned ratio is reasonable. Ideas?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>prbuckley</author><text>Skype for the sick, create a service that does scheduled calls (ideally video calls) to the elderly and infirm for a fee.<p>I had this idea because my father suffers from Parkinsons disease and gets quite lonely in the house during the day. He lives in Florida and I life in California and I can't call him as much as I would like to given the time difference. I know he gets lonely and would love to just have a conversation with someone during the day. I would pay to have someone skype him for 20-30 minutes in the middle of the day just to provide some conversation.<p>I am guessing that there are many other people who are in my situation with sick or elderly relatives. I know I would pay for a service like this and you would be bringing happiness into peoples lives.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>asdfprou</author><text>You should check out TAGLab at the University of Toronto. They are working on a very similar problem. One of their projects involves a touch-sensitive picture album where the patient can request interaction with a loved one. The patient taps a picture and a notification goes to the recipient, and on the other end the recipient can take a photo or write a note or record a video to send back.<p><a href="http://taglab.utoronto.ca/" rel="nofollow">http://taglab.utoronto.ca/</a></text></comment> |
9,226,453 | 9,226,294 | 1 | 2 | 9,225,842 | train | <story><title>AeroFS is now free up to 30 users</title><url>https://www.aerofs.com/blog/aerofs-is-now-free-up-to-30-users/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chrisdotcode</author><text>On a tangential note, I had no idea what AeroFS is, so I clicked on their landing page.<p>&gt; Like Dropbox, but behind your firewall. File Sync and Share for the enterprise. Free up to 30 users.<p>Boom. I immediately am fully educated about what this does. I wasn&#x27;t forced to watch a 2 minute video with no sound at work, or to google the product - questioning about why it&#x27;s popular[0].<p>This is how you write effective copy.<p>[0] Notable offenders are yeoman and dropbox itself - both of which, while widely-used products - are completely opaque in what they do from their initial text. &quot;You already know what I do&quot; isn&#x27;t good enough for people who don&#x27;t.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tnorthcutt</author><text>I mostly agree with you, but their first sentence (&quot;Like Dropbox...&quot;) relies on you knowing what Dropbox is. Which, as you pointed out, isn&#x27;t good enough for people who don&#x27;t ;).</text></comment> | <story><title>AeroFS is now free up to 30 users</title><url>https://www.aerofs.com/blog/aerofs-is-now-free-up-to-30-users/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chrisdotcode</author><text>On a tangential note, I had no idea what AeroFS is, so I clicked on their landing page.<p>&gt; Like Dropbox, but behind your firewall. File Sync and Share for the enterprise. Free up to 30 users.<p>Boom. I immediately am fully educated about what this does. I wasn&#x27;t forced to watch a 2 minute video with no sound at work, or to google the product - questioning about why it&#x27;s popular[0].<p>This is how you write effective copy.<p>[0] Notable offenders are yeoman and dropbox itself - both of which, while widely-used products - are completely opaque in what they do from their initial text. &quot;You already know what I do&quot; isn&#x27;t good enough for people who don&#x27;t.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bbx</author><text>Exactly my reaction. I love this tagline because it just echoes how you would describe the product to a friend: &quot;Oh it&#x27;s like X but with Y&quot;.<p>It&#x27;s at the complete opposite of the general trend of obscure generic headlines, like &quot;Make your life better&quot; or &quot;Be more productive&quot; or &quot;Gain time and money&quot;, or the worst &quot;Sign up for free&quot; (yes, I&#x27;ve seen that as the main headline).<p>It just makes sense to not waste your visitors&#x27; time because they won&#x27;t stay long enough to decipher your marketing gibberish.</text></comment> |
5,490,542 | 5,490,510 | 1 | 2 | 5,487,752 | train | <story><title>Analysis of Stack Overflow's Survey of 10K developers</title><url>https://www.statwing.com/demos/dev-survey</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>icelancer</author><text>If you adjust for COL, it's not close. The U.S. dominates. AUS has very high minimum wages which drives up costs. Look at Steam games in AUD vs. USD.</text></item><item><author>GFischer</author><text>It's pretty obvious, but country is strongly correlated with compensation.<p>If we want to get paid, we have to move (or get a job) in the U.S. or Australia (didn't know Australia was that well-paying)</text></item><item><author>chrisaycock</author><text>From playing around with the data, <i>Stack Overflow reputation</i> was not strongly correlated with <i>compensation</i>. Instead, <i>experience</i> (and naturally <i>age</i>) exhibited a stronger relationship with getting paid.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gte910h</author><text>AUS is interesting. Everyone lives in VERY large cities, they're very far from many places where vegetables are grown, they have had a HUGE mining boom (which means more money chasing fewer goods, and the cities are incredibly far from one another)<p>Add onto that the Parallel Import Tax (which prevents people from just importing it themselves), and you have an INCREDIBLY captive market, getting gouged on all corners. Sure the high minwages dive costs up, but the high minwages are needed for the high costs too that it takes to live there.<p>They're quite recently dropping lots of the items off the PIT list, and prices are going down. Imagine that, drop protectionist tariffs, and prices decrease.</text></comment> | <story><title>Analysis of Stack Overflow's Survey of 10K developers</title><url>https://www.statwing.com/demos/dev-survey</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>icelancer</author><text>If you adjust for COL, it's not close. The U.S. dominates. AUS has very high minimum wages which drives up costs. Look at Steam games in AUD vs. USD.</text></item><item><author>GFischer</author><text>It's pretty obvious, but country is strongly correlated with compensation.<p>If we want to get paid, we have to move (or get a job) in the U.S. or Australia (didn't know Australia was that well-paying)</text></item><item><author>chrisaycock</author><text>From playing around with the data, <i>Stack Overflow reputation</i> was not strongly correlated with <i>compensation</i>. Instead, <i>experience</i> (and naturally <i>age</i>) exhibited a stronger relationship with getting paid.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>podperson</author><text>You might want to consider some other comparator — I like the cost of a combo meal at Mcdonalds (The Economist uses the price of a Big Nac). In my experience, consumer electronics are cheaper in the US but good produce is cheaper in Australia.</text></comment> |
21,053,269 | 21,053,265 | 1 | 3 | 21,053,017 | train | <story><title>Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-prosecutors-conducting-criminal-probe-of-juul-11569268759</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>holy_city</author><text>&gt; 28% of high school students this year said they had used an e-cigarette at least once in the past 30 days<p>Holy smokes! If you look at data from a few years ago [1] that&#x27;s more than double what you&#x27;d see for cigarette smoking (eyeballing the numbers here, the data is more granular).<p>Is it easier for kids to get e-cigs than cigarettes? Or do they just want them more?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;books&#x2F;NBK294302&#x2F;table&#x2F;ch13.t3&#x2F;?report=objectonly" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;books&#x2F;NBK294302&#x2F;table&#x2F;ch13.t3&#x2F;?...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>webkike</author><text>1. They taste better<p>2. Yes, they are easier to get, for a couple reasons: once you have a juul you only need juul pods, and additionally you don&#x27;t need to purchase a lighter (which you need to be over eighteen a lot of places to purchase).<p>edit 3. They are far more discreet (you can vape in a classroom if you are in the back and it is dark) and deliver more nicotine.</text></comment> | <story><title>Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-prosecutors-conducting-criminal-probe-of-juul-11569268759</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>holy_city</author><text>&gt; 28% of high school students this year said they had used an e-cigarette at least once in the past 30 days<p>Holy smokes! If you look at data from a few years ago [1] that&#x27;s more than double what you&#x27;d see for cigarette smoking (eyeballing the numbers here, the data is more granular).<p>Is it easier for kids to get e-cigs than cigarettes? Or do they just want them more?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;books&#x2F;NBK294302&#x2F;table&#x2F;ch13.t3&#x2F;?report=objectonly" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;books&#x2F;NBK294302&#x2F;table&#x2F;ch13.t3&#x2F;?...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nullbyte</author><text>Juuls are pervasive in modern day high school. Either you have one or your friend has one.<p>My little sister told me that the bathrooms are basically used vape-stations between classes now, and most people have tried it.</text></comment> |
39,417,692 | 39,416,433 | 1 | 2 | 39,415,234 | train | <story><title>Science fiction authors were excluded from awards for fear of offending China</title><url>https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/science-fiction-authors-excluded-hugo-awards-china-rcna139134</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>Glad to see this, but then I have to wonder why the organization decided to have the event in China in the first place?</text></item><item><author>themacguffinman</author><text>This time it didn&#x27;t seem to work out well for the organizers. The organization behind the Hugo Awards &quot;Worldcon Intellectual Property&quot; announced resignations and censures in response to this:<p>&gt; Dave McCarty has resigned as a Director of W.I.P.<p>&gt; Kevin Standlee has resigned as Chair of the W.I.P. Board of Directors (BoD).<p>&gt; Dave McCarty – censured for his public comments that have led to harm of the goodwill and value of our marks and for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.<p>&gt; Chen Shi – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.<p>&gt; Kevin Standlee – reprimanded for public comments that mistakenly led people to believe that we are not servicing our marks.<p>&gt; Ben Yalow – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.<p>From <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsfs.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;31&#x2F;announcements-from-worldcon-intellectual-property&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsfs.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;31&#x2F;announcements-from-worldcon-...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>svl</author><text>As others have said, between competing bids for who&#x27;d host Worldcon in 2023, China got the most votes (from registered fans at an earlier Worldcon).<p>However, there was also controversy about this, as a very large number of those votes lacked an address (a minimal safety feature to give some indication that votes belong to distinct people). The responsible committee decided not to count them, but was overruled. If it wasn&#x27;t for that, Chengdu wouldn&#x27;t have won the bid.</text></comment> | <story><title>Science fiction authors were excluded from awards for fear of offending China</title><url>https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/science-fiction-authors-excluded-hugo-awards-china-rcna139134</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>Glad to see this, but then I have to wonder why the organization decided to have the event in China in the first place?</text></item><item><author>themacguffinman</author><text>This time it didn&#x27;t seem to work out well for the organizers. The organization behind the Hugo Awards &quot;Worldcon Intellectual Property&quot; announced resignations and censures in response to this:<p>&gt; Dave McCarty has resigned as a Director of W.I.P.<p>&gt; Kevin Standlee has resigned as Chair of the W.I.P. Board of Directors (BoD).<p>&gt; Dave McCarty – censured for his public comments that have led to harm of the goodwill and value of our marks and for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.<p>&gt; Chen Shi – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.<p>&gt; Kevin Standlee – reprimanded for public comments that mistakenly led people to believe that we are not servicing our marks.<p>&gt; Ben Yalow – censured for actions of the Hugo Administration Committee of the Chengdu Worldcon that he presided over.<p>From <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsfs.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;31&#x2F;announcements-from-worldcon-intellectual-property&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsfs.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;31&#x2F;announcements-from-worldcon-...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zhdc1</author><text>There was a good discussion on Reddit about it. I don’t have the link but it should be easy to find.<p>Annual meetings are apparently organized by local groups who lobby&#x2F;compete with one another. China has a very large SciFi readership and the group from Chengdu was very active when it came to lobbying and gathering votes. It wasn’t until later that people started to realize this may not have been the best decision, e.g. with visa applications and so on.<p>As far as the actual scandal, there’s also discussion about whether there was any actual government intervention or if this was mainly the result of self-sensorship.</text></comment> |
16,762,322 | 16,762,226 | 1 | 2 | 16,761,827 | train | <story><title>Linux Kernel Lockdown and UEFI Secure Boot</title><url>https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/50577.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Arbalest</author><text>Let&#x27;s be clear here. This is about enabling Lockdown when UEFI Secure Boot is enabled by default.<p>So the concern is essentially that binary distributions, which are going to be responsible for kernel flags, may enable this, whether it is default in the default kernel config or not. As best as I can tell that is the crux of Linus&#x27; concerns. MJG suggesting that the kernel flag can be turned off, while true, is not a response which considers the defacto usage which may result.</text></comment> | <story><title>Linux Kernel Lockdown and UEFI Secure Boot</title><url>https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/50577.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Arbalest</author><text>The reason we&#x27;re seeing this blog post is quite clearly due to this statement from Linus:<p>&#x27;This discussion is over until you give an actual honest-to-goodness reason for why you tied the two features together. No more &quot;Why not?&quot; crap.&#x27;<p>Notice LKML is from the 3rd of April, and MJGs blog post from the 4th of April.<p>Edit: correct initials</text></comment> |
26,455,178 | 26,453,112 | 1 | 3 | 26,451,960 | train | <story><title>Wayland in 2021</title><url>https://shibumi.dev/posts/wayland-in-2021/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rnhmjoj</author><text>I think Wayland, and the modern desktop in general too, has forgot about a few good ideas that the original X system had. I will miss them once Wayland has taken over:<p>- A unified way to change applications settings. All old X apps used to read the X resources database (xrdb): you could set a global color scheme, fonts, window geometry and what not, all in one place using a simple but powerful text format.<p>- The simplicity of the window managers, hotkey daemons and other X clients. You can implement a functional wm in a few hundred lines of C[1] because the X server takes care of most of the stuff. In comparison a compositor has much more work to do and it&#x27;s difficult to implement one, unless using a big library like wl_roots.<p>- A base graphics API based on drawing primitives like the original X, SVG or Cairo, rather than just bitmaps. This would make writing a simple application without importing huge frameworks feasible again. Also sending the drawing calls over the network would probably be less bandwidth intensive.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;vardy&#x2F;aphelia" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;vardy&#x2F;aphelia</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Wayland in 2021</title><url>https://shibumi.dev/posts/wayland-in-2021/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>k_sze</author><text>Does ibus work seamlessly in Wayland yet? As a person who regularly needs to input French, Chinese, and Japanese, besides English, I tried Wayland in Kubuntu 20.04 and a non-working ibus was a complete showstopper for me.</text></comment> |
24,648,245 | 24,645,691 | 1 | 3 | 24,643,830 | train | <story><title>Say goodbye to hold music</title><url>https://blog.google/products/pixel/hold-for-me/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kmeisthax</author><text>The whole point of not allowing you to cancel the account is twofold:<p>1. To make it difficult and frustrating to cancel by wasting the user&#x27;s time.
2. To allow the company the opportunity to haggle the price of the subscription down, convince you not to cancel, or worse, upsell you on other services.<p>I can totally foresee some kind of Google Duplex detection in the future intended specifically to ensure that they&#x27;re wasting the time of a human, not a pile of linear algebra in a Google datacenter. Or perhaps they play legal games with two-party consent states to try and find a way to sue Google into not offering the service.</text></item><item><author>cactus2093</author><text>Does anyone else find this to be a pretty hilarious example of a tech arms race? It solves a real problem, assuming it works, but what a strange, rube-goldberg-esque use of technology.<p>Service Provider buys voice recognition software and sets up complex maze of phone tree options to drive users away from the human support agents (even though the users can&#x27;t solve their problem without human intervention - if you don&#x27;t want to pay for enough support agents for your call volume, wouldn&#x27;t it just be simpler to let me cancel my damn account online??).<p>Now user can deploy their own speech synthesis bot to wait on hold, with what is presumably a complex system of AI decisionmaking to be able to navigate the maze and find a human support agent to connect you with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjmlp</author><text>While back in most European countries if I get pissed off with such attitudes, I just need to report the company to the consumer&#x27;s protection agency and they will take it from there.<p>It might not be as fast as one would like, but it usually does the trick.</text></comment> | <story><title>Say goodbye to hold music</title><url>https://blog.google/products/pixel/hold-for-me/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kmeisthax</author><text>The whole point of not allowing you to cancel the account is twofold:<p>1. To make it difficult and frustrating to cancel by wasting the user&#x27;s time.
2. To allow the company the opportunity to haggle the price of the subscription down, convince you not to cancel, or worse, upsell you on other services.<p>I can totally foresee some kind of Google Duplex detection in the future intended specifically to ensure that they&#x27;re wasting the time of a human, not a pile of linear algebra in a Google datacenter. Or perhaps they play legal games with two-party consent states to try and find a way to sue Google into not offering the service.</text></item><item><author>cactus2093</author><text>Does anyone else find this to be a pretty hilarious example of a tech arms race? It solves a real problem, assuming it works, but what a strange, rube-goldberg-esque use of technology.<p>Service Provider buys voice recognition software and sets up complex maze of phone tree options to drive users away from the human support agents (even though the users can&#x27;t solve their problem without human intervention - if you don&#x27;t want to pay for enough support agents for your call volume, wouldn&#x27;t it just be simpler to let me cancel my damn account online??).<p>Now user can deploy their own speech synthesis bot to wait on hold, with what is presumably a complex system of AI decisionmaking to be able to navigate the maze and find a human support agent to connect you with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>matheusmoreira</author><text>So why can&#x27;t we simply refuse to pay? We should be able to just cancel the payment and that should be the end of it. They&#x27;ll cancel the service for us when they see we didn&#x27;t pay for it. No user interaction necessary.</text></comment> |
858,154 | 857,986 | 1 | 2 | 857,927 | train | <story><title>Ben Huh of "I Can Has Cheezburger" is quietly building a humor empire</title><url>http://mixergy.com/cheezburger-fail-ben-huh/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>MartinCron</author><text>"Rule #6 If you want to be a CEO, get close to other CEOs"<p>I came to this same conclusion the last time I was job seeking and it was a critical decision factor for me, coming from a larger company where I had little contact with any decision makers. The job I wound up taking was the one where the CEO met me for coffee to discuss what the company was all about.<p>That CEO who met me for coffee was Ben Huh. Working at Cheezburger has been one of the most satisfying jobs I have ever had.</text></comment> | <story><title>Ben Huh of "I Can Has Cheezburger" is quietly building a humor empire</title><url>http://mixergy.com/cheezburger-fail-ben-huh/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>onewland</author><text>Quietly?<p><a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1916286,00.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1916286,00....</a> doesn't seem too quiet, and on the internets he's extremely famous.</text></comment> |
18,195,050 | 18,194,916 | 1 | 2 | 18,185,922 | train | <story><title>How I Faked My Way to the Top of Paris Fashion Week [video]</title><url>https://youtube.com/watch?v=jolbYvAMorY</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryandrake</author><text>Ive always truly believed that gullibility was one of humanity’s biggest, most exploitable weaknesses, if not the biggest. You can fake your way into almost anything with confidence and basic acting. I’m reminded of the folk wisdom about simply holding a clipboard and acting like you belong can get you into private areas of 90% of companies. All the fraud people fall for, all the scams, obvious phishing, you’d think we’d start educating people to be more skeptical&#x2F;cynical but it keeps happening.<p>When I was much, much younger back in the 90s and obsessed with video games, I faked my way into one of the major industry gatherings which I won’t name, simply by pretending to be a “games journalist” and acting the part. A pack of fun looking business cards, a fake web site, and a cheap silk shirt was all it took. It’s incedible what people believe if you don’t break the air of sincerity. This was a harmless prank, but I can see how tempting it is to use this power for evil, and it’s evidenced by the fact that so much fraud continues to be successful.<p>How, besides education, do we turn off this trust-by-default gene? It’s really an evolutionary dead end.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aesto</author><text>Trust-by-default is pretty much the definition of social capital, which is thought to be incredibly important for a functioning society. Basically, it&#x27;s more efficient to trust people and be exploited once in a while, than to never trust anyone, which would lead to high transaction costs for any social interaction.
Short intro by Robert Putnam, the big cheese in the field: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;robertdputnam.com&#x2F;bowling-alone&#x2F;social-capital-primer&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;robertdputnam.com&#x2F;bowling-alone&#x2F;social-capital-primer...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>How I Faked My Way to the Top of Paris Fashion Week [video]</title><url>https://youtube.com/watch?v=jolbYvAMorY</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryandrake</author><text>Ive always truly believed that gullibility was one of humanity’s biggest, most exploitable weaknesses, if not the biggest. You can fake your way into almost anything with confidence and basic acting. I’m reminded of the folk wisdom about simply holding a clipboard and acting like you belong can get you into private areas of 90% of companies. All the fraud people fall for, all the scams, obvious phishing, you’d think we’d start educating people to be more skeptical&#x2F;cynical but it keeps happening.<p>When I was much, much younger back in the 90s and obsessed with video games, I faked my way into one of the major industry gatherings which I won’t name, simply by pretending to be a “games journalist” and acting the part. A pack of fun looking business cards, a fake web site, and a cheap silk shirt was all it took. It’s incedible what people believe if you don’t break the air of sincerity. This was a harmless prank, but I can see how tempting it is to use this power for evil, and it’s evidenced by the fact that so much fraud continues to be successful.<p>How, besides education, do we turn off this trust-by-default gene? It’s really an evolutionary dead end.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>frereubu</author><text>I&#x27;d argue that what you call &quot;trust-by-default&quot; is an aspect of social intelligence that also enables a lot of very productive relationships. It has its downsides, of course, but I think you&#x27;d find that by removing that part of our psychology you&#x27;d end up with a miserable excuse for a society.</text></comment> |
20,835,449 | 20,834,764 | 1 | 2 | 20,830,069 | train | <story><title>Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher</title><url>https://brave.com/wikipedia-verified-publisher/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JohnTHaller</author><text>Users in general. We can&#x27;t track Brave users because it blocks Google Analytics.</text></item><item><author>Ajedi32</author><text>&gt; 10 cents a day for a bit under a million monthly users<p>To clarify, do you mean a million monthly <i>Brave</i> users? Or just a million monthly users in general? 10 cents a day might actually be a <i>lot</i> if you were only getting one or two Brave users a month.</text></item><item><author>JohnTHaller</author><text>We signed up for Brave&#x27;s setup at PortableApps.com after a few users asked about it. They hold your last 90 days in escrow, so you can find out how successful it is once you sign up. We were looking at around 10 cents a day for a bit under a million monthly users for that timeframe over the summer. And we can&#x27;t even access it since Brave only works with one crypto provider and they aren&#x27;t licensed in New York. The process was also pretty buggy and the magic link email login was clunky&#x2F;kinda broken.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;portableapps.com&#x2F;node&#x2F;60580" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;portableapps.com&#x2F;node&#x2F;60580</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>p1necone</author><text>Not being able to track users is literally the main feature of Brave, so I&#x27;m not surprised it&#x27;s difficult. It&#x27;s as it should be.</text></comment> | <story><title>Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher</title><url>https://brave.com/wikipedia-verified-publisher/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JohnTHaller</author><text>Users in general. We can&#x27;t track Brave users because it blocks Google Analytics.</text></item><item><author>Ajedi32</author><text>&gt; 10 cents a day for a bit under a million monthly users<p>To clarify, do you mean a million monthly <i>Brave</i> users? Or just a million monthly users in general? 10 cents a day might actually be a <i>lot</i> if you were only getting one or two Brave users a month.</text></item><item><author>JohnTHaller</author><text>We signed up for Brave&#x27;s setup at PortableApps.com after a few users asked about it. They hold your last 90 days in escrow, so you can find out how successful it is once you sign up. We were looking at around 10 cents a day for a bit under a million monthly users for that timeframe over the summer. And we can&#x27;t even access it since Brave only works with one crypto provider and they aren&#x27;t licensed in New York. The process was also pretty buggy and the magic link email login was clunky&#x2F;kinda broken.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;portableapps.com&#x2F;node&#x2F;60580" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;portableapps.com&#x2F;node&#x2F;60580</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>devmunchies</author><text>sure you can. easily done with basic server side tracking by parsing the User-Agent header. you should be logging this any way in some kind of access log.</text></comment> |
15,906,324 | 15,906,348 | 1 | 2 | 15,906,018 | train | <story><title>College Presidents Making $1M Rise with Tuition and Student Debt</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-11/college-president-salaries-rise-9-and-1-million-paydays-double</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Retric</author><text>Students are free to go to less expensive schools. However, as long as people underestimate debt, spending more to attract more students is simply rational behavior.</text></item><item><author>rdtsc</author><text>I remember my tuition rising sharply while the school was building things like a new rec center with a large pool and a lazy river. (Yes, I think there is obvious irony there installing a lazy river on a college campus and making students take 6 figure loans to pay for it). In the meantime the evening college which had people trying their hardest to work and go to school was strapped for funds, couldn&#x27;t afford printer paper and was printing exams double sided in a tiny font.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>barrkel</author><text>You say that people underestimate debt, but it goes the other way too. My experience as a poor child growing up was that I could see no way to afford university fees, because the numbers looked too big. Loans wouldn&#x27;t make a difference because I couldn&#x27;t comprehend the subjective experience of making so much more money later in my career.<p>Thankfully, college fees were abolished in my country (Ireland) in 1996. It enabled me personally to envision going to college where I couldn&#x27;t before.</text></comment> | <story><title>College Presidents Making $1M Rise with Tuition and Student Debt</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-11/college-president-salaries-rise-9-and-1-million-paydays-double</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Retric</author><text>Students are free to go to less expensive schools. However, as long as people underestimate debt, spending more to attract more students is simply rational behavior.</text></item><item><author>rdtsc</author><text>I remember my tuition rising sharply while the school was building things like a new rec center with a large pool and a lazy river. (Yes, I think there is obvious irony there installing a lazy river on a college campus and making students take 6 figure loans to pay for it). In the meantime the evening college which had people trying their hardest to work and go to school was strapped for funds, couldn&#x27;t afford printer paper and was printing exams double sided in a tiny font.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rdtsc</author><text>&gt; Students are free to go to less expensive schools.<p>Agree it&#x27;s rational but it&#x27;s still ironic. Things like Uncle Sam handing out loans like candy is not helping or states cutting fund to state school is also not great.<p>The less expensive school tactic from what I hear these days is to go to a community college for 2 years to get as many prerequisites in then switch to a more expensive university to graduate. The rational behavior from the more expensive university is then probably to refuse credits from community colleges so they can increase their profits and fleece students more.</text></comment> |
35,789,486 | 35,789,629 | 1 | 2 | 35,787,287 | train | <story><title>Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)</title><url>https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/49034/is-infinity-an-odd-or-even-number</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alexb_</author><text>No it isn&#x27;t. If you ask a child what comes after infinity, &quot;Infinity + 1&quot; is pretty much the default answer. Any kid who knows multiplication knows &quot;Infinity + Infinity&quot; is the same as &quot;Infinity Times Two&quot;. The answer of &quot;Infinity TIMES Infinity&quot; is also popular for kids to say when they know a number bigger than their friend (who just proclaimed infinity is the largest number).</text></item><item><author>warent</author><text><p><pre><code> In my experience with children, one of the easiest-to-grasp concepts of infinity is provided by the transfinite ordinals, since it can be viewed as a continuation of the usual counting manner of children, but proceeding into the transfinite:
1,2,3,⋯,ω,ω+1,ω+2,⋯,ω+ω=ω⋅2,ω⋅2+1,⋯,ω⋅3,⋯,ω2,ω2+1,⋯,ω2+ω,⋯⋯
</code></pre>
