skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
" single purpose hospitals would be a bad idea - what if you're delivering a baby and the mother starts bleeding profusely?"

you would clearly need to provide immediate care, but then move them on as soon as possible to a general purpose hospital.

Here in NZ we already do something like that specifically for birth - mothers have the choice of using a midwife and having a home birth, and the midwives move the mothers on to the hospital only if problems present.
In hindsight, I regret submitting this link. The article itself was interesting, but the discussion here was abysmal.

Next to the comment box on Jai's blog, there is a gentle reminder: "Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?" I'm sure the quality of HN comments could be improved by adding the same message.
1.) Judging from their cost graph [0] it seems to be about 3-4 (definitely less than 5). I'm guessing that the points where the costs increase is due to batteries wearing out and having to be replaced.

2.) Probably? The cost bumps in 1 don't make much sense otherwise.

3.) Hard to tell, in a home system there isn't such a huge cost savings to be had with a battery. As for usefulness it's a really short term battery but it'd be good enough to let the system power-down/suspend gracefully instead of losing power immediately. That niche is pretty well served by UPSs for people who care though and everyone else doesn't care already. It might find a small niche for consumers but it won't be ubiquitous.

[0] http://www.theplatform.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/open-c...
There are a few hundred citations to sort through, but it looks like they are just building on these conclusions. Keep in mind that they were published very recently, and psychology has less of an emphasis on reproducing studies than, say physics, for instance. IOW, I have no clue. Haven't read the papers either. Looks like a bunch of copy + paste from SPSS/SAS, plus a little polemical rhetoric, like most social science papers. I find such to be tiring to read closely as a consequence (so I don't).
> With electronically controlled delays between elements, it is possible to make an electronically steerable antenna.

Multiple current and future radio telescopes are using this technique with dipole arrays at low frequencies, including LOFAR[0], the LWA[1], and eventually the SKA[2].

[0] http://lofar.org/ http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-23397-5_3...

[1] http://lwa.phys.unm.edu/abouthome.html

[2] https://www.skatelescope.org/
I am living in Bangalore, India. Good to know its already implemented in Chennai. I hope its soon implemented in Bangalore and other cities.
Good post. As a male, I have the same issues that you have in your last three paragraphs. I am masculine but do not feel the need or desire to spray alpha maleness constantly. When the pendulum swings back to sales reps having to perform to eat, I think much of that will settle down a bit.
I don't know if it's only nostalgia, but I feel strongly about old programs attempt at conveying conveying / display complex things through limitations of the era.

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/87549-a-train-constr...
I thought they were going for this:

{law books, mahogany desks} : practice of law
~=
{computer parts, tech magazines} : software development.
I've been thinking this for years; the bay area has significant local concerns that span 6-10 counties (out of 58 in the state). In particular the counties of San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Contra Costa, and Alameda would do very well to work together more, and spend more on regional transit, but it seems that it's always The Local Politics Show, Brought to you by Metcalfe's Law. It's impractical to bring matters to the state level; a lot of the state doesn't even particularly like the bay area, so why should they care about the issues here?

If there were a super-county made up of the bay area counties that had the power to enact and enforce law, and serve as a venue for regional debate, discourse, and decision-making, I think the long-term economic health of the region would be more secure.
A Transparent Solar Cell That Makes Every Window a Power Source
I'm not sure if "complaining about getting fired" counts as "whistleblowing".

I'm not necessarily inclined to take this guy's side of the dispute just because I read it first.
I had the pleasure of taking Differential Equations from Dr. Coward at UC Davis back in undergrad. He was one of the best math professors I ever had.
>Death is a vile, atrocious thing, the biggest enemy humanity has.

You have a time on this earth. When it is up, you make way for new generations. What is atrocious about it? What is atrocious and vile is the longing of some people for living indefinitely. We have a name for things that does not die and multiply uncontrollably. Cancer. Human beings are already cancerous in nature by their disregard/disrespect for everything that has been given by nature. Now you want to perpetuate that indefinitely by not dying?

>Just because it seems inevitable, we should not make it socially acceptable to give up and view death as anything but the wickedness it is.

Socially acceptable? Death? You put it as some kind of social custom that we obediently follow.

>People spin death to be a positive, often under some guise of Deep Wisdom.

Deep wisdom? How much wisdom do you need to see that the resources are limited? Human beings have
no right to even want to live indefinitely until they have figured out how to live the limited time we got here without fighting and killing each other, how to live and expand without reckless destruction of nature/environment, how to expand life to other worlds, planets etc etc.
That's especially true about the 10x programmer---I don't see people talking about how they saw a 10x programmer doing <X>, and how that factored into the 10x, I just see admiration, envy, disdain, etc.
Also, I find that being able to read code is super important. The faster you can read code and get it, the faster you understand new ways of doing things that actually are backed up under the hood by things that run.

