jkeisling/hacker-news-corpus-2007-2022 huggingface dataset:
The more people try to decide their own “truth” instead of living in reality, the more they will run into depression, despair, and suicide.

The real solution to these is to encourage facing reality in its entirety, including being honest when someone has a self destructive habit, tendency, interest, reaction, or hobby.
You could argue that display ads in general are a positive. (I personally disagree, but that I can see how reasonable people might see it differently.) But tracking is not close to being ethical.
The difference is between someone handing out pamphlets for a new baby care product because you are walking into a baby clothing store, and one handing you the same pamphlet because he has gone through your trash and found your pregnancy test results.
"People don't get pissed when income from a shared resource (petroleum for instance) is divided among people living on the land or in the country"

I think that statement is worth considering a bit more. For instance, Alaska and Saudi Arabia fit that description, setting aside whatever "on the land" means.

I don't know if people "get pissed" about it, but it has been noticed that such a situation oftentimes doesn't seem to result in a healthy economy/society.

See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
This is a really informative talk, thanks for posting. I'm definitely the target audience - I avoid designing stuff until the very end, and it's often a daunting process. The site mentioned at the end, pattertap.com, is great.
Here is the same code, without syntactic obfuscation:

void condense_by_removing(char* s, char c)
{
char* d = s;
while (*d = *s++)
d += *d != c;
}

I would have sworn I found a bug. There is none. Brilliant.

Now, I wonder if we could further optimize it. For instance by accessing memory several bytes at a time, in a fashion similar to strcmp().
Very Interesting
"Niche Markets is Where it’s At!" -- this is very important
but unreadable font =P
You don't get to the leaderboard if your account is nuked. Survivor bias.

Admittedly I've said things that are immature and stupid and that I regret. None of them merited the destruction of 2000+ karma account. Not a one. The banning policy around here is extremely inconsistent.

Also, I once got hellbanned for comparing Clojure favorably over Arc. (Although Arc wins on aesthetics, Clojure has the JVM libraries which is a win in the real world. That was the gist of my argument, and enough to merit a ban.) The ban policy on HN is heavy-handed, inconsistent, destructive and, quite frankly, moronic. If Paul Graham is directly responsible, he should be embarrassed; if others are doing the trigger-happy banning, he should revoke these powers.
On the background I am doing already quite some preparational work (and I can name you some organisations that work like this already) and it works out nice :)
A single, 250GB HD seems a bit "lite" for a server, even for one that does mostly processing.

I've found that 250GB is way overkill for a machine that does mostly processing. Consider web servers, which need a copy of the code (which hopefully isn't over a gig), and the operating system install for a server should fit in under 10GB. The bulk of the data they'll be processing will be in remote services like databases. If you have a decent logging infrastructure setup, where you regularly ship all logs off the machine, you need enough storage space for the logs for the rotation period -- if you ship them off immediately (say with scribe), you need enough local storage for the period your aggregator is unavailable (which can be minimized by having even scribe log aggregation load balanced). If these machines are in clusters and you can survive with some of them being out, you don't even need RAID on them. It's kind of unfortunate that the smallest drive you can buy leaves it 80%+ empty, because I have a feeling that drives that were smaller and not optimized for speed and capacity, but still use modern technology, might be more reliable.

We've taken to putting smallish SSDs in our load balancers and other machines that don't need a lot of local storage, since having fewer moving parts (now the only moving parts are the fans) is a power-usage and reliability win.
I think this is a genius move for them. Groupon tries to be a social coupon type of place but they don't actually have a social network to back them up. If you and three friends want to take up that skydiving offer, you need to coordinate outside of Groupon, agree upon it, and then everyone trusts that the others made the purchase.

Now imagine doing this on Facebook where you could potentially (no idea if they have this functionality planned, but they should) purchase the skydiving offer with a provision such as "only settle the charge on my credit card when three of my friends also sign up". It would get posted to your wall as "John Smith signed up for skydiving at 50% off and needs 3 more people to join him". Then Jane Doe also signs up and your wall now reads "John and Jane are going skydiving and they need 2 more people to join them". If Facebook did that, it could be huge.

Additionally, Facebook credits cost 30% commission to the vendor. Groupon charges 50% commission for their deals. Assuming that the commission structure for Facebook Deals uses the same percentage and there isn't an additional fee on top, it's more financially appealing for merchants to sign up with Facebook over Groupon. To match it, Groupon would need to cut their revenue by 40%. That'll be a tough pill to swallow.
I think this is a false economy. You're just paying your provider to employ people that are capable of fixing these problems instead of in-housing them.

