jkeisling/hacker-news-corpus-2007-2022 huggingface dataset:
One thing that was helpful to me in making sense of this post was to understand that Quadratic Voting is trying to solve the problem of the "tyranny of the majority." It's a voting scheme that gives greater weight to minority preferences than the one-person-one-vote schemes we are mostly familiar with.

(Please note that this is "minority" in the "!majority" sense of the word, and not merely "!caucasians.")

Tyler's contribution here is to push back a little against the idea that we should be favoring minority preferences more than we do currently. He thinks this is too indiscriminate. Some minority preferences are quite good and others are pernicious. Favoring all minority preferences empowers the good and the bad.

I was also struck by the last paragraph:
> "In any case the relevant question is what kinds of preference formation, and which kinds of groups, we should allow voting mechanisms to encourage."

In other words, all voting schemes favor certain preferences and groups over others. There is no perfectly objective voting scheme that would let us avoid this. We as a polity have no choice but to grapple with what and who to favor.

The implicit criticism in that final paragraph is that Quadratic Voting is leaping over the "what/who should we favor" question and optimizing for a particular answer. Tyler is saying "wait a minute, we haven't even agreed on the fundamental questions. So why are we already optimizing for a particular solution?"
What makes me remember that so many western democratic countries are silent about human rights when it happens at an military Allied country.
They do exist at festivals. (minus the hygienic aspect of course)
From your point of view what are the risks here?

Denmark's current debt level is at around 35% of GDP, so we should be able to debt finance this for a while and still have money for further stimulus packages to start things up once corona has passed
So, they used asymmetric encryption for the request so that a MITM can't read that, but they used symmetric encryption for the response. Though it requires a MITM to fully analyse the code, it allows a MITM to decrypt any response. Cited possible reason (in the conclusion) is performance.

I think you don't have to resort to symmetric encryption here, even keeping performance in mind. What you do is generate a new asymmetric keypair on the client for every session, then send the public key over to the server. Then the server encrypts every response with that public key, allowing only the client to decrypt it.

Doing that, one can only read a session's network traffic, both ways, if they can read values of variables on the client -- but if one can do that, you can read everything anyway. ;)

EDIT: forgot to talk about performance -- you just use a so-called "envelope", where the sending party first encrypts the data symmetrically with a randomly generated key, then encrypts that random key with the asymmetric crypto. The pair (symmetrically encrypted data and the asymmetrically encrypted key) is sent to the receiver, which can use its private key to decrypt the symmetric key, with which it decrypts the data.
You could trial it in a smaller community before rolling it out nationwide, is what I can think of off the top of my head.
I'm wary of anyone who dismisses classics en masse like that.

My experience has been that if I don't like a classic, it's usually my fault, not the book's, and if I wait a few years, read and learn some more things, and try it again I'll likely get a lot more out of it.

[EDIT] A closer reading of the linked article has revealed that only some of those 300 were what the author had been told were must-read classics, making my criticism less relevant.
> why I've finally begun to blog

I'm glad you did, and I'm looking forward to reading more!
Books are just one aspect of the larger question of how to prioritise what you spend your time on given a limited life span. It's good to refresh that question once in a while...
That was also one of the things I noticed at a quick glance. It would probably be a fairly big win for anything I/O constrained. I didn't take a look at the data being compressed or the algorithm in detail though.
Google Ventures' budget is reportedly nearer $300-$500M/year so I would imagine this is something different. There were rumblings of Satellite internet coming out of GoogleX but this seems to fit with their new Energy / Access group (Where Project Loon ended up) too. So my answer is that it definitely won't maybe end up in Google Ventures.
Sometimes you do not want an understandable name for a thing... instead a merely memorable one is far better.

Currying is actually an incredibly specific and universal thing. It's the act of noting that a function space

(a, b) -> c

is the same as a "higher-order function space"

a -> (b -> c)

in a very particular way. It's worth it to give this thing it's own name because it's a highly important and unique transformation.

"Curring" and partial application as it exists which take this notion further, such as those which transform (a, b, c) -> d to (a -> b -> c -> d) or (a, b, c) -> d to ((a, c) -> b -> d) are generalizations of the core concept and perhaps don't honestly deserve the name (if you're a stickler).

Merely calling currying and uncurrying by some operational name de-emphasizes these operations. It's like calling a "home run" a "quadruple" in baseball. Sure, it makes sense, but it's really just missing something.
Not to piss on the pie BUT: The GitHub CSS breaks when one sets a minimum font-size (as required for high DPI screens). Heck every web page based on bootstrap or most "modern" CSS frameworks breaks the same way.

