skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As anigbrowl implied, the name for what you describe is the "precautionary principle", which has its criticisms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Critic...

We absolutely should use the best theories we have to try to predict outcomes of our actions, and apply them incrementally instead of globally where possible. But sometimes more damage is caused by avoiding risk (time wasted planning, lives lost that could have been saved, etc.) than would be lost if the experiment in question goes wrong.

Often the only way to "know for sure" is to do something and see what happens.
35 Gorgeous Examples of White Color Usage in Web Design
The standup is obviously one method of applying "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation."

Agile also strongly discourages remote work, under the same principle.
It's not a stretch at all when it comes to nuclear weapons. The Iranians are doing exactly what the North Koreans did. The "people, culture, government, and history" are relevant only to the extent to which they played into the government's decision to acquire nuclear weapons.
To be absolutely clear, I responded, but I'm not an employee of HN, a moderator, nor dang (just in case there was some assumption I was speaking for myself previously).

P.S. I'm curious, what personal attacks are you referencing?
Hey look, it's a menu that's actually useful for understanding what's on the site and navigating it. Nice.

Given that, wouldn't it be better if the menu were always visible? I had to resize my browser window to be tiny to even see that it was there on the Paradeiser site (and not just in the screenshot).
One can hope, but remember the Arab Spring and its collapse.

Iran is a theocracy, and theocracies can't lighten up too much or they lose first their reason for being, then their power.
Ask HN: Best Price for any product
At Price Bureau, for past 5 months, we have been helping individual and businesses to get best price for any product. We have served 1300+ requests along with handling procurement for 5+ businesses.

Currently, we physically go and negotiate with local sellers and research online to get the best price. We are now considering a pivot to scale it. At the core of this pivot, we realized that people are already negotiating before they buy today. If we can incentivize them to share this knowledge (at what price and from where they are buying), probabilistically we will get the best price in our system in long run.

Here is how we are planning to execute it: we are now introducing an app which will be top up with virtual currency (say 3 coins). User can still ask for best price for any product (it will cost them - say 1 coin). Once they run out of coins, we will ask them to upload a receipt of any recent purchase they made - say iPhone 6. We will extract the price and seller information from the receipts. Later on, if other user is looking for best price for iPhone 6, we can surface all the information from the crowd who has submitted receipts for iPhone 6, ofcourse anonymously. In long run, system should grow by itself and we should get out of business (or maybe doing it for free) of getting the best price.

(1) What are your thoughts on this model?
(2) What are some of the leanest way you can think to test this experiment?

Looking forward to some constructive thoughts.
No worries! You're certainly not the first person to mention too much text. It's something I'll definitely be fixing soon. I have zero UI/UX experience (all my work is backend) so this has been a learning project for me. Thanks again for taking time to check it out!
When young/old/stupid/tired your reaction times and concentration level are slowed. But there are no laws against those things (unless you're actually driving badly).
Many companies which aren't remote-friendly tend to resist hiring folks without a clear tie to their primary market for obvious reasons. If you're in Anytown, USA and applying to jobs in Metropolis, you look more like a country mouse dreaming about big city livin' than an unattached city mouse whose happenstance brought you back to your humble hometown.

Even if you've historically lived and held down key roles in a major market, the fact that you're not there now may lead an employer to believe that you're not prepared to stick out long-term assignments if the wind blows another direction. Or, worse, you're not actually as good as your résumé purports, and your last employer(s) figured that out and fired you, which led you to crawl back to the nest.

I'd suggest either moving to a major market and shooting from close range, or looking for remote-friendly roles (which would allow you to keep your negligible rent, quite a rare find in any of the top engineering job markets).
I appreciate the detailed reply, and the others as well. To address your questions and some of the others:

We can generally pin our entire fleet against whatever we want -- until we can't. One particular (very large, very important) dependency currently requires CentOS 6.5. Go figure.

As much as possible, I want to treat infrastructure as a commodity, so catering to specific versions (even LTR versions) breaks that goal. As another reply notes, if we lock in at Ubuntu 12.04 and it's predictable, that's excellent.

As another mentions, Upstart was easy to get a handle of quickly. As an aside, it bugs me that the (otherwise excellent and detailed) Upstart docs don't seem to mention that all of Upstart is now deprecated. Hence the original confusion! In general I don't want flexibility (not first and foremost), I want simple and consistent.
I agree. The basic problem is that things auto-hide a lot of are otherwise non-obvious.
Where does the money come from to pay for these instances? Is it Mozilla?
I'm pretty sure more people have died from masturbation (auto-erotic asphyxiation) than from marijuana-related harm.
Of course the reason there is cruelty is because there are people who feel helpless, and by being cruel they can feel empowered and that, for a while, changes how they feel about themselves until they find another opportunity to be cruel. Eventually they become bullies or trolls or what ever the current colloquialism is for people who behave that way.

