jkeisling/hacker-news-corpus-2007-2022 huggingface dataset:
Whether a company is "rent seeking" vs. "value creating" has nothing to do with whether it's a pre-existing security or a startup.

If investors put $1B into a company that manufactures commodity widgets, and the company spends that $1B on a factory that produces $100M worth of widgets per year (with no market cornering, monopoly, etc.), this is obviously a value-creating business model. If the original investors sell their shares to passive index investors, that doesn't magically make the underlying business rent-seeking. Twenty years later, the company might still be doing basically the same thing, and the securities might have changed hands many times, but it's still a $1B company producing $100M of genuine value per year.

Conversely, if investors put $1B into a startup whose business model is to build a monopoly, starve the competition, and then jack up the prices (as Uber is allegedly doing), then that's obviously a rent-seeking business model. It's a rent-seeking business model from the very beginning. It doesn't have anything to do with how long the company has been in business.

There's a valid debate to be had over what fraction of the returns on stocks come from value-creation vs. rent-seeking, but the "pre-existing security vs. startup" distinction has nothing to do with it. Personally, my hunch is that the majority is genuine value creation. Every factory, farm, train car, power plant, office building, etc. is an asset that creates genuine value.
Darling[1] provides an opensource userspace runtime, which could be combined with this.

It's similar to reactos sharing userspace code with wine.

1: https://darlinghq.org
> I couldn't understand why friends weren't interested in what I was working on, until I realized they were building CRUD apps all day.

As someone who gets paid to clean up the cluster fuck that can be created by people building "crud" apps let me tell you better debugging tools would be a godsend.

In the old days with more monolithic apps you at least had one pile everyone shit in, and it was possible to get a handle on how it "functioned" and what its quirks were. Between micro-services and docker it isn't one big shit pile its a bunch of small ones, everywhere. And because of docker on occasion I now get to dig down to the underlying OS, because someone who had no right touching a production server, ever, built and tweaked a container and it "runs" so it went out. Did you know that you can run diff over ssh to compare and contrast the code on two containers? I can think of two rather heathy pay days in the last year where some Jr. on site engineer is the one who found the problem by going bottom up while I went top down.

The article states that "developers suck" and on a bad day I would say that the author is giving them too much credit. On a good day I realize that the issue is much deeper and that we hire technological magpies who want to chase shiny new objects (the javascript world is probably the worst at this). On a really bad day I realize that our entire industry is "wrong headed" starting from hiring. We test people on "can they write code" but no one ever asks the people walking through the door to read 50 pages of it. To find the one misplaced semicolon just to see if they picked up on any of the logic traps that were littered all over the other 49 pages.

So to you sir (or madam), I raise a glass for at least trying to build tools for me, the guy who fixes the "gnarly bugs" in crud apps. I wish you would go back and finish your work, the 6 of us who really appreciate you would happily buy you a beer.
> In particular, developer culture is that developers don't pay for tools, especially not debuggers.

I blame larger programming teams. It’s a chicken and egg problem: if you want to start using a commercial debugger, you need to buy it for everyone on dev team, so you can share your knowledge and benefit from others’ help; and you are not going to buy a debugger for everyone if you are not using it yourself.
I spend my day on CRUD apps and disagree.

Often big CRUD apps with a lot of business logic tend to have higher level, "logic flaws" that generate bugs. In those cases having something like `rr` to trace the origin of certain values would be a godsend.

I think these apps tend to be very wide in breadth, where instrumenting the entire system can be hard. Languages like Python (with `pdb` being a single-line in the middle of a program) are great in these scenarios because it allows for a pretty exploratory strategy when debugging.