This kills the incompetence.
I've always been under the impression it was corrosion related.
City ads represent fashion, ongoing trends and so on. Without it, it looks like a dying place to me, a museum.

Of course, it depends how bad ads are in your country.
That is kind of interesting, I wonder how it got through EMC testing.
> I'm on the autism spectrum.

Me too. I find nervousness is generally a positive indicator for empathy.

> If you're looking for a more effusive, gregarious "personableness"

I'm generally not. In general I look less at how someone interviews and more at choices they've made. How people behave in an hour isn't as interesting to me as how they've behaved over the past years.
How to Playback HEVC Videos with DVDFab Media Player
I follow a few (and definitely have rules about quality over quantity), but I kind of actually don't care about anything on Twitter that happened more than a few hours ago. I have always seen the inability to keep up with the stream as a "feature" of sorts. Twitter has let me connect with people who have made things I've truly loved, and I think that is in no small part because it's about living and responding in the moment, not being strictly a completionary consumer.
That's wrong. Plus, what if I want to turn it back on later? It just makes zero sense.
This article pretty conclusively convinced me that systemd is actually good, if these are the strongest arguments against it. Most of the dependency-related stuff (process order related, cyclicstuff) seems eminently fixable. I found his arguments about dependency management having to be linearizable highly unconvincing.
> I realise I hated the system more than the subject

Wow, you're right, I feel the same way

> I sometimes wish I could go and tell my younger self to skip school but there you go hindsight is 20/20.

You could consider homeschooling your kids should you decide to have any.

[tangent]
The more I read about education, the more I feel this is the better option for parents who can have a flexible schedule, such as programmers who seem more and more to be able to work from home.

I'd love to live in a community some day where there are a lot of home-schooled kids where they can also do some activities together. I don't know if that is a thing or not but it should be!
[/tangent]
I like to link to this photo [0] when this discussion comes up. I don't think SF will ever look like this, unfortunately.

[0] http://7-themes.com/data_images/out/69/7008405-hong-kong-sky...
>Numerous health experts have warned that, without new antibiotics, the world risks a return to the medical dark ages, when the slightest knick or scratch could spawn a lethal infection that doctors had no way to treat.

The use of antibiotics in the agricultural industry has allowed farmers to raise animals in inhumane conditions with minimal sanitation. The CDC believes this is contributing to antibiotic resistance, and the FDA has only been able to recommend that farmers use the drugs "judiciously." [1] We effectively subsidize this industry on the back of future species-scale human suffering.

Our politicians have proven to be too shortsighted to do anything but hope for new discoveries, prioritizing short-term gains over a catastrophe that those with multi-drug-resistant infections are presently living through. This article does us a disservice by misrepresenting that discovering new antibiotics is the only way we can address this problem.

1. http://www.cdc.gov/narms/animals.html
I think this goes far beyond complaining about getting fired, and delves into the pernicious attitudes of the department's faculty. For example:

"Given the success I am having with students, one might think that the Mathematics Department leadership would be expressing curiosity about how I am achieving that success. Instead, Craig Evans [the interim chair of the department] in early 2014 asked me 'If you had a job at McDonalds and came along with all these new ideas, how long do you think you'd carry on working there?' The fact that the now Interim Chair of the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department should compare undergraduate education to fast food reveals everything you need to know about how students are regarded by the leading clique of men at the helm of the Mathematics Department of the number one public university in the world."

Should faculty be punished for having new ideas about teaching (which happen to be successful[1], and well-liked by students)?

[1] "My Fall 2013 Math 1A students were tracked into the next course in the sequence, Math 1B, and it was found that their average grade in Math 1B was 0.17 grade points higher than that of those students who took Math 1A with another instructor."
> This incremental upload technique simply tricks your subjective self into thinking there is absolutely no change in continuity.

In other words, your subjective consciousness is somehow changed but you can't subjectively tell? What does that even mean?
>From my perspective, I never benefit from seeing an ad.

Ads would at the very least have made you aware of what choices the market provided. If you have a preference for any one brand of anything over another, chances are advertising played some part in that decision making process. And anyway, even if you were completely brand agnostic, that doesn't mean advertising doesn't have any value for other people as well.
That + I have no idea what it's even supposed to provide me with. I mean, can't you just search a hashtag and you get the same info?
One thing I noticed / learned about when we had our child is that we are all social creatures. We yearn to be with others like ourselves and to fit in.

It's an incredibly strong pull, and the attitude of "if they really were interested, they'd be interested" that is prominent here greatly underestimates how strong our desire to fit in is.

