jkeisling/hacker-news-corpus-2007-2022 huggingface dataset:
I have the opposite reaction to this situation: I avoid products that use DBs for smallish datasets because the DB blob doesn't dedup well, and that impacts me negatively for maintaining file-system level backups as well as for efficient sync between hosts.

Sure, I could write a custom script that dumps the DB to a format that deltas better, but I'd really rather my filesystem level dedup and sync tools just work and not have to do something special-case for every application I use.

(I'm currently going through this exact process with my media library -- it's a dozen megabyte database. It's so small loading the entire thing into RAM is easier than not; indexing it is beyond unnecessary, etc. And yet because it doesn't diff, every time I sync it between laptop and desktop, I'm irritated to discover I'm waiting for the entire thing to cross the network every single time.)
I'd like to offer a minor correction. We want as many companies that provide positive value to the economy to succeed.

There is a positive (but not r=1) correlation to providing value to the economy and offering higher pay to employees. We (that is to say, software pros) don't want all companies to get as many software workers as they might want, because they wouldn't pay any one of us a decent middle-class wage.
Knowing the people behind the attacks personally, I can ensure you this isn't the case. They're simply kids with too much free time and a yearning for attention.

If you're curious about validating this first hand, some of the members are active over at digitalgangster.com to give you an idea of the level of sophistication.
> If my "number" is in fact a string I'd like to get an error instead of a type conversion that hides this error.

If you expect a number or a string, call parseInt() on your value and then isNaN() on that will tell you whether you have an error condition. Your code will be more understandable if you spend time parsing your inpt and explicitly casting to expected types, rather than papering over differences with ===
I've always pushed back at storing blob data in databases in most cases -- probably 80-90% of the time depending on the job.

Why? Databases are all about storing data in a structure defined by the relationships between the records. In most cases with files, the relevant data is the metadata or other structured data, not the file.

If you do the math, it's rarely cost effective to store unstructured data in a structured database. Databases are always harder to scale.

On the file side, there are dozens of ways to effectively deliver files that are cheaper, more scalable and simpler for many use cases.
Unfortunately, flash is still used everywhere. I have flash set to 'click to play' which seems like a good middle ground.
Or to remain engineers, or to get BACK into engineering without taking a pay-cut. It would increase the supply of good engineers immediately. But I don't disagree with pg; I think we should hire all the greatest engineers in the world, except for the fact that we cannot identify them.
The compensation table looks interesting. $1M in salary and $56M from stock options. 2-3x higher base salary and 10-25x higher than in the case of DigitalOcean.
The problem is that mainstream economics fails to accept that the choice of metric to perform their analyses encodes biases. Ivory tower economists don't really grok what affects the working class. (I can't say I totally do myself, but at least I drove for Lyft full time for a year and a half).

Mainstream economics says that monetary intervention is necessary to "stabilize" the economy, as measured by metric X Y or Z. Who benefits from that stability?
I would say mostly the upper echelon status quo. And what is the social cost of the stability? Mainstream economics also measures the widening wealth gap but it's incredibly infuriating that they can't fucking put two and two together and understand that the gap is the social cost of their stability measures. Especially so since there is a clear straight line mechanism for that to be the case.
Performance profiling on a laptop is largely pointless. There's too much stuff trying to conserve power by limiting performance.
> especially if you're in a community that praises those others

I was with you until this part. I have never seen praise of any large social network _or_ any growth-hacking dark patterns on HN.
I love animals (especially dogs, but now that my family has that cat, I slowly soften) and I think this was absolutely the best thing to do.

As you are saying, there is the evolution aspect, but also the fact that he cut short a possible string of serious problems.

This is also the reason I am for euthanasia of animals in shelters past a month (the time left for the owners to find a dog that escaped). Keeping them in cages is torture for the animals.

It is not that they realize they will die, if this is done correctly.

This is also why I am against zoos and circuses with animals.

I think we went into some kind of multiple personality spilt when it comes to animals : we eat them after they have suffered (I eat meat myself, but I would prefer to pay more for meat from animals that were slaughtered in a human way), we do not want to stop the suffering of caged animals, we keep large dogs in small apartments, we cry when we see a lion eating a gazela in the wild, etc.
> It’s a shame that outside of historical circles and the well read nobody knows who Charlemagne is

Except for all the French, and neighbouring French-speaking countries... (and probably other European countries, but I wasn't exposed to their education system).
While there is likely some truth to it, the first survey is hardly unbiased: it’s a survey showing lots of people are looking for jobs conducted by a company focused on job searching. That would be like WebMD doing a survey of people on its site to see how many people think they’re sick and finding out “wow, lots of people think they’re sick”.
Definitively the wrong approach. I wrote this on another board:

> Everyone has 100Mbit lines now, a lot of people have gigabit fiber internet at home.