Unfortunately there's a lot of people who do "print statement debugging" because the tooling really isn't practical in most places, but it would definitely be useful.
The comp structure is very different though. Base salary in finance is low compared to tech/silicon valley. most of the typical finance comp comes from yearly bonus, usually cash, but sometimes stock/options with vesting.
But then if Apple gets pissed off at that, they just change the XCode EULA to say "no non-Apple hardware, please". Actually, I would not at all be shocked if the XCode EULA already says that.
Yeah, I thought so too. I've been teaching myself Lisp as a side project, working through online tutorials and, more productively, Paul Graham's "ANSI Common Lisp", using SBCL and CLISP in a terminal window. OK, cool, try another Lisp, leverage my Python knowledge.

Took a look at the github of Pixie: "pre-alpha" and no docs whatever. Not for the student.

Hy is cleanly packaged, installed with pip3, has complete(ish) docs[1], great. So I installed it and started it, it puts up a REPL prompt, and I paste in one of the functions I've worked out:

(defun hello ()
(write-line "this is the prompt:")
(let ( (name (read-line)) )
(format t "Hello, ~A.~%" name)
)
)

Error message: "empty expressions are not allowed at top level"

Sorry? Exactly that usage, an empty expression when a function takes no argument, is used on (I just checked) page 20 of Graham. But ok, I try it without, "(defun hello" etc.

Error message: "NameError: name 'defun' is not defined"

You what? defun is introduced on page 14, and defined in the "Language Reference" Appendix of Graham. OK, wait, what does Hy use, if not defun? Search their tutorial chapter: "Define named functions with defn".

OK, this is a deal-breaker for somebody trying to learn (ahem) COMMON Lisp. Why would you do that, just arbitrarily change the probably third or fourth name a student learns after car, cdr and setv? And more importantly, if you have taken it on yourself to dick around with (ahem) Common Lisp at this basic point, what else have you changed that will break the examples in my textbook or online tutorial?

pip3 uninstall hy

[1] https://docs.hylang.org/en/master/index.html
Really? A friend of mine has a house full of the Lepin kits and they look indistinguishable to me. Apparently there's very occasionally a piece which doesn't snap tightly enough and needs a bit of glue or something, but then I have an official Lego kit (little VW convertible thing) on my shelf which falls apart if nudged too hard so Lego's not perfect either.
If you have a family, you simply don't stay for dinner. You work 9-5 and go home to your family at night. Oh, and take advantage of the awesome health plan ($0/month HMO, or something like $25/month PPO), long maternity/paternity leave (it's something like 6 weeks of paid paternity leave, and several months of maternity leave), flexibility to schedule your time so you can make it to all of your kid's events, free shuttle so you don't waste all your time commuting, job stability, and relatively generous salaries.
This sounds like a great situation. You just need to explain to them how long each idea will take to implement. Then you can all talk about what should be done first.

I do not see the problem.
Just because it surprised me to find it - firewalls we deal with have HTTPS MITM capability built in. You install an SSL certificate which your corporate workstations trust, and it will present that to the workstation while proxying the connection out to the site, and sniffing/filtering the traffic in between.

Until I saw that I thought of it as 'an attack'.
"relatively generous salaries"

This seems new. Last I checked, Google offered (relatively) low salaries.
It pays pretty well for experienced people.
I start with a "that takes like 3 seconds easy" sub-feature on the "it looks really easy" feature such as entering a user's name into a text box. Then I ask the "looks really easy" person questions:

- What is a "name" exactly?
- What about names in other languages?
- How do we search for names in other languages?
- What if the user puts something that is clearly not a name e.g. bob@example.com. But what if it is someone's name?
- What about cultures with no last name?
- What about security? How do we make sure that someone doesn't try destroy our data with the name text box?

And on and on. Basically, I make them think like me. Usually, they either (1) realize it's hard or (2) say "fine!" (meaning they realize it's hard).
Pune, India.

Job title: Software Artisan

Technologies: Clojure, Python, MongoDB, Amazon AWS, JavaScript

Company: Infinitely Beta (http://infinitelybeta.com)

More info: http://bit.ly/ibt-hackers-wanted
I can't decide if Chrome is leading the way, or pulling ahead, but the gap is widening considerably.

