skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Seems clear to me. The market consists of voluntary associations. An association is voluntary if it is entered into without coercion. The "political system" more properly called the state, depends on coercion. There is no purpose to a law other than to involuntarily compel, by violence if necessary.
If he's only looking at ITER he might have a point. He's ignoring much cheaper possibilities, ranging from conservative but more compact approaches like MIT's ARC design and UW's dynomak, to aneutronic designs like Tri-Alpha and Helion.

UW claims the dynomak would cost less than coal: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/inside-the-dynomak-a...

Aneutronic fusion has the potential to be far cheaper than any other energy source.
We live in a dream world where we believe technology can eventually save us from our sins. We dream that technology will allow us to live unsustainably, forever in a world with limited resources.

Unfortunately, we are bounded by limitations in physics, energy and nature. Technology is derived from the same universe, and therefore, like all other things in nature, there is a limit. We can't keep sucking oil out of a well forever.

Whether we have reached peak technology is debateable. It would be wise to approach such an idea with caution. But to utterly deny that a technological peak even exists is a fools errand.
I think more likely they're referring to Perestroika and Glasnost leading to the 1991 failed coup. Does anyone who matters seriously believe the above myth?
Is that just a thought experiment, or do you really think that would work?

Because I don't think it would work. Why would producers give bombs to the government? Why would they give food to the populace? Why would they submit to taxation when they have more power than the entity trying to tax them?
Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, Guam, Wake, Hawaii.
Biker showed his inept skills
> I'm not sure I follow your logic - are you equating 'majority establishment' with 'majority'?

Are you not equating it? A demographic majority is an enormous source of power. It seems like you're trying to avoid the dynamic and highly local nature of power by putting everything on "institutions" to paper over all the subtlety. Institutions are not monolithic, are not all aligned with one another, and are not the sole source of all power.

It is never the case that a group has no power whatsoever. Anyone who uses their power out of racial animus is a racist.

What you're proposing is like when feminists claim that anyone who is for equality is a feminist, but then in practice self-described feminists care much more about the gender disparity in corporate officers than the gender disparity in prison. It's a bait and switch. Which causes reasonable people to object to the equality-for-me-not-for-thee feminism and start a civil war with other people who also actually want equality, because the leaders lie about who they are and what they want.

When racism is defined as "power exercised under racial animus" then everyone can agree that it's wrong. As soon as you try to redefine it as "power exercised by white people", you're not going to be able to convince white people that that is wrong. Acceptance of your definition of racism will cause white people to stop accepting racism as wrong. That is not OK.
> The only way we can screw this up is to weaken the governments and strengthen the corporations to the point that governments won't be able to tax.

Sadly, this seems to be the dominant narrative among people these days. I can understand that when fighting for less taxes, they're thinking about themselves and their neighbours who run small businesses, but in the end this will likely turn self-destructive, as the businesses increasingly consolidate and governments are less and less able to protect the intrests of their people.

That most governments are run by openly corrupt media stars doesn't help either.

> So probably private armies are bad idea

Private armies are such, such bad idea that it's hard to believe there are actually people advocating them.
Me: "Near as I can tell, you, me and Markhor are all in the same moral boat..."

Coldtea: "Only, one of us [the employer] has used the $x an hour work of that woman up to that point..."

If you want to argue that coldtea isn't making a moral argument as to why he isn't responsible, be my guest. I don't think my interpretation is unreasonable.

It seems quite reasonable to believe that our responsibility towards the other may increase if 1/ we somehow contributed to their misfortune, 2/ if we somehow benefit from it, or 3/ if we benefit from them in any way at all.

(2) and (3) are exactly what the author is calling the Copenhagen Interpretation. I thought this wasn't a thing?
Fascism is totalitarian capitalism, just as Communism is totalitariam socialism.

Don't conflate economic models with government models.
>Obviously improving things even a little is better than not improving them at all. People just disagree whether what the author sees as a clear improvement is in fact so -- that's why you and the GP disagree.

Not true: in all the examples given, the critics never articlulate a mechanism for how that could be true. I know because I look for this every time such a scenario comes up.

You seem to be making the mistake of thinking that "because a good argument exists, that must be what these critics really mean"; that because there's academic literature on optimal tariffs, that's what's grounding the protectionists who complain about "takin' our jobs". But the people referred to in the post don't articulate how eg Uber surge pricing made things worse, only that "hey they're visible and related to suffering". If and when people cite how Uber surge pricing reduces service, Uber supporters are more than willing to have that discussion!