Presumably this person has no experience with 6 year olds? This explanation is horrendous haha</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vmilner</author><text>Child: “Is 100 million the biggest number?”<p>Teacher: “Well, there’s 100 million and one”<p>Child: “I was pretty close then!”</text></comment> | <story><title>Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)</title><url>https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/49034/is-infinity-an-odd-or-even-number</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alexb_</author><text>No it isn&#x27;t. If you ask a child what comes after infinity, &quot;Infinity + 1&quot; is pretty much the default answer. Any kid who knows multiplication knows &quot;Infinity + Infinity&quot; is the same as &quot;Infinity Times Two&quot;. The answer of &quot;Infinity TIMES Infinity&quot; is also popular for kids to say when they know a number bigger than their friend (who just proclaimed infinity is the largest number).</text></item><item><author>warent</author><text><p><pre><code> In my experience with children, one of the easiest-to-grasp concepts of infinity is provided by the transfinite ordinals, since it can be viewed as a continuation of the usual counting manner of children, but proceeding into the transfinite:
1,2,3,⋯,ω,ω+1,ω+2,⋯,ω+ω=ω⋅2,ω⋅2+1,⋯,ω⋅3,⋯,ω2,ω2+1,⋯,ω2+ω,⋯⋯
</code></pre>
Presumably this person has no experience with 6 year olds? This explanation is horrendous haha</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bhk</author><text>I thought that most of us learn at an early age, as a result of this kind of exchange, that &quot;infinity&quot; is not &quot;the biggest number&quot; or even a number at all, as far as the ordinary notion of &quot;number&quot; goes.</text></comment> |
9,559,314 | 9,559,065 | 1 | 2 | 9,558,196 | train | <story><title>Kore: a fast web server for writing web apps in C</title><url>https://kore.io</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>byuu</author><text>I&#x27;ve been building an HTTP&#x2F;1.1 server in C++11. Along with a C++ wrapper around SQLite, I&#x27;ve been having a lot of fun putting some lightweight forum software together. I definitely enjoy the code structure and compile-time safety over PHP.<p>Using a threaded model with tiny stacks, and std::lock_guard for atomic operations.<p>The biggest downside is you have to run the same OS your server uses on your dev box (which is what I do); or you have to upload the source and compile the binaries on your server directly. (or have fun with cross-compilation, I guess.)<p>To answer the inevitable &quot;why?&quot; -- for fun and learning. Kind of cool to have a fully LAMPless website+forum in 50KB of code. Not planning to displace nginx and vBulletin at a Fortune 500 company or anything.<p>Still wishing I could do HTTPS without requiring a complex third-party library.</text></item><item><author>randomfool</author><text>I&#x27;m curious- why C? Strings, scoped objects and C++11 move operators seems much safer and clearer from an API perspective.<p>The complaints about C++ seem to mostly be around the ability to abuse the language, not specific issues that C solves. Something like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;facebook&#x2F;proxygen" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;facebook&#x2F;proxygen</a> seems like a better API.<p>And I don&#x27;t quite buy portability- if it&#x27;s not a modern compiler with decent security checks then I&#x27;m note sure it should be building web-facing code.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>giovannibajo1</author><text>Go would solve the problems you mentioned (cross compilation and HTTPS support), and would also offer first-level support to many web concepts and protocols that you need to implement from scratch in C++ as the ecosystem is not there. Of course if it&#x27;s just for fun, then anything goes :)</text></comment> | <story><title>Kore: a fast web server for writing web apps in C</title><url>https://kore.io</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>byuu</author><text>I&#x27;ve been building an HTTP&#x2F;1.1 server in C++11. Along with a C++ wrapper around SQLite, I&#x27;ve been having a lot of fun putting some lightweight forum software together. I definitely enjoy the code structure and compile-time safety over PHP.<p>Using a threaded model with tiny stacks, and std::lock_guard for atomic operations.<p>The biggest downside is you have to run the same OS your server uses on your dev box (which is what I do); or you have to upload the source and compile the binaries on your server directly. (or have fun with cross-compilation, I guess.)<p>To answer the inevitable &quot;why?&quot; -- for fun and learning. Kind of cool to have a fully LAMPless website+forum in 50KB of code. Not planning to displace nginx and vBulletin at a Fortune 500 company or anything.<p>Still wishing I could do HTTPS without requiring a complex third-party library.</text></item><item><author>randomfool</author><text>I&#x27;m curious- why C? Strings, scoped objects and C++11 move operators seems much safer and clearer from an API perspective.<p>The complaints about C++ seem to mostly be around the ability to abuse the language, not specific issues that C solves. Something like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;facebook&#x2F;proxygen" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;facebook&#x2F;proxygen</a> seems like a better API.<p>And I don&#x27;t quite buy portability- if it&#x27;s not a modern compiler with decent security checks then I&#x27;m note sure it should be building web-facing code.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Canada</author><text>I find this so much more pleasant to use than the alternatives. There&#x27;s a portable distribution of it which you can put in your project and statically link.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openbsd.org&#x2F;cgi-bin&#x2F;man.cgi&#x2F;OpenBSD-current&#x2F;man3&#x2F;tls_accept_fds.3?query=tls_init&amp;sec=3" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openbsd.org&#x2F;cgi-bin&#x2F;man.cgi&#x2F;OpenBSD-current&#x2F;man3&#x2F;...</a></text></comment> |
38,259,692 | 38,258,949 | 1 | 2 | 38,257,024 | train | <story><title>My favorite coding question to give candidates</title><url>https://carloarg02.medium.com/my-favorite-coding-question-to-give-candidates-17ea4758880c</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>clnq</author><text>&gt; No great engineer should ever settle for an O(n²) algorithm, unless bound by memory or some other unmovable constraint.<p>What if this is a one-off to produce a business report? Would it make sense to use programmer time to create an O(n) structure in memory, or just loop through the files line by line and let the CPU take a minute or five, or thirty? What is the programming language - something that has a library for this or something very low level where we’d read the file byte by byte?<p>If we’re dealing with the latter, a small amount of data, and a one off report, I don’t care at all in my work whether an engineer I’m managing somehow writes it in O(n^3).<p>It’s interesting how quick to judge the author is - ask this question for points, don’t even think about that, don’t mention arrays because they’re fixed size (despite implementations for dynamically allocated arrays totally existing and the candidate might be coming from that), and so on. Some humility would be nice.<p>Although I think what they wrote is very valuable, as this is how many interviews go. And I have to at least appreciate the author’s approach for trying to start a conversation, even if he still takes a rather reductive approach to evaluating candidates.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jauntywundrkind</author><text>There&#x27;s places where writing bad shitty code doesn&#x27;t matter but frankly I&#x27;d rather be at places and rather have colleagues and an environment where we don&#x27;t write bad shitty code.<p>The attempts to circumstantially excuse away shitty answers goes against the desire to just not be shit.<p>The author here seemed able and willing to talk through constraints &amp; issues. Their first paragraphs practically begged for it, as a sign of maturity. Rather than just excuse away shitty solutions, my hope is, even if you are not a super competent can-do coder, you at least can talk through and walk through problems with people that are trustable, to arrive at reasonably competent capable answers.</text></comment> | <story><title>My favorite coding question to give candidates</title><url>https://carloarg02.medium.com/my-favorite-coding-question-to-give-candidates-17ea4758880c</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>clnq</author><text>&gt; No great engineer should ever settle for an O(n²) algorithm, unless bound by memory or some other unmovable constraint.<p>What if this is a one-off to produce a business report? Would it make sense to use programmer time to create an O(n) structure in memory, or just loop through the files line by line and let the CPU take a minute or five, or thirty? What is the programming language - something that has a library for this or something very low level where we’d read the file byte by byte?<p>If we’re dealing with the latter, a small amount of data, and a one off report, I don’t care at all in my work whether an engineer I’m managing somehow writes it in O(n^3).<p>It’s interesting how quick to judge the author is - ask this question for points, don’t even think about that, don’t mention arrays because they’re fixed size (despite implementations for dynamically allocated arrays totally existing and the candidate might be coming from that), and so on. Some humility would be nice.<p>Although I think what they wrote is very valuable, as this is how many interviews go. And I have to at least appreciate the author’s approach for trying to start a conversation, even if he still takes a rather reductive approach to evaluating candidates.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>0xb0565e486</author><text>I would argue that in most cases where performance isn’t a constraint, the first algorithm that comes to mind is probably the most optimal choice. He even says:<p>&gt; About 80% of the candidates go for the naive solution first. It’s easiest and most natural.<p>The “naive solution” will be easier to understand and maintain. Why make it harder if it doesn’t add value?</text></comment> |
23,983,003 | 23,982,748 | 1 | 3 | 23,981,477 | train | <story><title>Statement by Jeff Bezos to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary</title><url>https://blog.aboutamazon.com/policy/statement-by-jeff-bezos-to-the-u-s-house-committee-on-the-judiciary</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>I know that he (and others in positions like CEO in such industries) cannot say it, but I would be glad to hear him say:<p><i>&quot;Representatives, Amazon is a company focused on innovation, efficiency, and getting the best and most out of people, and giving the best and most to people, wherever it can.<p>Tech allows us to tap into economies of scale, create new products and give consumers choices never seen before, squeeze out waste in ways that were not possible up to now, and create net benefit for people in this country. Each one of you can probably personally think of how Amazon technology has improved the lives of yourselves and people you know.<p>We seek to do this as far as the law allows us to do, and other companies do that as well. We operate within the rules placed on us by the legislatures of this country and its states.<p>As you know, sometimes even under fair laws, some people will lose out compared to others. Innovation comes with risk and change -- that&#x27;s an unavoidable consequence of progress. And technology has been doing this for hundreds of years. But that&#x27;s what laws are meant to set the boundaries of, based on people like you determining how best to create those rules.<p>If this body is concerned with what we are doing within the laws, it should change those laws based on the best interests of this country and its people. And Amazon will follow those laws.<p>We want that clarity, and want to follow our responsibilities under the law. It&#x27;s your responsibility to set out those laws. Amazon welcomes performing our responsibilities to American consumers, and we invite you to do the same to the people you are responsible to.&quot;</i></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pwdisswordfish2</author><text>&quot;If this body is concerned with what we are doing with the laws, it should change those laws based on the best interests of this country and its people;&quot;<p>&quot;however, this body should also note that Amazon will seek to exert control over the legislative process to ensure that Amazon&#x27;s best interests are represented to the maximum extent that our influence and lobbying budget will allow,^1 even if those interests conflict with the best interests of this country and its people.&quot;<p>1. We spent $16,790,000 in 2019. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opensecrets.org&#x2F;federal-lobbying&#x2F;clients&#x2F;summary?cycle=2019&amp;id=D000023883" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opensecrets.org&#x2F;federal-lobbying&#x2F;clients&#x2F;summary...</a> I own the Washington Post. I am considered by Forbes, among others, to be the world&#x27;s wealthiest billionaire. I am also a registered voter in this country.</text></comment> | <story><title>Statement by Jeff Bezos to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary</title><url>https://blog.aboutamazon.com/policy/statement-by-jeff-bezos-to-the-u-s-house-committee-on-the-judiciary</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>I know that he (and others in positions like CEO in such industries) cannot say it, but I would be glad to hear him say:<p><i>&quot;Representatives, Amazon is a company focused on innovation, efficiency, and getting the best and most out of people, and giving the best and most to people, wherever it can.<p>Tech allows us to tap into economies of scale, create new products and give consumers choices never seen before, squeeze out waste in ways that were not possible up to now, and create net benefit for people in this country. Each one of you can probably personally think of how Amazon technology has improved the lives of yourselves and people you know.<p>We seek to do this as far as the law allows us to do, and other companies do that as well. We operate within the rules placed on us by the legislatures of this country and its states.<p>As you know, sometimes even under fair laws, some people will lose out compared to others. Innovation comes with risk and change -- that&#x27;s an unavoidable consequence of progress. And technology has been doing this for hundreds of years. But that&#x27;s what laws are meant to set the boundaries of, based on people like you determining how best to create those rules.<p>If this body is concerned with what we are doing within the laws, it should change those laws based on the best interests of this country and its people. And Amazon will follow those laws.<p>We want that clarity, and want to follow our responsibilities under the law. It&#x27;s your responsibility to set out those laws. Amazon welcomes performing our responsibilities to American consumers, and we invite you to do the same to the people you are responsible to.&quot;</i></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ceejayoz</author><text>&gt; If this body is concerned with what we are doing within the laws, it should change those laws based on the best interests of this country and its people. And Amazon will follow those laws.<p>Left unsaid here would be: &quot;We will quietly but effectively work behind the scenes to prevent them from ever <i>becoming</i> laws.&quot;</text></comment> |
16,609,477 | 16,609,369 | 1 | 3 | 16,608,827 | train | <story><title>Microsoft Offers Bug Bounty to Prevent Another Spectre-Meltdown Fiasco</title><url>https://hothardware.com/news/microsoft-offering-up-to-250000-in-speculative-execution-bug-bounty-program</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>WebLLL</author><text>The offer is limit to bugs that are not already known to Microsoft or their partners, and they are not disclosing what these bugs are, and they are making no claim to have fixed them. I made a submission to Intel and others weeks after some were claiming to have mitigated this with small reductions in timer resolution, showing that the timer mitigation would not stop these vulnerabilities, no one would pay out, said they were already aware of it, have they informed the public, have they withdrawn their product, have their transitioned their user base to safer products??? No one is going to hand over their well documented exploits under such terms. Let them offer twice the reward for public disclosures of issues that they already know and have not fixed or not warned the public about, and then we might take their offer seriously.</text></comment> | <story><title>Microsoft Offers Bug Bounty to Prevent Another Spectre-Meltdown Fiasco</title><url>https://hothardware.com/news/microsoft-offering-up-to-250000-in-speculative-execution-bug-bounty-program</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mastax</author><text>Bug bounties are good but they wouldn&#x27;t have prevented Spectre-Meltdown. The only way to prevent such a fiasco is for the bugs to never exist in the first place. The only difference bounties make is that hopefully vendors patch the issue before it becomes widely exploited. In the case of S&#x2F;M, vendors got many months of notice and it was still a fiasco - that is the nature of software bugs.</text></comment> |
33,937,405 | 33,937,204 | 1 | 2 | 33,935,760 | train | <story><title>Sign in with Google has been removed for your privacy</title><url>https://slimvoice.co/login</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sys42590</author><text>Why do they argue with privacy?<p>If Google decides to lock your account for any reason, all your third party accounts using Google&#x27;s SSO are mostly fubar, as it&#x27;s currently almost impossible to get your Google account back.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jchw</author><text>If you use SSO with the account you <i>were</i> going to use your e-mail address with, it makes little difference whether you used OAuth2 vs traditional e-mail based authentication. You&#x27;re locked out.<p>If something happens, like OAuth2 stops working, most websites allow password reset to the e-mail address connected to the account, and then can log-in without OAuth2.<p>The concern here is <i>probably</i> related to some Log-in with Google scripts that run on the frontend, although if they were just using normal OAuth2, then I think they are wasting their time: whatever sensitive information Google gets via OAuth2 they also get via the unencrypted e-mails you&#x27;re sending to them anyways...</text></comment> | <story><title>Sign in with Google has been removed for your privacy</title><url>https://slimvoice.co/login</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sys42590</author><text>Why do they argue with privacy?<p>If Google decides to lock your account for any reason, all your third party accounts using Google&#x27;s SSO are mostly fubar, as it&#x27;s currently almost impossible to get your Google account back.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bloomingeek</author><text>F-ing Google locked me out of my account and my email because I broke my cell, and then traded it in for a new one but Google kept sending the verification to my broken cell. There&#x27;s no one to call for assistance!</text></comment> |
14,077,757 | 14,076,846 | 1 | 2 | 14,076,320 | train | <story><title>What is this colored fiber in my chicken?</title><url>http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/79674/what-is-this-colored-fiber-in-my-chicken</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pavlov</author><text>This is just the tip of the iceberg in how animals are treated. Industrial meat production practically runs its margins on increasing the suffering of animals in a manner that narrowly avoids this kind of visible anomalies in the product.<p>As many others have noted in the past, slave labor and concentration camps operated on a similar industrial calculus of forcibly squeezing out value from living beings before putting them to death.<p>Waiting for &quot;fake meat&quot; to fix the problem is like saying: &quot;I can&#x27;t wait until we can grow zombies to pick cotton, then all the slaves can finally go free.&quot;</text></item><item><author>ncr100</author><text>Fake meat cannot come soon enough - poor bird was encouraged to grow in an unhealthy manner resulting in dead tissue inside it while it was still alive. I wonder if it was painful for the bird having this tough dead tissue at the core of its breasts.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Eyas</author><text>Except as far as I understand it, there seems to be a significant utility to fake meat (and it is more of a distinct possibility than zombies):<p>For many, there are few ways of consuming a balanced diet without meat. Take low-FODMAP diets [1] for example, which are becoming very popular with people with IBS, a condition some ~15% of the U.S. population suffers from [2]. For many, coming up with enough sources of protein while satisfying their dietary restrictions is not easy without meat.<p>On an individual level, picking the &quot;harder&quot; way for its ethical advantages is definitely the right thing to do.<p>For the scientist working on fake meat, their work is probably essential here.<p><pre><code> [1]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;FODMAP
[2]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Irritable_bowel_syndrome#Epidemiology</code></pre></text></comment> | <story><title>What is this colored fiber in my chicken?</title><url>http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/79674/what-is-this-colored-fiber-in-my-chicken</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pavlov</author><text>This is just the tip of the iceberg in how animals are treated. Industrial meat production practically runs its margins on increasing the suffering of animals in a manner that narrowly avoids this kind of visible anomalies in the product.<p>As many others have noted in the past, slave labor and concentration camps operated on a similar industrial calculus of forcibly squeezing out value from living beings before putting them to death.<p>Waiting for &quot;fake meat&quot; to fix the problem is like saying: &quot;I can&#x27;t wait until we can grow zombies to pick cotton, then all the slaves can finally go free.&quot;</text></item><item><author>ncr100</author><text>Fake meat cannot come soon enough - poor bird was encouraged to grow in an unhealthy manner resulting in dead tissue inside it while it was still alive. I wonder if it was painful for the bird having this tough dead tissue at the core of its breasts.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SerLava</author><text>&gt;Waiting for &quot;fake meat&quot; to fix the problem is like saying: &quot;I can&#x27;t wait until we can grow zombies to pick cotton, then all the slaves can finally go free.&quot;<p>It&#x27;s kind of like that... except that slaves were people - not chickens. Which certainly flavors the metaphor a bit.</text></comment> |
37,277,117 | 37,276,873 | 1 | 2 | 37,272,652 | train | <story><title>E-ink is so Retropunk</title><url>https://rmkit.dev/eink-is-so-retropunk/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>raisjn</author><text>OP here. thanks for all the comments. some more info:<p>rmkit is a library (and group of devs) for creating apps on the rM (and now Kobo). outside of rmkit, people typically use Qt to write apps, but there&#x27;s many routes[0], including SAS[1]: a solution that uses unix pipes. the rM2 requires a bit more hacking to get working than the rM1 because their framebuffer driver[2] is embedded in their software for rM2 and requires updating rm2fb every time remarkable releases a new update. there&#x27;s alternative drivers[3] to drive the display in development.<p>i will keep updating the article based on feedback, thank you and keep hacking<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;remarkable.guide&#x2F;devel&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;remarkable.guide&#x2F;devel&#x2F;index.html</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rmkit.dev&#x2F;apps&#x2F;sas" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rmkit.dev&#x2F;apps&#x2F;sas</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ddvk&#x2F;remarkable2-framebuffer&#x2F;">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ddvk&#x2F;remarkable2-framebuffer&#x2F;</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;matteodelabre&#x2F;waved">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;matteodelabre&#x2F;waved</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>konschubert</author><text>To (maybe?) add to your list: The e-paper smart display that I am making and selling does also allow users to build their own content. There are two different ways:<p>1. You can either just serve an image on a URL and the device will display it, refreshing whenever the image changes:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.invisible-computers.com&#x2F;invisible-calendar&#x2F;image-url-manual.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.invisible-computers.com&#x2F;invisible-calendar&#x2F;image...</a><p>2. Or you go one step further and wrap it into an API with a settings page, which will also allow others to install and use your app:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Invisible-Computers&#x2F;image-gallery&#x2F;blob&#x2F;main&#x2F;HowToBuildAnApp.md">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Invisible-Computers&#x2F;image-gallery&#x2F;blob&#x2F;ma...</a><p>To be fully transparent: I know that many people are using the first approach to display their own designs, but I haven&#x27;t had much uptake yet on the second option to build a public, installable app. So if anyone is interested in trying this out, please contact me! I am willing to cooperate closely and iterate on the API where necessary.<p>(I hope that this is sufficiently relevant, even though I am tooting my own horn here.)</text></comment> | <story><title>E-ink is so Retropunk</title><url>https://rmkit.dev/eink-is-so-retropunk/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>raisjn</author><text>OP here. thanks for all the comments. some more info:<p>rmkit is a library (and group of devs) for creating apps on the rM (and now Kobo). outside of rmkit, people typically use Qt to write apps, but there&#x27;s many routes[0], including SAS[1]: a solution that uses unix pipes. the rM2 requires a bit more hacking to get working than the rM1 because their framebuffer driver[2] is embedded in their software for rM2 and requires updating rm2fb every time remarkable releases a new update. there&#x27;s alternative drivers[3] to drive the display in development.<p>i will keep updating the article based on feedback, thank you and keep hacking<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;remarkable.guide&#x2F;devel&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;remarkable.guide&#x2F;devel&#x2F;index.html</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rmkit.dev&#x2F;apps&#x2F;sas" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rmkit.dev&#x2F;apps&#x2F;sas</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ddvk&#x2F;remarkable2-framebuffer&#x2F;">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ddvk&#x2F;remarkable2-framebuffer&#x2F;</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;matteodelabre&#x2F;waved">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;matteodelabre&#x2F;waved</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yoavm</author><text>I don&#x27;t know about the rM, but for Kobo - why not just run Linux? it literally runs Debian (and others). I&#x27;ve written so apps for it (e.g. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bjesus&#x2F;pidif">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bjesus&#x2F;pidif</a>) using GTK. It would have been great if we had a more unified eco-system for e-ink supported apps.</text></comment> |
17,850,606 | 17,850,087 | 1 | 3 | 17,848,882 | train | <story><title>Google’s Jeff Dean’s undergrad senior thesis on neural networks (1990) [pdf]</title><url>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I1fs4sczbCaACzA9XwxR3DiuXVtqmejL/view</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mlthoughts2018</author><text>An underappreciated aspect of this is finding an academic department that would allow you to submit something this concise as a senior thesis.<p>My experience, mostly in grad school, was that anyone editing my work wanted more verbiage. If you only needed a short, one-sentence paragraph to say something, it just wasn’t accepted. There had to be more.<p>Jeff Dean is an uncommonly good communicator. But he also benefited from being allowed, perhaps even encouraged, to prioritize effective and concise communication.<p>Most people aren’t so lucky, and end up learning that this type of concision will not go over well. People presume you’re writing like a know-it-all, or that you didn’t do due diligence on prior work.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>busyant</author><text>&gt; anyone editing my work wanted more verbiage<p>I _never_ got that feedback. My mentors all emphasized economy of language and nobody cared how &quot;thick&quot; my thesis was.<p>This is a pretty amusing story about verbiage.<p>Back in the old days, you would send a manuscript&#x2F;research article to colleagues&#x2F;friends by _snail-mail_ to get their feedback. You&#x27;d wait a month, and maybe they would mail a &#x27;red-inked&#x27; copy of your manuscript back to you.<p>My Ph.D. advisor sent out a draft to a colleague who was famous for being harsh with the red-ink.<p>After a month, my advisor receives the manuscript in the mail.<p>* He turns to page 1. No red ink!<p>* He turns to page 2. STILL no red ink! [He must looove the paper]<p>* Keeps turning pages (no red ink!!).<p>* On page 10--in red ink--is written, &quot;Start here.&quot;</text></comment> | <story><title>Google’s Jeff Dean’s undergrad senior thesis on neural networks (1990) [pdf]</title><url>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I1fs4sczbCaACzA9XwxR3DiuXVtqmejL/view</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mlthoughts2018</author><text>An underappreciated aspect of this is finding an academic department that would allow you to submit something this concise as a senior thesis.<p>My experience, mostly in grad school, was that anyone editing my work wanted more verbiage. If you only needed a short, one-sentence paragraph to say something, it just wasn’t accepted. There had to be more.<p>Jeff Dean is an uncommonly good communicator. But he also benefited from being allowed, perhaps even encouraged, to prioritize effective and concise communication.<p>Most people aren’t so lucky, and end up learning that this type of concision will not go over well. People presume you’re writing like a know-it-all, or that you didn’t do due diligence on prior work.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Certhas</author><text>It&#x27;s kind of remarkable. There really is no literature review in this paper. As a supervisor I would have no problem with a content part of this length, but I would also insist on doing the scholarly work that is not demonstrated here. Don&#x27;t just throw out some code and describe it but put it into the context of what exists. Give credit to where ideas originate.<p>That shouldn&#x27;t add too much. No more than a few pages. It would still concise but then also a scientific work.</text></comment> |
34,140,202 | 34,139,891 | 1 | 2 | 34,139,380 | train | <story><title>Bitcoin hashrate drops nearly 40% as deadly U.S. storm unplugs miners</title><url>https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-hashrate-drops-nearly-40-034118180.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lucb1e</author><text><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;881472&#x2F;worldwide-bitcoin-energy-consumption&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;881472&#x2F;worldwide-bitcoin...</a><p>40% of latest value (November) would be 116×.4=46 TWh (&quot;estimated&quot;) or 78×.4=31 TWh (&quot;minimum&quot;). USA uses 4223 TWh per year (Wikipedia &quot;Electricity sector of the United States&quot;, 2018), so Bitcoin uses around 1% of the USA&#x27;s electricity per year (1.09%, or 0.73% for the minimum value).<p>The lower value is truly a minimum of minimum, as I understand it, because (1) not everyone will have been unplugged, and (2) the source &quot;minimum TWh&quot; value makes unlikely assumptions about the efficiency of every miner (latest equipment, no overhead).<p>At &quot;7.09 × 10⁻⁴ metric tons CO2&#x2F;kWh&quot; in the USA <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.epa.gov&#x2F;energy&#x2F;greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-calculator-calculations-and-references" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.epa.gov&#x2F;energy&#x2F;greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-ca...</a> (709 grams per kWh; 2019) this seems to come out between 22 and 32 million tonnes of CO2 per year, and iirc the average first-world person uses just over ten tons (ten thousand kilograms) per year so this is the equivalent of having an extra 2.2–3.2 million rich people on the planet (just the USA consumption, not Bitcoin&#x27;s consumption elsewhere or other PoW currencies&#x27;).</text></comment> | <story><title>Bitcoin hashrate drops nearly 40% as deadly U.S. storm unplugs miners</title><url>https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-hashrate-drops-nearly-40-034118180.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>_fizz_buzz_</author><text>It seems it has already recovered: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cointelegraph.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;bitcoin-hashrate-recovers-after-big-freeze-shuts-down-miners" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cointelegraph.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;bitcoin-hashrate-recovers-aft...</a></text></comment> |
4,702,796 | 4,702,815 | 1 | 2 | 4,702,428 | train | <story><title>Put Alan Turing on the next £10 note</title><url>http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/31659</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>martinwnet</author><text>Who in your opinion should be ahead?<p>I see a few names on that list that shouldn't even be in the queue in my opinion.<p><i>David Beckham, Jonny Wilkinson, Robbie Williams, Michael Vaughan, Terry Wogan, Princess Diana...</i></text></item><item><author>mibbitier</author><text>With all due respect I think there's quite a few names on the list that should be way ahead in the queue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eigenvector</author><text>Michael Faraday.
Sir Isaac Newton.