How about you "CSS experts" get your shit together and start respecting the fucking standard. Assuming being able to force a font size (other than relative) is UNPORTABLE. It always has been and (hopefully) it WILL ALWAYS BE. I am NO GOD DAMN DESIGNER. I just know CSS because its fucking 2015. I knew this bug since fucking 2010. Only because I fucking PLAYED WITH CSS.

Why is that the GitHub (successful company, right?) CSS team makes mistakes I stopped making when I was in high school and CSS based layouts were a new thing?

Now wait for it: "But minimum font size is not a default setting in any browser. You're less than 1% of out userbase. We don't care."

/end unforgivable vulgar rant. No harm intended. Consider it comedy. But seriously: CSS people are so wrong right now. I should be the pope of web design and I don't even care about it.

mdo: It's not your fault. I am barking at the wrong tree. In fact there are more pressing issues I have that GitHub ignores. It just vulcanoed out of me. If you have any influence in the CSS scene, please try to address this common mistake.
I really like this gem from the Texas Instruments ad on page 145:

"The function key advantage: We give you 12 function keys that you can easily program to make your work simpler and easier. The best the competition can do is 10 or fewer keys"
I don't understand why you say it is very dependent on the relationship with the boss. You only give a negative example for telling the boss. Was the positive side getting a free lunch without a job?
> that part of my comment was said in humor.

I think more will read it seriously than not.
Unfortunate name similarity with “Snabb Switch”, as featured here on HN six months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008963
Because most programs aren't simulators, and there often isn't a natural way to map the concepts involved in an application to that of the real world. When you move beyond the garbage examples they give in computer science 101 ("RaceCar extends Car") you realize objects still have their place, just not in the way the professors taught you.
> For the right person, it's 3 hours work. For the "wrong" person, it could be 3 weeks.

> How much do you charge? We never go over $300

One of these things is not like the other.
Does Stripe support all the EU countries yet?
It would be great to see examples of successful applications, and why they stood out. Seeing how the initial presentation of the idea is different than the company today would help applicants be bolder. There's the Dropbox application which is used as an example, but are there more examples?
When we stopped using typewriters.
The comments are the content. It has been this way since the earliest days of Slashdot. The reason that Slashdot, Digg, Reddit and HN exist is because of the comments, not the links.

The reason things like Delicious ultimately failed was because "bookmarking" and "link sharing" are not what most people find entertaining.
So.. you're definitely missing a bit.

Light years is a measure of distance not time. As a result 10,000 light years measured from either parties perspective is 10,000 light years. ie a human on the ship would still experience 10,000 years of travel. No human can currently live that long.

Now change your hypothetical numbers to 10 light years and you're not misunderstanding anything. The human aboard the ship would have experienced 10 years of travel. However, any observer from Earth would have experienced 10*(some large factor) years, such that making a return trip "home" is impossible.
That makes it sound like even the autocrats just don't really care about any kind of ideology anymore.

Kinda depressing.
Command-line interfaces seem to involve two main parts. The commands themselves (ls, mv, rm, and so on) and the arbitrary parameters supplied to them (all files with the .txt extension or compiler flags). For the former hand gestures would work well since there is a limited and well-defined set of commands, the latter would be better served with a regular text input. Even here the distinction gets blurred by commands created by applications you install yourself.

A combination of the two with instant switching between the two modes would be nice. But that still seems like an uncreative solution.
Still doesn't seem to be loading for me.
The banner at the top of the site boasts about winning a lawsuit to prevent someone else (Hasbro) from creating similarly-shaped dice, but the shapes look like they would have ancient origins. Not exactly my kind of company.
There are already some (imperfect) tools for rendering svg with javascript/canvas. If SVG ever went away as a standalone things it would be at a time where usable fallbacks ara available.

That said, Canvas doesn't yet support all the same fill modes as svg. I got caught by the lack of even-odd once.
My name is Dr Cheeks and I'm a little behind on my rounds.
I just came from the Apple store. There was a problem with my brand new machine, so they replaced the whole machine and did a data transfer for me. Without me even asking, the tech assured me that a secure disk erase is part of the data migration procedure.
>when you write a good program you get the same feeling of achievement you'd get from making something like a piece of pottery or a house

I get the same feeling writing good software now as I did when I built cool stuff with Legos and Knex when I was in younger.
I understand that the node community is still very young but hopefully they'll start consolidating around some of the core libraries/frameworks pretty soon. For example, I haven't seen a consensus for the best testing or packaging libraries.
You've said this before about Google, but I only just now realized what you're getting at: What's to say that my (hypothetical) site that shows up #9 on Google shouldn't be #1 and that users wouldn't benefit from it being #1? Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn't, but that is an argument one can make.
The energy project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/ .
In this interview they speculate about whether our attraction to music might be a by-product of the fact that we have evolved other specialized skills that aid our individual survival. For example, our survival is aided by our rhythm analysis which helps us walk upright, and our speech analyzing mechanisms which help us in many obvious ways - the idea is that we enjoy music because we are obsessively attuned to these survival-aiding perceptions.