By and large, if you manage physical, owned infrastructure the same way you manage cloud resources. That is: automated configuration, monitoring, and deployment. The vast majority of the time it's the same process. You just need to make sure that your instrumentation is sufficient to notice when things aren't running correctly and remove machines from service until someone can figure out what happened. This could be in the form of an outside tech or in house support. Either way, at clusters of this size a loss of one, or even 5 machines should not be the difference between everything working and a colossal systems failure.
At least from what I hear, Microsoft was huge enough that tribalism was already a thing even with a CEO there, going as far back as the Gates era. The slowdown in growth in the '00s that shrank the reward pool and the dog-eat-dog mentality fostered by their vicious stack ranking system just made the tribalism and cronyism there worse.
Back of America just killed of it's viral credit card feature, according to them because it's getting replaced across the board with intermediary services like PayPal, Google pay, Apple pay, and the like and will eventually disappear from Chase and the other virtual credit card providers. BoA said they liked it off now because it relied on flash and they were pushing to remove that risk (and likely were getting complaints by customers who couldn't get it to work because their default browser didn't support flash natively). So this virtual credit card route is probably short for this works.

PS, BoA did an awful join and totally bungled the sunset of their virtual card program.
Network effects and money mostly (hype as you say).

NixOps is a great tool..when it works. When it doesn't, it's not inherent. It's just that it is clearly not heavily invested in by any entity with a bunch of money.
The Democrats are equally corrupt, they just have more control over the media that gets shipped overseas so it warps people's perception.

Both parties have started and engaged in needless wars, both parties spread falsehoods and start witch hunts, both parties are corrupt and suck down tax payer dollars without providing value in return.

Do you really think not a single Republican has critical thinking skills? That of course is incorrect, just as the opposite statement about Democrats would be.

That's not even touching hot button issues that are legitimately subjective or at least have no clear answer (like abortion).

It's best not to dehumanize those you don't agree with and instead realize that organizations as large and powerful as the DNC/GOP are almost inherently corrupt.
I recently saw a comment from someone really dedicated to privacy (I think they said they were a journalist) who scripted this via Streisand. They set up a new instance at the start of each day as part of their normal workflow. So I'm sure it's possible, and maybe not even too much of a hassle once you have the scripting in place.
I understand where it comes from but I hardly see the point as real for several reasons:

1) The argument at the start of this thread was that you have to be "ultra rich" (exact wording) to be a minimalist. It's hardly just the "ultra rich" that "pay a mechanic" or pay a plumber, and you hardly need to be one to afford to do so. If anything it might be only the ultra poor that can't afford those things.

2) Almost every middle class and most working class people I know pays mechanics and plumbers. And according to what I've read, poor people are more likely to eat e.g. fast food and such than sit and cook (many just don't have the time/will due to working hard for one).

3) Even if all the above weren't true, it's still a moot point. If only the things that prevented people from being minimalists where "monkey wrenches & a pipe sweating kit" and such "chest of tools for repairing their car or bicycle, or pans & knives & cooking spoons & such". It's all the other BS that fills every room of every house...

4) I also don't know where the weird notion comes from that "aA minimalist as currently known in popular culture" doesn't own tools, or pans and knives and cooking spoons and such. Minimalists can own all of those things. They just get rid of BS stuff we all have but don't need.
You sound like a Canadian dairy farmer :)
Clearly by listening to some rando on YouTube that is pointing out how the whole system is rigged /s

In seriousness, I think it is actually possible for people to understand enough information that they need to make a decision, even if they don't understand it to the level of an expert. I apologize for bringing Covid into this, but here was my analysis for understanding the mRNA vaccines:

1. The mRNA vaccines contain a small snippet of mRNA wrapped in a lipid bubble. This mRNA codes for spike proteins that are present on SARS-COV-2.

2. Your body takes up these lipid cells, translates the mRNA into spike proteins, and then your body recognizes those spike proteins as foreign and builds an immune response to them.

There is really nothing in the above (i.e. mRNA translation, the immune response, etc.) that I didn't learn in high school biology. There are certainly a ton of details that an expert is much more aware of. And, in evaluating my risk, there is certainly a ton of stuff there that I don't know, e.g. what's the probability of my body having a severe negative (a) immune response or (b) other reaction to the spike proteins in my body.

But all that said, even given all of the things I couldn't know because I'm not an expert, the rough details made it clear to me that, in any case, getting vaccinated should certainly be less detrimental than actually getting Covid, which was highly likely. That's why I get frustrated by some of the "trust the science" messages. You don't need to "trust" the science. The basics of the science are understandable by anyone with a high school degree.