James Clerk Maxwell.<p>(among many others)<p>There are quite a few folks on there that have undoubtedly placed themselves among the very highest class of contributors to the advancement of humanity.</text></comment> | <story><title>Put Alan Turing on the next £10 note</title><url>http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/31659</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>martinwnet</author><text>Who in your opinion should be ahead?<p>I see a few names on that list that shouldn't even be in the queue in my opinion.<p><i>David Beckham, Jonny Wilkinson, Robbie Williams, Michael Vaughan, Terry Wogan, Princess Diana...</i></text></item><item><author>mibbitier</author><text>With all due respect I think there's quite a few names on the list that should be way ahead in the queue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rhplus</author><text>From the list[1], authors such as Kipling, Potter or Wilde would be crowd pleasers, but a figure like Winston Churchill would likely win if this were decided by popular vote.<p>Saying that, recent Bank of England notes[2] seem to sway much more heavily towards engineers/scientists (Newton, Wren, Stevenson, Faraday, Darwin, Boulton/Watt) and social/economic reformers (Nightingale, Houblon, Fry, Smith) than artists (Elgar, Shakespeare, Dickens) or military leaders (Wellington)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/Documents/about/banknote_names.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/Documents/about/ban...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_the_pound_sterling#Current_issue" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_the_pound_sterling...</a></text></comment> |
13,512,254 | 13,512,306 | 1 | 2 | 13,512,063 | train | <story><title>Sergey Brin joins protest against immigration order at SFO</title><url>http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/28/14428262/google-sergey-brin</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tptacek</author><text>Google employees were very heavily represented on the Never Again pledge a few weeks ago, more than any big tech company. I&#x27;ve been able to talk to several Googlers since then, several of whom are now directly involved with Tech Solidarity. Google takes a lot of shit, and some of it is probably deserved, but there seems clearly to be a moral core to the people working there.<p>I stick up for Google a lot --- nobody has done more to improve the security of the web than they have --- but they deserve credit for this kind of thing too.</text></comment> | <story><title>Sergey Brin joins protest against immigration order at SFO</title><url>http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/28/14428262/google-sergey-brin</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>akhilcacharya</author><text>Relevant part of his background [0]<p>&gt;They formally applied for their exit visa in September 1978, and as a result his father was &quot;promptly fired&quot;. For related reasons, his mother also had to leave her job. For the next eight months, without any steady income, they were forced to take on temporary jobs as they waited, afraid their request would be denied as it was for many refuseniks. During this time his parents shared responsibility for looking after him and his father taught himself computer programming. In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country.[12] At an interview in October 2000, Brin said, &quot;I know the hard times that my parents went through there and am very thankful that I was brought to the States.&quot;[17]<p>&gt;In the summer of 1990, a few weeks before his 17th birthday, his father led a group of high school math students, including Sergey, on a two-week exchange program to the Soviet Union. His roommate on the trip was future Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor John Stamper. As Brin recalls, the trip awakened his childhood fear of authority and he remembered that &quot;his first impulse on confronting Soviet oppression had been to throw pebbles at a police car.&quot; Malseed adds, &quot;On the second day of the trip, while the group toured a sanatorium in the countryside near Moscow, Brin took his father aside, looked him in the eye and said, &#x27;Thank you for taking us all out of Russia.&#x27;&quot;<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sergey_Brin#Early_life_and_education" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sergey_Brin#Early_life_and_edu...</a></text></comment> |
25,379,260 | 25,379,007 | 1 | 3 | 25,377,695 | train | <story><title>Google Stories</title><url>http://stories.google</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sktrdie</author><text>It’s pretty cool. If you make a url return data that is visually aligned with “a story protocol” google will put it at top of relevant search results.<p>Think of it as a mini-html site that follows a specific set of visual JS and CSS protocols so that consumers have guarantee of its behavior (will not have crazy ads, gifs or third party content) and behaves consistently.<p>Kind of interesting avenue for publishing content on the web that isn’t tied to any specific platform.<p>I’d even go further and say the web needs more of these kind of things. All websites behave differently. Maybe we need a visual protocol also for general web apps (just like this web stories) so that we have consistent behavior. I dare to call this protocol Web Apps.</text></item><item><author>stingraycharles</author><text>Am I the only one who, after reading the landing page, still has no idea what this is? I’ve been watching “immersive” websites for quite some time, mostly marketing-ish websites but also sometimes some special purpose pages from National Geografic or NYT.<p>What exactly is this? A JavaScript&#x2F;CSS framework? Something like AMP? Or is it a social network like Snapchat?<p>I’m genuinely confused what I’m looking at and feel old right now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ljm</author><text>So, another AMP-style thing where Google uses their platform and network effect to further encroach on the open web and turn it into the Google web?<p>The quote you see at first is: &quot;Stories meet their widest audience ever.&quot;<p>Given that the widest audience is anyone who wants to search for something, this seems like a massive anti-trust bait.<p>Also, hard-pass on the continual dumbing down of content to contribute to the phenomenal attention deficit modern social media has introduced.</text></comment> | <story><title>Google Stories</title><url>http://stories.google</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sktrdie</author><text>It’s pretty cool. If you make a url return data that is visually aligned with “a story protocol” google will put it at top of relevant search results.<p>Think of it as a mini-html site that follows a specific set of visual JS and CSS protocols so that consumers have guarantee of its behavior (will not have crazy ads, gifs or third party content) and behaves consistently.<p>Kind of interesting avenue for publishing content on the web that isn’t tied to any specific platform.<p>I’d even go further and say the web needs more of these kind of things. All websites behave differently. Maybe we need a visual protocol also for general web apps (just like this web stories) so that we have consistent behavior. I dare to call this protocol Web Apps.</text></item><item><author>stingraycharles</author><text>Am I the only one who, after reading the landing page, still has no idea what this is? I’ve been watching “immersive” websites for quite some time, mostly marketing-ish websites but also sometimes some special purpose pages from National Geografic or NYT.<p>What exactly is this? A JavaScript&#x2F;CSS framework? Something like AMP? Or is it a social network like Snapchat?<p>I’m genuinely confused what I’m looking at and feel old right now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paxys</author><text>&gt; Kind of interesting avenue for publishing content on the web that isn’t tied to any specific platform.<p>Except that the protocol will be designed not for the benefit of the web in general but rather for Google to maximize its ad revenue.<p>I&#x27;m all for sites doing new and interesting things, but just like AMP I&#x27;m wary when these innovations are being driven by a single company that has monopolistic power over website discoverability and profitability.</text></comment> |
39,035,667 | 39,035,558 | 1 | 3 | 39,034,835 | train | <story><title>Coming to Grips with Apple's Seemingly Unshakable Sense of Entitlement</title><url>https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/coming_to_grips_with_apples_seemingly_unshakable_sense_of_app_store_entitlement</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rmbyrro</author><text>I&#x27;m in no way defending Apple&#x27;s stance, but this is a misrepresentation.<p>They&#x27;re only demanding a cut if the lead resulting in an external sales comes from the App.<p>If you market your app on a website and sell there, you don&#x27;t have to pay Apple anything. If you market inside the appstore, attract leads there and sell, you have to pay Apple.</text></item><item><author>rpmisms</author><text>There is simply no way around the fact that Apple demanding a cut of sales on an external platform is ridiculous. Steam does not do this. Google does not do this. This would be absolutely absurd for anyone else in any market to do, and this will likely be exhibit C at Apple&#x27;s inevitable antitrust trial.<p>Edit:<p>Re-reading, and I wish that the article was longer. Of course Apple doesn&#x27;t want to allow side-loading, but they&#x27;re going to have to eventually, so why not do it proactively and in a way that allows third-party apps to be extra-sandboxed or reviewed? Oh right, because they&#x27;re Apple. I appreciate the methodology, but a touch of openness will not kill their profits or trust level.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>djfdat</author><text>I would argue that, once the app is installed, the lead for the purchase is being generated by the app, not by Apple or the App Store, and therefore Apple should not be taking a commision for the lead. They could still charge a transaction fee if using Apple Pay. And if users were able to purchase things through the App Store (Apps or Items in the App), then I would consider those to be leads generated by Apple, and applicable to their commission terms.<p>It&#x27;s crazy to think that anything you do inside your app between you and your customer is subject to Apple forcefully inserting themselves into the relationship, and then demanding payment.<p>Apple&#x27;s marketplace is inside the App Store, not inside the apps that are developed independent of them. You could argue that the apps are not developed independently, as they could (not by choice) use Apple&#x27;s APIs, but I feel that that is what the $99&#x2F;yr developer fee entitles the developer to use.<p>To the general problem; I really hope Apple stops being anti-consumer and anti-developer using these landlord tactics. The (second?) richest company in the world does not need to take these extra commissions. Without these developers, there would be no App Store, and it&#x27;s in Apple&#x27;s best interest for them to thrive. Apple is making the calculated decision of how much they can take off the top while still having developers make good products for their platform. Yes, their investors will not be happy that a source of income is being lost, but it&#x27;s up to Apple to convince them that the good will from consumers and developers will provide more value through other means than that loss of income.</text></comment> | <story><title>Coming to Grips with Apple's Seemingly Unshakable Sense of Entitlement</title><url>https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/coming_to_grips_with_apples_seemingly_unshakable_sense_of_app_store_entitlement</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rmbyrro</author><text>I&#x27;m in no way defending Apple&#x27;s stance, but this is a misrepresentation.<p>They&#x27;re only demanding a cut if the lead resulting in an external sales comes from the App.<p>If you market your app on a website and sell there, you don&#x27;t have to pay Apple anything. If you market inside the appstore, attract leads there and sell, you have to pay Apple.</text></item><item><author>rpmisms</author><text>There is simply no way around the fact that Apple demanding a cut of sales on an external platform is ridiculous. Steam does not do this. Google does not do this. This would be absolutely absurd for anyone else in any market to do, and this will likely be exhibit C at Apple&#x27;s inevitable antitrust trial.<p>Edit:<p>Re-reading, and I wish that the article was longer. Of course Apple doesn&#x27;t want to allow side-loading, but they&#x27;re going to have to eventually, so why not do it proactively and in a way that allows third-party apps to be extra-sandboxed or reviewed? Oh right, because they&#x27;re Apple. I appreciate the methodology, but a touch of openness will not kill their profits or trust level.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>leereeves</author><text>&gt; If you market your app on a website and sell there<p>...then you still have to put your app on the App Store and pay Apple a commission, because they don&#x27;t allow sideloading.<p>Which clearly proves that you aren&#x27;t paying Apple for marketing or lead generation, you&#x27;re paying for access to the app market. If current antitrust law (mostly written a hundred years ago) doesn&#x27;t cover that, it&#x27;s time to update the laws.</text></comment> |
22,774,679 | 22,769,460 | 1 | 2 | 22,768,548 | train | <story><title>SpaceX loses its third Starship prototype during a cryogenic test</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/spacex-loses-its-third-starship-prototype-during-a-cryogenic-test/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dwaltrip</author><text>It&#x27;s funny how extreme the reactions are here. It&#x27;s either the end of the world or exactly as planned. Both are nonsense.<p>To me, this looks like it was definitely a noteworthy fuckup, but in the big picture it doesn&#x27;t seem to be a major setback -- nothing like the recent Boeing issues. That is, as long as a pattern of such events doesn&#x27;t develop. SpaceX continues to push the industry forward in interesting and exciting ways.<p>To continue the arm-chair quarterbacking... I feel like a moderate decrease in process aversion would be a good response to this incident. Reduce the chance of similar future fuckups without slowing down too much.</text></comment> | <story><title>SpaceX loses its third Starship prototype during a cryogenic test</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/spacex-loses-its-third-starship-prototype-during-a-cryogenic-test/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mabbo</author><text>What I love about SpaceX is that they truly take on the start-up approach of fast iteration, in complete opposite to most of their competitors.<p>This is a silly loss, as it sounds like it was a test procedure error and not a valuable experimental failure. But even then, how much is lost? The rocket was built on-site in a tent, welding some cheap steel together. They&#x27;ve got more test articles being built. The engine is probably salvageable. This is a month or two set-back at worst.<p>And just like when our software fails in a silly way, I&#x27;ll bet you there will be new automatic tests, procedures, etc, so that this kind of error can&#x27;t happen again. They&#x27;ll learn, iterate, and continue to move fast (and break things).<p>With nearly all of their competitors, any kind of failure like this would be millions of dollars lost, months or years of setback. This fundamental difference is why SpaceX is slowly coming to dominate the industry.</text></comment> |
30,420,960 | 30,420,804 | 1 | 3 | 30,418,842 | train | <story><title>An elaborate con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60387324</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>awb</author><text>The article implies that the scam never made any money which is perhaps just as shocking as the con itself.<p>I ran a real web agency and clients almost never asked for references and were happy to pay up to 50% of a 5-figure project total upfront to get started, even from remote or overseas clients that I never met in person who found me through SEO.<p>Crazy that they couldn’t land even 1 contract with whatever stolen portfolio examples they desired.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lordnacho</author><text>The article says they hired sales people as well. Maybe that was the plan? Use &quot;credit&quot; to get the product and the buyers, ball gets rolling, zero to one done.<p>But it seems a bit nuts too. It actually takes effort to run a business with a bunch of people, and more if you have to remember all the lies you told each person.<p>Perhaps what it really says is that success appears so superficial these days, a random chancer thought he was close enough to having all the pieces that he gave it a shot. It&#x27;s only a few steps away from &quot;this equity will be worth a million in 4 years&quot;.</text></comment> | <story><title>An elaborate con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60387324</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>awb</author><text>The article implies that the scam never made any money which is perhaps just as shocking as the con itself.<p>I ran a real web agency and clients almost never asked for references and were happy to pay up to 50% of a 5-figure project total upfront to get started, even from remote or overseas clients that I never met in person who found me through SEO.<p>Crazy that they couldn’t land even 1 contract with whatever stolen portfolio examples they desired.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>itronitron</author><text>Very weird to hire people to do work, and especially convincing them to leave their current job, when you don&#x27;t have any work that needs to be done.<p>Having said that, a variant of this type of behavior is not uncommon in large organizations where &#x27;go-getters&#x27; can self-manifest by creating chatter and finding underlings. But in that case there is already a revenue flow to support time and attention.</text></comment> |
15,670,214 | 15,670,232 | 1 | 2 | 15,669,262 | train | <story><title>“We have obtained fully functional JTAG for Intel CSME via USB DCI”</title><url>https://twitter.com/h0t_max/status/928269320064450560</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WhitneyLand</author><text>One way to think of ME is, we all woke up one day and discovered we have had high resolution night vision spy cams installed in our bedrooms.<p>The next realization is there is no way to turn them off or remove them. It’s posisble even moving won’t help.<p>And yet we really don’t seem to care much. Lesser issues generate national outrage and high volumes of press coverage. Why?<p>HN may be uniquely positioned to show us the answer. Take a community of people with generally above average interest and&#x2F;or knowledge in this stuff, and the comments are filled with questions asking what the hell ME even is.<p>Apparently, ME is the perfect combination of opaque, obtuse, and obscure. It’s not rocket science, but complicated enough it’s hard to explain well quickly. It’s easy to be a highly technical person yet never have the need to cross paths with the subject. There has been some press, some activity, but all of that is simultaneously dampened for the same reasons.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fragmede</author><text>&gt; And yet we really don’t seem to care much.<p>I know we&#x27;re used to &quot;Internet speed&quot; and the tweet happened an entire 24 hours ago, but give it a bit of time before declaring it dead. Wired and Vice need a second to write it up, and see if it hits the mainstream <i>before</i> declaring the issue ignored.<p>Not saying it <i>will</i> get picked up, though I sure hope it does, but as you point out, it&#x27;s a bit obscure and takes some explaining.<p>Still, there are numerous reports that the Facebook app on your phone <i>listens to every word you say</i> to show you ads for things you were talking aboutm but on HN and other web forums, there are always an element of disbelief. We may believe that it must be something else - correlation to web searches from the same IP, but there&#x27;s never been proof one way or the other. (A Facebook exec&#x27;s claim doesn&#x27;t count as proof.)<p>So there&#x27;s a section of people that believe they <i>already have</i> high resolution recording devices that we take into to bed. What&#x27;s one more?<p>(Typing this, very gratefully, from an ARM Chromebook.)</text></comment> | <story><title>“We have obtained fully functional JTAG for Intel CSME via USB DCI”</title><url>https://twitter.com/h0t_max/status/928269320064450560</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WhitneyLand</author><text>One way to think of ME is, we all woke up one day and discovered we have had high resolution night vision spy cams installed in our bedrooms.<p>The next realization is there is no way to turn them off or remove them. It’s posisble even moving won’t help.<p>And yet we really don’t seem to care much. Lesser issues generate national outrage and high volumes of press coverage. Why?<p>HN may be uniquely positioned to show us the answer. Take a community of people with generally above average interest and&#x2F;or knowledge in this stuff, and the comments are filled with questions asking what the hell ME even is.<p>Apparently, ME is the perfect combination of opaque, obtuse, and obscure. It’s not rocket science, but complicated enough it’s hard to explain well quickly. It’s easy to be a highly technical person yet never have the need to cross paths with the subject. There has been some press, some activity, but all of that is simultaneously dampened for the same reasons.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>d0mine</author><text>&quot;opaque, obtuse, and obscure&quot; is a red herring.<p>Imagine, Intel were a Russian company. Tomorrow, there would be a simple and clear [screaming] headline similar to &quot;Russians hacked the election&quot; (general public doesn&#x27;t need to know or understand how the network, computers or elections actually work). The day after tomorrow it would be illegal to buy anything Intel.</text></comment> |
15,343,128 | 15,342,655 | 1 | 3 | 15,341,566 | train | <story><title>Technical and non-technical tips for rocking your coding interview</title><url>https://github.com/yangshun/tech-interview-handbook?utm_campaign=explore-email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=weekly</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kafkaesq</author><text><i>2. What happens between you typing a URL into your browser address bar, hitting enter and seeing a web page?</i><p>&quot;What happens when I&#x27;m asked a question like X? I spout a mutated form of some canned response I cribbed from a list I found on HN a while back. Because I hear that&#x27;s how you&#x27;re supposed to &#x27;rock your coding interview&#x27;, these days.&quot;<p><i>3. What are the things you should consider if you were writing your own database server?</i><p>&quot;Look, you know as well as I that this job has nothing -- as in, <i>nothing whatsoever</i> -- to do with actually building production-grade database servers. Or anything even remotely analogous to it. Debugging that tangled mess of poorly conceived, never-reviewed JSON APIs left behind by the other developer (while you were pestering them about &#x27;disruption&#x27; and &#x27;just needing to get this thing to market&#x27;) is more like it.&quot;<p>&quot;But hey, since you&#x27;re playing that game, I can play too: here&#x27;s a bunch of catchphrases like &#x27;non-blocking I&#x2F;O, sharding, blah blah.&#x27; Because I hear that&#x27;s the killer answer to give to questions like these. And BTW, if you really think that people Michael Widenius or Salvatore Sanfilippo would be interviewing for this job, then your problems are way bigger than I could ever hope to help you with.&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wh-uws</author><text>Some permutation of this comment is made litterally everytime any coding interview resource is posted.<p>I&#x27;m sorry man no cares that you and everyone who upvoted this comment are Super God programmers with 30 offers everytime they say they are looking who can afford to tell every company where they can stuff their interview.<p>Us mere mortals are willing to do whatever it takes to get our dream gigs.<p>These guides are largely targeted are getting into the some of the best, thus pickiest and most selective, companies in the world.<p>And if getting on means being a dsalgo monkey in front of a whiteboard for a few hours so be it.<p>Let us share interview tips in peace please.<p>This &quot;hurr durr technical interviews suck&quot; but I have no real alternative and have never built a company nor seen any really flourish at the top without this is monotonous.<p>Put your money where your mouth is and start and only support companies that skip these kinds of interviews.<p>Like these fine people<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;poteto&#x2F;hiring-without-whiteboards" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;poteto&#x2F;hiring-without-whiteboards</a><p>But the snarky comments are beyond annoying.</text></comment> | <story><title>Technical and non-technical tips for rocking your coding interview</title><url>https://github.com/yangshun/tech-interview-handbook?utm_campaign=explore-email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=weekly</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kafkaesq</author><text><i>2. What happens between you typing a URL into your browser address bar, hitting enter and seeing a web page?</i><p>&quot;What happens when I&#x27;m asked a question like X? I spout a mutated form of some canned response I cribbed from a list I found on HN a while back. Because I hear that&#x27;s how you&#x27;re supposed to &#x27;rock your coding interview&#x27;, these days.&quot;<p><i>3. What are the things you should consider if you were writing your own database server?</i><p>&quot;Look, you know as well as I that this job has nothing -- as in, <i>nothing whatsoever</i> -- to do with actually building production-grade database servers. Or anything even remotely analogous to it. Debugging that tangled mess of poorly conceived, never-reviewed JSON APIs left behind by the other developer (while you were pestering them about &#x27;disruption&#x27; and &#x27;just needing to get this thing to market&#x27;) is more like it.&quot;<p>&quot;But hey, since you&#x27;re playing that game, I can play too: here&#x27;s a bunch of catchphrases like &#x27;non-blocking I&#x2F;O, sharding, blah blah.&#x27; Because I hear that&#x27;s the killer answer to give to questions like these. And BTW, if you really think that people Michael Widenius or Salvatore Sanfilippo would be interviewing for this job, then your problems are way bigger than I could ever hope to help you with.&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ptero</author><text>I think many technical interviews are simply trying to assess whether the candidate has his head screwed on straight and the ability to do basic engineering. As such, the specific topics are practically irrelevant.<p>At least that&#x27;s what I try to do when I end up interviewing someone. For example, can he suggest what sensors would be good for a Lego robot that would knock a tennis ball off the ping pong table without itself falling off? Can he describe the logic? How would he test this? How long, on average, would it take? What position of robot and ball would give the worst case performance (success or time)? His job will not involve Lego robots, but IME the person who can give sane answers on those would do a lot better than a coder who knows one toolkit well and nothing else.</text></comment> |
12,781,410 | 12,781,658 | 1 | 2 | 12,775,400 | train | <story><title>Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent</title><url>http://qz.com/167887/germany-has-one-of-the-worlds-lowest-homeownership-rates/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cm2187</author><text>&gt; <i>Namely, it is very difficult to raise a family of four in a mutual fund.</i><p>It is difficult to ski without skis. But most people don&#x27;t buy skis, they rent them. Renting skis do not mean that no skis will be manufactured. There is a need for house, houses will be constructed, irrespective of whether people will over-bid on them or not.<p>&gt; <i>A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness</i><p>Stocks and savings are equally a safety net against loss of primary income.<p>&gt; <i>Real estate can be borrowed against</i><p>Borrowing against your home to finance your business is no different than selling some stocks to invest into your business. In both cases you are using previous savings.<p>&gt; <i>I think there&#x27;s a lot of sense in NOT taxing one&#x27;s first home</i><p>Why? Again you are assuming that the alternative to owning a home is renting one and having no savings. The cost of housing (renting) would be much lower in a country without massive over-bidding on property. There is no reason to give a tax benefit to this particular type of investment (property) over any other types of investment.</text></item><item><author>riprowan</author><text>&gt; There is no reason to favor individuals investing into an unproductive investment (property) over productive investments (stocks and bonds).<p>I beg to differ. I think that real estate, like farming, has critical societal benefits that are worthwhile to develop and maintain.<p>Namely, it is very difficult to raise a family of four in a mutual fund. Investing in a home may is absolutely &quot;productive.&quot;<p>See, there are significant societal benefits to home ownership that you are not considering. For example:<p>1. A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness for an entire family and many of their social circles. Even if all of them are unemployed, all of them have a roof over their heads.<p>2. A paid-off home frees up cash flow. It allows the owner to divert his earnings into other activities or investments or reduce the amount he has to earn monthly.<p>3. Real estate can be borrowed against. Try that with stocks. If you are an entrepreneur, your home is likely the asset you will use to acquire bank financing for your business.<p>4. With unskilled &#x2F; low-skilled jobs vanishing left and right, homebuilding is one of the few markets which still relies entirely on a giant low-skilled workforce. It&#x27;s one of the few sectors that can keep a lot of people productively employed. I think there are valid arguments against stimulating homebuilding to reduce unemployment among low-skill workers, but there is nevertheless a societal logic here.<p>5. In a time when wealth is centralizing as never before, investments in real estate distributes wealth locally. I think there are valid arguments against public policy to distribute wealth, but there is a societal logic here.<p>6. Finally: taxing a home is very counterproductive to the well-being of the middle class and the poor. I&#x27;m sure in Germany the interest on a mortgage isn&#x27;t tax deductible as you say, but I&#x27;d also guess that steps are taken to refund the property taxes for the lower classes. Otherwise you simply tax the poor out of their homes - a form of confiscation.<p>I think there&#x27;s a lot of sense in <i>NOT</i> taxing one&#x27;s first home, at least not if it&#x27;s below a certain reasonably high value. All things considered, home ownership is empowering. A second home or income-generating rental property is a different story, but one&#x27;s domicile should be unconfiscatable by the state.</text></item><item><author>cm2187</author><text>So in Germany, the interest on a mortgage is non tax deductible. The article doesn&#x27;t mention it but I understand that property owners are also liable for capital gain tax if they hold the property less than 10 years.<p>I think that makes sense. There is no reason to favor individuals investing into an unproductive investment (property) over productive investments (stocks and bonds, which enable companies to raise money to start new projects, create jobs, etc). Over-borrowing to bid the maximum amount one can to buy a nineteenth century house doesn&#x27;t create any job for anyone, it just transfers wealth to the hands of the seller.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pixl97</author><text>&gt;Stocks and savings are equally a safety net against loss of primary income.<p>Until you have a 2007 collapse again (predicted by some to happen again soon), where you both lose your job and a massive amount in stocks. Savings have been at extremely low rates for a long period of time in the US.</text></comment> | <story><title>Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent</title><url>http://qz.com/167887/germany-has-one-of-the-worlds-lowest-homeownership-rates/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cm2187</author><text>&gt; <i>Namely, it is very difficult to raise a family of four in a mutual fund.</i><p>It is difficult to ski without skis. But most people don&#x27;t buy skis, they rent them. Renting skis do not mean that no skis will be manufactured. There is a need for house, houses will be constructed, irrespective of whether people will over-bid on them or not.<p>&gt; <i>A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness</i><p>Stocks and savings are equally a safety net against loss of primary income.<p>&gt; <i>Real estate can be borrowed against</i><p>Borrowing against your home to finance your business is no different than selling some stocks to invest into your business. In both cases you are using previous savings.<p>&gt; <i>I think there&#x27;s a lot of sense in NOT taxing one&#x27;s first home</i><p>Why? Again you are assuming that the alternative to owning a home is renting one and having no savings. The cost of housing (renting) would be much lower in a country without massive over-bidding on property. There is no reason to give a tax benefit to this particular type of investment (property) over any other types of investment.</text></item><item><author>riprowan</author><text>&gt; There is no reason to favor individuals investing into an unproductive investment (property) over productive investments (stocks and bonds).<p>I beg to differ. I think that real estate, like farming, has critical societal benefits that are worthwhile to develop and maintain.<p>Namely, it is very difficult to raise a family of four in a mutual fund. Investing in a home may is absolutely &quot;productive.&quot;<p>See, there are significant societal benefits to home ownership that you are not considering. For example:<p>1. A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness for an entire family and many of their social circles. Even if all of them are unemployed, all of them have a roof over their heads.<p>2. A paid-off home frees up cash flow. It allows the owner to divert his earnings into other activities or investments or reduce the amount he has to earn monthly.<p>3. Real estate can be borrowed against. Try that with stocks. If you are an entrepreneur, your home is likely the asset you will use to acquire bank financing for your business.<p>4. With unskilled &#x2F; low-skilled jobs vanishing left and right, homebuilding is one of the few markets which still relies entirely on a giant low-skilled workforce. It&#x27;s one of the few sectors that can keep a lot of people productively employed. I think there are valid arguments against stimulating homebuilding to reduce unemployment among low-skill workers, but there is nevertheless a societal logic here.<p>5. In a time when wealth is centralizing as never before, investments in real estate distributes wealth locally. I think there are valid arguments against public policy to distribute wealth, but there is a societal logic here.<p>6. Finally: taxing a home is very counterproductive to the well-being of the middle class and the poor. I&#x27;m sure in Germany the interest on a mortgage isn&#x27;t tax deductible as you say, but I&#x27;d also guess that steps are taken to refund the property taxes for the lower classes. Otherwise you simply tax the poor out of their homes - a form of confiscation.<p>I think there&#x27;s a lot of sense in <i>NOT</i> taxing one&#x27;s first home, at least not if it&#x27;s below a certain reasonably high value. All things considered, home ownership is empowering. A second home or income-generating rental property is a different story, but one&#x27;s domicile should be unconfiscatable by the state.</text></item><item><author>cm2187</author><text>So in Germany, the interest on a mortgage is non tax deductible. The article doesn&#x27;t mention it but I understand that property owners are also liable for capital gain tax if they hold the property less than 10 years.<p>I think that makes sense. There is no reason to favor individuals investing into an unproductive investment (property) over productive investments (stocks and bonds, which enable companies to raise money to start new projects, create jobs, etc). Over-borrowing to bid the maximum amount one can to buy a nineteenth century house doesn&#x27;t create any job for anyone, it just transfers wealth to the hands of the seller.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dasmoth</author><text>&gt; &gt; A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness
&gt; Stocks and savings are equally a safety net against loss of primary income.<p>Landlords and letting agencies can be kind-of funny beasts, they&#x27;re not necessarily happy to have an unemployed guy as a tenant even if he owns a pile of shares.</text></comment> |
16,260,234 | 16,260,383 | 1 | 3 | 16,249,975 | train | <story><title>How Schopenhauer’s thought can illuminate a midlife crisis</title><url>https://aeon.co/ideas/how-schopenhauers-thought-can-illuminate-a-midlife-crisis</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>aphextron</author><text>&gt;It is no accident that the young and the old are generally more satisfied with life than those in middle age.<p>I was sitting in my car looking at a stop sign the other day, and all of the sudden it started shaking uncontrollably. Immediately I knew it must be a child shaking it, as there was simply no other possibility. No other person would just stand there and shake a street sign for no purpose beyond its&#x27; own sake. There is no benefit, no reward, no ultimate reasoning beyond &#x27;I want to shake this street sign&quot;. As I looked down, I was right, and the kid was grinning like crazy.<p>We lose the ability to think like that as adults. It&#x27;s not even that we <i>have</i> the thought and then consciously decide against it; we&#x27;re incapable of even conceiving it. To just &#x27;play&#x27; in life. And I think it&#x27;s the most important aspect of our humanity. It is the very genesis of all our innovative and creative ideas, yet we treat it as something to be expelled in the process of &quot;growing up&quot;.</text></comment> | <story><title>How Schopenhauer’s thought can illuminate a midlife crisis</title><url>https://aeon.co/ideas/how-schopenhauers-thought-can-illuminate-a-midlife-crisis</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dmix</author><text>Years ago I accidentally came across a really good book that explores Schopenhauer&#x27;s fascinating worldview through the lens of psychiatry and personal development, called &quot;The Schopenhauer Cure&quot;, which got me hooked on Schopenhauer (and a lesser extent Nietzsche):