I've always enjoyed contemplating the inverse of this theory; what if we gained appreciation for music and other collective rituals because by acting out these rituals (as individuals), our collective tribe benefited. These rituals cause us individuals to 'tune' ourselves as a collective and as a result, the tribe has increased chances of survival.

If this were the case, it would be more appropriate to say that our collective tribes evolved music and rituals for the tribe's sake - it doesn't directly help an individual survive and the individual might not even understand their compulsion to participate. For example, a drum beat might compel a soldier into battle. A religious ritual might compel an individual to supersede their allegiance in order to serve a king. If you look at other species like bees and ants that function as a collective, you see that their 'dance' is not an individual's language but one that evolved because it enabled the collective to survive. Again, the individuals might not understand their dance - they just wanna dance!

So actually, I like the idea that maybe speech, language, and what we call intelligence are all byproducts of adaptations like music and rhythm that appear worthless to individual survival, but in fact are crucial to the survival of the collective. What do you all think?
I assume this is a reference to the 1976 book _The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_, by Julian Jaynes.

Richard Dawkins wrote of it: “It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets.”
Browser, emacs with lots of terminals is pretty much it for me.

What am I missing?
Do you not have regular 1:1 time with your boss?

It boggles my mind how people seemingly don't understand the importance of having protected time 1:1 with your direct boss.
I also find you (the OP) are making too many assumptions. Reading your message we (the readers) may just as well conclude your boss thinks your are doing good work and you are best left alone. Maybe your boss thinks you are a difficult person to talk to. The problem is informal discussion is difficult in those pandemic times although AFAICT everybody misses it. So if your boss is not making the effort to keep the link alive maybe you'll have to do it.

Maybe he does not like you but still thinks you are doing good work. In this case a formal a one-to-one and asking directly what he thinks of your work is a better approach.

If he both does not like you and does not like your work, there is not much to be done.
Chinese social scoring system is much more extensive.
It includes jaywalking and speaking evil of the government.
It affects internet speed and boarding on trains.

Sure the “western countries” are heading that direction, but still have a long way
Have always had a soft spot for The Economist. I don’t always agree with their analyses but I like their generally pragmatic and humanistic style, and their global scope.
While I read SSC and agree that this article is lacking to say the least I think NYT has every right to publish it.
Rationalist movements, other areas for though and discussion, I welcome main stream media to talk even more about it. Maybe they will see that there is a huge opportunity on the table.

I do however not, in any way, hope that "big tech" buries a news house. Even for a, not very good written and mean spirited, article. Especially one trying to bring public light on where a lot of very influential people get a lot of their ideological beliefs from. That would be a horrible precedent.
The NYTimes precipitated the Slate Star Codex controversy [1]:

> Slate Star Codex was launched in 2013, and was taken down by its author on June 23, 2020, due to fears of having his full name published in an upcoming piece by the New York Times.

I’m assuming this article is the delayed result from the NYTimes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex#Controversy_o...
> Google Calendar seems to do everything I need and more; same with Gmail. I don't want new versions of them unless there's a really compelling reason. I sure don't want < 2 month release cycles.

We probably get the unnecessary updates because Google (and others) have a boat-load of engineers that need something to do and they aren't getting assigned to something useful.
Everything works in the cloud. It works from every client. You have all your data everywhere. You have a well defined, powerful, standardized and cross-platform interface to it. All such applications will probably work on every computer also in the next 10 or 20 years.

You don't have those properties for most Android applications (they don't really work that well on your desktop PC even right now).
I don't think MS tablets will take off until they take an approach similar to what they did for Windows Phone 7 and force a very specific set of design limitations on their partners.
django-admin.py and "rails" are the exact same thing, it's just that the Rails command line utility doesn't have an unnecessary Ruby extension. I'm not sure why "new" is a magic incantation while "startproject" is an intuitive command line option just because you're not familiar with the command line arguments for "rails".
I have to respectfully disagree. The docs of just about every java library or framework I've looked at or used have been extensive, detailed and complete.
It wasn't really a story about car trouble.
Seriously, did you read the anecdote?