In poor neighborhoods, few rise out of their situations to become scholars and professionals. Do we believe it is because they don't want to? Or is it because the social currents -- the pull to fit in, sell drugs, check out, be cool -- are too strong? We have deeply evolved social genes, and our fear of being alienated trumps a lot of things.

Unconscious bias is real. You can take a test and see for yourself. We think we view the sexes, other races, other tribes as we view ourselves. But the fact is we're deeply biased. It is ingrained.

So, we might not be best suited to say whether our tribe is inclusive -- we probably couldn't give an objective answer if we tried. But what we can do is make a better attempt to be more inclusive of ideas; especially the ones that make us uncomfortable.
Ask HN: Should I move back to previous employer?
tl;dr Employer announced layoffs while previous employer offering me to come back. Seeking advice on whether I should go back or not?

I work in silicon valley for one of the reputed employer who recently announced plans for layoffs. The things are still very uncertain as there is no visibility on which departments and how many people are affected by the company's decision. In short, I don't know if I will be laid off or working for the same company in next couple of weeks. I just finished first half year at this employer.

Hearing the news, my previous employer contacted me offering the role back in company. The position (technologies, background etc) at both places is similar. I have listed points about both companies in terms of opportunities, salary, perks and working hours etc below.

Opportunity
Current company is reputed brand name in silicon valley and there are lots of smart people around me. I have been focussing on single project at a time and learning curve is very shallow. Whereas, the previous company is a startup where I have freedom to work on anything I want and learning curve is pretty steep.

Perks
No doubt the current company has best perks in the valley.

No. of working hours
My current job is typical 9 to 6 whereas in previous company it varied anywhere from 8am to 8pm.

Salary
I had almost 50% rise + stock benefits when I joined this company. The previous employer might give me ~30% rise of my base package in old company plus some stock options.

I need your guidance in deciding whether I should stay at current employer for things to become more clear about layoffs or I should move on and go back to previous employer. Or take out some time and look for new opportunities in tech market (as it's not a bad time in market to be laid off).

Thanks a lot in advance.
As a UC Berkeley student who's never taken one of Coward's classes, I've heard great things from every single friend of mine whose taken his class ("I love Coward" is heard a lot). I know students are already rallying to keep him at Cal. However, I think that perhaps the Math Department at Cal doesn't deserve such a great professor if the system is as decrepit as described.
Are there no development fees in the US? In Canada, municipalities will levy fees on developers to pay for all the new infrastructure. In some cities, this also helps keep taxes low for other residents by paying for operating costs as well.
Yea it's pretty late in my timezone and I'm typing on a phone, but it did occur to me that that could be misinterpreted.

Contrary to what my overly succinct comment may have suggested, I think that diversity initiatives are critical, both for a society and a company. Companies need to stay vigilant for potential sources of bias in hiring and retention and deal with issues aggressively when identified.

My comment about proponents of diversity wasn't intended to malign everyone who recognizes the importance of diversity initiatives (which as I said, includes myself), but rather, a particular philosophical strain that I've encountered as the dominant force amongst diversity initiatives in the companies I've experienced (including within the "big 4").

What frustrates me specifically is precisely what I mentioned: an often unqualified rejection of rational consideration of facts when they even resemble an unpalatable conclusion. In the example we're talking about: there are less women than men in company X. Either the company is discriminating, women are somehow innately less suited to work there, or there's upstream discrimination so that hiring reflects an equal assessment of the candidate pool. The evidence pointed strongly to the latter situation (ie the proportion of women cs majors was equal to the proportion of women technical employees, and non technical employees broke down 50/50).

And yet, any suggestion that the company wasn't explicitly discriminating (and that the problem existed upstream) was shouted down with "If you think we're not discriminating then you must think women are innately unsuitable and will be reported to HR for creating an unwelcome misogynist work environment"[1].

So when I talk about proponents of diversity lacking rigor, it was shorthand for "IME, in places that are quite reasonably considered the mainstream, the prevailing school of thought with respect to diversity initiatives focuses more on appearances and social signaling than actual progress".

[1] note that I was smart enough to stay out of these conversations so I wasn't ever actually the victim of this sort of lunacy.
I for years don't bothered with web ads, but sites got increasingly slow, sometimes some sites would time out after exchanging 10mb of data with ad servers, when the site itself had 300kb or something like that.

So I installed ad blocking to get rid of this issue...