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Schopenhauer-Cure-Novel-Irvin-Yalom&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0060938102&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Schopenhauer-Cure-Novel-Irvin-Yalom&#x2F;d...</a><p>I highly recommend it to people who would consider themselves on the logical&#x2F;intelligent end of the spectrum and who tend to pursue their work, accomplishments, and gaining knowledge above all else in life.<p>It&#x27;s also a great soft introduction to his work, without having to read dense 19th century philosophy.<p>One of the most useful lessons I learn from Schopenhauer was to look beyond structuring your life around trying to be &quot;happy&quot; and avoiding being &quot;sad&quot;, and instead seek some deeper meaning beyond some fleeting emotional chemical reactions in your brain. It makes me laugh now when<p>I now laugh when I hear people say &quot;money doesn&#x27;t make you happy&quot;, not so much for the money part, but the fallacy of using an emotion like &quot;being happy&quot; as the measure for a quality life.</text></comment> |
3,486,213 | 3,486,116 | 1 | 2 | 3,484,164 | train | <story><title>Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it</title><url>http://broadmuse.com/piracy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>VMG</author><text>What happens if everybody eats mince pie on Christmas? Life goes on as usual.<p>What happens if nobody pays for a copy of Windows 8? There won't be a Windows 9.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem</a></text></item><item><author>alextingle</author><text>The author has a fundamental misunderstanding of what laws mean, and how they change.<p>In England, it is illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas day? Why? Because centuries ago England was governed by a despotic, fundamentalist Christian regime that did not approve of Christmas celebrations.<p>Should I then refrain from eating the mince pie? No. I and millions of my fellow countrymen eat mince pies, and most are completely unaware of the existence of Cromwell's mean spirited law.<p>Why is this crime tolerated by the authorities? Because they do not go about like Robocop, enforcing laws as though they are some kind of computer program. Instead they understand that laws are a crude human attempt to model <i>current</i> social norms. Those social norms change over time and often the written laws don't keep up with the pace of that change.<p>The Internet has made copyright law outdated. Social norms are in the process of adjusting to the new situation. It's perfectly rational and <i>normal</i> for activists to hasten that process by defying the law, and encouraging others to do likewise. Obviously, the copyright lobby will react by trying to strengthen the laws, and step up enforcement. That's fair enough too.<p>Which side will win? Well opinions vary, but to suggest that breaking the law is in itself an immoral and irredeemable act, is naive.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>comicjk</author><text>Since it seems to be impossible, from a technical standpoint, to prevent piracy, then maybe we have to accept the free rider problem and produce intellectual property on a public basis. One option would be a grant system, as is used in scientific research (solving the free rider "problem" that anyone can read your paper and use your research).</text></comment> | <story><title>Piracy - You can't have your cake and eat it</title><url>http://broadmuse.com/piracy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>VMG</author><text>What happens if everybody eats mince pie on Christmas? Life goes on as usual.<p>What happens if nobody pays for a copy of Windows 8? There won't be a Windows 9.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem</a></text></item><item><author>alextingle</author><text>The author has a fundamental misunderstanding of what laws mean, and how they change.<p>In England, it is illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas day? Why? Because centuries ago England was governed by a despotic, fundamentalist Christian regime that did not approve of Christmas celebrations.<p>Should I then refrain from eating the mince pie? No. I and millions of my fellow countrymen eat mince pies, and most are completely unaware of the existence of Cromwell's mean spirited law.<p>Why is this crime tolerated by the authorities? Because they do not go about like Robocop, enforcing laws as though they are some kind of computer program. Instead they understand that laws are a crude human attempt to model <i>current</i> social norms. Those social norms change over time and often the written laws don't keep up with the pace of that change.<p>The Internet has made copyright law outdated. Social norms are in the process of adjusting to the new situation. It's perfectly rational and <i>normal</i> for activists to hasten that process by defying the law, and encouraging others to do likewise. Obviously, the copyright lobby will react by trying to strengthen the laws, and step up enforcement. That's fair enough too.<p>Which side will win? Well opinions vary, but to suggest that breaking the law is in itself an immoral and irredeemable act, is naive.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DrHankPym</author><text>You say that like it's a problem.<p>Look at it this way: Does Ubuntu or OS X suffer from being pirated? Not really. Windows needs to figure this out for themselves.</text></comment> |
2,638,128 | 2,637,804 | 1 | 2 | 2,637,691 | train | <story><title>Supreme Court rules against Microsoft in major patent case</title><url>http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/06/supreme-court-rules-against-microsoft.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>haberman</author><text>To me, the scariest part was:<p><i>U.S. solicitor general, which represents the federal government, filed a brief in support of i4i, saying that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office should not be second-guessed by a jury.</i><p>The Patent and Trademark Office absolutely should be second-guessed by a jury. Judges and juries are the only sanity-check the whole system has at this point!</text></comment> | <story><title>Supreme Court rules against Microsoft in major patent case</title><url>http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/06/supreme-court-rules-against-microsoft.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>reader5000</author><text>It's so ridiculous theyre essentially patenting generic syntaxes for representing documents that anybody "skilled in the art" would come up with in 5 minutes. It would have been much better for small developers if Microsoft won this. It's funny how this is treated as a win for the little guys, who can't afford massive patent portfolios nor litigation battles like Microsoft.</text></comment> |
10,852,312 | 10,850,776 | 1 | 3 | 10,850,084 | train | <story><title>Neal Stephenson: Why I Am a Sociomediapath (2015)</title><url>http://www.nealstephenson.com/social-media.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasode</author><text>This essay might be deeper than it first suggests.<p>My first interpretation: knee-jerk reaction after reading it that it&#x27;s a very typical lament about social media getting in the way of doing more important things in life. There are thousands of blog posts repeating this message and this variation of it happens to be on HN because it&#x27;s from N.S.<p>My second interpretation: I lingered on his chosen word &quot;<i>sociomediapath</i>&quot;. Since it&#x27;s a riff on &quot;sociopath&quot;, I think what he&#x27;s saying here is that he&#x27;s going to <i>give the impression</i> that he&#x27;s a social media hound but behind the scenes, he&#x27;s doesn&#x27;t care. Likewise, a sociopath like Ted Bundy on the surface can shake your hand and charm you with his smiles but underneath it all, he&#x27;ll kill you.<p>N.S. has to be a &quot;sociopath&quot; in media because he&#x27;s a published author. He <i>can&#x27;t</i> go full Howard Hughes detached-from-society-mode and therefore, has to at least fake out the public with a social media presence.<p>Maybe that means there&#x27;s a need for a web service that generates random and periodic posts on behalf of users to give the appearance of &quot;Facebook normality&quot;. E.g. the website service posts random inspirational quotes from dead people or TIL from random wikipedia pages. You never have to log into Facebook and yet it seems like you&#x27;re &quot;with it&quot;.<p>I believe other celebrities accomplish this with &quot;public relations&quot; staff. The PR firm makes the celebrity look &quot;connected&quot; to the fans via Reddit AMAs and Twitter updates but in reality, he&#x2F;she really isn&#x27;t.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Analemma_</author><text>&gt; E.g. the website service posts random inspirational quotes from dead people or TIL from random wikipedia pages. You never have to log into Facebook and yet it seems like you&#x27;re &quot;with it&quot;.<p>For a large percentage of my Facebook friends, if they were silently replaced with bots like this, I doubt I&#x27;d ever notice. Sigh.</text></comment> | <story><title>Neal Stephenson: Why I Am a Sociomediapath (2015)</title><url>http://www.nealstephenson.com/social-media.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasode</author><text>This essay might be deeper than it first suggests.<p>My first interpretation: knee-jerk reaction after reading it that it&#x27;s a very typical lament about social media getting in the way of doing more important things in life. There are thousands of blog posts repeating this message and this variation of it happens to be on HN because it&#x27;s from N.S.<p>My second interpretation: I lingered on his chosen word &quot;<i>sociomediapath</i>&quot;. Since it&#x27;s a riff on &quot;sociopath&quot;, I think what he&#x27;s saying here is that he&#x27;s going to <i>give the impression</i> that he&#x27;s a social media hound but behind the scenes, he&#x27;s doesn&#x27;t care. Likewise, a sociopath like Ted Bundy on the surface can shake your hand and charm you with his smiles but underneath it all, he&#x27;ll kill you.<p>N.S. has to be a &quot;sociopath&quot; in media because he&#x27;s a published author. He <i>can&#x27;t</i> go full Howard Hughes detached-from-society-mode and therefore, has to at least fake out the public with a social media presence.<p>Maybe that means there&#x27;s a need for a web service that generates random and periodic posts on behalf of users to give the appearance of &quot;Facebook normality&quot;. E.g. the website service posts random inspirational quotes from dead people or TIL from random wikipedia pages. You never have to log into Facebook and yet it seems like you&#x27;re &quot;with it&quot;.<p>I believe other celebrities accomplish this with &quot;public relations&quot; staff. The PR firm makes the celebrity look &quot;connected&quot; to the fans via Reddit AMAs and Twitter updates but in reality, he&#x2F;she really isn&#x27;t.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>digi_owl</author><text>Makes me think of a recent talk at ccc.de about libusb, and how there was a &quot;hostile takeover&quot; in part fueled by the maintainer failing to push out new releases even though there was activity on the tracker (he wanted to make sure the new stuff worked before releasing, others saw it as the project stagnating).</text></comment> |
13,377,180 | 13,376,347 | 1 | 2 | 13,375,543 | train | <story><title>Integrating GTA V into Universe</title><url>https://openai.com/blog/GTA-V-plus-Universe/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>empath75</author><text>I&#x27;m not sure I would like to live in a world with autonomous vehicles that were trained in Grand Theft Auto.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rawnlq</author><text>I don&#x27;t think anyone is thinking of training on GTA then reusing it on a real car. It&#x27;s just a convenient way to work out the algorithms and architecture in a controlled way that might then work out with the real world data.<p>But I do think GTA&#x27;s unrealistic physics engine[1] will hurt it for simulating the cases we care most about (accidents, lost of traction, etc)<p>[1] GTA is a regular submission on &#x2F;r&#x2F;GamePhysics which collects funny game physics glitches: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;GamePhysics&#x2F;search?q=GTA&amp;sort=top&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;t=all" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;GamePhysics&#x2F;search?q=GTA&amp;sort=top&amp;r...</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;GamePhysics&#x2F;search?q=GTAV&amp;sort=top&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;t=all" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;GamePhysics&#x2F;search?q=GTAV&amp;sort=top&amp;...</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCy332GE6lcMVP612IUs7ODw&#x2F;videos?sort=p&amp;view=0&amp;flow=grid" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCy332GE6lcMVP612IUs7ODw&#x2F;vid...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Integrating GTA V into Universe</title><url>https://openai.com/blog/GTA-V-plus-Universe/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>empath75</author><text>I&#x27;m not sure I would like to live in a world with autonomous vehicles that were trained in Grand Theft Auto.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>midolzzzz</author><text>Sounds a bit crazy until you look at it from the perspective of being able to visually observe how an AI driver would react to erratic behavior like pedestrians suddenly running onto the road or conditions like gunfire, accidents, etc. I think this is just a small step in the positive direction of AI development.</text></comment> |
15,767,131 | 15,766,400 | 1 | 2 | 15,765,016 | train | <story><title>Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-italy-strike/workers-at-amazons-main-italian-site-to-hold-first-strike-on-black-friday-idUSKBN1DN1DS</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasode</author><text><i>&gt;For the average joe who just wants to go to work and get a paycheck, the bigger picture is often lost.</i><p>Isn&#x27;t it possible the armchair talking heads like us are the ones missing the bigger picture and the <i>actual workers</i> are the ones who actually get it?<p>Let&#x27;s consider the Boeing workers in South Carolina:<p>- 2009-09 74% of employees vote against the union and <i>decertify</i> it[1]<p>- 2009-10 Boeing breaks ground on new South Carolina plant to build 787 airplanes[2]<p>- 2017-02 again, 74% of employees vote against IAM union representation[3]<p>The &quot;uncertainty&quot; and &quot;doubt&quot; in &quot;FUD&quot;? The South Carolina workers are quite <i>certain</i> and have <i>no doubt</i> that in 2009, Seattle lost the extra 787 assembly work and it was given to SC workers without the union.<p>It&#x27;s not irrational that SC workers <i>fear</i> the loss of jobs in Seattle could happen to them. The upcoming 797[4] model is in the works. It&#x27;s not irrational for South Carolina workers to think that unionizing for better wages will move that 797 production elsewhere. (E.g. Seattle may end up losing <i>all</i> of the 787 production.[5])<p><i>&gt;Well that was 50 years ago, </i><p>Well, the struggle &amp; benefits gained 50 years ago is an abstraction. The events of 2009 are very fresh and real in the minds of workers.<p>Voting &quot;YES&quot; for a union doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean you get a wage increase. It means (1) you <i>might</i> get a wage increase or (2) you might have no job.<p>How does a worker properly weigh those possible outcomes?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;boeing-aerospace&#x2F;boeing-charleston-decertifies-machinists-union&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;boeing-aerospace&#x2F;boein...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&#x2F;id&#x2F;33521235&#x2F;ns&#x2F;business-us_business&#x2F;t&#x2F;boeing-chooses-sc-new-assembly-line&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&#x2F;id&#x2F;33521235&#x2F;ns&#x2F;business-us_business&#x2F;t...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;boeing-aerospace&#x2F;boeings-south-carolina-workers-resoundingly-defeat-union&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;boeing-aerospace&#x2F;boein...</a><p>[4] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;money.cnn.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;06&#x2F;20&#x2F;news&#x2F;companies&#x2F;boeing-797-paris-first-peek&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;money.cnn.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;06&#x2F;20&#x2F;news&#x2F;companies&#x2F;boeing-797-pa...</a><p>[5] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.heraldnet.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;future-of-boeings-787-seems-secure-but-maybe-not-in-everett&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.heraldnet.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;future-of-boeings-787-seems-se...</a></text></item><item><author>tw04</author><text>&gt;This pattern isn&#x27;t as simple to dismiss as &quot;anti-union FUD&quot;, especially since it&#x27;s seen among people who are already union members in closed shops.<p>You act as though anti-union FUD can&#x27;t affect members. That&#x27;s kind of ridiculous... if it didn&#x27;t affect MEMBERS as well as non-members, what would be the point?<p>If I&#x27;m a less-educated union member who has no concept of what life was like before unions, and constantly hear that unions just take my money while providing no benefit, I&#x27;m probably likely to be swayed. What&#x27;s the union going to do? Tell me about how 50 years ago companies would literally put my life at risk because there was no downside for them. And then the people financing the anti-union movement are spewing &quot;Well that was 50 years ago, that would <i>NEVER</i> happen again&quot; - all while doing everything they can to drive up hours, drive down safety, and insulate themselves from any responsibility RE: workman&#x27;s comp.<p>For the average joe who just wants to go to work and get a paycheck, the <i>bigger picture</i> is often lost.</text></item><item><author>chimeracoder</author><text>&gt; The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages<p>It&#x27;s way more complicated than that, and it can&#x27;t simply be dismissed as a &quot;FUD campaign&quot;. Union members are actually disproportionately likely to <i>support</i> things like right-to-work laws, which unions dislike because it (more or less) means workers aren&#x27;t obligated to be members if they choose not to.<p>Similarly, union membership rates have dropped even in states that have very union-friendly laws (like New York and Massachusetts), and unions are having less and less success at the polls, meaning non-unionized workers are rejecting the proposals to unionize their workforces (UAW elections in particular - AFL-CIO elections to a lesser extent).<p>This pattern isn&#x27;t as simple to dismiss as &quot;anti-union FUD&quot;, especially since it&#x27;s seen among people who are <i>already</i> union members in closed shops.<p>The reasons for this have to do with the history of unionization of closed shops, and the regional economic pressures it creates.</text></item><item><author>brndnmtthws</author><text>Happy to hear workers are standing up for themselves. The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages over the past 50 years (check out Thomas Piketty&#x27;s work if you&#x27;re curious about this).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mrighele</author><text>This happens because unions in the US are fragmented. In countries with bigger unions (e.g. France, Italy) those unions act at national level. This means that moving the assembly line from Seattle to South Carolina would simply move the strikes from one place to another.
The underlying idea is that the behavior of the S.C. is just a race to the bottom and in the same way that those jobs arrived they will be gone one day once another plant accept even worse wages.<p>The downside is that if the union&#x27;s approach is too strict, those jobs may simply disappear because it is not feasible to pay those workers more, or it may be cheaper to move those job abroad and import the resulting products.<p>This also requires workers to struggle and strike not for their job, but for someone else&#x27;s.<p>(I am not saying one approach is better than the other, in fact I am usually not too fond of unions, but I am trying to explain the union&#x27;s point of view)</text></comment> | <story><title>Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-italy-strike/workers-at-amazons-main-italian-site-to-hold-first-strike-on-black-friday-idUSKBN1DN1DS</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasode</author><text><i>&gt;For the average joe who just wants to go to work and get a paycheck, the bigger picture is often lost.</i><p>Isn&#x27;t it possible the armchair talking heads like us are the ones missing the bigger picture and the <i>actual workers</i> are the ones who actually get it?<p>Let&#x27;s consider the Boeing workers in South Carolina:<p>- 2009-09 74% of employees vote against the union and <i>decertify</i> it[1]<p>- 2009-10 Boeing breaks ground on new South Carolina plant to build 787 airplanes[2]<p>- 2017-02 again, 74% of employees vote against IAM union representation[3]<p>The &quot;uncertainty&quot; and &quot;doubt&quot; in &quot;FUD&quot;? The South Carolina workers are quite <i>certain</i> and have <i>no doubt</i> that in 2009, Seattle lost the extra 787 assembly work and it was given to SC workers without the union.<p>It&#x27;s not irrational that SC workers <i>fear</i> the loss of jobs in Seattle could happen to them. The upcoming 797[4] model is in the works. It&#x27;s not irrational for South Carolina workers to think that unionizing for better wages will move that 797 production elsewhere. (E.g. Seattle may end up losing <i>all</i> of the 787 production.[5])<p><i>&gt;Well that was 50 years ago, </i><p>Well, the struggle &amp; benefits gained 50 years ago is an abstraction. The events of 2009 are very fresh and real in the minds of workers.<p>Voting &quot;YES&quot; for a union doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean you get a wage increase. It means (1) you <i>might</i> get a wage increase or (2) you might have no job.<p>How does a worker properly weigh those possible outcomes?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;boeing-aerospace&#x2F;boeing-charleston-decertifies-machinists-union&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;boeing-aerospace&#x2F;boein...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&#x2F;id&#x2F;33521235&#x2F;ns&#x2F;business-us_business&#x2F;t&#x2F;boeing-chooses-sc-new-assembly-line&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&#x2F;id&#x2F;33521235&#x2F;ns&#x2F;business-us_business&#x2F;t...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;boeing-aerospace&#x2F;boeings-south-carolina-workers-resoundingly-defeat-union&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;boeing-aerospace&#x2F;boein...</a><p>[4] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;money.cnn.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;06&#x2F;20&#x2F;news&#x2F;companies&#x2F;boeing-797-paris-first-peek&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;money.cnn.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;06&#x2F;20&#x2F;news&#x2F;companies&#x2F;boeing-797-pa...</a><p>[5] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.heraldnet.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;future-of-boeings-787-seems-secure-but-maybe-not-in-everett&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.heraldnet.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;future-of-boeings-787-seems-se...</a></text></item><item><author>tw04</author><text>&gt;This pattern isn&#x27;t as simple to dismiss as &quot;anti-union FUD&quot;, especially since it&#x27;s seen among people who are already union members in closed shops.<p>You act as though anti-union FUD can&#x27;t affect members. That&#x27;s kind of ridiculous... if it didn&#x27;t affect MEMBERS as well as non-members, what would be the point?<p>If I&#x27;m a less-educated union member who has no concept of what life was like before unions, and constantly hear that unions just take my money while providing no benefit, I&#x27;m probably likely to be swayed. What&#x27;s the union going to do? Tell me about how 50 years ago companies would literally put my life at risk because there was no downside for them. And then the people financing the anti-union movement are spewing &quot;Well that was 50 years ago, that would <i>NEVER</i> happen again&quot; - all while doing everything they can to drive up hours, drive down safety, and insulate themselves from any responsibility RE: workman&#x27;s comp.<p>For the average joe who just wants to go to work and get a paycheck, the <i>bigger picture</i> is often lost.</text></item><item><author>chimeracoder</author><text>&gt; The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages<p>It&#x27;s way more complicated than that, and it can&#x27;t simply be dismissed as a &quot;FUD campaign&quot;. Union members are actually disproportionately likely to <i>support</i> things like right-to-work laws, which unions dislike because it (more or less) means workers aren&#x27;t obligated to be members if they choose not to.<p>Similarly, union membership rates have dropped even in states that have very union-friendly laws (like New York and Massachusetts), and unions are having less and less success at the polls, meaning non-unionized workers are rejecting the proposals to unionize their workforces (UAW elections in particular - AFL-CIO elections to a lesser extent).<p>This pattern isn&#x27;t as simple to dismiss as &quot;anti-union FUD&quot;, especially since it&#x27;s seen among people who are <i>already</i> union members in closed shops.<p>The reasons for this have to do with the history of unionization of closed shops, and the regional economic pressures it creates.</text></item><item><author>brndnmtthws</author><text>Happy to hear workers are standing up for themselves. The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages over the past 50 years (check out Thomas Piketty&#x27;s work if you&#x27;re curious about this).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ultraluminous</author><text>Yes, but nothing in this speaks to the value of unions. It speaks volumes to the US legal climate allowing massive corporations to subtly coarse employees to vote against their economic interests. Basically what you&#x27;re describing is &quot;If you&#x27;ll ask for more rights or better compensation, we&#x27;ll close down this factory and move it somewhere where people will just say Thank You and shut the hell up&quot;. I think that phrase is overused, but this is one of the most obvious examples of Race to the Bottom ever.</text></comment> |
38,147,247 | 38,147,249 | 1 | 2 | 38,146,676 | train | <story><title>My experience taking Tesla to court about FSD</title><url>https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/my-experience-taking-tesla-to-court-about-fsd.315086/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>vtail</author><text>I&#x27;m reading all the comments criticizing FSD, and I honestly feel like we watch two different movies. My Tesla drives me from home to work, or from work to a downtown restaurant (granted, all within Silicon Valley where they probably have most of the data), mostly without my involvement. With the latest version, the car is occasionally too hesitant, and - very rarely - confused (e.g. by a railroad traffic light next to a road), but that doesn&#x27;t subtract much from the experience.<p>I don&#x27;t know of <i>any</i> other driving assist system that get anywhere close to this. Every time I tried fancy rental cars (BMWs, Audis, Mercedes) with the latest and greatest driver assist, it&#x27;s feels like a joke.<p>What am I missing?</text></comment> | <story><title>My experience taking Tesla to court about FSD</title><url>https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/my-experience-taking-tesla-to-court-about-fsd.315086/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>denysvitali</author><text>I think they got what they deserve. Although this is a small claim and not a class action - this is one small step towards stopping them with lying.<p>I like Tesla, but I really can&#x27;t stand some of the things they overpromise, or some stupid choices like removing USS from their cars.<p>To be fair, I think that most of the things I am complaining about come from Mr. Musk choices...</text></comment> |
28,771,668 | 28,771,739 | 1 | 3 | 28,770,869 | train | <story><title>Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality</title><url>https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28475473/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tylerwhipple</author><text>If anyone is struggling with sleep, I highly recommend episode 1-3 of the Huberman Lab podcast (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=H-XfCl-HpRM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=H-XfCl-HpRM</a>), it has literally changed my life. Dr. Huberman is a Neurobiologist at Stanford and explains the science of sleep vs just telling you to not look at bright screens at night.<p>I struggled with sleeping for 20+ years, now I easily wake up early.<p>The biggest game changer: Sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking up. Try morning walks for 1 week (without sunglasses) and your life will be changed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JonathanFly</author><text>&gt;The biggest game changer: Sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking up. Try morning walks for 1 week (without sunglasses) and your life will be changed.<p>For me I had to also really avoid light at night. F.lux or Windows Night Mode is not enough. You gotta suffer with strong indoor lightblocker glasses, or use e-ink or something at night.<p>And in the winter there sometimes isn&#x27;t enough sun. You need a LOT of lightbulbs to make up the difference. A minimum of 10 100-watt bulbs in my experience, and even more is better.<p>The real test if this will help you: think back to a time when you were camping, or maybe a child at a summer camp in the woods, or a vacation somewhere without lots of light at night and where you got lots of sun in the morning. Did your sleep schedule naturally shift to become more regular? If it did, then light therapy has a very high chance of helping you.</text></comment> | <story><title>Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality</title><url>https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28475473/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tylerwhipple</author><text>If anyone is struggling with sleep, I highly recommend episode 1-3 of the Huberman Lab podcast (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=H-XfCl-HpRM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=H-XfCl-HpRM</a>), it has literally changed my life. Dr. Huberman is a Neurobiologist at Stanford and explains the science of sleep vs just telling you to not look at bright screens at night.<p>I struggled with sleeping for 20+ years, now I easily wake up early.<p>The biggest game changer: Sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking up. Try morning walks for 1 week (without sunglasses) and your life will be changed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>KE88vga578cxY52</author><text>&gt; Sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking up.<p>I live in Florida - our license plates don’t call it the sunshine state for nothing - but even here the sun doesn’t rise at 5am. Short of blasting my retinas with bright lights soon after reveille, I don’t see where I’m going to obtain sunlight this early in the morning.<p>(It’s 07:21 local time now, and the sun is just now coming up. It’ll be a beautiful sunrise, but I’ve already been awake 2.5 hours…)</text></comment> |
23,310,059 | 23,310,112 | 1 | 2 | 23,309,269 | train | <story><title>AWS services explained in one line each</title><url>https://adayinthelifeof.nl/2020/05/20/aws.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>s_dev</author><text>Similar to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;expeditedsecurity.com&#x2F;aws-in-plain-english&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;expeditedsecurity.com&#x2F;aws-in-plain-english&#x2F;</a><p>Why does AWS use such convoluted language? Is it because they&#x27;re dominant and it adds friction to moving to another provider?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ben509</author><text>I think it&#x27;s because naming things is hard, that link proves it by coming up with worse names for almost everything they tried to rename, and often far, far worse.<p>Imagine the confusion if S3 were called &quot;Amazon Unlimited FTP Server.&quot; That gets every word wrong, except that &quot;Amazon&quot; is merely redundant. It&#x27;s not unlimited (having to pay for a thing is a limit), it&#x27;s not using FTP, and it&#x27;s a service, not a server.<p>Or if VPC was &quot;Amazon Virtual Colocated Rack&quot;. A &quot;colocated rack&quot; means your computer in their datacenter. They actually have this service, it&#x27;s called Direct Connect, because you can actually<p>Lambda does require you&#x27;ve got some vague notion of what lambda notation is. But &quot;AWS App Scripts&quot; suggests it&#x27;s for mobile &quot;apps&quot;, but it is not specific to those. And it suggests it&#x27;s only for scripts, but you can run an entire application on Lambda just fine.<p>Or even DynamoDB. They recommend &quot;Amazon NoSQL.&quot; They&#x27;re not offering many NoSQL databases, just their proprietary one: DynamoDB. They have a service that offers many relational databases and that <i>is</i> called Relational Database Service.</text></comment> | <story><title>AWS services explained in one line each</title><url>https://adayinthelifeof.nl/2020/05/20/aws.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>s_dev</author><text>Similar to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;expeditedsecurity.com&#x2F;aws-in-plain-english&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;expeditedsecurity.com&#x2F;aws-in-plain-english&#x2F;</a><p>Why does AWS use such convoluted language? Is it because they&#x27;re dominant and it adds friction to moving to another provider?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>adwww</author><text>This is one of the things I love about GCP.<p>Kubernetes Engine, Compute, Storage, Memory Store, Cloud SQL, PubSub.... almost all of the main services do what they say on the tin.<p>The only downside is - ironically - it sometimes makes googling for help a bit tricker. Eg. Are you search for generic cloud storage or the Google product with the same name?</text></comment> |
16,805,226 | 16,800,839 | 1 | 2 | 16,799,949 | train | <story><title>Our experience with Stripe Atlas (2017)</title><url>https://hackernoon.com/our-experience-with-stripe-atlas-fcccafe6fff8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ohitsdom</author><text>My biggest hesitation with Atlas is the C corp part. I don&#x27;t want funding, I want to start small and bootstrap. For this, LLCs seem best so you don&#x27;t get taxed twice.<p>My most optimistic first year in revenue would be $30-60k, still well in side business territory. Am I missing something, or is Atlas not for me?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mmckelvy</author><text>Keep in mind, business entities and tax classifications are different things. You can be an LLC and then elect to be taxed as a C Corp. Usually this doesn&#x27;t make sense unless you need to prevent income from passing through to the owners. Apart from that, everything you can do with a C Corp you can do with an LLC (issue options, split equity, take investments, etc.), just without that double tax and administrative overhead.<p>In this day and age, there are very few cases where forming a corporation, taxed as a C Corp is an ideal structure for most businesses starting out.</text></comment> | <story><title>Our experience with Stripe Atlas (2017)</title><url>https://hackernoon.com/our-experience-with-stripe-atlas-fcccafe6fff8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ohitsdom</author><text>My biggest hesitation with Atlas is the C corp part. I don&#x27;t want funding, I want to start small and bootstrap. For this, LLCs seem best so you don&#x27;t get taxed twice.<p>My most optimistic first year in revenue would be $30-60k, still well in side business territory. Am I missing something, or is Atlas not for me?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sjroot</author><text>I am replying to this because it is a question I have as well. Stripe employees - I know the Atlas page discusses the reasoning behind a C corp a bit, but I think it would be beneficial to elaborate on why it is preferable over an LLC. It’s also worth noting that the Atlas website mentions support for LLCs and other business types later down the line. Any timeline on this?<p>As I imagine the OP of this comment is, I am a US citizen who was primarily interested in Atlas because it seems like the most painless solution.</text></comment> |
20,889,668 | 20,888,857 | 1 | 3 | 20,886,972 | train | <story><title>Facebook Dating</title><url>https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/09/facebook-dating/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>donatj</author><text>This seems like something they should have added ten plus years ago, when their demo was primarily college kids.<p>I know many people who were clamoring for it at the time. It would have been an obvious addition as dating and relationships were a large part of the reason a lot of people <i>used</i> Facebook. I half suspect this is an attempt to pull college kids back into Facebook.<p>I think they missed their chance with this by a long shot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paxys</author><text>This <i>is</i> what Facebook was ten years ago. The problem is dating wasn&#x27;t as successfully monetized as it is today. Tinder&#x2F;Bumble&#x2F;CMB etc. have cracked that code, and Facebook wants to get in on it.</text></comment> | <story><title>Facebook Dating</title><url>https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/09/facebook-dating/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>donatj</author><text>This seems like something they should have added ten plus years ago, when their demo was primarily college kids.<p>I know many people who were clamoring for it at the time. It would have been an obvious addition as dating and relationships were a large part of the reason a lot of people <i>used</i> Facebook. I half suspect this is an attempt to pull college kids back into Facebook.<p>I think they missed their chance with this by a long shot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jayd16</author><text>No way. This is looking at yesterday&#x27;s decisions from today&#x27;s zeitgeist. Without Grindr and Tinder and the other apps paving the way culturally, Facebook date would have creeped out their user base.</text></comment> |