> You can get a Cortex-A55 TV Box for $30, plug in your old SSD drive via USB 3.0 with

> a $3 adapter, install Linux and you are ready to go. It consumes virtually no power.

> The processing speed and disk speed is incredible. Often the ping is lower than in a

> datacenter. This is not even the future of hosting. It has been around for quite some

> time. It is totally superior to any mid-range server. There literally are only advantages.

Pair this with Yunohost (via Docker). Yunohost is like an appstore for Linux servers. Easy 1-click setups for Nginx, Xampp, Postfix, Dovecot etc. that average people can do and understand.

You can still use the TVbox as a media center, even run Libreoffice on it and Blender like a small mini PC that has "poor but good enough" performance for most everyday tasks. Also games via Retroarch.

Sounds too awesome to be true? Yes, it is not quite true yet. You can do all this, but you still need to be tech savvy to step through it. And the media-center part is still questionable, because video drivers (the ones that work with hardware video acceleration) are bugged on most SOCs. Games work though, just not HD videos.
Sometimes I wonder if driver support such as Wi-Fi on FreeBSD is terrible by design. That OS has almost no attack surface.
More accurately, their need for illusion of control trumps their attachment for the employees.
What kind of skill does this type of test measures?

I think the main ones are:

* How much about the language the candidate knows. Not the control flow and data types, but how to navigate and where to look for information. And that leads to bellow

* how quickly one can understand a codebase (at least part of it)
and start delivering

What else?

If that's one of those "think out loud" tests it's possible to get a clue of how the candidate thinks, but it's not specific of this test.
Or, just don't install viruses.

On Linux I'm sure some AppArmor or flatpak whatever will be the norm one day, once all the kinks are worked out... but for now it seems to work surprisingly well to just not install stuff that isn't popular and trusted.
What do you mean by "developing a pseudo-FMT probiotic"? How did you do that? I ask because your results are interesting enough that I'd like more information to understand if I should pursue it.
CouchDB takes things a step further: instead of having all your data on a server and gradually sending changes to each interested party, CouchDB's way is to have a data store on each "node" (the server and all clients in a traditional web server model) and synchronize data (ie documents), possibly continuously. Then on the clients you react to changes and update the UI. Your application only manages the data locally, and the CouchDB components manages everything network-related.

To do it, one useful component is PouchDB (http://pouchdb.com/), which is a data store in the browser. You just hook it to whatever backend you want and access the data with a straightforward javascript API.

There's also the much larger (in scope) Hoo.ie, but I can't talk much about it...

Unfortunately I don't have any links for you, I'm looking for experiences just like you ...
Its never been a good idea. Fingerprint as user identification is the worst kind of password you can come up with. You can't change it periodically; you have to use the same one for every purpose; you leave it lying around in public all the time. Forget biometrics, they're useless.
Reputation economies are pretty interesting. There's a trade-off inherent in them related to the number of potential sources of trusted information. If that number is small and the credits are hard to fake, you get corruption as the in-crowd uses the power it already has to increase its share. Over time, the reputation economy becomes "prestigious" but ineffective and harmful to society. That's Silicon Valley. On the other hand, if that number of credible sources is large, you don't have good-ol'-boy corruption in the reputation economy, but it's open to "flooding the channel" attacks.

Something that I've learned is that it's impossible to erase negative information (even, or I should say, especially if it's untrue) about anyone or anything. This is the "Streisand Effect". On the other hand, you have to flood the channel. I know someone who signed up for a bunch of social media profiles just to knock negative publicity off of his top 10 Google searches, who hired an Indian firm to astroturf-endorse him on LinkedIn, and who created a bunch of identical-looking articles (to the one describing his indiscretion) that popped the date of the damaging event back 8 years, making it appear to have happened when he was a teenager.

Flooding the channel is the absolute best defense against a reputation problem. Unfortunately, there's a fine line between that and spamming, which I think we all agree is bad for the world.

If you want to take the dystopia concept further-- and, for the record, I don't actually think that this will happen, but it could-- we may get to a point where it's impossible to get a "real" job without a ridiculous amount of public endorsement and credibility, so the bottom-90% who don't have that end up working in body shops where their jobs are to pump up the reputations of their clients. Instead of having Third World body-shops creating level-60 paladins or clerics in virtual worlds and selling them (and their equipment) for a few thousand bucks, they could be building up level-60 resumes and selling them to aspiring executives for much more.
Some of the X-15 pilots got astronaut wings.
Vietnam? The belief that low, slow and stealthy would win the day vs high and fast? Look at how many people claim that SAMs won out against the B-70 Valkyrie (basically, a heavy bomber analogue to the SR-71).
I'm acquainted with a civil engineer who worked in the FHWA for several decades.