I, for one, welcome our small round red-yellow-green-blue overlords.
i think it's because they aren't actually "focusing" on all of those products. they have small teams come up with a new product, push it out, see how the public reacts, and if it's a hit, they devote more resources to it. if not, they can it.
Without knowing all the facts surrounding this choice, it is rather difficult to judge if this decision was ill-conceived. But as a father of a home-schooled 5yr old, I find myself constantly questioning the value/trade-offs of traditional education paths rooted in a paradigm that doesn't quite fit todays' world. With a bit of planning, History and Socialization skills can definitely be learnt outside the High School System. I am all for a blended learning experience, taking the best of the traditional approach and mixing with unconventional learning opportunities.
Don't be so incredulous. No where does he say "fuck being a well-rounded person." He thinks her time is being wasted in school which I think is certainly capable of being argued. Schools are designed to fit most people. By their very nature they're supposed to be good enough for everyone but rarely perfect for individuals.
Same issue with the XPS and throttle, you can bypass the throttling manually through an app - and disable speedstep and one other thing...

I can't recall, but I never could finish Persona 4 on my XPS. :( 9350.

Agree 100% w/ 16" MBP.
but there is a segment of the population that does, and thus a market.
UK here, have never and will never use any fcbook property and didn't use Whatsapp before then. For me it's Signal, Matrix or folk can SMS me to give up their privacy without pushing me into using other services to do so.
I'm in love with this concept! I'm wondering about the longevity of storage devices.

> SD Cards won’t last 100 years but the code to talk to one will.

It seems like the article implies that family that owns an heirloom computer would have to backup their data every decade or so, assuming the storage medium lasts that long.

Are there any data storage options that can go decades without being used? From my admittedly cursory research, it seems like M-Disc or solid state storage are the best options so far.
Fetchmail grew to be a mail transport swiss army knife and encompassed half baked functionality of a domain-wide MTA rather focusing on single user async email consolidation and collection for a logical single account, which is largely what this rant is about. Half of the half-bakedness is due to lack of MTA protocol support for MUA interactions on the receiving side.

pop3 was never meant as a spool for MTA to MTA email transfers, but was instead meant for an MUA to access. It's not fetchmail's fault that the envelope TO isn't available via pop3. That, at the time, email service providers bolted on entire domain delivery to a single mailbox, and then users of those services put multiple recipients behind that single mailbox. Fetchmail made this work as best it could. Also missing at the time was any kind of serious connecting-client-as-MTA or MTA-to-MTA authentication (rather, relying on DNS and TCP!), which might have made async, receiver controlled MTA initiation more workable.

This was also due to common SMTP MTAs not having good (or at least easy/obvious to configure) store-for-later-pickup functionality where an MTA could query for email destined for itself rather than be always-on connected to the internet waiting for another MTA to initiate delivery. Fetchmail filled a hole that existed in email delivery at the time, but it was really a hole that should have never existed. The quality of the fetchmail code is another, albeit serious, issue in itself.

These days we have a better understanding of the differences between MTAs, MSAs, and MUAs.
Does representative democracy break down at some point? What happens when America has 1B people?

At some point, you can't fit enough people into a chamber usefully. What do we do then?
As someone who has survived 5 or so serious attempts, I can say that it's not actually that easy unless you're a masochist, and that this comment thread strikes me as quite ignorant.
That's pretty interesting! What do you think might have happened in the short term? The 2010 elections were fairly unkind to Democrats, and a large wall of opposition might have impeded the Obama administration even further...
I wonder if it's competitive with Rackspace and similar, or if they are charging a premium and/or things like egress.
Being intelligent isn't enough, especially if they have their self-interest in mind rather than the will of their constituents.
Still impressive for a 1-man show who says he spends just 1% if him time on it.
Even without having to resort to elitism, the theoretical advantage of representative democracy is that it slows down the pace of change. It attempts to keep legislation from being a reactionary yo-yo.