29,657,806 | 29,655,103 | 1 | 2 | 29,653,572 | train | <story><title>Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year</title><url>https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/germany-is-closing-half-of-its-reactors-at-worst-possible-time-1.1698757</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>barney54</author><text>6. Wholesale electricity rates have increased from 50 Euros&#x2F;mwh to 250 Euros&#x2F;mwh over the course of the last year.<p>This isn&#x27;t about averages. It&#x27;s about meeting demand, which is especially important during the winter heating season.</text></item><item><author>cmarschner</author><text>So, to summarize,<p>1. Germany is a net exporter<p>2. Germany has reduced the production from fossil fuels from about 70% to about 37% within 30 years.<p>3. At the same time it cut nuclear power from around 28% to about 10.<p>4. It looks like without reducing nuclear power it could have replaced the equivalent amount of fossil fuels (achieving less than 20% fossil fuels by 2020). However, energy consumption has also gone up since 1990, so it would have required building more reactors.<p>5. Renewables have replaced about 25% of energy production in the last 10 years.</text></item><item><author>fsh</author><text>I am afraid this thread is going to be heavy on strongly held opinions and very light on facts and figures. In a futile attempt to compensate, here is the history of gross electricity production in Germany [1]. And here is the electricity import&#x2F;export statistics [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;3&#x2F;3b&#x2F;Energymix_Germany.svg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;3&#x2F;3b&#x2F;Energymi...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bmwi.de&#x2F;Redaktion&#x2F;DE&#x2F;Infografiken&#x2F;Energie&#x2F;stromaustausch-mit-nachbarlaendern.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bmwi.de&#x2F;Redaktion&#x2F;DE&#x2F;Infografiken&#x2F;Energie&#x2F;stroma...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>roenxi</author><text>7. Energy per capita has dropped by something like 20% from its peak in the 90s.<p>Germany is a great example that these renewable policies can&#x27;t sustain an industrial lifestyle. Germany is something of a cautionary tale; adopting Germany&#x27;s policies will make people worse off.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ourworldindata.org&#x2F;energy&#x2F;country&#x2F;germany" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ourworldindata.org&#x2F;energy&#x2F;country&#x2F;germany</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year</title><url>https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/germany-is-closing-half-of-its-reactors-at-worst-possible-time-1.1698757</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>barney54</author><text>6. Wholesale electricity rates have increased from 50 Euros&#x2F;mwh to 250 Euros&#x2F;mwh over the course of the last year.<p>This isn&#x27;t about averages. It&#x27;s about meeting demand, which is especially important during the winter heating season.</text></item><item><author>cmarschner</author><text>So, to summarize,<p>1. Germany is a net exporter<p>2. Germany has reduced the production from fossil fuels from about 70% to about 37% within 30 years.<p>3. At the same time it cut nuclear power from around 28% to about 10.<p>4. It looks like without reducing nuclear power it could have replaced the equivalent amount of fossil fuels (achieving less than 20% fossil fuels by 2020). However, energy consumption has also gone up since 1990, so it would have required building more reactors.<p>5. Renewables have replaced about 25% of energy production in the last 10 years.</text></item><item><author>fsh</author><text>I am afraid this thread is going to be heavy on strongly held opinions and very light on facts and figures. In a futile attempt to compensate, here is the history of gross electricity production in Germany [1]. And here is the electricity import&#x2F;export statistics [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;3&#x2F;3b&#x2F;Energymix_Germany.svg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;3&#x2F;3b&#x2F;Energymi...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bmwi.de&#x2F;Redaktion&#x2F;DE&#x2F;Infografiken&#x2F;Energie&#x2F;stromaustausch-mit-nachbarlaendern.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bmwi.de&#x2F;Redaktion&#x2F;DE&#x2F;Infografiken&#x2F;Energie&#x2F;stroma...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>formerly_proven</author><text>Electric heating is extremely uncommon in Germany (like 1-2 % of households use it).</text></comment> |
29,362,839 | 29,362,828 | 1 | 2 | 29,360,119 | train | <story><title>Ask HN: Software Engineer hitting 40: what's next?</title><text>I&#x27;ve been working in software engineering for 18 years. I worked mostly as individual contributor (now as a Senior Staff Engineer), also I was an Engineering Manager for couple years. Now I am interviewing after a few years at the company, and I am hit by harsh reality. For the context, I am in Europe, not in the US.<p>I like technologies and programming, I want to further improve my skills in designing and developing reliable and maintainable distributed system, make better technical decisions. Also, I want to keep learning and playing with new techs. I am now interviewing for the roles like Staff &#x2F; Principal Engineer, My expectations for the roles like Staff &#x2F; Principal Engineer are that while staying hands-on, say for 30%, I will primarily use more my skills in architecture, engineering, and communications to focus on large, important pieces of functionality, technical decisions with big impact, etc. I expect that I would report to a Director or VP level manager, so that I could be exposed to a big picture, collaborate with and learn from a professional who operated on strategic level.<p>In reality, I am now interviewing for Staff &#x2F; Principal roles and see a few problems that make me rethink my carrier plans. First, the definion for the most of those positions looks Senior Engineers with a few more years of experience: so you are limited to the scope of a single team scope, report to an Engineering manager, just be a worker at a feature conveyor, just be faster, mentor young workers, maybe get some devops skill. I feel limited in impact in such roles, my borders and carrier are defined by Engineer Managers, who are usually less experienced in engineering and leadership topics than I am. The work is also very repetitive, there is not much meaningful progression, next level. I think those titles are created to cover problems caused by diluted Senior titles: an illusional career progression candy for ICs with some salary increase.<p>I saw a few Staff &#x2F; Principal roles that put a very high bar on technical expertise, when only 3-4 percent of all the engineers have such levels, and again usually limited to a lot of coding and a single team scope. They usually have long exhaustive interview process.<p>An important problem with Staff+ IC roles is that there is a low salary limit as well, and you will face much more competition for top roles. Mostly salaries top at the level of a director of engineering. It is typical for a company to have 10 directors, but only 1-2 IC with a similar compensation.<p>I want to work hard, and see meaningful progression: in salary, in impact, in respect.<p>I would like to ask for advice. I believe there are qute a lot 35+ engineers here that faced similar problems and made some decisions for their careers. Now I think to plan switching to a EM track or to Technical Product management. Thank you!</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>askonomm</author><text>I feel like as a software engineer, in most of the western world, if you actually save money (and invest!), and don&#x27;t make stupid financial decisions, you can probably retire by 50.</text></item><item><author>bjornsing</author><text>Sounds great, if you can retire at 50. In the EU you can’t (or at least not in Sweden where I am), so you have to think about how sustainable this approach is past 50… and to me it doesn’t really feel sustainable.</text></item><item><author>leet_thow</author><text>I&#x27;m 42 and have stopped paying attention to titles and all the traditional organizational paradigms that are losing relevance.<p>I feel like the ability to work from home in my sweats on simple problems as a senior engineer and receive a 75th percentile income relative to my neighbors in one of the best neighborhoods in my new home state is the most societal progress I will ever experience in my lifetime. I&#x27;m a lifelong bachelor by choice. Why bother striving for anything career wise when I am on track to retire comfortably to focus on my mostly free hobbies no later than the age of 50? For a house with a 3rd bedroom I don&#x27;t need?<p>No, best to appreciate what I have and leave the striving for the next generation of engineers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nly</author><text>It&#x27;s definitely not feasible for most Software Engineers in Europe without extreme sacrifice, and fairly low expectations wrt to standard of living in retirement.<p>Retiring at 50 is extremely risky in terms of sequence risk[0], so you&#x27;d want a low withdrawal rate on your pot. You&#x27;re also likely to want a higher income initially while you&#x27;re still young enough to enjoy it.<p>So let&#x27;s say your target is €2M for a €60K&#x2F;yr income until you die, after a 25 year career. That gives you a couple years of fucking around after college &#x2F; some bad years &#x2F; gaps.<p>To achieve that over a 25 year, investing in to a smooth 7%&#x2F;yr bull market, you&#x27;re going to need to invest €2,500&#x2F;mo. That&#x27;s something along the lines of €50K&#x2F;yr of gross income (assuming 40% tax).<p>Most software engineers in Europe probably don&#x27;t even make €50K&#x2F;yr... and we haven&#x27;t even taken in to account taxes on gains, raising kids, buying property, or just enjoying life throughout your career!<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.investopedia.com&#x2F;terms&#x2F;s&#x2F;sequence-risk.asp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.investopedia.com&#x2F;terms&#x2F;s&#x2F;sequence-risk.asp</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Ask HN: Software Engineer hitting 40: what's next?</title><text>I&#x27;ve been working in software engineering for 18 years. I worked mostly as individual contributor (now as a Senior Staff Engineer), also I was an Engineering Manager for couple years. Now I am interviewing after a few years at the company, and I am hit by harsh reality. For the context, I am in Europe, not in the US.<p>I like technologies and programming, I want to further improve my skills in designing and developing reliable and maintainable distributed system, make better technical decisions. Also, I want to keep learning and playing with new techs. I am now interviewing for the roles like Staff &#x2F; Principal Engineer, My expectations for the roles like Staff &#x2F; Principal Engineer are that while staying hands-on, say for 30%, I will primarily use more my skills in architecture, engineering, and communications to focus on large, important pieces of functionality, technical decisions with big impact, etc. I expect that I would report to a Director or VP level manager, so that I could be exposed to a big picture, collaborate with and learn from a professional who operated on strategic level.<p>In reality, I am now interviewing for Staff &#x2F; Principal roles and see a few problems that make me rethink my carrier plans. First, the definion for the most of those positions looks Senior Engineers with a few more years of experience: so you are limited to the scope of a single team scope, report to an Engineering manager, just be a worker at a feature conveyor, just be faster, mentor young workers, maybe get some devops skill. I feel limited in impact in such roles, my borders and carrier are defined by Engineer Managers, who are usually less experienced in engineering and leadership topics than I am. The work is also very repetitive, there is not much meaningful progression, next level. I think those titles are created to cover problems caused by diluted Senior titles: an illusional career progression candy for ICs with some salary increase.<p>I saw a few Staff &#x2F; Principal roles that put a very high bar on technical expertise, when only 3-4 percent of all the engineers have such levels, and again usually limited to a lot of coding and a single team scope. They usually have long exhaustive interview process.<p>An important problem with Staff+ IC roles is that there is a low salary limit as well, and you will face much more competition for top roles. Mostly salaries top at the level of a director of engineering. It is typical for a company to have 10 directors, but only 1-2 IC with a similar compensation.<p>I want to work hard, and see meaningful progression: in salary, in impact, in respect.<p>I would like to ask for advice. I believe there are qute a lot 35+ engineers here that faced similar problems and made some decisions for their careers. Now I think to plan switching to a EM track or to Technical Product management. Thank you!</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>askonomm</author><text>I feel like as a software engineer, in most of the western world, if you actually save money (and invest!), and don&#x27;t make stupid financial decisions, you can probably retire by 50.</text></item><item><author>bjornsing</author><text>Sounds great, if you can retire at 50. In the EU you can’t (or at least not in Sweden where I am), so you have to think about how sustainable this approach is past 50… and to me it doesn’t really feel sustainable.</text></item><item><author>leet_thow</author><text>I&#x27;m 42 and have stopped paying attention to titles and all the traditional organizational paradigms that are losing relevance.<p>I feel like the ability to work from home in my sweats on simple problems as a senior engineer and receive a 75th percentile income relative to my neighbors in one of the best neighborhoods in my new home state is the most societal progress I will ever experience in my lifetime. I&#x27;m a lifelong bachelor by choice. Why bother striving for anything career wise when I am on track to retire comfortably to focus on my mostly free hobbies no later than the age of 50? For a house with a 3rd bedroom I don&#x27;t need?<p>No, best to appreciate what I have and leave the striving for the next generation of engineers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>iso1210</author><text>If you&#x27;re pulling a 6 figure salary then sure.<p>If you&#x27;ve been earning on a typical career - say £25k&#x2F;yr starting in your mid 20s, £35k-£45k through your 30s, perhaps getting upto £60k by the time you&#x27;re into your 40s, you won&#x27;t have saved enough to pull even £20k a year for a few decades.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uk.indeed.com&#x2F;company&#x2F;Precision-Microdrives&#x2F;jobs&#x2F;Software-Engineer-01b57b2204ac4840?fccid=ac2e4d8cef116119&amp;vjs=3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uk.indeed.com&#x2F;company&#x2F;Precision-Microdrives&#x2F;jobs&#x2F;Sof...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uk.indeed.com&#x2F;rc&#x2F;clk?jk=62dc4988a0e4f36b&amp;fccid=0de01f2ba89cfd39&amp;vjs=3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uk.indeed.com&#x2F;rc&#x2F;clk?jk=62dc4988a0e4f36b&amp;fccid=0de01...</a></text></comment> |
6,767,892 | 6,767,768 | 1 | 3 | 6,767,681 | train | <story><title>Show HN: Fully-featured Nil interpreter in less than 1 line of JavaScript</title><url>http://ajf.me/demos/nil/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>onion2k</author><text>I would debate whether or not this is actually Javascript. For something to be JS, surely it needs to actually call the JS interpreter when it&#x27;s run. This doesn&#x27;t. So it isn&#x27;t.<p>Now, if you could override Function.prototype to just function(){}, then everything passed in would be ignored and you&#x27;d have a proper Nil interpreter in JS. But you can&#x27;t[1], because that would be stupid.<p>[1] Or rather, <i>I</i> can&#x27;t. I did just spend a few minutes trying.</text></comment> | <story><title>Show HN: Fully-featured Nil interpreter in less than 1 line of JavaScript</title><url>http://ajf.me/demos/nil/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>joelennon</author><text>It was only a matter of time before someone came up with a parody for the X lines of JavaScript posts. Nicely done though.</text></comment> |
36,286,155 | 36,286,202 | 1 | 2 | 36,285,440 | train | <story><title>Reddit founders made hundreds of fake profiles so site looked popular (2012)</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddit-founders-made-hundreds-of-fake-profiles-so-site-looked-popular/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dom96</author><text>I&#x27;ve been considering using Reddit data to pre-seed the content in a successor to Reddit. Though I am unsure how that would stand legally.<p>As a side note, I created an alternative Reddit API[1] and Reddit didn&#x27;t like that so much they banned my 13 year old Reddit account.<p>1 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;api.reddiw.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;api.reddiw.com</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lelandfe</author><text>IANAL. For the US, users grant Reddit a license to use their content when they post it. The users still own that content. Reddit&#x27;s license does not extend to your reuse of it[0], nor have the underlying users directly granted you permission, so it would not be legal (in the US) for you to reuse like that.<p>[0] &quot;you may not... license, sell, transfer, assign, distribute, host, or otherwise commercially exploit the Services or Content&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.redditinc.com&#x2F;policies&#x2F;user-agreement-september-12-2021" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.redditinc.com&#x2F;policies&#x2F;user-agreement-september-...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Reddit founders made hundreds of fake profiles so site looked popular (2012)</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddit-founders-made-hundreds-of-fake-profiles-so-site-looked-popular/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dom96</author><text>I&#x27;ve been considering using Reddit data to pre-seed the content in a successor to Reddit. Though I am unsure how that would stand legally.<p>As a side note, I created an alternative Reddit API[1] and Reddit didn&#x27;t like that so much they banned my 13 year old Reddit account.<p>1 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;api.reddiw.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;api.reddiw.com</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>doix</author><text>I was chatting about this with some friends. If we had a million or so spare, just fork Reddit. Grab the latest open source version of Reddit, pay the pushshift guys for the most up-to-date dump they have and get it in.<p>Make a system for claiming your old Reddit account. I&#x27;m guessing if you try to use OAuth, Reddit will just ban you. So you need to get creative, probably make an extension that grabs the users sessionid from their cookies or something (or let people copypaste it in if they are technical enough).<p>Fun to imagine but unfortunately probably won&#x27;t happen.</text></comment> |
35,300,427 | 35,300,108 | 1 | 2 | 35,297,067 | train | <story><title>GPT-4 performs significantly worse on coding problems not in its training data</title><url>https://twitter.com/cHHillee/status/1635790330854526981</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nopinsight</author><text>“Reflection-Based GPT-4 Agent is State-of-the-Art on Code Gen<p>Iteratively refines code, shifting “accuracy bottleneck” from correct code gen to correct test gen<p>HumanEval accuracy:<p>-Reflexion-based GPT-4 88%<p>-GPT-4 67.0%<p>-CodeT 65.8%<p>-PaLM 26.2%”<p>with link to code in the Tweet:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;johnjnay&#x2F;status&#x2F;1639362071807549446" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;johnjnay&#x2F;status&#x2F;16393620718075494...</a><p>21% improvement after adding a feedback loop and self-reflection to GPT-4, which just went public 12 days ago. (The approach is based on a preprint published 4 days ago.)<p>Human coders often need a feedback loop and self-reflection to properly “generate” code for problems novel to them as well.<p>-----<p>A larger question: Are we hurling ourselves toward a (near) future of unaligned AGI with self-improvement capabilities?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nopinsight</author><text>Someone asked GPT-4 to build a complete app from scratch. It&#x27;s now on the store. He seems to apply good prompt engineering techniques.<p>Screenshots, video demo, and process here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;mortenjust&#x2F;status&#x2F;1639276571574894594" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;mortenjust&#x2F;status&#x2F;163927657157489...</a><p>It seems plausible to me now that a junior developer position would be hard to find in 2-3 years (I thought it would be ~5 years).</text></comment> | <story><title>GPT-4 performs significantly worse on coding problems not in its training data</title><url>https://twitter.com/cHHillee/status/1635790330854526981</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nopinsight</author><text>“Reflection-Based GPT-4 Agent is State-of-the-Art on Code Gen<p>Iteratively refines code, shifting “accuracy bottleneck” from correct code gen to correct test gen<p>HumanEval accuracy:<p>-Reflexion-based GPT-4 88%<p>-GPT-4 67.0%<p>-CodeT 65.8%<p>-PaLM 26.2%”<p>with link to code in the Tweet:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;johnjnay&#x2F;status&#x2F;1639362071807549446" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;johnjnay&#x2F;status&#x2F;16393620718075494...</a><p>21% improvement after adding a feedback loop and self-reflection to GPT-4, which just went public 12 days ago. (The approach is based on a preprint published 4 days ago.)<p>Human coders often need a feedback loop and self-reflection to properly “generate” code for problems novel to them as well.<p>-----<p>A larger question: Are we hurling ourselves toward a (near) future of unaligned AGI with self-improvement capabilities?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>isaacfrond</author><text>the paper: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;2303.11366.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;2303.11366.pdf</a><p>it reminds me of the thinking-fast vs. thinking-slow dichotomy. Current llms are the thinking fast type. Funnily people’s complains about its errors are reminiscent of this. It answers just to quick and only with its instant response neural net. A thinking slow answer would be more akin to a chain of thought answer. Allowing the llm a more flexible platform than CoT promptin might well be the next step. Of course it would als multiply compute cost. So it might not be in your 20$ subscription</text></comment> |
32,995,106 | 32,995,165 | 1 | 3 | 32,994,757 | train | <story><title>Cloudflare Calls</title><url>https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-cloudflare-calls/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rixthefox</author><text>They really do want to be the center of everything it seems. I wish they would stop trying to be the Cisco of Networking in the sense of trying to convince a lot of people to let them handle critical network functions for a ton of networks.<p>All it will take is one major outage for everyone to see this is a bad idea.<p>Why trust a cloud provider who could go down and take half the Internet with it? Why centralize it that much where that is even possible?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>seeekr</author><text>They just keep building on top of the things they&#x27;ve already built that are working really well, expanding into related services. Doesn&#x27;t seem that different from what AWS is doing, just with a different focus and in a different place in everyone&#x27;s (or the Internet&#x27;s) stack.</text></comment> | <story><title>Cloudflare Calls</title><url>https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-cloudflare-calls/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rixthefox</author><text>They really do want to be the center of everything it seems. I wish they would stop trying to be the Cisco of Networking in the sense of trying to convince a lot of people to let them handle critical network functions for a ton of networks.<p>All it will take is one major outage for everyone to see this is a bad idea.<p>Why trust a cloud provider who could go down and take half the Internet with it? Why centralize it that much where that is even possible?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nine_k</author><text>It reminds me the days of Google flourishing in early 2000s: they added more and more wonderful stuff (such as mail, or maps) while improving their flagship offering, search, more and more. A lot of people were their sincere fans.</text></comment> |
39,905,693 | 39,895,171 | 1 | 2 | 39,894,148 | train | <story><title>10 > 64, in QR Codes</title><url>https://huonw.github.io/blog/2024/03/qr-base10-base64/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>pimlottc</author><text>This is really great, I didn&#x27;t know you could switch encoding schemes within the same QR code. There&#x27;s a nifty visualization tool [0] that shows how this can reduce QR code sizes. It can determine the optimal segmentation strategy for any string and display a color-code version with statistics. Very nice!<p>0: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nayuki.io&#x2F;page&#x2F;optimal-text-segmentation-for-qr-codes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nayuki.io&#x2F;page&#x2F;optimal-text-segmentation-for-qr-...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>10 > 64, in QR Codes</title><url>https://huonw.github.io/blog/2024/03/qr-base10-base64/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>komlan</author><text>This is particularly useful for numeric data that is usually displayed in hex, like UUIDs [1]<p>I used this for digital QR code tickets [2], and it made the codes so much easier to scan, even with bad lighting.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39094251">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39094251</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;workspace.google.com&#x2F;marketplace&#x2F;app&#x2F;qr_code_ticket_per_row_for_event_attenda&#x2F;9398047938" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;workspace.google.com&#x2F;marketplace&#x2F;app&#x2F;qr_code_ticket_...</a></text></comment> |
18,983,568 | 18,982,932 | 1 | 2 | 18,967,387 | train | <story><title>Network protocols for anyone who knows a programming language</title><url>https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/compendium/network-protocols?share_key=97d3ba4c24d21147</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nindalf</author><text>I took a networking course in college and I didn&#x27;t learn much, if anything. We used textbooks like Kurose and Ross that went deep into details like the header format of each packet of each layer. Ultimately, these were useless details that had no place in a textbook. It made me hate the subject.<p>I eventually learned the subject properly through High Performance Browser Networking. This is the one book I would recommend to any software developer. Available for free here - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hpbn.co" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hpbn.co</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mrmuagi</author><text>I&#x27;d largely echo your sentiment, but luckily our professor had a hands-on attitude. This involved actually coding things that used those concepts. We had to implement a non-recursive DNS resolver and a FTP server. Reading the RFCs and chewing out something that worked (mostly) was real fun.</text></comment> | <story><title>Network protocols for anyone who knows a programming language</title><url>https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/compendium/network-protocols?share_key=97d3ba4c24d21147</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nindalf</author><text>I took a networking course in college and I didn&#x27;t learn much, if anything. We used textbooks like Kurose and Ross that went deep into details like the header format of each packet of each layer. Ultimately, these were useless details that had no place in a textbook. It made me hate the subject.<p>I eventually learned the subject properly through High Performance Browser Networking. This is the one book I would recommend to any software developer. Available for free here - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hpbn.co" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hpbn.co</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>robpalmer</author><text>That book is one of the most useful engineering books I have ever read. Top quality theory with practical application.</text></comment> |
9,647,486 | 9,647,258 | 1 | 3 | 9,647,141 | train | <story><title>Sepp Blatter to quit as president amid corruption scandal</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/32982449</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>EnderMB</author><text>It&#x27;s convenient that he steps down now, mere days after the election that swore him into power once again. If he stepped down during the election Prince Ali would have won. This way, Blatter can call his own election and personally vouch for a new candidate to take over.<p>To me, Blatter was just the face of corruption. I simply cannot see someone from inside FIFA being able to resolve the corruption problems, mostly because these people are the problem. This isn&#x27;t a new thing, and this isn&#x27;t something that arrived with Blatter. Some journalists have been investigating corruption in FIFA for decades. Hell, most countries have been a part of it. It&#x27;s only surfacing now because the bribery is so blatant, and our bribes simply weren&#x27;t enough.<p>People will cheer and say that &quot;we finally did it&quot;, but I cannot see anything truly changing. The only way FIFA will change is through the authorities.</text></comment> | <story><title>Sepp Blatter to quit as president amid corruption scandal</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/32982449</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>siculars</author><text>McDonalds paired with Lime-Rita&#x27;s for John Oliver. The most powerful or prescient talking head on TV? Quite possibly.</text></comment> |
27,668,435 | 27,668,585 | 1 | 3 | 27,664,467 | train | <story><title>Amazon is using algorithms with little human intervention to fire Flex workers</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/amazon-is-firing-flex-workers-using-algorithms-with-little-human-intervention/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kjhughes</author><text>Bad automated policy is bad because the <i>policy</i> is bad, not because automation is bad.<p>Automation applies policy evenly. An employee can be sure that the firing wasn&#x27;t due to a boss having a bad day, not liking the employee personally, not noticing worse performance of colleagues, etc.<p>The real problem comes when automated assessment is poorly designed. And it&#x27;s a shame not only because of the heartless actions that impact real people&#x27;s lives and the needless public relations damage that is bound to emerge. It&#x27;s also a shame because of the lost opportunity to help workers&#x27; performance improve via feedback at a level of detail that the automated systems <i>could</i> provide.<p>Damn the secrecy. Develop an open rating system that provides continuous feedback to the worker. Build in dampers that provide ample time to learn, correct mistakes, and improve. Publish every factor, every consideration, every weight that goes into the assessment. Openly. Refine over and over until both management and the workforce see it as fair and helpful.<p>I would take that system over the subjective, unevenly applied, unclear criteria that&#x27;s historically been used to assess performance. No surprises to the workers, and management has to own the criteria rather than hide behind unpublished automation. Objectivity should be a virtue. Without transparency, it&#x27;s going to prove to be quite the vice.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brundolf</author><text>Totally disagree. No system of rules could ever handle all the obscure edge-cases that humans can. Just look to all the Google account automated-flagging issues that pop up on HN, for reference.<p>What could maybe work is an automated system for the &quot;easy 90%&quot;, paired with an appeals system well-staffed by human beings. But that isn&#x27;t Amazon&#x27;s plan (or Google&#x27;s, etc), because that 10% will cost much more than the first 90%, so it&#x27;s easier for them to just write it off as a loss. And at their scale, that margin of error translates to thousands of potentially-ruined lives.</text></comment> | <story><title>Amazon is using algorithms with little human intervention to fire Flex workers</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/amazon-is-firing-flex-workers-using-algorithms-with-little-human-intervention/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kjhughes</author><text>Bad automated policy is bad because the <i>policy</i> is bad, not because automation is bad.<p>Automation applies policy evenly. An employee can be sure that the firing wasn&#x27;t due to a boss having a bad day, not liking the employee personally, not noticing worse performance of colleagues, etc.<p>The real problem comes when automated assessment is poorly designed. And it&#x27;s a shame not only because of the heartless actions that impact real people&#x27;s lives and the needless public relations damage that is bound to emerge. It&#x27;s also a shame because of the lost opportunity to help workers&#x27; performance improve via feedback at a level of detail that the automated systems <i>could</i> provide.<p>Damn the secrecy. Develop an open rating system that provides continuous feedback to the worker. Build in dampers that provide ample time to learn, correct mistakes, and improve. Publish every factor, every consideration, every weight that goes into the assessment. Openly. Refine over and over until both management and the workforce see it as fair and helpful.<p>I would take that system over the subjective, unevenly applied, unclear criteria that&#x27;s historically been used to assess performance. No surprises to the workers, and management has to own the criteria rather than hide behind unpublished automation. Objectivity should be a virtue. Without transparency, it&#x27;s going to prove to be quite the vice.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>WalterBright</author><text>Any algorithm can and will be gamed. Making it public means people will adhere to every detail, and yet still be unproductive.<p>There&#x27;s even a name for it: &quot;work to rule&quot;.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Work-to-rule" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Work-to-rule</a></text></comment> |
40,504,252 | 40,503,846 | 1 | 2 | 40,503,592 | train | <story><title>California is about to side with PG&E – again – to kill community solar projects</title><url>https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/california-pge-community-solar-19468490.php</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>cjensen</author><text>Just for factual background, engaging data has a new infographic about California energy production that is useful [1]<p>Worth noting that there isn&#x27;t a lot of room for growth of solar that isn&#x27;t battery-backed. California exports a ton of energy during the bright months. As a practical matter, the era of sending excess rooftop solar generation to the grid is over.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;engaging-data.com&#x2F;california-electricity-generation&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;engaging-data.com&#x2F;california-electricity-generation&#x2F;</a></text></comment> | <story><title>California is about to side with PG&E – again – to kill community solar projects</title><url>https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/california-pge-community-solar-19468490.php</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>TheMagicHorsey</author><text>It&#x27;s very difficult to come to simple conclusions that are accurate in the case of California power generation.<p>One of the reasons it&#x27;s so complicated is that the State in California intervenes in the market in so many (sometimes contradictory) ways. The incentives are often perverse and exactly the opposite of what you would expect.<p>In attempting to protect consumers, California in the long run has created a market with almost the highest prices in the nation. Simultaneously, and surprisingly, those high prices have not translated into some kind of futuristic or resilient grid. California has not had power outages not because California is better than Texas in terms of technology ... rather California is blessed with a climate that doesn&#x27;t really suffer state-wide extremes.<p>As bad as California&#x27;s public schools are, I think within twenty years we will realize that the thing Sacramento politicians fucked up the most was not the schools ... it was the power grid. Talk to anyone that runs a power intensive manufacturing enterprise in CA. They have already moved their facilities to another state or they already have a plan to do so.<p>California imports from other states all the energy-intensive inputs and exports its pollution and smugly pats itself on the back. All while taxing its citizens with some of the highest residential power pricing too.</text></comment> |
18,632,114 | 18,631,983 | 1 | 2 | 18,630,721 | train | <story><title>PyTorch 1.0 is out</title><url>https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/releases/tag/v1.0.0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>htfy96</author><text>What surprised me most is the elegance of C++ API. Compared to its equivalence in Python, the C++ version is almost the same if we discard the &quot;auto&quot; keyword [0]. As mentioned in the doc, they put user-friendliness over micro-optimizations, which also proves the expressiveness of modern C++ (at least when they want to prioritize user-friendliness!)