If the argument only exists in a philosophical article that almost none of the critics have heard of, you can't really say that's driving their critique.
Ah, I was hoping for a Rick and Morty comment. Such a great show
Silly software engineers. So cute. They think taxes should be logical, effective, relevant. Should someone tell them that taxes are a political issue? (Sarcasm aside, I look forward to the day when our political bodies become composed of a higher percentage of such minded individuals, as software wealth translates into political power, who might inject some reality into the process.)
I agree. To give an example of what I think you're referring to, the field of synthetic biology is evolving rapidly (perhaps too rapidly in my opinion, the implications are fairly far reaching and I'm not sure we have the cultural maturity to handle them). Even if the most visible fruits of this field appear later they'd still be linked to the research happening now.
The use cases are clear. Also for less dramatic situations :-)

But my problem is the reliance on a database, especially a proprietary one. Feels like solving one problem by creating another.

Therefore an algorithm for converting gps coordinates into a few common words would be ideal (and to convert back).
Defensive Bash Programming
Well, fair enough.

He didn't even use the word capitalism, just "redistribution". ..which is a common effect in even the smallest transaction. The headline is pretty stretchy.
Government regulation is one specific form of power. Human hunger is another, hence the trouble that started the labor movement / unions.
If Python's `if` is weakly typed, Rust's `for` is weakly typed. Few would argue for the later, so I disagree that this is weak typing.
So is there evidence of this in states where cannabis access has been legal/decriminalized for at least a decade like California, Washington, and the Netherlands as a whole? It sounds like a significant portion of students from those states should be consistently underperforming each year compared to other states and to students before legal access was allowed.
Are people impressed that you got out of the ghetto? Would people be as impressed if, say, a Kennedy your age was where you are now?

I guess I'm just agreeing with you. Everybody takes some knocks---which is ensured by the fact that some knocks are caused by not having had any.
Indeed. The government can now threaten to bomb a company because most companies are small enough not to pose a threat (though I wouldn't be sure if the USGOV would really be able to bomb Lockheed Martin). But as the companies merge and band together, at some point the government may start hearing demands to be met if they want to keep their satellite guidance active, or not accidentally showing capital city as an active target.
ARM server market
> I'm not sure but I think that list.__iadd__ is even more tricky

False; __iadd__ is always in-place for lists.
Collect Amazon payback points via chrome extension
MS success started with a very generous legal contract, backed by copyright fee regulation protections, then became the anti-competiitve progress-blockimg behemoth they replaced.
Yes. This is the same military that didn't have the popular support to complete its objectives in the ME, so they phoned it in. That's what happens to countries that go to war under false pretense - they get to half-send their militaries for political appeasement.

Were you implying that the REAL military was defeated in the ME? Or, that they would somehow be unable to put down a guerrilla war?
Continuous motion, maybe. Continuous forward motion, not so much.
> the situation today is, that the big corporations are shaping the laws and the small players can not

Indeed! How about we fix that and don't let big corporations shape the laws? Crony capitalism is not an inherent feature of capitalism, it's a perversion of it which really ought not be taken as a given.
Just taken at face value there is nothing surprising about the article's premise. As we continue to increase our knowledge more problems move into the "solved" category, and what remains is the harder stuff.
Didn't say it was going to hurt their business. Only that a post-mortem doesn't somehow change my opinion on their quality or reputation, and in this case is the opposite.
This article, linked from Wikipedia's page on the Great Raft, offers a much more detailed and informative discussion of European and Native American interaction with the raft: https://www.invasiveswatch.org/site/GreatRaft/History.aspx
You're right, but you're not rebutting his point, you're actually reinforcing it: all of those things were possible in 1950, we just made them faster. The whole point of the post is that very little is completely new, meaning (close to) not understandable to a 1950 man:

> They will no doubt be impressed with miniaturization as an evolutionary spectacle, but will tend to have a context for the functional capabilities of our gizmos

You say that we can now face to face with people from the other side of the world in real time -- he says if there was as much innovation (and not just refinement) as there was between 1885 and 1950, we should be able to interact with a hologram of someone from the other side of the Solar System.

The real change a 1950's man would see is probably how more linked humans are (mostly first world humans though) and how much more interaction there can be.
http://jscrollpane.kelvinluck.com here, I don't know what that guy uses but this is a good implementation
Voluntary trade at the level of basic needs is bullshit. Fear of hunger or death from sickness is coercion. I have to have a job, and I have to buy food. Companies are very happy to exploit that. A lot of blood was shed a century ago to establish some minimum safety net for this "voluntary trade".
I did say most lying, and you are choosing some pretty extreme examples to counter. I do agree with much of what you say though.
Sure, but that's sort of the point. They are attractive but if you have access to something better then you'd rather be doing that.