And this is where the Internet loses something. Everyone can yell just as loudly as everyone else. And so even when it is full of 99.99% of caring and loving people the million or so hard core trolls can wreak their havoc without any of that spilling back on them. And feeling invulnerable is important to enabling their willingness to speak out.
I drive by a lot of corn fields out here. California produces 16% of the nation's sweet corn, #2 in the nation.

http://www.seecalifornia.com/farms/california-corn.html
Computer enclosure and server rack manufacturers might have a new market for built-in Faraday cages.
"We plan to extend the compiler to permit deeper integration with IDEs and other tools; the plan is to focus initially on two IDEs, and then grow from there."

Any ideas which IDEs will be chosen?
I almost despise the white and flat color design oriented web. I prefer usable lists to one word per page on white space.
Switch to the master branch. :) it confused me too.
I don't think the Stencil pattern is the best pattern for sorting algorithms, but I think it can be done.

The following link has a very simple example:
https://github.com/pskel/pskel/wiki
Running inside the app is probably the strongest argument here, though I think that's also kinda assuming that people cannot subvert the app in unexpected ways. The size of requests can still be observed e.g. being on Wifi - people don't just use their Smartphone from the cellular network.

My thinking is that while in this case it's "probably safe" to use Gzip + HTTPS, but that's not a good practice to build secure systems. If e.g. here these requests are exempted and run to Gzip, the reasons and circumstances for doing it here will be forgotten, and can end up with other stuff exempted later which shouldn't. Just from experience how things work in large orgs.
Declining to answer is the same as admitting it exists, which he wasn't permitted to do.

It is no matter anyway, the chairman knew the answer to the question before it was asked, and he just wanted to expose the program, which Clapper wasn't going to allow to happen. Just because you are able to chair a public committee doesn't mean you also have the right to expose top secret government programs you happen to not like.
Thanks for the feedback Kevin!

Oh man, can't believe that copy issue (triple-line instead of plus) has been in the first run experience for over a month and I didn't realize it... thanks for pointing it out!

Great insight about not hiding the feature list behind that button... hadn't thought about that since as a dev I know that button can never charge me w/out another prompt from Apple. Dev blindness.

Also, what an interesting (and new to me) idea about trying a conversion during onboarding. Apple would indeed allow it. Great opportunity for an A/B test.

Yes, defaulting to actual weights is something I've wrestled with. The fact is, while I knew I could play up the moving average angle with this audience, many of my customers got confused about how moving averages worked and why they were seeing weights they didn't type in on their second day of usage. Also, moving average predictions are pretty inaccurate until there's a week's worth of data, so it's really hard to have a great day 2 experience using just the moving averages. In my experience, defaulting to simple weight tracking for the numbers I display and letting power users switch to moving averages seems to have worked best.

Kevin- This is some of the most thought-provoking feedback I've gotten. You clearly put a good amount of your time into the review and the feedback, and I really appreciate how you gave actionable advice. Thanks for your help!
Actually just an inaccurate cut & paste of the url (https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=55419240) is still there, and you can see more of it if you log into LinkedIn
Thanks for letting me know! If you'd like me to let you know when it's fixed, email me at support@happyscale.com.
We definitely do need better government. But I don't think this digital service thing is going to work out. Early reports from similar programs like the Presidential Fellows program, shows that government bureaucracy is pretty calcified, and the private contractors that provide the current dated technology aren't going to go quietly either.

A bunch of young guns parachuting in isn't going to have much effect unless someone with a lot of political capital, spends that capital forcing change.

Otherwise, the young guns will just get sidelined. I've talked to people in the Presidential Fellows program, and they get sidelined a lot. Nothing actually changes.

And forget about bringing in new, better vendors for government contracts. There is an entire skillset required to bid on and get government contracts, and the people that know how to build good technology, have no idea how to get the contracts. And the people that know how to get the contracts, specialize in that, and have no idea how to build good technology.

How do you think that garbage-ass company from Canada (that isn't even allowed to build tech for the Canadian government) gets recruited to build Healthcare.gov at some huge inflated expense.

And BTW, you can't even get people in the know to talk about this stuff, because anyone that does is shitting on their own career prospects if they tattle on the system.