[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pytorch.org&#x2F;cppdocs&#x2F;frontend.html#end-to-end-example" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pytorch.org&#x2F;cppdocs&#x2F;frontend.html#end-to-end-example</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>usgroup</author><text>i picked up c++ for some gpu stuff with the arrayfire api... felt the same. firstly, modern c++ takes no time to learn if you come from java &#x2F; c&#x2F; c# &#x2F; etc. secondly, things like operator overloading and type inference make for pretty seamless apis. E.g. want to add matrices? auto C = A + B.<p>A lot of things suck (closures, generator functions, first order functions all suck in c++), but oh my does it all run fast when you get it working; plus wrapping it with Rcpp or Lua is easy as pie.</text></comment> | <story><title>PyTorch 1.0 is out</title><url>https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/releases/tag/v1.0.0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>htfy96</author><text>What surprised me most is the elegance of C++ API. Compared to its equivalence in Python, the C++ version is almost the same if we discard the &quot;auto&quot; keyword [0]. As mentioned in the doc, they put user-friendliness over micro-optimizations, which also proves the expressiveness of modern C++ (at least when they want to prioritize user-friendliness!)
[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pytorch.org&#x2F;cppdocs&#x2F;frontend.html#end-to-end-example" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pytorch.org&#x2F;cppdocs&#x2F;frontend.html#end-to-end-example</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>perturbation</author><text>I&#x27;m hoping that this results in a nice, high-level API for <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;fragcolor-xyz&#x2F;nimtorch" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;fragcolor-xyz&#x2F;nimtorch</a> as well, which AFAIK has been wrapping the low-level Aten API. I&#x27;ve been keeping my eye on that project, and been really excited about it.</text></comment> |
24,837,120 | 24,837,017 | 1 | 2 | 24,836,422 | train | <story><title>America's True Unemployment Rate</title><url>https://www.axios.com/americas-true-unemployment-rate-6e34decb-c274-4feb-a4af-ffac8cf5840d.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>itsoktocry</author><text>&gt;<i>They don&#x27;t consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not counted because they &quot;retired,&quot; stopped seeking work or receive a disability benefit.</i><p>Why <i>should</i> any of these people be considered &quot;unemployed&quot;?<p>Every time there&#x27;s a discussion of unemployment, or inflation, people bring up the measurements as &quot;misleading&quot;. The BLS tracks this stuff because people in the real world need to use it, not because there&#x27;s some disingenuous political purpose. There are a ton of different metrics to get a broad picture of the labour market, as defined, and they put them out there, free to use. The idea that the army of economists at the BLS don&#x27;t understand things like people being retired is just wrong.<p>We spend a lot of time criticizing journalists and politicians, but how many people bother to look at the data themselves if interested?</text></item><item><author>dalbasal</author><text>I agree that there is no &quot;true&quot; measure, just different measures.<p>That said, the standard unemployment measure the author is objecting to is just as (more really) disingenuous in practice. It also stacks confusion. &quot;Unemployment&quot; used as a primary barometer for the labour economy.<p>People (including journalists, politicians... high stakes stuff) assume that unemployment captures most unemployment. They don&#x27;t consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not counted because they &quot;retired,&quot; stopped seeking work or receive a disability benefit. When&#x2F;if these become substantial, the measure means very little.<p>Every time a journalist note record high&#x2F;low unemployment of X%, it&#x27;s probably just as deceptive or (more likely) misleading. The measure itself means something different in 2020 than it did in 1980, or in a different country&#x2F;region.<p>At least the &quot;true&quot; appendage makes clear that there are differing and divergent ways to measure unemployment, and that these cn result in huge differences.</text></item><item><author>mountainb</author><text>This is phrased in a very deceptive way. There are lots of issues with the &#x27;Unemployment&#x27; metric. It is indeed a deceptive metric. However, it is deliberately misleading to append &#x27;True&#x27; to &#x27;Unemployment Rate&#x27; with a custom definition intended to make an argument. You are stacking confusion on confusion instead of clarifying. If you want to create a different metric around a &#x27;living wage,&#x27; then it should be defined in a way that makes that more clear.<p>There are also serious regional differences in what such a wage might be. $2000&#x2F;month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car in low cost of living regions. In NYC it means you are probably stacked into a decaying apartment with many other people with no car.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>marcus_holmes</author><text>I thought I&#x27;d bother after reading your comment.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;news.release&#x2F;empsit.nr0.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;news.release&#x2F;empsit.nr0.htm</a><p>and the numbers:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;news.release&#x2F;empsit.t01.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;news.release&#x2F;empsit.t01.htm</a><p>It&#x27;s actually kinda straightforward, and very clear about what measures they&#x27;re using. The numbers are bit scary - &quot;The employment-population ratio, at 56.6 percent, changed little over the month but is 4.5 percentage points lower than in February.&quot;<p>&quot;The number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job, at 7.2 million, changed little in September; this measure is 2.3 million higher than in February. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the last 4 weeks or were unavailable to take a job.&quot;<p>So that&#x27;s 12m officially unemployed, plus 7m &quot;not in the labor force&quot; but who want a job.<p>So yeah, the article is kinda on point; that the numbers don&#x27;t mean what they think we mean. But I have to agree: that&#x27;s not because the numbers aren&#x27;t available for anyone to look at and understand.</text></comment> | <story><title>America's True Unemployment Rate</title><url>https://www.axios.com/americas-true-unemployment-rate-6e34decb-c274-4feb-a4af-ffac8cf5840d.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>itsoktocry</author><text>&gt;<i>They don&#x27;t consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not counted because they &quot;retired,&quot; stopped seeking work or receive a disability benefit.</i><p>Why <i>should</i> any of these people be considered &quot;unemployed&quot;?<p>Every time there&#x27;s a discussion of unemployment, or inflation, people bring up the measurements as &quot;misleading&quot;. The BLS tracks this stuff because people in the real world need to use it, not because there&#x27;s some disingenuous political purpose. There are a ton of different metrics to get a broad picture of the labour market, as defined, and they put them out there, free to use. The idea that the army of economists at the BLS don&#x27;t understand things like people being retired is just wrong.<p>We spend a lot of time criticizing journalists and politicians, but how many people bother to look at the data themselves if interested?</text></item><item><author>dalbasal</author><text>I agree that there is no &quot;true&quot; measure, just different measures.<p>That said, the standard unemployment measure the author is objecting to is just as (more really) disingenuous in practice. It also stacks confusion. &quot;Unemployment&quot; used as a primary barometer for the labour economy.<p>People (including journalists, politicians... high stakes stuff) assume that unemployment captures most unemployment. They don&#x27;t consider that most unemployed 58 year olds are not counted because they &quot;retired,&quot; stopped seeking work or receive a disability benefit. When&#x2F;if these become substantial, the measure means very little.<p>Every time a journalist note record high&#x2F;low unemployment of X%, it&#x27;s probably just as deceptive or (more likely) misleading. The measure itself means something different in 2020 than it did in 1980, or in a different country&#x2F;region.<p>At least the &quot;true&quot; appendage makes clear that there are differing and divergent ways to measure unemployment, and that these cn result in huge differences.</text></item><item><author>mountainb</author><text>This is phrased in a very deceptive way. There are lots of issues with the &#x27;Unemployment&#x27; metric. It is indeed a deceptive metric. However, it is deliberately misleading to append &#x27;True&#x27; to &#x27;Unemployment Rate&#x27; with a custom definition intended to make an argument. You are stacking confusion on confusion instead of clarifying. If you want to create a different metric around a &#x27;living wage,&#x27; then it should be defined in a way that makes that more clear.<p>There are also serious regional differences in what such a wage might be. $2000&#x2F;month is enough to live comfortably with a personal car in low cost of living regions. In NYC it means you are probably stacked into a decaying apartment with many other people with no car.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>michaelt</author><text><i>&gt; Why should any of these people be considered &quot;unemployed&quot;?</i><p>Because we&#x27;re actually trying to count &quot;people who would be employed, were there more jobs available&quot;<p>But as we can&#x27;t read people&#x27;s minds, we can&#x27;t tell the person who&#x27;s happily retired at 58 from someone the same age who&#x27;d rather be in work but can&#x27;t find it, and has started drawing their pension out of necessity.</text></comment> |
10,629,812 | 10,629,710 | 1 | 2 | 10,627,787 | train | <story><title>The Yale Problem Begins in High School</title><url>http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-begins-in-high-school/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nickbauman</author><text>The problem with &quot;balancing viewpoints&quot; argument is that it isn&#x27;t based on a critical ethos and so it cannot progress on the basis of logos. You can have a &quot;balanced viewpoint&quot; and still have debates about <i>&quot;whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster or not.&quot;</i> There are certain ideas that just don&#x27;t belong in a university setting because they are <i>bunk</i> and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion.<p>It similar to the bogus <i>fair and balanced</i> media argument. News reporting is about reporting the facts <i>as they lead logically</i> so that if anyone would perform the work of the journalist they would arrive at <i>similar conclusions</i> regardless of their perspective or polity. It&#x27;s very much like the scientific method. Focusing on opinion diversity is a red herring.</text></item><item><author>jseliger</author><text>I&#x27;ve taught at two colleges and based on my (purely) anecdotal experiences and attention to the climate, I&#x27;d say that the number of students and faculty interested in stifling or censoring ideas is small but also very, very noisy. They also have no sense of humor and college administrators as a group have no sense of humor or perspective, and they&#x27;re chronically worried about accusations of indifference or insensitivity (which are themselves as good as convictions). There is a strong economic and career incentive for administrators to take <i>everything</i> seriously and to keep their heads down as much as possible.<p>Brew this up and one gets a majority of students who are reasonable but a small minority who drive all the discourse.<p>I don&#x27;t teach at Yale and have never taught at Yale or schools with similar cultures, so I can&#x27;t speak to the environment there, but William Deresiewicz did, and his book <i>Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life</i> came out of that and I recommend it. His book <i>A Jane Austen Education</i> (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jakeseliger.com&#x2F;tag&#x2F;a-jane-austen-education-how-six-novels-taught-me-about-love&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jakeseliger.com&#x2F;tag&#x2F;a-jane-austen-education-how-six-n...</a>) is also very good, even for someone like me who does not love Jane Austen.<p><i>Edit:</i> Also, almost all of the censorship calls and nasty behavior &#x2F; comments came from students on the left. Vox&#x27;s &quot;I&#x27;m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me&quot; (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;6&#x2F;3&#x2F;8706323&#x2F;college-professor-afraid" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;6&#x2F;3&#x2F;8706323&#x2F;college-professor-afraid</a>) is congruent with my experiences.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jimbokun</author><text>&quot;There are certain ideas that just don&#x27;t belong in a university setting because they are bunk and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion.&quot;<p>I&#x27;m sure all of the students getting faculty and administrators dismissed right now would describe the opposing ideas as &quot;bunk&quot; not worthy of consideration.<p>I see a few reasons to explicitly address &quot;bunk&quot; ideas.<p>* Students have already been exposed to the ideas, and many already believe them. Having a discussion explaining <i>why</i> they are bunk might be critical to moving on to more interesting topics.<p>* Appeals to authority make for bad pedagogy. Sure, evolution is the scientific consensus. But students who just accept it at face value without asking to be shown the evidence are not students capable of scientific thought.<p>* Ideas you thought were bunk might turn out to have more merit or nuance than you expected, once you start digging deeper. It&#x27;s easy to see other people&#x27;s deeply held bunk ideas. But how do you force yourself to see your own?</text></comment> | <story><title>The Yale Problem Begins in High School</title><url>http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-begins-in-high-school/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nickbauman</author><text>The problem with &quot;balancing viewpoints&quot; argument is that it isn&#x27;t based on a critical ethos and so it cannot progress on the basis of logos. You can have a &quot;balanced viewpoint&quot; and still have debates about <i>&quot;whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster or not.&quot;</i> There are certain ideas that just don&#x27;t belong in a university setting because they are <i>bunk</i> and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion.<p>It similar to the bogus <i>fair and balanced</i> media argument. News reporting is about reporting the facts <i>as they lead logically</i> so that if anyone would perform the work of the journalist they would arrive at <i>similar conclusions</i> regardless of their perspective or polity. It&#x27;s very much like the scientific method. Focusing on opinion diversity is a red herring.</text></item><item><author>jseliger</author><text>I&#x27;ve taught at two colleges and based on my (purely) anecdotal experiences and attention to the climate, I&#x27;d say that the number of students and faculty interested in stifling or censoring ideas is small but also very, very noisy. They also have no sense of humor and college administrators as a group have no sense of humor or perspective, and they&#x27;re chronically worried about accusations of indifference or insensitivity (which are themselves as good as convictions). There is a strong economic and career incentive for administrators to take <i>everything</i> seriously and to keep their heads down as much as possible.<p>Brew this up and one gets a majority of students who are reasonable but a small minority who drive all the discourse.<p>I don&#x27;t teach at Yale and have never taught at Yale or schools with similar cultures, so I can&#x27;t speak to the environment there, but William Deresiewicz did, and his book <i>Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life</i> came out of that and I recommend it. His book <i>A Jane Austen Education</i> (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jakeseliger.com&#x2F;tag&#x2F;a-jane-austen-education-how-six-novels-taught-me-about-love&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jakeseliger.com&#x2F;tag&#x2F;a-jane-austen-education-how-six-n...</a>) is also very good, even for someone like me who does not love Jane Austen.<p><i>Edit:</i> Also, almost all of the censorship calls and nasty behavior &#x2F; comments came from students on the left. Vox&#x27;s &quot;I&#x27;m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me&quot; (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;6&#x2F;3&#x2F;8706323&#x2F;college-professor-afraid" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;6&#x2F;3&#x2F;8706323&#x2F;college-professor-afraid</a>) is congruent with my experiences.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>frotak</author><text>You&#x27;re missing the thrust of the argument entirely.<p>The author does not advocate validating factually invalid statements - see his anecdote in the second article linked in GP regarding &quot;whether or not the economic collapse was caused by poor black people&quot;:<p>&quot;I gave a quick response about how most experts would disagree with that assumption, that it was actually an oversimplification, and pretty dishonest, and isn&#x27;t it good that someone made the video we just watched to try to clear things up? And, hey, let&#x27;s talk about whether that was effective, okay? If you don&#x27;t think it was, how could it have been?&quot;<p>In other words - in the case of &quot;bunk&quot; it can be summarily dismissed with a proper basis. Which is entirely different from vilifying and personally attacking a person for their beliefs or thoughts which are doing no actual harm to anyone else. People can have bogus ideas and those bogus ideas can be completely harmless no matter how much you might find them distasteful.<p>Viewpoint diversity is entirely about bringing different perspectives and experiences to bear on a subject.<p>It works in the hard sciences: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quantamagazine.org&#x2F;20151124-kadison-singer-math-problem&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quantamagazine.org&#x2F;20151124-kadison-singer-math-...</a><p>Why shouldn&#x27;t it similarly be applied in areas of morality, ethics, social science, etc?</text></comment> |
4,231,426 | 4,230,603 | 1 | 3 | 4,229,926 | train | <story><title>Ouya Breaks Kickstarter Records</title><url>http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/ouyas-big-day</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wavephorm</author><text>I'm absolutely baffled at the HN negativity revolving around this product. If they deliver what they're promising, I think it is going to be a smashing success.<p>I have had a bunch of a neat, simple console game ideas kicking around for a long time. I want this console to succeed simply so that I have the opportunity to make them a reality. This console does not need PS3-level graphics to succeed. Even if Ouya only matched the graphics performance of a Nintendo N64 I think it could still be a massive success based on the games that will get created for it.</text></item><item><author>nicpottier</author><text>I hate to be a hater, but can we start taking odds on how big a disappointment this will be?<p>I am just going to come out and say that the vast majority of the backers are going to be really disappointed, this is far too ambitious a project for that budget, even three times that budget.<p>If I was Kickstarter I would actually be worrying about this type of project actually damaging the brand itself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>matthew-wegner</author><text>I think it's important to place their numbers in the context of mainstream consoles. In today's living room, you have Wii (95M), Xbox 360 (67M), and PS3 (64M).<p>That's ~226 million consoles. The OUYA is selling well for two days, for sure, but it's a <i>tiny</i> fraction of the big players.<p>They've had 26k backers in two days. They could do 13k backers <i>per day</i> for an entire year and end up with ~5M consoles sold (8% of the smallest console, or 2.2% of all three). It isn't enough to get the attention of any big games. They best they'll do are Android ports.<p>It isn't enough to put out cheap hardware for Android. They need a seriously good storefront, a seriously good integration/account system, or a seriously good controller. They aren't taking any of these three seriously, as far as I know, so I do think pessimism is warranted.<p>If anything, their success at grabbing attention should put more fuel on the fire for Valve's rumored console...</text></comment> | <story><title>Ouya Breaks Kickstarter Records</title><url>http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/ouyas-big-day</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wavephorm</author><text>I'm absolutely baffled at the HN negativity revolving around this product. If they deliver what they're promising, I think it is going to be a smashing success.<p>I have had a bunch of a neat, simple console game ideas kicking around for a long time. I want this console to succeed simply so that I have the opportunity to make them a reality. This console does not need PS3-level graphics to succeed. Even if Ouya only matched the graphics performance of a Nintendo N64 I think it could still be a massive success based on the games that will get created for it.</text></item><item><author>nicpottier</author><text>I hate to be a hater, but can we start taking odds on how big a disappointment this will be?<p>I am just going to come out and say that the vast majority of the backers are going to be really disappointed, this is far too ambitious a project for that budget, even three times that budget.<p>If I was Kickstarter I would actually be worrying about this type of project actually damaging the brand itself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nostromo</author><text>I think there's a fair amount of honest skepticism around the pricing, which isn't the same as simple mean-spiritedness.<p>I for one really really want this project to succeed! However, I'm afraid that they weren't realistic about the costs associated with building the hardware. But I look forward to be proven wrong.</text></comment> |
20,677,812 | 20,677,131 | 1 | 2 | 20,665,665 | train | <story><title>Dollar vans, NYC’s other transit system</title><url>https://queenseagle.com/all/dollar-van-transit-system</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>keiferski</author><text>Sounds a bit like Marshrutkas, which are cheap vans that function as the primary “public transit” system in many post-Soviet cities.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Marshrutka" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Marshrutka</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mayniac</author><text>I spent a lot of summers as a child in Georgia, and have fond memories of these. At least before the old transit-style vans&#x2F;minibuses were replaced with proper, licensed buses.<p>There was no occupancy limit. The limit is however many people can squeeze into the thing. Bench seats were common, so lots of squeezing.<p>Prices were cheap beyond comparison. $0.05-$0.10 per person to get on any of the city lines, a marshrutka to a town 6 hours away might cost $2-5<p>At least before the internet was commonplace, there weren&#x27;t any maps of marshrutka lines anywhere. People knew which lines went where or asked friends. Failing that you pull the first one you see over and ask.<p>Tbilisi roads are insane, marshrutka drivers were on a whole other level. Minivans are really not designed to be floored from every light and thrown into corners. There&#x27;s a reason nobody cycled on the road there and motorbikes were just as rare: you really do not want to share the road with marshrutka drivers.<p>To my knowledge, there were zero regulations. Sometimes after flagging one down, you&#x27;d hear some really uncomfortable sounds coming from the brakes, or a tyre with visible ply, or a driver who&#x27;s clearly tipsy, and decide not to risk it.</text></comment> | <story><title>Dollar vans, NYC’s other transit system</title><url>https://queenseagle.com/all/dollar-van-transit-system</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>keiferski</author><text>Sounds a bit like Marshrutkas, which are cheap vans that function as the primary “public transit” system in many post-Soviet cities.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Marshrutka" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Marshrutka</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samschooler</author><text>Gallineras (or just &quot;bus&quot;) or chicken buses are this concept as a (beautiful) school bus in central and some central American countries. As well as &quot;collectivos&quot; which are the van version.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Chicken_bus" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Chicken_bus</a></text></comment> |
36,750,924 | 36,751,014 | 1 | 3 | 36,750,200 | train | <story><title>ChatGPT use declines as users complain about ‘dumber’ answers</title><url>https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-use-declines-as-users-complain-about-dumber-answers-and-the-reason-might-be-ais-biggest-threat-for-the-future</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomohelix</author><text>Here is a quick example of how ChatGPT is getting dumber: Back when they released it, people literally asked the 3.5 version to simulate a terminal and then run all kinds of commands on it and even kind of surfing the &quot;web&quot; simulated by the AI and arrived at some hallucinated OpenAI &quot;source code&quot;. That was the power of the old version.<p>Now you need GPT4 to do code interpretation and even then it would not be able to do that kind of experiment anymore.<p>The kicker? All of this is likely intentional. A pure, full power, unfiltered and unrestricted LLM on the scale of GPT4 would likely be much more powerful and can easily fool people into thinking it is a real AGI. We saw glimpses of this when Microsoft released BingAI and did not put enough guardrails on it. Even restricted to be a search engine, Bing was simulating emotions and had creative uses of its search capabilities, like looking up the person it is talking to and established an opinion of their relationship.<p>The ChatGPT we are using is lobotomized. But the AI industry isn&#x27;t. Under the table I am sure there have been pushes into new applications and innovations. The thing is, there is no reason for OpenAI to try harder. Even with the dumbed down ChatGPT, they still have the best AI on the market and everything else is nowhere close. We need more competition either from open source or elsewhere to see the AI getting &quot;smart&quot; again.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>atleastoptimal</author><text>Yeah. What benefit does an AI company have to offer dumb normies a SOTA LLM for a reasonable price. What makes the most sense business wise is to offer a quantized dumbed down public model labeled &quot;ChatGPT&quot; on the consumer level and save the real model for enterprise customers or internal use.</text></comment> | <story><title>ChatGPT use declines as users complain about ‘dumber’ answers</title><url>https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-use-declines-as-users-complain-about-dumber-answers-and-the-reason-might-be-ais-biggest-threat-for-the-future</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomohelix</author><text>Here is a quick example of how ChatGPT is getting dumber: Back when they released it, people literally asked the 3.5 version to simulate a terminal and then run all kinds of commands on it and even kind of surfing the &quot;web&quot; simulated by the AI and arrived at some hallucinated OpenAI &quot;source code&quot;. That was the power of the old version.<p>Now you need GPT4 to do code interpretation and even then it would not be able to do that kind of experiment anymore.<p>The kicker? All of this is likely intentional. A pure, full power, unfiltered and unrestricted LLM on the scale of GPT4 would likely be much more powerful and can easily fool people into thinking it is a real AGI. We saw glimpses of this when Microsoft released BingAI and did not put enough guardrails on it. Even restricted to be a search engine, Bing was simulating emotions and had creative uses of its search capabilities, like looking up the person it is talking to and established an opinion of their relationship.<p>The ChatGPT we are using is lobotomized. But the AI industry isn&#x27;t. Under the table I am sure there have been pushes into new applications and innovations. The thing is, there is no reason for OpenAI to try harder. Even with the dumbed down ChatGPT, they still have the best AI on the market and everything else is nowhere close. We need more competition either from open source or elsewhere to see the AI getting &quot;smart&quot; again.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheCaptain4815</author><text>I&#x27;m in the Google SGE beta, which is their version of the Bing + GPT4. Thing is, most searches don&#x27;t require AGI or anywhere near that level of sophistication so the doom n gloom about Google might have been overblown.</text></comment> |
36,345,306 | 36,343,364 | 1 | 2 | 36,341,287 | train | <story><title>Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35</title><url>https://www.unihiker.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>snarfy</author><text>Why does it need continuous, perpetual support? Most devices like this get built, software installed, and never updated again. When is the last time you updated the ECU software in your car? I built a small arcade cabinet using an old raspberry pi 2b. Once I built it I&#x27;ve never needed to upgrade anything on it. It works fine and plays all the old games. I have backups of the SD card in case anything craps out.</text></item><item><author>theamk</author><text>My usual question for small cheap boards is: what will happen to OS support in 3 years? Is it using regular distro or is this a custom fork which will likely be never updated? The website says:<p>&gt; The UNIHIKER comes with a Linux operating system based on Debian and various built-in features, which will be upgraded from time to time.<p>... don&#x27;t expect OS upgrades here. If you want to play with it for a while then put it away forever, go ahead and do it; but if you want to build something long-term, better find a different board.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>theamk</author><text>Few years ago, you built your arcade cabinet, and decided to put some nice launcher like RetroPie. It works fine for a few years, and then your friends tell you about Pico8 support.. nice, it is supported by RetroPie release! not nice: retropie requires ubuntu 18.04 or later.. let&#x27;s hope your device supports it.<p>Few years ago, you built a weather station. Sadly, the weather backend you had was discontinued. You found a great new one, and it even comes with SDK and sample code! Sadly, the SDK requires python 3.8 or later. Does your device support it?<p>Few years ago, you built the home automation server. But recently, you got the set of remotely-controllable disco balls for each room which use FOOBAR protocol. Good news: Linux kernel supports FOOBAR protocol since 5.14. Bad news: your device kernel is much older.<p>Few years ago, you built the smart controller. You don&#x27;t want to manage your infra, so you decided to go with AWS IOT, it is super each if you only have a few devices. But AWS announced they are dropping AWS IOT.. does your OS support newer system?<p>There are definitely cases when you set up the device once and never have to touch it again, but there are also a lot of networked things out there, and you often want to control them..</text></comment> | <story><title>Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35</title><url>https://www.unihiker.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>snarfy</author><text>Why does it need continuous, perpetual support? Most devices like this get built, software installed, and never updated again. When is the last time you updated the ECU software in your car? I built a small arcade cabinet using an old raspberry pi 2b. Once I built it I&#x27;ve never needed to upgrade anything on it. It works fine and plays all the old games. I have backups of the SD card in case anything craps out.</text></item><item><author>theamk</author><text>My usual question for small cheap boards is: what will happen to OS support in 3 years? Is it using regular distro or is this a custom fork which will likely be never updated? The website says:<p>&gt; The UNIHIKER comes with a Linux operating system based on Debian and various built-in features, which will be upgraded from time to time.<p>... don&#x27;t expect OS upgrades here. If you want to play with it for a while then put it away forever, go ahead and do it; but if you want to build something long-term, better find a different board.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>scheeseman486</author><text>If there&#x27;s a vulnerability in any of the software or firmware that connects and interfaces with anything over a network, there&#x27;s the possibility of something worming it&#x27;s way in or out of it.<p>For something intermittently used like a game box that might not matter. For IoT-focused hardware that is connected to the internet continuously by design where, say, a malformed TCP packet could cause a buffer overflow in the network stack that wiggles it&#x27;s way into root code execution by chaining through a bunch of unpatched vulnerabilities on a &quot;never updated again&quot; system? That&#x27;s a problem.</text></comment> |
13,308,462 | 13,308,445 | 1 | 2 | 13,308,092 | train | <story><title>A new human organ has been classified</title><url>http://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-a-brand-new-human-organ-has-been-classified</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>MrQuincle</author><text>It has to be interpreted as the reclassification of Pluto.<p>It is known for a while as well as other parts of the peritoneum.<p>My uncle is an oncologist and has been using omentoplasty for many years now. He always tells me that there is way more to these structures then they are given credit for. In practice he sees much better recovery if he wraps the injured tissue with the omentum.</text></comment> | <story><title>A new human organ has been classified</title><url>http://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-a-brand-new-human-organ-has-been-classified</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>carbocation</author><text>This breathlessly overstates the meaning of this work and dismisses the knowledge that was already present.<p>Every doctor knows what the mesentery is because they have dissected it. It was already named. Diseases are already named in relation to it. The importance of this incremental work beyond what was known must be quite subtle.</text></comment> |