He spent a big chunk of that time trying to convince government agencies to build roads with pavement that had a better coefficient of friction. See for example

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/pavement/pavement_fr...

He estimated that they could reduce deaths considerably with more appropriate pavement.

In many cases, states refused to even allow pavement friction tests to occur, as they didn't want to be on the hook for paying for improvements if the tests showed poor friction. Also, requiring better friction would disallow certain road materials, which would adversely affect certain very large politically connected contractors.

In Europe, they take this much more seriously. The Germans have started using a concrete pavement that is both better for friction and is quiet.

It's interesting that if a government builds a substandard road that leads to people losing their lives, it doesn't seem to be a big deal, but if a car manufacturer produces a car that leads to a much smaller number of people dying, then it is.
My first foray into programming was also QuakeC, though I didn't really think of it as programming at the time.

I lived in a rural area with very poor network access so I actually got most of the QuakeC tooling and mods from CDs purchased at the mall. Since Internet access was so spotty my primary hobby was to take bot mods and combine them with weapon mods I liked so I could play deathmatch against bots with a grappling hook or self-guided missiles, etc.
I mean domain squatting has been a thing since the inception of the net. Not too far off to think this will happen over and over again.
Is there a point you’re trying to make with this weird tirade?
Here's another approach that compresses even better while retaining (limited) human readability: https://bitbucket.org/tkatchev/muson/

(Though it's mostly meant for making things smoother in statically-typed languages.)
> Artificial scarcity is why you get paid big bucks.

You are assuming that my software is distributed.

Look 50 years ago you got a catalog from sears. You mailed a check, someone opened it, your order went to the warehouse, the check went to the bank, your items got picked packed and shipped.

The software I spent a good part of my career writing got rid of a LOT of people from that scenario. The hardware and software combination that is the ATM got rid of many tellers. MP3's killed record stores.

If you find a programer old enough, they will insult you by saying "I will replace you with a very small shell script". Many of us built software to replace people, many of us continue that. Our value is literally reducing costs and "enabling scale" at a massive discount. For those of us that do this sort of work, we are massively underpaid when compared to the manual processes that are replaced or never have to happen.
It's never positive as your life is worth far more than those wages in all cases. That's why no one can be considered overpaid, or we would limit payment to CEOs. Thus wages can only be considered at best, a trade.

That's why I asserted that profits are nothing more than unpaid wages. Since it's objectively a trade of your life for wages, paying others less than the value you produced is simply not valuing human life. The worst sort of theft.

For your example, it doesn't hold up because most people only make enough to live, there's nothing to optimize other than going "full ramen". While others have far more than necessary for basic food, shelter and medical care. Those who are just-surviving aren't doing anything wrong, when an economic ponzi scheme simply doesn't value their life by paying them less than the value they produce.
Also pictures/videos attached to the tweet
We could also pay for all the sites we use (google, youtube, gmail, reddit, etc.), but it would be pretty pricey if you visit a lot of sites. Most people would choose tracking instead.
"You break the law, you go to jail. Simple as that."

This is laughably ignorant. It's absolutely not simple as that, by chance.
And if you listen beyond the highlighted range of the interview, you hear Excite's CEO Bell speaking of how most of his attention was on the @Home side of the business, managing difficult relationships with his cable-company owners/partners.

That reveals, I think, the actual error in Excite's strategy: not realizing that "internet search" was the real prize deserving all the attention. That mis-prioritization is what led to accepting the merger with @Home just a little before these Google discussions. That's also why they mainly evaluated Google on some static set of then-common queries. That's why they were satisfied with their existing search results – which by my recollection, were for a while the clearly "most relevant" of then-extant options. Their tech stack & team had been quite good, and certainly seemed "good enough" as just one small part of the particular larger game they thought they were playing.

Had Excite accepted Page's requirement, the tech/team switchover might've been rocky, and I suspect at best Excite would've remained relevant in search for only a little while longer. But the same distractions & headwinds that bankrupted Excite@Home by the end of 2001 likely would've felled the company even with the addition of Google's nascent potential. Google's best talent, including Page & Brin, wouldn't have stayed around for long. (And in the actual history of an independent Google, it still raised tens-of-millions in additional venture investment to give them the time/resources to perfect their model – runway that might not have been available inside Excite.)

It was the earlier choice to emphasize the "last mile" cable-internet business and monthly subscription revenues, via the merger with @Home, that sealed Excite's fate. It nudged them away from buying Google, sure, but also put them on a path where even buying Google couldn't have saved them.
I'm in somewhat opposite situation. Spent a good chunk of my 20s like that. Keeping my costs low, working more during winters (but still nowhere close to full time), spending most of the summer time riding bicycles and visiting music festivals.