Edited for clarity
Surely if the economy collapsed a you say, the price of eggs would increase again, saving the economy. Something is wrong with your analysis
See: Systems Theory

Sometimes the greatest harm is born out of the most sincere intentions. Anything founded on false, internally inconsistent premises will fail. Often, the longer it takes to fail, the more harm is done. Like it or not, humans cannot completely extricate themselves from "nature", unless we are talking packing up and migrating every last human off Earth to Mars. That's not happening; this won't work. Come to grips with that sooner, not later.
What you present is a naive fantasy. There do not exist any corporations that do not engage in coercion. Coercion is human nature. Corporations are run by humans. In the real world things are messy. Politics and capitalism go hand in hand.
Or, you know, we could just use tax revenue from elsewhere. There's absolutely no inherent reason that roads have to be paid for by a tax on their usage.
What has annexing to do with it? USSR didn't annex Czechoslovakia (the country where I was born) or Hungary; they just supported anti-democratic government that was more in line with their interests. You can downvote as much as you want, but the U.S. did the same in many countries of the Latin America, often with more violence. Here's a good reference: http://williamblum.org/books/killing-hope/

BTW, this is also spot on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Vcct_g_z4 (and this insulation of the Eastern Europe is actually nicely shown now on the stance to the refugee crisis)
The only way to do that would be to have a government completely disconnected from the economy. As long as the officials need to eat, need to send their kids to school and need the money to increase their chances for reelection, politics is a part of market economy. Pretending those two are not connected is fooling oneself.
I only agree about the 'energy predicament' not being taken seriously. I don't think progress can be measured like he described. The steam-engine and frequency signaling where huge, transformed our society greatly and still are the base of many things we do now. But he sounds like "there are no hoverboards so progress must be declining".
Show HN: I wanted a better messaging app – so I made one, it's called Textr
I think there's a fairly general case to be made that moral intuitions that look like nonsense from a utilitarian perspective (1) may sometimes actually make sense when one takes a different view and (2) may have spread and prospered for exactly that reason (e.g., because communities in which such ideas were around did better overall).

In this case, the "different view" in question is a less local one (look not only at the effects on people directly involved, but also at the knock-on effects on others around them). I think there are many "Copenhagen" cases in which one could make similar points. E.g., consider laws that stop employers treating employees "badly" -- minimum wages, no making people work while heavily pregnant, etc. One can argue (as the author of the OP does) that these end up hurting workers because employers will prefer not to employ them rather than to employ them on less favourable terms. (Or, on the flip side, that "exploitative" employers are actually helping their employees because hey, otherwise they'd have no job.) But it's at least credible that when you have such laws, employers everywhere end up treating their workers a little better while more or less the same amount of work still gets done, leaving lots of vulnerable people better off overall. (And it's notable that it's at any rate far from clear that creating or increasing a minimum wage actually reduces employment overall, Econ 101 notwithstanding.)

The ideas being criticized by the OP may have more merit than they look like, even if most of the people espousing those ideas don't know quite why.
> (2) and (3) are exactly what the author is calling the Copenhagen Interpretation.

That is not the case. Let me state it clearly. He says:

interaction => blame

We say:

profit => increased responsibility

No one blames the interactor for the origin of the problem, nor does anyone demand increased responsibility if the interactor doesn't benefit from the interaction in any way. No one even asks for a level of responsibility that far exceeds the benefit.

The author's view is known as the non-worseness claim, which is often described by those who are more generous towards it as "free floating evil". Those who are less generous, view it in worse ways, of course.

BTW, the criticism of homeless experiment does seem stupid, but I don't know the details. Also, the critic may not have actually made a moral argument (even if he tried to frame it as such). For all I know he's a politician who opposes the mayor and would use any argument at all against him, even if he doesn't really believe it.
Nope. Westerners with 2 babies consume 100x as much resources as rural Africans with 7 babies. And they can continue to consume more as the productivity increases. And we have room (in the population, not in resources) to double the number of high consuming people eveery 30 years for many generations.
In the current game dev industry, there is no longer anything "in-between". The days of the medium sized games are long gone. It is either big winner takes all or very small indie under the radar.
> A lot of money has been going into fusion for many, many years now

Sure, but if you're going to holistically include the cost of the science in the comparison price per KWh you should also balance it against the cost of dealing with the consequences of sustained carbon emissions from other types of power generation.
In a related vein, one transformative idea (http://www.theguardian.com/science/small-world/2013/oct/21/b...) has been mostly ignored over the last 15 years or so -- as if "Space travel is utter bilge" had won out instead of Sputnik. At some point the continued progress in fields like biomolecular engineering is going to make the potential too obvious to miss, and we'll be reminded that technology is not a synonym for computers.