But, of course, it also allows the government to lose touch with the will of the people.
I personally always prefer first historical approach, only then elegant summaries. I am aware that some like just a distilled material. Still thanks for mentioning Landau and Lifschitz book!
solution: 9,500 representatives, lol....

I also don't take dissenting opinions from a 1920s Missouri representative seriously

or that Geocities website

but in the spirit of not immediately discrediting the sources or ad hominem attacks, it does at least makes me wonder if the 435 cap was arbitrary and capricious
Let’s Encrypt makes this trivial and automatic if foobar.example.com has been CNAMEed to the tracking provider.
It also means that people would have a lot less access to information about what's going on. I wouldn't subscribe to a single newspaper or magazine if it cost me money. I would guess that a lot of the people I know would do the same.

Knowing more about the world has been interesting and it probably has benefited my view of the world, but it hasn't given me anything tangible or anything I could point to. If anything it has occupied a lot of my time instead.
> remained heroic and civilized

Well, except for the rapes, murders, mass internment, civilian bombing, etc. Its a nice fable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World...
Urls are encrypted.
Mostly by "global interest". Reading between the lines, I wonder if they're being pressured.
> are there any examples for successful implementations for these categories in Rust?

Depends on how you define "successful", I'll toss some things in. This won't be comprehensive.

1. O/S kernels and drivers,

Amazon has multiple projects in this space: Firecracker, Bottlerocket. So does Google: ChromeOS, Fuchsia. Kernel maintainers have said that they would accept non-essential drivers in Rust, but they want some examples first.

2. embedded code for tiny microcontrollers,

Tons of stuff here. Multiple RTOSes like Tock and RTFM. Lots of little projects. One of the first Rust-only consultancies does a lot of embedded contracts.

3. language interpreters/runtimes and JITters,

Most of the languages that have existed are bigger than toys, but don't have large user bases. Gluon and Dyon are two examples. JITs exist but aren't really "production", Cranelift has a JIT for example.

4. bootstrap compilers,

rustc is written in Rust (it does use LLVM though)

5. portable command-line utilities,

Tons and tons and tons. ripgrep is the most famous. On the "portable" end, I'm a Windows user, and most things I try Just Work, though they may print out funny paths sometimes. (if you escape a native\windows\path you'll get a native\\windows\\path since \ ends up getting escaped. Only a display issue though, things still work just fine.)

6. low-level/mixed asm routines for performance,

This isn't "for performance" but I like https://crates.io/crates/x86 as an example here. Inline asm isn't stable yet, but we're getting pretty close, it seems.

7. and the large body of legacy apps of course,

It's not clear to me what this actually means.
URLs are encrypted. Hostnames aren't encrypted in HTTPS, unless TLS SNI is encrypted.

The problem with URLs is that a lot of products will log the URL to disk, and many operators forget or aren't aware they might need to have security plans around data in the logs.
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7303361
Though it's interesting to think of the possible legal ramifications, I doubt there will be a court case. The "damages" looks like about ten terabytes of bandwidth, and lawyer fees would surpass that in days .

NTP domains have had a history of similar problems, and they seem to be resolved by apologizing, fixing the problem, and sometimes a donation.
Nobody has mentioned keynav[0] yet. "It lets you move the pointer quickly to most points on the screen with only a few key strokes."

With some software or web pages you're better off with this kind of workaround than installing browser plugins or configuring the software, especially if you use them infrequently.

Another tip: use ' in firefox to search for links when the focus is not in a text area. For instance, typing |'comment| (without the pipes) here selects a link containing "comment", and you can circle through other matches with F3 / Shift-F3 just like regular searches.