The Healthcare.gov fix worked because the President supported that intervention. Can every place that Digital Service serves get that kind of support? If it does, then that will be amazing. But I sort of doubt the President can micromanage and give support to a thousand interventions in a thousand different departments, all with their own little fiefdoms.
I'm with you. I've been in cars with drunk drivers and they're nowhere near as bad as soccer moms, taxis and old people. T

They're actually more careful cause they really don't want to be pulled over.
From the standpoint of understanding human behavior at scale, the alternatives you offered are unworkable.

People are going to drink, they are going to do it in social environments beyond their homes, and they are going to return to their homes. A realistic solution involves recognizing these centuries-old truths and minimizing the inherent risk. Water flows downhill, and hitting it with a stick won’t change that.
Grammar here is seriously lacking as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Doppler_cooling
How did you manage that? We currently have a problem with crashing services using up all system resources trying to constantly restart. Or better yet, exponential backoff.
(off topic)

I have to say I'm very thankful to have found HN. I grew up in a decent, moderately sized city (300k) going to a private religious school with children whose parents were similarly strongly interested in the intellectual development of their children.

I had access to all the sports teams. I played soccer through Varsity, played with the golf team [but note I was not on the golf team, hehe], and basketball in middle school. I played piano for 8 years. I attended one of the top 5 schools of my field in the nation, and graduated into a small company with other graduates from my school, MIT, etc. From 'good places'.

Because of this, education was always something I always took for granted. I always valued it, but always took it for granted. My education, however, took humans for granted. Your value to society was sometimes considered limited by what you could produce. Additionally, many of those I highschooled and undergraduated with held little reservation filtering people out of their life based on, I'll call it, 'being dumb'.

This always bothered me. I believed in the intrinsic value of the human, so I always sought to correct for it. Because I always tried my hardest, it never occurred to me how people could willfully and knowingly not aspire themselves to something greater than what required minimal effort. Everyone I grew up with did, I did, and my parents did, so naturally I assumed everyone else did, too. As such, I was regularly perplexed at the value judgements certain colleagues would place on other members of humanity.

So I left that company, and struck out on my own.
I have since discovered what a rare breed my background nurtured, and now understand the wisdom in filtering those you spend time with. Instead of a prideful superiority [which I certainly observed], I exercise with a cautious respect for, and in protection of, talent and time. I exercise without placing value judgements on the people I come in contact with, but I do judge the values of the people I spend time with. In this way I safely continue to respect their humanity, and avoid pride.

It's only since I moved and became aware of my need to protect that I became aware of how hard it is to find knowledge seekers. And so, when I come across someone from a different field but similar excellence, who carries with them persuasive content helpful for advancement, I am thankful.

And so I am thankful to have found HackerNews, and specifically this lecture material that I can't wait to watch.

It's very important to surround yourself with excellence. You'll become the ones you're around, and believe their idiocy, if you're not careful.

Be careful.
I've never used this app first-hand, but it's the one I recommend to users when they ask about an Android version. I didn't know they let you customize the moving average, so I'll have to check that out.

If you wouldn't mind sharing, how do they let you customize it, and what do you enjoy about that?
I'd easily pass a drug test, and whatever technical interviews. And there's not a chance in hell I'd piss in a cup for any employer.

It's demeaning, and I simply will not do it.
This is an important point. It's hard to enact change when it threatens the status quo. In California, Prison Correctional officers are backed by a powerful lobby[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_...
So global warming is a GOOD thing, let the next sentient species figure out how to live durably on the planet :-). It is an interesting challenge to propagate the sum of our knowledge through a global extinction event, something durable enough to survive, and yet with a means of each level unlocking the next level.
I actually really like the Withings UI, so I take that as high praise.

Yes, Body Fat % is a pretty important thing on my list. I don't have it scheduled for the next release, but I do hope to get it into one of the next couple of releases.
I doubt people without a brain would get much out of drugs.

So now it's my urine and substantial pieces of my health history, including a pretty good drug-directed guess of what the actual underlying health condition is. Hope it's not an expensive one to insure. Oh, I'll write the doctor's number down too. I'll just fill out the HIPAA authorization form granting my potential employer access to my medical history. Good thing the practice's name doesn't include "behavioral health" anywhere in it.

Why bother with this nonsense when there are so many better employment options?
Yes. Putting the year first and with 4 digits is the only safe way because, afaik, nobody anywhere uses yyyy/dd/mm. It's nice that it's also in order of significance but the main advantage is unambiguousness.

You'd think people would have learnt from Y2K but somehow we still see 2-digit years which make dates like 03/04/05 impossible to even guess at. It's slightly better since 2012 where a 2-digit year can't also be a month, but we'll have to wait till 2032 for 2-digit years to unambiguously mean year.