(This is another 'jam tomorrow' response, like a lot of others here. I pretty much agree with the OP about the progress seen before and after 1950.)
5 QUICKER TIPS TO WRITE BLOG POSTS
> Kids will be shorting out your car and watching it burn just for fun (or blowing a very expensive fuse)

Er, what city are you talking about here? Do you even live in the US?
Is Money Corrupting Research?
I see the truth isn't popular today.
Could it be the case that everything that has been 'discovered' in history has at some point been 'the harder stuff'?
This is somewhat similar to the streaming producer/consumer from another rust crate: https://github.com/Geal/nom perhaps they could be interoperable.
Yeah, medicine is nuts. The whole field of medical imaging is magic. fMRI still blows my mind. But everything medicine is swept together as one advancement, just as everything computing related is.
I don't see a problem with pro-Israeli websites just as I don't see a problem with pro-Palestinian websites.

Were they lying or something?
It's accurate to call it a subsidy. That doesn't mean it's bad.

I personally think it's definitely a valuable subsidy.
I think it is hard to get progress when number of Americans unsure about evolution increased from 7% to 21% from 1985 to 2005 [1].

I think Idiocracy prediction [2] is what we are getting.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16902112
[2] http://uproxx.com/movies/2014/10/the-many-signs-that-mike-ju...
Totally Model-Free Learned Skillful Coping (2004) [pdf]
I love the Viking missions.

Also, the first images from the surface of Venus:

http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2013/08/the-soviets-landed...
How the Amazon and Netflix method might someday cure cancer
His notoriety has everything to do with the fact that he co-founded a successful business.
The scrolling on this page was so broken I had to look at the page source to read it. It kept jumping around to random places whenever I tried to get to where the text of the page started.
There's no shortage of willingness to cover excruciatingly boring stories, as long as a "Breaking News" label can be slapped on it. I'm talking about live feeds from closed doors, behind which someone may or may not be having an important conversation, which may or may not conclude in the near future, and when it does, that person may or may not exit through this door. So why not a slowly appearing picture from another planet?

They'll probably run it split screen along with a panel of bickering "analysts", though.
Missouri already has a tax stamp for EV's that is ostensibly to offset the lost revenue from gasoline taxes.
> Trucking subsidies? I find that a bit of a strange attitude.

What else would you call the artificial lowering of trucking and truck-hauled goods prices through passing a significant subset of trucking costs directly onto taxpayers instead of reflecting said costs in hauling prices?

> Without the roads there would be no deliveries. No deliveries, no industry. No industry, no jobs.

I'm not sure what comment you're replying to here, but it certainly isn't mine.
As long as we don't start watering our fields with Gatorade and elect wrestlemania stars as presidents will be alright...
The Polish had guns AND fought back. How did it help them? Hitler and Stalin both invaded anyway.
Thing is, it's not actually there for backwards compatibility. Guido says as much:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/6865824/1763356

Alex Martelli's answer on the same page goes into more depth.

I get the worries, but this is Python - you should know what domain you're working on anyway, because you have to. It's a different philosophy to statically typed languages, and since having True and False as aliases is convenient I'm personally glad for it:

# Truth as samples
sum(x > 10 for x in xs)
(numpy.random.randint(0, 10, 1000) == 7).mean()

# Several properties are made obvious
assert True > False
my_flag ^= True
"Technology is the collection of techniques, skills, methods and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives." (from Wikipedia)

More things are technology than you seem to think. For instance, technology isn't only things.
The four most common problems I've had with PMs:

#1 Won't nail down the customer's actual problem, describe it clearly to you and let you come up with a solution. They will just pass on the customer's proposed solution and insist that you build it.

#2 Vague, Incomplete and unversioned specifications rife with duplication and redundant information.

#3 Inability to prioritize or break down stories coherently.

#4 Won't get their hands dirty actually testing the product. That's QA's job.
I couldn't disagree more. I didn't know code at all and learned over 50% of what I know about code today high. Thousands of hours of high coding. I am now a full stack developer. I was actually the most productive of my entire life when I would wake up and smoke at 8AM every day and continue smoking throughout the entire day.

I would also regularly go into class high and have riveting conversations with my professors. I remember I went into Calculus and Chemistry in senior year of high school high every single day and I always asked the most questions in class every time.

I'm not saying that smoking weed is good or bad, but to say it is strictly bad for learning is false.

I will say from my experiences that it bothers me deeply that we don't unbiasedly look into this more. I wish we could study these things since we already have millions of people doing active experiments worthy of scientific study. And for some reason we are wildly comfortable giving our kids adderall to do homework, which basically is saying every time you have to critically think you will use this as a crutch. That is good, but weed is bad? That seems absurd to me and I would say the long term impact adderrall has on a persons ability to learn is potentially worse than marijuana. I'd also argue that the social stigma of asking questions has more impact on a persons ability to learn than any drug. People are so afraid to ask questions.
A $200M Shell Game in Seychelles