[0]: https://www.semicomplete.com/projects/keynav/
This is calculated in dollars, which is not the unit we use for measuring amounts of energy.
If you want to fuzz a Java web app, our commercial platform CI Fuzz (of which Jazzer is one part) has built-in detectors for the typical vulnerabilities such as SQL injections: https://blog.code-intelligence.com/sql-fuzzing
Having more keys is a workaround for not having extra layers :)
I'm amused. You're the only one trying to feel outraged. But you go do your thing.
Every time I read about people's obsessions with keyboards I feel like an outsider. Am I weird? I've been using the same Logitech K120 that costs around 10€/$10, my muscle memory is important.

The keys are in the usual places instead of multi-function keys, arrow keys are separated, it has a numpad... I'd like to have dedicated media keys, but that's the only thing I'd change. I keep buying it and have spare ones just in case.
I purchased some at Home Depot recently for $4/pc (they had plenty in stock, Seattle area). The company mentioned here is selling [0] them for $3.75/pc, but only in quantities of 20 ($75).

I wish N95’s did not necessitate the second strap, but hey, it’s better than COVID!

[0] https://shop.demetech.us/collections/n95-respirator-masks/pr...

Edit: for the record, I think the ones I got at Home Depot are nicer. They have a foam cushion on the bridge of the nose and a super sturdy “pinch”.
What? If you're not trolling, what wheat is grown without chemicals? Sincere question.
Fine, yes, Perl "Won". The problem is, that war happened two decades ago and has very little relevance to the state of things today.
Previous fruitful HN conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7580465
This appears to be a bug in your browser extension. All list pages show proper TLDs for me.
I agree with ggreer [0] that there must be a want to commit everyday. sferik, good job in doing what you want, when you want.

When I saw this I was immediately reminded of the recently front page "Your 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour" [1]. I don't think that each week for a streak like this requires 60-hours. I know that a streak like this wouldn't be good for me, and I personally don't think it'd be good for most people.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7309996

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7244109
He's not gonna get a visa for the US.
the registry, yes, not npm itself. isaacs also has committed more to the actual registry code than I have as well.
If they are trained designers, they'll have portfolios with some amount of intermediate work, not just static websites, but maybe wireframes, graphic design output, storyboards, and so on.
You are vastly overestimating the technical abilities of the average QA person. "Just as easily spinning up their own VM with the Vagrantfile" assumes a significant base understanding of a lot of technologies.
The bulk of those who are pushing for more voter ID are from the most political alliance most vocal about both (a) insisting the voting is a state matter (b) federal government issuing ID is not OK.
This brilliant video shows what it would be like if this practice was common in other industries.

http://www.dump.com/2010/12/13/the-vendor-client-relationshi...
> But if you don't read the right blogs or wherever it is the cool kids figure out which repos are active and which aren't, the github centric experience is frustrating.

True, Github badly needs a "bless this non-root repository as the canonical one" feature. That's absolutely important for less plugged-in contributors, which may be why it's not as high on their radar.
It's a matter of risk. Think of it like a house... Renting vs buying vs building one. All strategies have their benefits.

Renting you let someone else maintain the property and can walk away at any time. This is what CloudKick's current customers all do when they consume the cloud service.

Buying means gaining control. You build equity and have total control over all the maintenance and improvements. And you have all the knowledge that hindsight offers. Is the house in a thriving neighborhood? Was it built well? Did the previous owners take good care of it?

Building means what? Total control over the entire job, from finding architects and contractors, having say in every detail of the design, the budget, bill of materials, schedule, etc.

But the amount of risk is massive here. If funding takes a hit, or budget blows up, what do you do?

Back to software, more projects die in incubation than mature to CloudKick status, no matter how mature the software companies are. Think really hard about how fragile software development practices are.

And there's further risk in the market. If you set out to build your own CloudKick style infrastructure, CloudKick is still out there furiously innovating and battle testing their software. It can be difficult or impossible to catch up.

You are proposing to spend $8MM to build the cloudkick of today in 2 years time. That might be ok if you're just worried about internal tools, but that's no good if you want to offer the service to other providers.