Another thing I think is important to understand is that it may make a ton of sense to give very different societal recommendations versus individual recommendations. For example, I think both of the following are easily provably true:

1. Publishing recommendations of "eat less and exercise" is ineffective in combating obesity at the societal level.

2. For an individual, eating less and exercising is the number one way to lose weight.

That is, we know that most people are unable to stick with the recommendations of eating less and exercising more, and we have decades of data to prove it. For an individual, though, if you are able to set up a system to stick with your plan, this is the best way to lose weight.
The Running Man movie is coming to life.
As a pretty big SpaceX fan, the additional delay is quite disappointing. I was greatly looking forward to seeing New Glenn go up...and back down...late this year.
Check out GoatCounter (http://goatcounter.com/). It's what I use for my personal blog, and it also has a free tier for non-commercial users (though I'd still recommend donating so they can stick around). They even have a no JS way to integrate tracking, as all I really care about is how many ppl are reading my blog.
Edit : sorry I am on mobile.

I am against any restriction on free speech but this one has some context. the farmer protests are happening in two states of India only which had a history of violent separatist terrorist movement (khalistanis). when this farmer protest started, it started getting a lot of attention in international media , NYT, WaPo which are usually critical of India. Canadian PM also put out a statement. the farm bills have their issues but they are more liberal and pro-environment. Canada criticizes India on global forums for not doing these reforms and when India does these reforms, Canada PM puts out a statement against the bill. it is entirely 180. Rihana and Greta start tweeting about it. Germany has a farmer protest happening too but no coverage. because the main reason is link to khalistani propaganda to spread. they don't care about farmers. they want to re-ignite the fire of Khalistani separatist movement. the farmers didn't do a good job of separating themselves from this organisations. The toolkit linked by Greta was created by a Khalistani supporting group. these are NOT speculation. search for poetic justic india and SJI. so govt is rightly looking for anti national content because it has been there for months.

More edit : Really ask yourself. Why a farmer protest within a country is so much advertised all over the world ? There is no serious violence by the govt . Ppl are getting space to do protests too. It is not just farmer movement, it is a launchpad for fanning anti india sentiments. Indian embassies have been attacked, superbowl ads have been shown at some places, massive rallies on US - Canada cities. Twitter celebrities are posting on it. Really ? Is this really only about farmers. Can they really list the 3 farmer laws and their problems ? The answer is NO. They haven't bothered to read the bills. They are expecting a bloodbath in India and the govt is smart enough to not do it even when India had its own Capitol riot style attack where a religious flag was flurred on Red fort and khalistani flags were raised, hurting the symbol of Indian republic.

Kind of long livestreamed video but explains it well : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZHCiIFfc1Q
Add:

* An option for a good quality trackpoint and 3 buttons

* A possibility to order a fully assembled model without an OS

And you will quickly get a significant share of buyers from the ThinkPad/Linux crowd.
Moving consensus away from proof of work, proof of stake is currently the promising solution but there will be a lot of pushback from the miners as their hardware would become obsolete and they may decide to just continue mining like they currently are.

The market would then decide which is the real Bitcoin and the mining would only stop once it’s no longer economically viable to mine Bitcoin due to the price dropping.
Correct however in that "different era" the proprietors of Questar cared about what they built which seems to be lost in the many products manufactured today in this more "modern era". And yes, I do greatly appreciate quality when I spend my hard earned income but to each their own.
The back of the union movement in the United States was pretty much broken when Ronald Reagan broke an air traffic controllers strike by firing 11,359 of them and replacing them with members of the military. He also imposed a lifetime ban on rehiring any striking worker. Then they decertified the union. Sent a message.

Their justification for this was that the strike was illegal, after Reagan himself declared it illegal via an executive order.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/reagan-fires-11-00...
You don't think Costco optimizes their checkout process using huge piles of analytics? You can focus on more than one thing at a time.
>Genocide of 1 milion of your own citizens - this is what Putin did. You say American presidents are as bad? Really?!

So in comparison can I say that Sandusky was a pretty swell guy whose indiscrittions were completely blown out of porportion? Or what about Ariel Castro? He was a pretty upstanding citizen who was bullied into suicide by the media and a government giving his actions undue focus (in the grander scheme of things).

I'll agree that often our priorities are screwed up, but these individuals who have hurt tens of people are still very bad people. That their total victims is less than rounding error of the victim counts for worse individuals in no way defends what they have done.
FTA: One might wish that President Obama could put up such a principled defense for his scurrilous conduct in handing over the security of the American people to secret courts and universal surveillance.

What exactly is Obama's defense? I know myself and others are extremely disappointed in his direction, despite voting him in for a second term. Yet it doesn't seem like he's made any attempt at justifying his direction. Does he even feel obligated? Has he directly addressed the issues of his hypocritical back-flopping on prosecuting whistleblowers, or blatant disregard to our privacy rights? Is he just ignoring the backlash?
> I politely suggest that a short contract job might be the best option for a company to evaluate a senior developer.