The difference is DRASTIC, not only in performance (it feels like it felt when I switched from dial-up to DSL) but there are no more blinking and flashing stuff anymore, the browser crashes much less (because of badly coded flash ads) and some sites are much better to see the content (example: one of the most popular brazillian newspaper, Folha.com has some flash banner ads that when you mouseover they expand and cover the entire page, the problem it is really easy to unintentionally mouse over them, and then to get rid of them again is really obnoxious)
>The author seems to have written the article on the assumption that it will be humans figuring out a brain upload mechanism.

I don't see that assumption anywhere in his text, nor in any of his arguments, and I don't see how a non-human mechanism is not susceptible to any of the physical requirements that he lays out.
There are super good points here. WAY too much value is put on "confidence". I imagine because really talented folks are tend to be confident confidence is preferred because talent is harder to gauge. That's a shame.

"Culture Fit" is a really problematic state of mind. I totally agree that it locks in on a 'type' and reduces diversity. It's a dangerous, ego-maniacal, and lazy way to hire.
Hermes – A Friendly, Pluggable Chat Bot
Yes, yes, yes. Looking for work?
https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/2.0/...
>Maybe it's better that people die, and all we're left with is our memories of them, or written statements of their ideas or accounts of their deeds. We pick up what we find useful from them, and have the freedom to discard what isn't. Every political movement has a built-in time limit based on the deaths of its most powerful leaders. Greater diversity in people and thoughts grows, because we don't have the luxury of keeping them the same forever. Many mistakes will die with their creator, and everyone else can move on.

Fantastic points. I was about to type something along the same lines when I saw your reply. You said it much better than I could have.
These are tiny, atomic, piecemeal changes that happen slowly over time.

If one of your neurons randomly dies right this instant, you would probably not subjectively notice, even though that neuron composes your subjective consciousness. Your neural network is highly redundant and fault-tolerant.
> The idea that there is one factor that "really" keeps women out of tech implies that the other reasons are false.

There could be a few factors that account for the vast majority.
#WithCowardWeStand
but then individuals like Amelia Earhart, Jane Goodall, and Maria Mayer (to name a few) come along and inspire a generation of young women. Maybe the problem is that we simply don't have a worldwide recognized women's role model for Tech yet. Hell there are only a handful of male ones.. people like Gates, Jobs & Wozniacki, Zukerberg, Knuth, Kay, Turing, etc.. inventors of programming languages, famous tech authors (W. Richard Stevens, Sussman & Abelson, etc).. they're pretty much all men. I think that eventually this will change.
No - rather there is no change in consciousness but if you do the upload in one jump, your subjective self sees the discontinuity and mistakenly thinks there was a change in consciousness. You have to do the process gradually to trick it out of its error.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10364196
>glaring injustices

Kind of a false dichotomy. The APA has found that men are more likely to become substance abusers, which is linked to homelessness and conviction rates.

Why not help both men and women? Why does one need to be first?
It's irrelevant how fervent you are when you are presumed voting when you actually don't.

I don't know how much sense does it make to steal elections; nontheless it has been done.
So how do you plan on enforcing this? Revoking the First Amendment?
This might be useful for that: https://scans.io/study/sonar.ssl
did you read the contents of that link before posting?
Now that I think about it, a power supply that held power just long enough to go into hibernation automatically would be very useful. There would need to be some signalling into the OS though.
Singapore is successful, Russia is crumbling. That's the main difference.

Of course it always depends on perspective. There are some people who would claim relative success of Singapore not compensating restrictions, and yet some other people would claim even North Korea is doing okay so stop insulting them.
"The person who happens to like sci-fi isn't motivated by excluding anyone; they like it because they like it and will share their enthusiasm with anyone."

You sure about that? I know quite a few people who are seemingly only interested in science fiction and gaming it its various forms and aggressively disinterested in anything else. Maybe you know some, too: people who use terms like "sports ball" and whatever the current incarnation of "mundane" (as a noun) or "muggle" is. Believe me, it's no more appealing than hanging with a group of, say, serious football fans (for the appropriate value of "football").

I don't feel the need to demonize anyone, but decent people doing what they feel are innocent things can successfully masquerade as a conspiracy for as long as you care to watch.
More rotten news from Berkeley. Just this week, it was revealed that the university administration decided a warning was sufficient punishment after a Title IX investigation revealed Prof. Geoff Marcy participated in a decade of abusive and harassing behavior.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/science/astronomer-apologi...
Keep in mind how you would handle this situation if you managed a large and well-established dev team with procedures and policies you worked hard on and are proud of.

It is not enough for a team member to be fantastic in a solo role. I'd be more interested in hearing from other faculty than I would from the students, who don't much experience actually working with Coward.
> I think that perhaps the Math Department at Cal doesn't deserve such a great professor if the system is as decrepit as described.

At the very least, Coward does not deserve them.
I can argue. Why were grani.ru blocked?