This is an area where I believe localization makes things worse, not better. If every website showed dates with the year first, people would easily understand, regardless of whatever silly local convention they have. As it is, whenever I see a ##/##/## date, I have to think about what the website might be trying to do (do they know what country I'm from? What country I'm in now? Are they using their own local convention?) and what possible dates it might mean. "I think that happened around August, so 08/10/14 is probably not the 8th of October." Localized dates just make no sense at all on the internet.
What if the person is on a train? Spending the entire ride not being able to use one's phone?
I don't think that most people are usually talking about all substance abuse bans, but rather specific substances like marijuana or psychedelics. In fact, many defenders of certain drugs will mention the dangers and harms of alcohol in comparison to the banned drug.

It's a little amusing to see people who have alcohol as a major part of their life respond negatively to other drugs with a much smaller social impact.

edit: or, from another perspective, let's say we find 8 hours of sleep a night, a better diet with fewer inflammatory foods, plenty of water, and an hour of exercise a day reduce violence by 40% in total. We criminalize not following this exercise program.

While it's damaging on a societal level if people don't abide by the Healthy Lifestyle, on the individual level most people would describe it as a victimless crime and say the government should not be able to regulate these decisions. (Or would they, if the effect was that strong?)

Whereas, on the opposite end of the spectrum, taking a pill with meth and PCP might increase the risk so much that very, very few people would call it "victimless" or wish to leave that decision up to the individual.
Was just about to go to bed, when I saw you mentioned that you wrote http://sleepyti.me. Got up to go to my computer to say that I use it all the time!! Thanks for the awesome tool.
The Batterizer circuit is more widely known as joule thief [1]. It's a boost converter that produces a constant output voltage regardless of the battery voltage. Some sort of similar switching power supply is standard in things like cell phones and laptops. For cheap toys, cost is key and the circuit would be too expensive.

"5 times more battery life" is kind of crazy though. Alkaline batteries start falling off quickly as they become discharged - in fact, this is a prized feature of the chemistry as the voltage stays pretty level through most of the life of the cell [2].

What surprises me is that they can build the Batterizer for $2.50. That seems awfully low for a completed product like that. How many amps can it handle?

Even at the $2.50 price point, you'd be better off buying NiMH cells. That would do much more for the environment than the Batterizer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_thief
[2] http://www.powerstream.com/AA-tests.htm
I think the difference between distracted driving and drunk driving is the foreknowledge of impairment, and intentional increase of danger to the public. As such, in many states driving while texting or on the phone without a hands-free system are also illegal. The reasoned decision that someone's convenience is above the safety of the public is what I see as the problem here (and of course if someone isn't sober enough to make a reasoned decision about that, then I definitely don't think they have any place operating a piece of heavy equipment).
The self-driving car will be transformative, and it's important that no one company be the only game in town. If this seems like me-too-ism then it probably is, but that's a good thing for the world.
This approach is being used a by a judge in Hawaii, with regard to its probation program:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law-july-dec13-hawaiihope_11-...

JUDGE STEVEN ALM: I thought to myself, well, what would work to change behavior? And I thought of the way I was raised, the way my wife and I would– were trying to raise our son. You tell him what the family rules are, and then, if there’s misbehavior, you do something immediately. Swift and certain is what’s gonna get people’s attention and help them tie together bad behavior with a consequence and learn from it.

MEGAN THOMPSON: These seemingly simple reforms in Hawaii soon produced remarkable results. An arm of the department of justice funded a study five years after the program launched. That study found that compared to people in regular probation, HOPE probationers were half as likely to be arrested for new crimes, or have their probation revoked. They ended up spending about half as much time in prison. And were 72% less likely to use drugs. The results from Hawaii caught the attention of criminal justice experts across the nation.
Something to rember about the "powerful interests" they only remain powerful because vast majority of voting Americans either agree with them on that don't care about that about that issue or care so little about the issue that it dosen't matter. When this changes policy changes. Look at Marijuana legalization, where are the powerful interests benefiting from it?
"I'm guessing less than 5% of all ag in the state is almonds."

Based on what? Are you just making up numbers? By round numbers, it seems to be around 10% of agriculture. This report states that it is 15%, but the report is funded by the Almond Board and is probably making generous assumptions [1].

[1] http://aic.ucdavis.edu/almonds/Economic%20Impacts%20of%20Cal...
...people's obsession with meaningless green lawns...

I suspect there's a reason why green is a common favorite color; it's a sign of life and vitality. Have there been any studies of mental health in areas without many green lawns?

Of course, there are less thirsty plants that can provide greenery.