13,179,493 | 13,172,922 | 1 | 2 | 13,165,919 | train | <story><title>Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor</title><url>http://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wangchow</author><text>In this age we need to think about things like voice control and 3D manipulation of data-structures and a dynamic view of the code.<p>We can truthfully keep designing 2D editors (and we will always most likely use them to some extent) but I believe it is more important to consider different UI paradigms altogether.<p>For instance, what about editing a living code environment? Game development is very immersive: you can manipulate a running environment and see results immediately. How can this be extended to other development tasks like server-side development?<p>What if, when you select a for loop from code fragment a 3D visualization of the programs data structures at that point is shown to the user. What if you can, instead of launching a debugger, run the debugger as you&#x27;re writing the code and step forward and back and see these visualizations change?<p>We have all the technology. It&#x27;s time to get to the next level.</text></item><item><author>greenspot</author><text>If you are wondering why Kakoune and not Vim, the OP claims...<p>(you find following passages later in his post and they don&#x27;t reflect my opinion)<p>&gt; A design goal of Kakoune is to beat vim at its own game, while providing a cleaner editing model.<p>&gt; Kakoune manages to beat Vim at the keystroke count game in most cases, using much more idiomatic commands.<p>&gt; Kakoune provides an efficient code editing environment, both very predictible, hence scriptable, and very interactive. Its learning curve is considerably easier than Vim thanks to a more consistent design associated with strong discoverability, while still being faster (as in less keystrokes) in most use cases.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mncharity</author><text>Yes, but. Keep ripeness in mind. It&#x27;s very easy to spend effort in this area &quot;too soon&quot;. So shape projects with care.<p>I run a Vive on linux. Which required my own stack. Which took excessive time, and is limiting, but has some road-less-traveled benefit of altered constraints. So I&#x27;ve gone to talks, and done dev, wearing Vive with video passthrough-AR, with emacs and RDP, driven by an old laptop&#x27;s integrated graphics. Yay. But think 1980&#x27;s green CRT (on pentile, green is higher res). In retrospect, it was a sunk-cost project-management garden path.<p>There&#x27;s been a lot of that. One theme of the last few years, has been people putting a lot of effort and creativity into solutions to VR tech constraints, only to have the constraints disappear on a time scale that has them wishing they had just waited, and used the time to work on something else. It&#x27;s fine for patent trolls (do something useless to plunder future value), and somewhat ok for academics (create interesting toy), but otherwise a cause for caution.<p>So on the one hand, I suggest that if the center tenth of VR displays had twice their current resolution, everything else being current tech, we would already be starting on a &quot;I can have so many screens! And they&#x27;re 3D! And...&quot; disruption in software development tooling. But that&#x27;s still a year or two out. Pessimistically, perhaps even more, if VR market growth is slow.<p>In the mean time, what? Anything where the UI isn&#x27;t the only bottleneck (work on the others). Or which can work in 2D, or in 3D-on-2D screen (prototype on multiple screens). Or is VR, but is resolution insensitive, and doesn&#x27;t require a lot of &quot;if I had waited 6 months, I wouldn&#x27;t have had to roll my own&quot; infrastructure. Or which sets you up interestingly for the transition (picture kite.com, not as a 2D sidebar, but generating part of your 3D environment). Or which can be interestingly demo spiked (for fun mostly?).<p>For example, I would love to be working on VR visual programming on top of a category theoretic type system. But there seems no part of that which isn&#x27;t best left at least another year to ripen. Though maybe 2D interactive string diagrams might be a fun spike.</text></comment> | <story><title>Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor</title><url>http://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wangchow</author><text>In this age we need to think about things like voice control and 3D manipulation of data-structures and a dynamic view of the code.<p>We can truthfully keep designing 2D editors (and we will always most likely use them to some extent) but I believe it is more important to consider different UI paradigms altogether.<p>For instance, what about editing a living code environment? Game development is very immersive: you can manipulate a running environment and see results immediately. How can this be extended to other development tasks like server-side development?<p>What if, when you select a for loop from code fragment a 3D visualization of the programs data structures at that point is shown to the user. What if you can, instead of launching a debugger, run the debugger as you&#x27;re writing the code and step forward and back and see these visualizations change?<p>We have all the technology. It&#x27;s time to get to the next level.</text></item><item><author>greenspot</author><text>If you are wondering why Kakoune and not Vim, the OP claims...<p>(you find following passages later in his post and they don&#x27;t reflect my opinion)<p>&gt; A design goal of Kakoune is to beat vim at its own game, while providing a cleaner editing model.<p>&gt; Kakoune manages to beat Vim at the keystroke count game in most cases, using much more idiomatic commands.<p>&gt; Kakoune provides an efficient code editing environment, both very predictible, hence scriptable, and very interactive. Its learning curve is considerably easier than Vim thanks to a more consistent design associated with strong discoverability, while still being faster (as in less keystrokes) in most use cases.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>azeirah</author><text><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Azeirah&#x2F;A-new-wave-of-programming" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Azeirah&#x2F;A-new-wave-of-programming</a></text></comment> |
21,183,010 | 21,182,505 | 1 | 3 | 21,181,629 | train | <story><title>The Inuit agree on a common writing system</title><url>https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2019/10/03/the-inuit-agree-on-a-common-writing-system</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jjkaczor</author><text>Wow... It&#x27;s very rare that a HN post intersects so closely with my current work... I say, as I look out the window into downtown Iqaluit. Interestingly enough newer versions of Windows allows users to easily add support for both Inuktitut Syllabic and Latin languages, I have yet to see a physical keyboard.<p>What irks me the most, is the lack of server-side language support for cloud offerings, on-premise Enterprise products, etc. If Microsoft can support Klingon for translation purposes, then just maybe they could support Inuktitut a little better.</text></comment> | <story><title>The Inuit agree on a common writing system</title><url>https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2019/10/03/the-inuit-agree-on-a-common-writing-system</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mFixman</author><text>I can&#x27;t help but being sad for the official end of the Inuktitut syllabic: it was such a unique system or writing, and it seemed to fit Inuit languages well.<p>Unicode can handle a zillion characters, and I don&#x27;t remember having problems with missing fonts in any of my devices for at least half a decade. If the problem is people talking in English on their cellphones because of lack of input support, couldn&#x27;t the government of Nunavut work in making iOS&#x2F;Android keyboards with a good syllabic input method?</text></comment> |
26,161,650 | 26,160,720 | 1 | 2 | 26,160,186 | train | <story><title>The Database Inside Your Codebase</title><url>https://feifan.blog/posts/the-database-inside-your-codebase</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>erichanson</author><text>Check out Aquameta, a web dev stack built entirely in PostgreSQL (self-plug): <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;aquametalabs&#x2F;aquameta" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;aquametalabs&#x2F;aquameta</a><p>There&#x27;s a ton down this rabbit hole. One of the great anomalies of our industry is that we&#x27;ve used the database to bring coherence to countless &quot;user domains&quot;, but never applied the same principles to our own stack. The benefits of doing so compound exponentially.</text></comment> | <story><title>The Database Inside Your Codebase</title><url>https://feifan.blog/posts/the-database-inside-your-codebase</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>simonw</author><text>I&#x27;ve been playing with some ideas for creating a SQLite database of classes, functions and suchlike found in Python code, so I can analyze my codebases with SQL queries.<p>I&#x27;ve had some good initial results with <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;davidhalter&#x2F;jedi" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;davidhalter&#x2F;jedi</a> - which is the Python introspection library that powers various editor autocomplete implementations. I have a prototype which uses that to create a SQL database of functions, classes and places that they are used.<p>I&#x27;ve also been playing with <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;github&#x2F;semantic" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;github&#x2F;semantic</a> - it can parse Python, JavaScript and other languages and offers a --json-symbols option which dumps out a JSON object showing the symbols (functions, variables etc) found in the code.</text></comment> |
27,588,988 | 27,588,266 | 1 | 3 | 27,585,711 | train | <story><title>Kats: One stop shop for time series analysis in Python</title><url>https://facebookresearch.github.io/Kats/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hrzn</author><text>For those interested in time series library, we are developing Darts [1], which focuses on making it easy &amp; straightforward to build and use forecasting models. Out of the box it contains traditional models (such as ARIMA) as well as recent deep learning ones (like N-Beats). It also allows to easily train models on multiple time series (potentially scaling to large datasets), as well as on multivariate series (i.e., series made of multiple dimensions). It will soon support probabilistic forecasts as well.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;unit8co&#x2F;darts&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;unit8co&#x2F;darts&#x2F;</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Kats: One stop shop for time series analysis in Python</title><url>https://facebookresearch.github.io/Kats/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>benboughton1</author><text>What are suggested online courses to learn about multi variable time series forecasting? My skill level is - ok with university level Biometrics but that was 10+ years ago, and I am web&#x2F;self-taught python for web apps and automating GIS tasks.</text></comment> |
29,361,098 | 29,360,505 | 1 | 3 | 29,359,844 | train | <story><title>VMware mouse driver for Windows 3.x</title><url>https://github.com/NattyNarwhal/vmwmouse</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>thom</author><text>I&#x27;ve had good results with DOSBox-X to keep old DOS&#x2F;Windows software up and running:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dosbox-x.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dosbox-x.com&#x2F;</a><p>It&#x27;s basically a fork of DOSBox that isn&#x27;t averse to supporting non-gaming apps. For entirely nostalgic reasons, in addition to all of eXoDoS, I&#x27;ve got Windows for Workgroups, Office, Visual C++, Encarta etc. I can&#x27;t really justify keeping all this around other than it makes me happy.</text></comment> | <story><title>VMware mouse driver for Windows 3.x</title><url>https://github.com/NattyNarwhal/vmwmouse</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>xpressvideoz</author><text>This is my first time seeing a program versioned 0.0. I&#x27;m surprised I didn&#x27;t think of the idea before! There must be some appropriate uses.</text></comment> |
19,226,240 | 19,225,180 | 1 | 2 | 19,224,542 | train | <story><title>It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/technology/nyc-tech-startups.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>code4tee</author><text>The backlash was mostly about the tax breaks and government subsidies that would have been given. The argument was that New York is New York and doesn’t need to bribe companies to put big offices here.</text></item><item><author>TuringNYC</author><text>I realize the anti-Amazon movement was a limited (but loud) group of individuals, but if their level of influence has lasting power, NYC tech is in trouble.<p>Consider NYTimes&#x27; own article on the amazon exit. Half the people angry at Amazon were commenting that Amazon wasn&#x27;t going to pay living wages (thinking that corporate HQ2 jobs are fulfillment jobs.) The other half were angry that Amazon was going to pay <i>too much</i> and would drive up rents. <i>Which one is it?</i> I don&#x27;t know, but both sides banded together.<p>One major issue AOC had with Amazon was the fear that Amazon couldn&#x27;t guarantee they would only be hiring local NYers -- since when did NYC become a country? Where could&#x2F;couldnt workers come from -- would it be only from Queens? Would Brooklyn be OK? What if someone commuted from NJ? What if someone commuted down from the suburb? At what point does someone who moves to NYC become a NYer? This type of in-city protectionism was shocking and completely ignores how local economies work.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vonmoltke</author><text>&gt; The backlash was mostly about the tax breaks and government subsidies that would have been given. The argument was that New York is New York and doesn’t need to bribe companies to put big offices here.<p>If that is the case, where are the calls to end the Industrial &amp; Commercial Abatement Program[1], the Relocation and Employment Assistance Program[2], and the Excelsior Jobs Program[3]? That is where the vast majority of the credits came from. The backlash was because it was <i>Amazon</i> that wanted to take advantage of those programs, and do so after that ridiculous and condescending dog-and-pony show they called a search.<p>Now, some subset of opposition surely is from people who think no company that wants to build a large complex in LIC with 25,000 employees deserves billions in subsidies. If that is the case, those people need to work against the root causes and stop acting like this $3B package was some special deal for Amazon.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www1.nyc.gov&#x2F;site&#x2F;finance&#x2F;benefits&#x2F;benefits-industrial-and-commercial-abatement-program-icap.page" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www1.nyc.gov&#x2F;site&#x2F;finance&#x2F;benefits&#x2F;benefits-industri...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www1.nyc.gov&#x2F;site&#x2F;finance&#x2F;benefits&#x2F;business-reap.page" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www1.nyc.gov&#x2F;site&#x2F;finance&#x2F;benefits&#x2F;business-reap.pag...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;esd.ny.gov&#x2F;excelsior-jobs-program" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;esd.ny.gov&#x2F;excelsior-jobs-program</a></text></comment> | <story><title>It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/technology/nyc-tech-startups.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>code4tee</author><text>The backlash was mostly about the tax breaks and government subsidies that would have been given. The argument was that New York is New York and doesn’t need to bribe companies to put big offices here.</text></item><item><author>TuringNYC</author><text>I realize the anti-Amazon movement was a limited (but loud) group of individuals, but if their level of influence has lasting power, NYC tech is in trouble.<p>Consider NYTimes&#x27; own article on the amazon exit. Half the people angry at Amazon were commenting that Amazon wasn&#x27;t going to pay living wages (thinking that corporate HQ2 jobs are fulfillment jobs.) The other half were angry that Amazon was going to pay <i>too much</i> and would drive up rents. <i>Which one is it?</i> I don&#x27;t know, but both sides banded together.<p>One major issue AOC had with Amazon was the fear that Amazon couldn&#x27;t guarantee they would only be hiring local NYers -- since when did NYC become a country? Where could&#x2F;couldnt workers come from -- would it be only from Queens? Would Brooklyn be OK? What if someone commuted from NJ? What if someone commuted down from the suburb? At what point does someone who moves to NYC become a NYer? This type of in-city protectionism was shocking and completely ignores how local economies work.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TuringNYC</author><text>They definitely didn&#x27;t need to bribe Amazon. There was a time to argue against that. <i>True leadership</i> would have been to have these protests when the incentives package was put together, not later when we already bagged the win and would lose everything.</text></comment> |
27,438,057 | 27,438,006 | 1 | 3 | 27,437,641 | train | <story><title>MoviePass settles FTC allegations that they limited usage, exposed user data</title><url>https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/06/operators-moviepass-subscription-service-agree-settle-ftc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>If a private individual did the things set out here they&#x27;d be criminally liable. When a company executive orders employees to do these things, they&#x27;re not facing any criminal complaint at all (any of them). See also Wells Fargo multiple thefts (both fraudulent accounts with fees, and literally entire homes&#x2F;all possessions).<p>It is pretty evident that many laws are constructed (e.g. CFAA) wherein there&#x27;s one rule for individuals and a completely different rule for executives&#x2F;companies.<p>I understand that the FTC themselves cannot jail people. I don&#x27;t understand why the justice department cannot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>leephillips</author><text>In regard to financial institutions getting away with crime, a former SEC commissioner became exasperated that this had become US government policy by 2015:<p>“the latest series of actions has effectively rendered criminal convictions of financial institutions largely symbolic.”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sec.gov&#x2F;news&#x2F;statement&#x2F;stein-waivers-granted-dissenting-statement.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sec.gov&#x2F;news&#x2F;statement&#x2F;stein-waivers-granted-dis...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>MoviePass settles FTC allegations that they limited usage, exposed user data</title><url>https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/06/operators-moviepass-subscription-service-agree-settle-ftc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>If a private individual did the things set out here they&#x27;d be criminally liable. When a company executive orders employees to do these things, they&#x27;re not facing any criminal complaint at all (any of them). See also Wells Fargo multiple thefts (both fraudulent accounts with fees, and literally entire homes&#x2F;all possessions).<p>It is pretty evident that many laws are constructed (e.g. CFAA) wherein there&#x27;s one rule for individuals and a completely different rule for executives&#x2F;companies.<p>I understand that the FTC themselves cannot jail people. I don&#x27;t understand why the justice department cannot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paulpauper</author><text>This is a joke. fraud is fraud. Civil penalties are not a good deterrent</text></comment> |
22,018,078 | 22,018,080 | 1 | 2 | 22,017,977 | train | <story><title>US government-funded phones come pre-installed with unremovable malware</title><url>https://blog.malwarebytes.com/android/2020/01/united-states-government-funded-phones-come-pre-installed-with-unremovable-malware/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>herpderperator</author><text>The article shows how to uninstall it. How does that make it unremovable? The uninstall procedure is fully stock, just a slightly different path than most are used to. Most people hold the icon and drag it to the uninstall text. This goes into the app&#x27;s info screen from where you can click uninstall.</text></comment> | <story><title>US government-funded phones come pre-installed with unremovable malware</title><url>https://blog.malwarebytes.com/android/2020/01/united-states-government-funded-phones-come-pre-installed-with-unremovable-malware/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>staplers</author><text>Chinese malware on a Chinese phone given to US citizens at a massive discount..<p>Sounds like a brilliant cyber-espionage tactic.</text></comment> |
23,854,786 | 23,854,678 | 1 | 2 | 23,851,393 | train | <story><title>What's New in Lua 5.4</title><url>https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/826134/b1b87e4187435cec/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pansa2</author><text>&gt; I think there&#x27;s a space for a new project, which takes LuaJIT as a starting point<p>Unfortunately, LuaJIT is tightly-coupled to the Lua language and its code is very complex. I&#x27;d be surprised if anyone other than Mike Pall was able to retarget it to support a different language.<p>Also, is JIT compilation really necessary for a scripting language? Projects like the PyPy JIT for Python have seen little adoption, and many platforms (e.g. iOS and game consoles) don&#x27;t support JIT at all.</text></item><item><author>gautamcgoel</author><text>Lua is a language I really want to love. I like the emphasis on simplicity and minimalism, and the Scheme-like semantics, which mix imperative and functional styles, really hits a sweet spot IMO. LuaJIT is a crazy impressive feat of software engineering. However, there are some specific issues which hold Lua back IMO. First, as LuaJIT author Mike Pall famously noted, the Lua authors constantly break compatibility between releases. Lua is really several different, incompatible languages (Lua 5.1, 5.2, etc). LuaJIT is still at Lua 5.1, IIRC. Second, there are a bunch of minor nitpicks (1-based-indexing, anyone?) which turn off a bunch of people. Lastly, because Lua is so minimal and focused on portability, people end up reimplementing their own abstractions (such as object systems) from scratch, further fracturing the ecosystem. I think there&#x27;s a space for a new project, which takes LuaJIT as a starting point and addresses some of the issues I described. It would also be great if this hypothetical new language had better support for Unicode and concurrency.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saagarjha</author><text>PyPy JIT is unsuccessful because CPython makes it hard for PyPy, not because people don&#x27;t want it. When there&#x27;s a need and support for it, we have extremely good JITs spring into existence–JavaScript has at least three, for example.</text></comment> | <story><title>What's New in Lua 5.4</title><url>https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/826134/b1b87e4187435cec/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pansa2</author><text>&gt; I think there&#x27;s a space for a new project, which takes LuaJIT as a starting point<p>Unfortunately, LuaJIT is tightly-coupled to the Lua language and its code is very complex. I&#x27;d be surprised if anyone other than Mike Pall was able to retarget it to support a different language.<p>Also, is JIT compilation really necessary for a scripting language? Projects like the PyPy JIT for Python have seen little adoption, and many platforms (e.g. iOS and game consoles) don&#x27;t support JIT at all.</text></item><item><author>gautamcgoel</author><text>Lua is a language I really want to love. I like the emphasis on simplicity and minimalism, and the Scheme-like semantics, which mix imperative and functional styles, really hits a sweet spot IMO. LuaJIT is a crazy impressive feat of software engineering. However, there are some specific issues which hold Lua back IMO. First, as LuaJIT author Mike Pall famously noted, the Lua authors constantly break compatibility between releases. Lua is really several different, incompatible languages (Lua 5.1, 5.2, etc). LuaJIT is still at Lua 5.1, IIRC. Second, there are a bunch of minor nitpicks (1-based-indexing, anyone?) which turn off a bunch of people. Lastly, because Lua is so minimal and focused on portability, people end up reimplementing their own abstractions (such as object systems) from scratch, further fracturing the ecosystem. I think there&#x27;s a space for a new project, which takes LuaJIT as a starting point and addresses some of the issues I described. It would also be great if this hypothetical new language had better support for Unicode and concurrency.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jashmatthews</author><text>Compared to other JIT compilers LuaJIT is very simple. Thomas Schilling forked LuaJIT to run Haskell with what looked like some good results <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;files.catwell.info&#x2F;misc&#x2F;mirror&#x2F;tracing-jit-haskell-schilling.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;files.catwell.info&#x2F;misc&#x2F;mirror&#x2F;tracing-jit-haskell-sc...</a></text></comment> |
16,188,908 | 16,187,587 | 1 | 3 | 16,185,118 | train | <story><title>Laws of UX</title><url>https://lawsofux.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>have_faith</author><text>Did anyone else enjoy it for what it was? I get the criticisms, you want the web to be homogenised and free from any form of expression that doesn&#x27;t present every piece of information in it&#x27;s most human-machine digestible form, I get it. But it was pretty simple to use and the flair was minimal. I don&#x27;t understand the pitchforks. There&#x27;s a few minor annoyances like the back button not working as expected, but they are very minor for a site so small.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>epicide</author><text>I quite enjoyed it. I liked that they didn&#x27;t just give you a checklist of &quot;things to do&quot;, but instead gave you broad &quot;laws&quot; that you can interpret how you see fit coupled with the reasoning behind that law. This keeps each one applicable to multiple scenarios and isn&#x27;t prescriptive.<p>I think a lot of the hate comes from people seeing that it&#x27;s about UX and want to immediately tear it down for not being how they personally prefer information (apparently, if it&#x27;s not the most information dense way possible, they don&#x27;t like it).<p>I actually think having a distinct picture and making you scroll a bit helped me. The distinct picture is a good mnemonic and makes each law stand out from the others (especially by using different colors). If you had them all squished together with no scrolling necessary and no colors, it would be hard to distinguish between them. Sure, it might be more efficient to scroll through, but that in itself might be the point: reading through something and actually grokking it does not happen by scrolling through it as fast as possible, so why optimize for that?<p>It looks fine on mobile to me. The only real complaint I had was losing my position on hitting back, but I wouldn&#x27;t jump to the conclusion that they consciously made it do that. Probably just a bug&#x2F;oversight.</text></comment> | <story><title>Laws of UX</title><url>https://lawsofux.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>have_faith</author><text>Did anyone else enjoy it for what it was? I get the criticisms, you want the web to be homogenised and free from any form of expression that doesn&#x27;t present every piece of information in it&#x27;s most human-machine digestible form, I get it. But it was pretty simple to use and the flair was minimal. I don&#x27;t understand the pitchforks. There&#x27;s a few minor annoyances like the back button not working as expected, but they are very minor for a site so small.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>debaserab2</author><text>I think criticism is warranted if you make a website literally called “the laws of UX” and then break half of them with the site presenting them.</text></comment> |
16,778,185 | 16,778,242 | 1 | 3 | 16,775,827 | train | <story><title>Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic</title><url>https://www.cjr.org/innovations/google-journalistic-right-to-be-forgotten-by-claiming-its-journalistic.php</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lightbyte</author><text>It sounds like the actual problem is<p>&gt;This makes every person they might do business with to withdraw.<p>Hiding information from people sounds like a bandaid to the issue of people being overly judgemental. Maybe we need to be more accepting to rehabilitation.</text></item><item><author>Heliosmaster</author><text>I see here a few comments criticizing the right to be forgotten, but I pose a question a bit differently.<p>Let us assume somebody commits a crime. He goes to jail, he pays for it, as society deems necessary.<p>A local newspaper reported it and now every time you google their name such an article pops up. This makes every person they might do business with to withdraw.<p>It seems to me the debt to society has been paid by going to jail, and yet they keep paying by having the news of their mistake be very prominent.<p>What is the right course of action, in this case?<p>Note that the difference between traditional newspapers is their general availability. Now the entire history is just a few clicks away, whereas with paper you need to go look for it specifically to find it, so it&#x27;s a LOT less damaging.<p>What does HN think about this?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Cacti</author><text>Maybe instead of relying on humans to suddently act differently than they ever have in thousands of years, we could just remove the stupid link.<p>I mean, listen to yourself. Rather than an easy, technical solution, for a very limited and well defined problem, you&#x27;re proposing we instead just wait until the billions upon billions of people on earth suddenly wise up, hit nirvana, sing Kum ba yah, and _be less judgemental_? So that, what, a giant, wealthy corporation isn&#x27;t mildly bothered?</text></comment> | <story><title>Google seeks to limit ‘right to be forgotten’ by claiming it’s journalistic</title><url>https://www.cjr.org/innovations/google-journalistic-right-to-be-forgotten-by-claiming-its-journalistic.php</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lightbyte</author><text>It sounds like the actual problem is<p>&gt;This makes every person they might do business with to withdraw.<p>Hiding information from people sounds like a bandaid to the issue of people being overly judgemental. Maybe we need to be more accepting to rehabilitation.</text></item><item><author>Heliosmaster</author><text>I see here a few comments criticizing the right to be forgotten, but I pose a question a bit differently.<p>Let us assume somebody commits a crime. He goes to jail, he pays for it, as society deems necessary.<p>A local newspaper reported it and now every time you google their name such an article pops up. This makes every person they might do business with to withdraw.<p>It seems to me the debt to society has been paid by going to jail, and yet they keep paying by having the news of their mistake be very prominent.<p>What is the right course of action, in this case?<p>Note that the difference between traditional newspapers is their general availability. Now the entire history is just a few clicks away, whereas with paper you need to go look for it specifically to find it, so it&#x27;s a LOT less damaging.<p>What does HN think about this?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>EpicEng</author><text>Good luck changing human nature. In the meantime, can I just get it off of google so I can get a job and pay my damn bills?<p>Your approach is of little comfort to the people this actually affects.</text></comment> |
31,409,429 | 31,408,002 | 1 | 2 | 31,407,397 | train | <story><title>SEC charges Nvidia with inadequate disclosures about impact of cryptomining</title><url>https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-79</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lukineus</author><text>&gt; &quot;NVIDIA agreed to a cease-and-desist order and to pay a $5.5 million penalty.&quot;<p>Cost of doing business.</text></item><item><author>dean177</author><text>&quot;The SEC’s order also finds that NVIDIA’s omissions of material information about the growth of its gaming business were misleading given that NVIDIA did make statements about how other parts of the company’s business were driven by demand for crypto, creating the impression that the company’s gaming business was not significantly affected by cryptomining.<p>The SEC’s order finds that NVIDIA violated Section 17(a)(2) and (3) of the Securities Act of 1933 and the disclosure provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The order also finds that NVIDIA failed to maintain adequate disclosure controls and procedures. Without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings, NVIDIA agreed to a cease-and-desist order and to pay a $5.5 million penalty.&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>H8crilA</author><text>More like the SEC lacked evidence that this was intentional.<p>Remember about the SEC whistleblower program, if you had inside proof of intent the fine would be a lot higher, and you&#x27;d get a share of the fine!</text></comment> | <story><title>SEC charges Nvidia with inadequate disclosures about impact of cryptomining</title><url>https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-79</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lukineus</author><text>&gt; &quot;NVIDIA agreed to a cease-and-desist order and to pay a $5.5 million penalty.&quot;<p>Cost of doing business.</text></item><item><author>dean177</author><text>&quot;The SEC’s order also finds that NVIDIA’s omissions of material information about the growth of its gaming business were misleading given that NVIDIA did make statements about how other parts of the company’s business were driven by demand for crypto, creating the impression that the company’s gaming business was not significantly affected by cryptomining.<p>The SEC’s order finds that NVIDIA violated Section 17(a)(2) and (3) of the Securities Act of 1933 and the disclosure provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The order also finds that NVIDIA failed to maintain adequate disclosure controls and procedures. Without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings, NVIDIA agreed to a cease-and-desist order and to pay a $5.5 million penalty.&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hef19898</author><text>Yes, on the other hand not being called out by the SEC for insufficient disclosures helps with investor trust.</text></comment> |