The point isn't the car trouble. The point is that nobody stopped to help him....except the poor, Mexican family, who had all the best reasons for not wanting to stop, who refused payment for their help, and then sent him on his way with a lesson about social responsibility.
Hi there, I hope I have replied to your query with my answer above. Please don't call this a 'scam', as a self taught coder, had to work pretty hard to launch this app. Most of the reviews you see are from friends and family. They know me, trust me and know that what I am doing is not a scam. Nothing shady about it buddy.
Around Boston for my 15 mile commute on the Interstate the fast lane is nominally at 110-120km/h.
No it's not as fast as the autobahn but it's on a par with Europe and far from slow. (I'm British, lived in Germany for 10 years, US for 5 years)
To be fair, I think that's a pretty young one (1.5-2.5 years old?).
You are ignoring a decade of history in declaring Rails to be "dangerous for enterprise use". The reality is that Rails apps are used in thousands of enterprises around the world, as well as in "web-scale" businesses like Github, Airbnb, and Groupon.

However, Rails (and specifically ActiveRecord) has a very specific design philosophy (see http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2012/rails-is-omakase.htm... ) which does not include support for stored procedures (because business logic belongs in the app, not the database).

Of course, there are ways to make stored procedures work with Rails (see https://github.com/leopoldodonnell/uses-stored-procedures ) but they are likely to end in tears, since you are working against the grain of the framework.

The basic argument for Rails is not about support for or against any specific underlying technology (if you can reach Facebook-scale on PHP, then you can make anything work), it is that using a mature and well-crafted framework maximizes developer productivity.

For most startups, as well as most enterprises, that is the critical resource.
I agree - I think his TV example is a little over-simplified, especially given the enormous range of quality and content available. Some of the best story-telling is taking place in between commercials these days, just like Dickens and Eliot were printed between printed ads in serials.

I also bet that if you asked most parents whether they let their kids watch anything they wanted (to the extent they are able to control that...), they would say they do not and at least have a concept of what they want their kids to watch and what they don't allow their kids to watch. I'm sure many would skew positively towards the educational shows you mentioned, and I'm sure many are not encouraging or even allowing their 8 year olds to watch MTV spring break (old person reference? haha).

Still, I think the overall point that there are costs that need to be recognized is valid, but I would say it is manifested more regularly than the article suggests in the sort of regulation I describe above.

That being said, I think his overall point that western society as a whole has not properly confronted the true costs of technology is fairly legitimate (see all the data scandals, the NSA, hackers etc.), but I also see certain corrections being made already (see the article itself and all backlash to the data scandals, NSA, hackers, etc.), and that given the rapid pace of tech development in the past 20 years the reactions are not particularly slow - we'll see where it all pans out.
Oh-ho! Security is evidently high on the Indian government's priority list... the Joint Secretary for the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, a Mr Shri P. Kalyanasundaram, has an email address at Yahoo for official correspondence! [1]

I'm wondering how long it will be though before the Wikipedia article gets updated:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India

1. http://pgportal.gov.in/pgo.aspx
Dang, if only I had this 2-3 years ago...
Well, yes, you can become liable for failure to do what you said you would do. That's what secondary liability means.

If you check for certain usage patterns, but there's a 10% chance of failure, then will 10% of that customer base sue you for not doing the job you said you will do? Remember, you've started with the premise that there is a clear signal. Certainly it's possible to tweak any SHA calculation enough to confuse detection algorithms.

What advantage is there for Amazon to put the infrastructure in place, as compared to the current (seemingly generous) practice of revoking fees for abused accounts?
This slippery slope is exactly what happened in China.

- First, they block a few websites: no big deal, I'll just use a VPN.

- Then they block OpenVPN default port: no big deal, I'll just use another port or IPSec.

- Then international connections slow down to a crawl: no big deal, maybe they're not throttling but just having capacity issues, let's wait a bit see if it gets better.

Then one day your realize that what was at first a minor inconvenience is now wasting hours of your life and killing your productivity.
> [Dijkstra] was suspicious of [type theory] being treated as a panacea

I'd be suspicious of anything being treated as a panacea.
I recently used Falcon to hack together a quick email backend for an ajax comments form, and found it really useful. It's super lightweight and was relatively easy to get working with uwsgi/nginx.

I've used Django and Pecan in the past, and both are much more full featured (Django by a couple orders of magnitude), so it's not really clear to me which I'd use for a large project. For something quick and dirty, Falcon seems like a reasonable bet.
Because I don't know that they have bad adverts. I've never seen them.

I'm occasionally shocked when trying to browse something from a public computer or at an in-law's house: "People actually use the web like this???"
I'd argue no tax code is needed, just treat C corps like S corps and LLCs.

1) Increase the incentives to save and invest in the U.S/

2) Restore progressivity to the tax code by taxing profits when paid to investors on a progressive rate based on their tax brackets.

3) Repurpose hundreds of thousands of accountants into doing actual business finance and development of wasting their efforts reconciling the differences between GAAP & a super convoluted Tax code accounting (and searching for loopholes)

4) Simplify business decisions and reward honest management based solely on GAAP accounting with no more "angles" to take advantage of tax code loopholes.
What kind of problems, in what kind of circumstances ?