Ended up doing 180 on this due to "adult life" responsibilities but I plan to turn this into 360 sooner or later.

Could I have easier time now if I would have been working more a decade ago? Probably. But if I travelled back in time, I wouldn't change anything for less than guaranteed very cushy fuck-you money.
Ah wow, that's fantastic news; I didn't know that was coming. Ben Wheatley's great as well.
Gall's Law for anyone who didn't know or couldn't remember it:

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system." – John Gall (1975)
I wonder if there's space for some boutique shops that specialize in sobriety.
and some of the groupings are so weird! (looking at you, "Update & Security".) i mostly just give up and text-search for the setting i want
> "Defense in depth" sounds, to me, like a phrase to justify multiple layers of imperfect security.

That’s absolutely correct! But you seem to be missing the fact that _all_ layers of security are always imperfect.
> something like `ilikecats@fastmail.com` and my Walmart account can be `iheckinhatecats@fastmail.com`

Might be better to generate random addresses for web account signups, so other users can reserve readable addresses for their main email. It would suck if all the good addresses were taken by a few people. I hope a trend like that wouldn't cause Fastmail to limit the feature.
This is so overwhelmingly better in every conceivable way that there is no excuse for ever using the other thing. (Unless you are using Rust and don't have it?)
> assigning his family to high-level positions

imo this is always one of the first tells that company owners aren't good to be in business with. I've never had a good experience with family-run businesses in my entire career- have learned to completely avoid them at this point.
This is pretty close to truth. And if all laws of physics at at work within the peanut, then all laws of the universe would be unlocked. Quite clever.
If I've understood you right, you break the TOS on other websites to collect users personal info, and then you have nightmares about people taking that data from you? Doesn't that raise ethical concerns in your eyes?
I haven’t personally but certainly know people who have.

The experience sounds quite pleasant if that’s what you’re interested in purchasing.

Fire up tor, mix some bitcoins around, look at a bunch of listings, send some bitcoins and an address, wait a few days, and get a package by post with some high quality drugs in it.

For the record, the people I know who’ve done this tend to be particularly technically inclined.
> no VFX hoax ever convincingly impersonated Nixon

Because nobody really cares about Nixon. People fake UFO videos because they're clickbait. You can hit and run and make $10,000 on YouTube revenue before someone debunks you.

The reason political campaigns aren't using VFX to make their opponents look bad is because someone would eventually figure it out and the backlash would be immense. Additionally, it's not even necessary. People do fine planting conspiracy theories and taking advantage of people's disinterest in fact checking to say whatever they want, all without investing any effort in video production.

I predict that deepfakes will be nothing but a series of amusing "I can't believe they thought they could get away with that" stories.
Wordpress -> WP2Static

You can deploy it to Cloudflare Workers, Azure Blobs, etc; and you get the customization options/rich library of Wordpress.

https://wp2static.com/
As an American, I simply do not understand why England let alone Europe suffers from the scourge of royalty in the 21st century. Just expropriate everything those motherfuckers have and be done with it.
> How would you know that those of us who repeat it don't know?

Because everybody is different and even if you have been through it yourself, your experience may be nothing like someone else's, and just because it was true for you, doesn't mean it is true for them. Yes, some people get past it, either on their own, with therapy or with medication. Some people are just numbed by it, other people learn to cope even if it never actually gets better. Other people still struggle every day. You cannot know what is going on in someone else's head or the struggles they face.

Its true that many people get better, certainly with treatment, but a large number of people do not (someone else here said that treatment does not work for approx. 1/3 of people).
I think this is the important takeaway for founders and product owners. People will eventually take "just works" for granted. If you make that your value prop (and you should) it is critical to continuously invest in ensuring your product always "just works". It doesn't matter if the alternatives don't. Your users will eventually turn on you.
> In fact my guess is they just leave your profile active if it's popular to encourage other people to "match" with you.

I wouldn’t go to the extent of saying they don’t do it, but I think it’s very unlikely due to the nature of their service. It’s different of, say, Facebook, that can do it without anyone knowing. If I got into a relationship and close my Tinder account but they kept it alive, a single friend can find it and tell my partner. If this happens too often word will spread that something shady is going on.
My apologies, I had hoped to communicate that my comment was specifically about implementation details.
Cars in the US last on average 17 years, though there is a long tail that stretches out 25 and 30 years (mostly for "light trucks").

If we assume the goal is <1% ICE vehicles on the road by 2050, then we need all new cars to be electric by 2033 at the latest, and 2020 to be sure.
Report: https://odh.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/odh/media-center/odh-new...
We're not so far down the Laffer curve that raising taxes would lower revenues, and it's unlikely we will be anytime soon.