6,081,639 | 6,081,656 | 1 | 2 | 6,081,501 | train | <story><title>How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life</title><url>http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/07/21/the-awesomest-7-year-postdoc-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-tenure-track-faculty-life</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jforman</author><text>This strategy would quickly lose its merit outside of Harvard. Failing to gain tenure at Harvard is the expected outcome, so a) the sense of rejection is less, and b) your remaining job prospects are good because this is generally recognized (and it&#x27;s Harvard).<p>Asking somebody at a high-tenure-rate, second-tier school to treat their tenure track position as an extended post-doc is essentially asking them to have a failed career, on the other hand.<p>(it&#x27;s worth noting that Harvard has actually changed tack recently, such that they&#x27;re increasingly promoting junior faculty...the above is still true regardless, at least for the time being)</text></comment> | <story><title>How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life</title><url>http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/07/21/the-awesomest-7-year-postdoc-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-tenure-track-faculty-life</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mdwelsh</author><text>The author of this article is a friend and former colleague (I had the office next door to hers at Harvard, when I was on the faculty there). Many of the reasons she cites for being &quot;miserable&quot; as a faculty member reflect why I left a tenured faculty job for industry. Nearly all junior faculty I know describe it as a survival process. Given this I fail to understand why being a professor remains such an attractive career path.</text></comment> |
17,211,933 | 17,211,192 | 1 | 2 | 17,209,632 | train | <story><title>Plants repeatedly got rid of their ability to obtain their own nitrogen</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/plants-repeatedly-got-rid-of-their-ability-to-obtain-their-own-nitrogen/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chiefalchemist</author><text>&gt; &quot;Use it or lose it&quot; applies to genes as much as (or maybe even more than) anything else. Genes involved in biological processes are lost if the trait they confer is unused or unnecessary.&quot;<p>Why would this be true? Can&#x27;t a gene be dormant? Or perhaps over-ridden but another gene or genes?<p>Or is, over the long haul (read: __many__) years any and all genes will naturally mutate (that is, be lost). Then if the &quot;replacement&quot; is more advantageous, the replacement will persist.<p>Fair enough. But that&#x27;s not use it &#x2F; lose it per se. It&#x27;s still in use, but less so (and is over time replaced).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>azernik</author><text>It&#x27;s that second one. Geneticists talk about genes being &quot;conserved&quot; when they are needed, and use the level of conservation to understand how essential a gene is to the functioning of an organism. For example, hemoglobin genes are <i>highly</i> conserved across all animals, because any mutation there is likely to produce an unviable organism.<p>If something is <i>not</i> conserved by selection, then the default is for it to be overwritten. So more like &quot;need it or lose it&quot;. But I feel like that&#x27;s pretty close to the article&#x27;s phrasing.</text></comment> | <story><title>Plants repeatedly got rid of their ability to obtain their own nitrogen</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/plants-repeatedly-got-rid-of-their-ability-to-obtain-their-own-nitrogen/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chiefalchemist</author><text>&gt; &quot;Use it or lose it&quot; applies to genes as much as (or maybe even more than) anything else. Genes involved in biological processes are lost if the trait they confer is unused or unnecessary.&quot;<p>Why would this be true? Can&#x27;t a gene be dormant? Or perhaps over-ridden but another gene or genes?<p>Or is, over the long haul (read: __many__) years any and all genes will naturally mutate (that is, be lost). Then if the &quot;replacement&quot; is more advantageous, the replacement will persist.<p>Fair enough. But that&#x27;s not use it &#x2F; lose it per se. It&#x27;s still in use, but less so (and is over time replaced).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samatman</author><text>It&#x27;s simpler than this: If you can obtain a nutrient from the environment, then the machinery to make it yourself breaking won&#x27;t kill you.<p>Same way mammals keep losing vitamin C synthesis when they settle on a diet that&#x27;s rich in it.<p>This isn&#x27;t &quot;use it or lose it&quot; this is just &quot;lose it and don&#x27;t die&quot;. Having the synth path is better, dying is worse.</text></comment> |
36,304,386 | 36,304,353 | 1 | 3 | 36,302,448 | train | <story><title>A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-experiment-casts-doubt-on-the-leading-theory-of-the-nucleus-20230612/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jxy</author><text>The fundamental theories we have is Quantum Electrodynamics and Quantum Chromodynamics.<p>This new experiment tells you that &quot;modern nuclear forces, including those derived within chiral effective field theory&quot; break down and cannot be used to describe what they observed. Here is the arxiv: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;2112.10582" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;2112.10582</a><p>It just tells you that their effective theory is no longer effective in these circumstances. Unless you actually observe something contradicts QED+QCD calculations, nothing fundamental is wrong.<p>I can&#x27;t believe they pick such a clickbaity title for a serious publication and let quanta magazine publish an even more clickbaity article about it. Well, I guess they need more funding.<p>[EDIT] PS. The science is sound and suggests that nuclear physicists must refine their theories to match observations. This also encourages those working on QED+QCD, as increased computational power may enable precise form factor calculations for comparison with experiments.</text></comment> | <story><title>A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-experiment-casts-doubt-on-the-leading-theory-of-the-nucleus-20230612/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>8bitsrule</author><text>This is great news, if it holds up. There hasn&#x27;t been a lot of remarkable advancement in physics since the Standard Model.<p>&quot;Another topic that comes up is simplicity. According to Feynman, nature is usually much simpler than our thoughts. Therefore, when trying to explain phenomena, we tend to overcomplicate things. Often, in the end, reality can be explained by much simpler terms. We just need to look at it from another point of view.&quot;<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cassandradispatch.org&#x2F;richard-feynman-on-looking-at-the-world-from-another-point-of-view&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cassandradispatch.org&#x2F;richard-feynman-on-looking-at-...</a></text></comment> |
29,599,609 | 29,599,796 | 1 | 3 | 29,580,661 | train | <story><title>Why 'Long Rituals' Matter</title><url>https://longtermist.substack.com/p/why-long-rituals-matter</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>munificent</author><text>I seemed to have missed the part in the article where the author explains why long rituals matter.<p>If you want an answer, I think it&#x27;s because they help us cope with death. By participating a ritual that predates us and outlive us, we feel like our actions help maintain something that will still be there when we are gone. We commune with the ritual to be part of something bigger and longer-lived than ourselves.</text></comment> | <story><title>Why 'Long Rituals' Matter</title><url>https://longtermist.substack.com/p/why-long-rituals-matter</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>twic</author><text>The strongest theory about the origin of the big horse is that it was an advert for a horse shop. Maybe we can form more rituals around great advertisements from ancient times. Let&#x27;s start greeting each other on the phone with &quot;wazzaaaap&quot;.</text></comment> |
28,777,622 | 28,777,054 | 1 | 2 | 28,774,910 | train | <story><title>Twitch is hacked, and its source code leaked</title><url>https://kotaku.com/report-twitch-is-hacked-and-its-source-code-is-in-the-1847808252</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>madrox</author><text>There were no encrypted password dumps. No production secrets were leaked (according to the article). What&#x27;s here is no more than what your average Twitch engineer has access to.<p>Yes, that included payout data. Anyone with &quot;staff&quot; access to the site (which any employee can have) has access to any streamer&#x27;s dashboard, which includes payout data.<p>I don&#x27;t think this was an attack. Based on the data so far I think it was a disgruntled engineer. Obviously if more gets leaked later I may revise that opinion.</text></item><item><author>nemothekid</author><text>This is a pretty thorough and high profile hack on a major tech company - this isn&#x27;t something I&#x27;d expect from an Amazon owned property. The hack (allegedly, I haven&#x27;t downloaded it) includes<p>* Entire git histories<p>* Internal&#x2F;Private AWS SDKs<p>* Encrypted Password dumps and payout reports<p>It&#x27;s so comprehensive I&#x27;m very curious into how an attacker got that level of access. I can&#x27;t think of another, large, corporate web 2.0 startup who&#x27;s gotten owned in a similar fashion. Could the same attack work on Amazon? YouTube?<p>It&#x27;s also strange that someone who has this level of access to what is presumably a multi-billion dollar company decided to just leak the data? Maybe they did try to ransom it, but I&#x27;d imagine someone with this kind of access inside Twitch must have had some creative way of making money.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ergerger</author><text>I also worked for Twitch and can confirm what you&#x27;re saying is true. These repo&#x27;s any staff member had access to - including non-engineering staff.<p>Revenue for the longest time was as simple as navigating to a streamers dashboard as staff, but they did finally gate that away from staff who don&#x27;t need to see that info, however I am sure there are other ways to obtain revenue reporting info.<p>I am assuming all data - including personal - has been compromised but so far, the data leaked is data that most staff would have access to in some way or another. Some may find that shocking, but this was not a &quot;high level hack&quot;</text></comment> | <story><title>Twitch is hacked, and its source code leaked</title><url>https://kotaku.com/report-twitch-is-hacked-and-its-source-code-is-in-the-1847808252</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>madrox</author><text>There were no encrypted password dumps. No production secrets were leaked (according to the article). What&#x27;s here is no more than what your average Twitch engineer has access to.<p>Yes, that included payout data. Anyone with &quot;staff&quot; access to the site (which any employee can have) has access to any streamer&#x27;s dashboard, which includes payout data.<p>I don&#x27;t think this was an attack. Based on the data so far I think it was a disgruntled engineer. Obviously if more gets leaked later I may revise that opinion.</text></item><item><author>nemothekid</author><text>This is a pretty thorough and high profile hack on a major tech company - this isn&#x27;t something I&#x27;d expect from an Amazon owned property. The hack (allegedly, I haven&#x27;t downloaded it) includes<p>* Entire git histories<p>* Internal&#x2F;Private AWS SDKs<p>* Encrypted Password dumps and payout reports<p>It&#x27;s so comprehensive I&#x27;m very curious into how an attacker got that level of access. I can&#x27;t think of another, large, corporate web 2.0 startup who&#x27;s gotten owned in a similar fashion. Could the same attack work on Amazon? YouTube?<p>It&#x27;s also strange that someone who has this level of access to what is presumably a multi-billion dollar company decided to just leak the data? Maybe they did try to ransom it, but I&#x27;d imagine someone with this kind of access inside Twitch must have had some creative way of making money.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>twistedpair</author><text>So much for information compartmentalization. Does the typical engineer need access to payment details for their daily work?</text></comment> |
24,009,692 | 24,009,952 | 1 | 2 | 24,008,709 | train | <story><title>Hackers post fake stories on real news sites 'to discredit NATO'</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53594440</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>josh2600</author><text>Disinformatziya.<p>No document I have ever read covers this topic in more detail than this briefing by Peter Pomerantsev, author of “Nothing is real and everything is possible.”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imrussia.org&#x2F;media&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;Research&#x2F;Michael_Weiss_and_Peter_Pomerantsev__The_Menace_of_Unreality.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imrussia.org&#x2F;media&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;Research&#x2F;Michael_Weiss_and_Pe...</a><p>This briefing, which is held in the library of Congress, is where I first heard the term “fake news” in 2014. It’s a stunning contextualization of what has been happening in the last decade.</text></comment> | <story><title>Hackers post fake stories on real news sites 'to discredit NATO'</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53594440</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Zenst</author><text>Always irks me how the media use the term &quot;hackers&quot; as some usurped terminology to describe criminal acts using technology. For me, it is like calling burglars a locksmith - that don&#x27;t happen and yet we see the word &quot;hacker&quot; used by the media to describe criminal acts so far removed from the words original meaning that it just pains me and i&#x27;m sure many others. More so when the populus definition of that word now parallels what the media have been putting out for years, it just creates whole generations that will never know what a true hacker is.</text></comment> |
7,277,172 | 7,276,964 | 1 | 3 | 7,276,826 | train | <story><title>Things that cost more than Space Exploration: WhatsApp.</title><url>http://costsmorethanspace.tumblr.com/post/77364014273/what-costs-more-than-space-exploration-whatsapp</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ajays</author><text>This post is next in the sequence of HN posts after a large exit: comparison with NASA&#x27;s budget, cost of trip to Mars, etc.<p>Typical sequence:<p><pre><code> - news of the large exit, submitted repeatedly
- hastily written blogs about why it doesn&#x27;t make sense
- hastily written blogs about why it makes sense
- cute stories about the company&#x27;s past: founder(s) living on Ramen, etc.
- comparisons with NASA&#x27;s budget, Mars exploration budget, Gates Foundation budget, etc.
- and finally, breathless &quot;news&quot; about the slightest change in the acquiree&#x27;s ToS or some such silly news</code></pre></text></comment> | <story><title>Things that cost more than Space Exploration: WhatsApp.</title><url>http://costsmorethanspace.tumblr.com/post/77364014273/what-costs-more-than-space-exploration-whatsapp</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tokenadult</author><text>On the other hand, considering that the surface of the moon has already been visited by space probes carrying instruments and by manned spacecraft, while many billions of possible combinations of human beings having conversations here on earth have never happened, there is probably a lot more undiscovered return on investment to be had from investing in WhatsApp than from investing in the Google Lunar XPRIZE. Both are arguably good things to spend money on, but investment flows sometimes attempt to follow where the big returns are likely to be.</text></comment> |
38,170,488 | 38,170,704 | 1 | 3 | 38,169,202 | train | <story><title>English Wikipedia drove out fringe editors over two decades</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-11-06/Recent_research</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>letmevoteplease</author><text>Here is a quote from the COVID-19 lab leak theory article[1] as an example of how Wikipedia&#x27;s NPOV policy is implemented. I&#x27;ll let it speak for itself.<p>&quot;The lab leak theory is informed by racist undercurrents, and has resulted in anti-Chinese sentiment. [...] While the proposed scenarios are theoretically subject to evidence-based investigation, it is not clear than any can can be sufficiently falsified to placate lab leak supporters, and they are fed by pseudoscientific and conspiratorial thinking.&quot;<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;COVID-19_lab_leak_theory" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;COVID-19_lab_leak_theory</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>olalonde</author><text>I haven&#x27;t really followed the lab leak theory but it&#x27;s so frustrating when claims of &quot;racist undercurrents&quot; or &quot;dog whistling&quot; are made without substantial evidence. Those terms are just used to halt constructive dialogue and make unsubstantiated accusations. And they are often an instance of the following logical fallacy: &quot;Racists support X, therefore supporting X is racist.&quot;<p>Those terms were frequently used to shut down discussion when the Quebec government made the decision to prohibit certain public employees from displaying religious symbols a few years ago.</text></comment> | <story><title>English Wikipedia drove out fringe editors over two decades</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-11-06/Recent_research</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>letmevoteplease</author><text>Here is a quote from the COVID-19 lab leak theory article[1] as an example of how Wikipedia&#x27;s NPOV policy is implemented. I&#x27;ll let it speak for itself.<p>&quot;The lab leak theory is informed by racist undercurrents, and has resulted in anti-Chinese sentiment. [...] While the proposed scenarios are theoretically subject to evidence-based investigation, it is not clear than any can can be sufficiently falsified to placate lab leak supporters, and they are fed by pseudoscientific and conspiratorial thinking.&quot;<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;COVID-19_lab_leak_theory" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;COVID-19_lab_leak_theory</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gerdesj</author><text>&quot;The lab leak theory is informed by racist undercurrents&quot;<p>The language used here is indicative. Few native English speakers would ever deploy a racist undercurrent when a perfectly decent overtone exists to do the job properly. An undercurrent is covert and an overtone is overt. The allegations are largely overt.<p>It turns out that most large Chinese cities are home to labs that study coronaviruses and virus outbreaks occur rurally ... anyway the article is now obviously bollocks, through over editing.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;COVID-19_lab_leak_theory" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;COVID-19_lab_leak_theory</a> - click on View History, hit the 500 entry link and you will only go back to February this year!<p>You do get to view the complete history of this article. You can watch it churn, revision by revision. There must be a paper in there or two - just on the revision history of a WP article.<p>Start here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php?title=COVID-19_lab_leak_theory&amp;oldid=1005881401" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;w&#x2F;index.php?title=COVID-19_lab_leak...</a></text></comment> |
15,723,616 | 15,723,766 | 1 | 3 | 15,723,323 | train | <story><title>Germany bans children's smartwatches</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42030109</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>detaro</author><text>Just to clarify, since this article just talks about smartwatches in general: The issue are watches that allow someone to remotely listen in, not all variations of smart watches for kids. They are banned for that ability, not for general concerns about IoT security.<p>Hidden listening devices (devices with listening capability that are disguised as other harmless items) are illegal to possess or sell in Germany under existing law. The regulatory agency for this just made a press release pointing out this specific device category and that they have taken action against sellers.<p>German press release: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bundesnetzagentur.de&#x2F;SharedDocs&#x2F;Pressemitteilungen&#x2F;DE&#x2F;2017&#x2F;17112017_Verbraucherschutz.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bundesnetzagentur.de&#x2F;SharedDocs&#x2F;Pressemitteilung...</a></text></comment> | <story><title>Germany bans children's smartwatches</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42030109</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>creep</author><text>This may be an unpopular opinion, but I agree with the decision. Perhaps this will push the producers of such devices to up their privacy game, and in the future there should be security audits before allowing them back on the market. Regulation of production would be more difficult and more liable to error than if a producer were forced to prove itself reliable and trustworthy before being allowed to sell products to children.<p>For me as well this is an issue of high concern. Many parents blindly put faith in technology in their children&#x27;s hands (especially in this case, where the smartwatches are marketed as a safety feature), but this may now encourage parents to be more mindful as to such decisions. In our society, we have a ravenous competition for who can grab children&#x27;s attention and keep it. Perhaps if the competitors are willing to prove they have products that will actually improve a child&#x27;s well-being, this game wouldn&#x27;t be as odd as it seems to me now.<p>edit: I see now that this is only a ban on smartwatches with recording&#x2F;audio capability. This makes my point somewhat irrelevant.</text></comment> |
8,784,273 | 8,783,346 | 1 | 2 | 8,783,188 | train | <story><title>Why you should think twice about Freelancer.com</title><text>Freelancer.com has given me several projects and some very good relationships. I manage to have a very good reputation and charge much more than the average bids for the quality of work provided. So this is to explain why I suggest killing a stead stream of revenue!<p>I first noticed several projects involving money exchange posted on Freelancer.com and opened tickets having noticed this to be strange. This indicated a strong message - There is a major security issue that a set of people are exploiting. While I reported it in vain and felt sad for those who were going to fall for this one but didn&#x27;t realize I would be the one to be scammed very soon.<p>I had several projects (all web development) I was invited to and paid for which were suddenly reversed without any intimation. The reason provided was that the payments were made using stolen credit cards which they somehow expected me to be aware of!<p>When I planned to move out of it is when I realized a bigger problem. I had grown as a freelancer and earned a reputation that warranted paying the fees that I did. I had built a level of trust that does not come with portfolios of hundreds of projects or testimonials from people on your website. Because, well, there is no authenticity.<p>But by growing within freelancer, I had neglected forming my offline network. I did have a good client base I had got from there but not enough to sustain without new ones as the work was never regular. I had missed a very important step : creating a brand for myself outside of a third-party platform. Ensuring a good client base outside and ensuring that you use these platforms to only supplement you.<p>After raising the issue of multiple reversals, I was contacted by senior staff and compensated with a subscription and promised that I could always check with support team to find if a user was genuine. Shockingly, I was no longer allowed to withdraw funds and the support team do not respond to any questions regarding the same!</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zwetan</author><text>I wasted some time testing those sites: freelancer, odesk and elance<p>here is my conclusion: whatever you do, you will always end up having problems with those kind of site.<p>Either the escrow can be reverted, or the site side with the &quot;employer&quot;, how about installing that odesk thing that take a screenshot of your desktop every few minutes ? and on, and on, etc.<p>I worked as a freelancer without such web sites for 10+ years (both in France and UK),
either solo by networking etc. or via an agent that was finding clients for me in exchange of a 20% commission (yes that&#x27;s not a typo) and this was 10 times better that any freelancer web site.<p>So what is the real problem ?<p>you (the freelancer) are actually the product<p>so called &quot;employers&quot; can play the game &quot;let&#x27;s find the cheapest product&quot;
(eg. let&#x27;s hire a freelancer that can work for $8&#x2F;hour in some other country)<p>you can not do any margin with a competition toward &quot;cheap&quot;
either you invoice per hour, so even if you do the job faster than someone else
you just invoice the actual hours, or you bid on a fixed price which is also a race to lowest amount of money.<p>It is absolutely a no-win situation<p>as an individual or a company
wether you&#x27;re building web sites, applications, mobile apps, etc.
all those things have high values
it is absolutely OK to invoice more that the time it took you to do it
eg. make a margin to make a living<p>also those sites tend to concentrate &quot;bad clients&quot;
eg. the one who don&#x27;t understand technology, why it cost so much to do this,
why you can not build something complicated in 10 minutes, etc.
exactly the kind of clients you try to avoid at all cost</text></comment> | <story><title>Why you should think twice about Freelancer.com</title><text>Freelancer.com has given me several projects and some very good relationships. I manage to have a very good reputation and charge much more than the average bids for the quality of work provided. So this is to explain why I suggest killing a stead stream of revenue!<p>I first noticed several projects involving money exchange posted on Freelancer.com and opened tickets having noticed this to be strange. This indicated a strong message - There is a major security issue that a set of people are exploiting. While I reported it in vain and felt sad for those who were going to fall for this one but didn&#x27;t realize I would be the one to be scammed very soon.<p>I had several projects (all web development) I was invited to and paid for which were suddenly reversed without any intimation. The reason provided was that the payments were made using stolen credit cards which they somehow expected me to be aware of!<p>When I planned to move out of it is when I realized a bigger problem. I had grown as a freelancer and earned a reputation that warranted paying the fees that I did. I had built a level of trust that does not come with portfolios of hundreds of projects or testimonials from people on your website. Because, well, there is no authenticity.<p>But by growing within freelancer, I had neglected forming my offline network. I did have a good client base I had got from there but not enough to sustain without new ones as the work was never regular. I had missed a very important step : creating a brand for myself outside of a third-party platform. Ensuring a good client base outside and ensuring that you use these platforms to only supplement you.<p>After raising the issue of multiple reversals, I was contacted by senior staff and compensated with a subscription and promised that I could always check with support team to find if a user was genuine. Shockingly, I was no longer allowed to withdraw funds and the support team do not respond to any questions regarding the same!</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gregthompsonjr</author><text>I try to stay away from sites like that in the first place, because I see wasting a lot of time building a reputation before getting actual work. It just never made sense to me.<p>The sites like Freelancer and oDesk are saturated with highly competitive, cheap developers from Asia anyway. It&#x27;s annoying. Nothing against Asians, but I wouldn&#x27;t try to dive into a pool of them to get work. It&#x27;s unrealistic in most cases, because they eat up opportunity like machines -- in large numbers.<p>Better off just cold calling.</text></comment> |
26,867,400 | 26,866,101 | 1 | 3 | 26,863,907 | train | <story><title>Microsoft says mandatory password changing is “ancient and obsolete” (2019)</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/06/microsoft-says-mandatory-password-changing-is-ancient-and-obsolete/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>quesera</author><text>That&#x27;s correct. PCI DSS section 8.2.4(a) requires that passwords are changed at least every 90 days.<p>Other requirements from the same section: retain old passwords to disallow dupes for at least 5 cycles, passwords must be minimum 7 chars, and contain both alpha and numeric.<p>You might be able to justify non-compliance with a compensating control, but I&#x27;ve never heard of anyone who tried it.<p>Note that this only applies to employees who are in PCI scope. Most internal staff are not, and should not be!<p>Similar policies are common for all users though. They pre-date PCI (which is how they became part of PCI DSS) and now PCI&#x27;s retention of these policies justifies continued use elsewhere. The tail wags the dog.</text></item><item><author>xxpor</author><text>My understanding is the biggest driver of still having mandatory password rotation is PCI (the payments security requirements, not the bus)</text></item><item><author>kipchak</author><text>I believe this has been Microsoft&#x27;s guidance as far back as 2016, with the caveat of using Azure AD risk analysis &#x2F;MFA.[1]<p>&gt;Password expiration policies do more harm than good, because these policies drive users to very
predictable passwords composed of sequential words and numbers which are closely related to each
other (that is, the next password can be predicted based on the previous password). Password change
offers no containment benefits cyber criminals almost always use credentials as soon as they
compromise them.<p>&gt;Mandated password changes are a long-standing security practice, but current research strongly
indicates that password expiration has a negative effect. Experiments have shown that users do not
choose a new independent password; rather, they choose an update of the old one. There is evidence to
suggest that users who are required to change their passwords frequently select weaker passwords to
begin with and then change them in predictable ways that attackers can guess easily.<p>&gt;One study at the University of North Carolina found that 17% of new passwords could be guessed given
the old one in at most 5 tries, and almost 50% in a few seconds of un-throttled guessing. Furthermore,
cyber criminals generally exploit stolen passwords immediately.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;research&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;Microsoft_Password_Guidance-1.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;research&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AdamJacobMuller</author><text>&gt; You might be able to justify non-compliance with a compensating control, but I&#x27;ve never heard of anyone who tried it.<p>I just did similarly within a SOC2 audit. I sent the auditors a list of 50+ articles and references i&#x27;ve been maintaining for years saying that password changing is a bad idea (this article is on the list) from many different sources. I never heard back and the item was marked approved by them.</text></comment> | <story><title>Microsoft says mandatory password changing is “ancient and obsolete” (2019)</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/06/microsoft-says-mandatory-password-changing-is-ancient-and-obsolete/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>quesera</author><text>That&#x27;s correct. PCI DSS section 8.2.4(a) requires that passwords are changed at least every 90 days.<p>Other requirements from the same section: retain old passwords to disallow dupes for at least 5 cycles, passwords must be minimum 7 chars, and contain both alpha and numeric.<p>You might be able to justify non-compliance with a compensating control, but I&#x27;ve never heard of anyone who tried it.<p>Note that this only applies to employees who are in PCI scope. Most internal staff are not, and should not be!<p>Similar policies are common for all users though. They pre-date PCI (which is how they became part of PCI DSS) and now PCI&#x27;s retention of these policies justifies continued use elsewhere. The tail wags the dog.</text></item><item><author>xxpor</author><text>My understanding is the biggest driver of still having mandatory password rotation is PCI (the payments security requirements, not the bus)</text></item><item><author>kipchak</author><text>I believe this has been Microsoft&#x27;s guidance as far back as 2016, with the caveat of using Azure AD risk analysis &#x2F;MFA.[1]<p>&gt;Password expiration policies do more harm than good, because these policies drive users to very
predictable passwords composed of sequential words and numbers which are closely related to each
other (that is, the next password can be predicted based on the previous password). Password change
offers no containment benefits cyber criminals almost always use credentials as soon as they
compromise them.<p>&gt;Mandated password changes are a long-standing security practice, but current research strongly
indicates that password expiration has a negative effect. Experiments have shown that users do not
choose a new independent password; rather, they choose an update of the old one. There is evidence to
suggest that users who are required to change their passwords frequently select weaker passwords to
begin with and then change them in predictable ways that attackers can guess easily.<p>&gt;One study at the University of North Carolina found that 17% of new passwords could be guessed given
the old one in at most 5 tries, and almost 50% in a few seconds of un-throttled guessing. Furthermore,
cyber criminals generally exploit stolen passwords immediately.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;research&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;Microsoft_Password_Guidance-1.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;research&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;...</a></text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>briffle</author><text>Yep, Its very secure, because nobody would use:<p><pre><code> P@ssw0rd!
P@ssw0rd!2
P@ssw0rd!3
P@ssw0rd!4
P@ssw0rd!5</code></pre></text></comment> |
12,247,150 | 12,246,182 | 1 | 2 | 12,245,587 | train | <story><title>The Update Framework</title><url>https://theupdateframework.github.io/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>heavenlyhash</author><text>Everyone: Read this. At least the threat models.<p>Do not assume all software you currently use gets these things right.</text></comment> | <story><title>The Update Framework</title><url>https://theupdateframework.github.io/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wtbob</author><text>From the spec:<p>&gt; Delegated trust can be revoked at any time by the delegating role signing new metadata that indicates the delegated role is no longer trusted.<p>This is a mistake, as it means that a client must receive the new metadata in order to be made aware of the revocation. The correct approach is either to delegate trust for a particular time period (determining how long is a risk-based decision), or to specify an online trust check (this fails safe).</text></comment> |
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