This article reeks of privilege, namely that of location.

The suggested is horrendously unfair to people that would need to relocate (possibly even internationally) to get a job.

I am currently interviewing for a large tech. company in Silicon Valley. I am living in England. It would take a substantial amount of resources for me to even meet the team in person, so of course they want to vet me via Skype or whatever before they commit to this. On the flip-side, if I'm going to be uprooting my entire life and moving to SF, I want some sort of guarantee I have a solid, full-time position.

I also wouldn't be able to afford a £1,000+ flight (and countless days of missed work) in order to do an on-site interview. Utterly preposterous.

Thankfully, the person doing the technical interviews has been a person who basically has the same job as me, so they understand the position and can see if I'm a good fit. The interviews were of the format that they pasted into some questions to a collaborative editor, I get to choose a language, and solve them. We are Skyping so I explain the reasoning behind what I'm doing etc. Code doesn't have to compile, I don't have to know the exact syntax for function calls (because who can't find that in seconds anyway), but it's about figuring out my though processes, confidence, ability to deal with new things, etc.

It'll be interesting to see what they think of me, but it seems like a reasonable process, and does not exclude people based internationally.
Octopress, Jekyll, Hakyll and probably a ton of others do the same thing, manage gh-pages hosted blog.

That said, if you care about branding and outreach, Silvrback appears to offer value beyond what the free alternatives do.
This is actually a very nice sentiment. Unfortunately, given the jadedness i've aquired over the last few years have convinced me that it will do little good for his freedom.

I only hope that, as demographics in america swing younger, the libertarians and progressives can put put aside our differences and get this guy a pardon down the road. Scooter Libby is free and Manning is in jail.
Agreed. I hope he gets a pardon as soon as possible.
Wow so much hate for Google lately. I'm not so sure about these people claiming the "NSA thing" has nothing to do with these feelings their having. I'm also not to sure why the author is upset. It seems to me that the request Google sent to link the Youtube account with Google+ WAS asking whether or not the account was an individual (and wanted to use G+). It seems to me that this is someone either doing this without thinking or really reading it, or accidentally and then getting mad about it. IIRC, I believe I've done this once before with a Gmail account and figured out a way to reverse it. I remember they didn't make it easy though.
What does this mean for ROS then?
Cool, an easy way to test the clustering features.
I listened to an hour-long podcast in which Chris Hayes interviewed Alicia Garza, who co-founded Black Lives Matter (BLM). They talked specifically about this question and since you're interested, perhaps it would be one place to go to hear informed organizers/activists discussing it. It aired on June 4.

Besides BLM, one other recent place in which this question of "are demonstrations enough" comes up is, of course, Occupy. (In that case: no, demonstrations were not enough.)

One thing I remember Garza saying is that the ability to organize a large, nationwide march on Washington showcases the scope and depth (down to the grassroots level) of a movement. If your movement isn't broad and organized, your nationwide march will not succeed.

But that's a necessary condition for political action, not a sufficient condition. A movement can't let marches be the endpoint, and in the interview, Garza emphasized this.

Clearly the organizers of the 1993 "March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation" (which I attended) did not view the march as an endpoint. Many of the roughly 600K (+/- 300K) people present had a lot at stake, including their jobs, at that time. The march was more of a focal point, a coming of age. A constituency made visible. But not an endpoint.

For more: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/how-black-li...
> In some sense, the existence of irrational numbers with no pattern in their digits is an illusory artifact of the number system.

But irrational numbers remain irrational in any integer number base. Therefore no, they aren't illusory at all, nor are they an artifact of the "number system".

> ... such numbers lack any description or means of being separated as individuals.

Also false. Many irrational numbers are easy to identify unambiguously. For example, the square roots of numbers that are not perfect squares are irrational, but they can be easily identified by squaring them.

While we're on the topic, the terms in the running sum of odd numbers are all perfect squares:

0 + 1 = 1
1 + 3 + 4
4 + 5 = 9
9 + 7 = 16
16 + 9 = 25

As is often true in mathematics, this is easier to explain with a picture:

http://arachnoid.com/example/#Math_Example

> But then, is any mathematical abstraction real?

Certainly. Consider general relativity. It's a mathematical abstraction, and it's also real.
Most gendered languages have 2 or 3 grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and sometimes neuter) with gender expressed in nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs. Depending on the language it may not be practically possible to add a new gender (or 20 new genders) due to the sheer number of grammatical forms you must memorize just to handle 2 or 3 genders. These are not trivial changes. In English, learning someone's pronoun might mean learning three words. In another language, it might mean learning literally hundreds of new grammatical rules. Instead of asking 99% of people to conform to the linguistic wishes of less than 1% of people, why not just expect them to find a solution within the existing language?