skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They targeted programmers.

Programmers.

We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a successful build saying we did.

We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun.

We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the runtime of an algorithm to draw out a single extra millisecond of runtime per element.

Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same design patterns over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such programmer nirvana that they can literally write these programs blindfolded.

Do these people have any idea how many keyboards have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and VMs destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?

These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our repository? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? programmers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the service our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a prewritten script. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.

Programmers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another bug report.

(If you actually read through all of this and found yourself agreeing, it's a modified copypasta from a toxic subreddit and I hope you feel silly: https://redd.it/3o82sn)
I dunno if Europe is really recent, or just a bigger problem now. My experience of Berlin circa 2009 was that the natives were as racist towards Turkish immigrants as my hillbilly folk back in the states were towards Mexicans. There were also waves around that time about North African and Muslim immigrants in France.
Absolutely. This would have helped me get the joke.
Way back in 2005, Shelley Powers made the argument that a diverse workforce helped a company deal with crisis. The inverse was also implied, that a rejection of diversity was an indicator of some kind of resistance, which would make it difficult to deal with crisis.

Powers wrote:

"When jobs are plentiful, diversification within the job pool is not seen as a threat. In fact, diversification can be seen as a way of extending one’s power over a larger base of people. Book companies see more people buying books, conference organizers hope for more butts in seats, industries have less stressed and healthier, happier workers. However, when jobs are threatened, any change in the status quo will be seen as a risk–even those in an industry populated by people who consider themselves free of bias. It is a natural inclination to want to pull in, like the turtle into its shell, when threatened. Except in the tech industry, this ‘pulling in’ materializes as a resistance to difference."

http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/2005/07/19/when-we-ar...

My interpretation of this is that the problems that Github has had with diversity in its teams was a leading indicator of the wider management problems that we now see.
DNA could help solve mystery of the Indus Valley civilization
Are you looking for http://breuleux.github.io/earl-grey/repl.html ?
Yup, to be on top of the security stuff is a really expensive thing to do.
Why the idea guy in a start up can't cut the mustard
<you aren't providing any specifics to contradict (or weaken) any of the claims he's making.>

Since following the discussions I linked to above has proven too difficult, here they are directly:

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2013/03/flint_city...

https://www.cityofflint.com/wp-content/uploads/CoF-Water-Sys...

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/10/26/opinion-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10961513

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10737915 320+ comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10747020 3-part documentary

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763480

"The Flint River has a history of poor water quality due to industrial pollution and agricultural runoff, according to an assessment by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. But efforts to remove pollutants and clean up the river have been successful in the past 40 years. Now, some are wondering if the problem lies in the city’s treatment of the water, which differs from its treatment of its previous water source, Lake Huron."

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/05/3666238/flint-mi...
Oh you mean apart from all the glue and solder, non-replaceable batteries and the like?
Yeah, things move fast there: Paper (August) -> Open source code (September) -> Deepart (November).

As a side note, for me the pace was one of the reasons to move from science to data science (shameless plug: http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-sci.html).
And which CIO is going to bet his job on making that move successfully? When the ROI is 10+ years for a transition like that, you'll be laughed out of the room proposing it. If the executives can't show a net positive in less than 3 years, it's NOT HAPPENING. Migrating most large companies from Oracle to X would take more than 3 years of planning alone.
> but they reserve the right to freeze an account pending investigation

In reality their processes for investigating are often a neverending nightmare that punish innocent people, or in this case are hampering one of our only hopes for reasonably secure mobile communications:
http://neo900.org/news/paypal-trouble-delays-project
More white women does not equal tech diversity
How to spot a fake Mario speedrun
" because the central planning committee gets every specific thing they want but what they want is not the same as what is good for the country"

Say what? Look at all the centrally planned shit in the laws of the USA, the idea that the USA is decentralized is a load of bollocks.

The whole point of the US government is to protect and expand monopoly power, aka centralization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/...
The Turing test is not about understanding, it's simply about distinguishability. The idea is measuring understanding is hard, but it's easy to try to distinguish the production of a machine in several parameters by doing a blind test. So a computer may actually "understand more" of something but be blatantly computer-like (by being much better than a human could ever produce) -- a chess expert may identify a top level chess AI that way -- and thus fail the Turing test. So it's more of a sufficient but not necessary intelligence test.

Those photo modifications kind of fit into that theme: if you can't distinguish the filters from real art, they passed an indistinguishability test.
"If assimilation is the expectation, those of us who are non-white, older than 40, disabled, trans, not neurotypical, queer, from low-income backgrounds, and/or a host of other identities will continue to be locked out of tech."

I would have thought being "not neurotypical" would be an asset.
My 20/20 hindsight only remembers the great ideas that I never got around to chasing. (In 1991 - going long tech in Tel Aviv, in 1996 voice recognition for mobile...) As I've gotten older, the ideas come less frequently, perhaps because I've learned so many ways to dismiss them.

I think kids change our ambitions too. We care more about them than more broadly changing the world.

But when THAT idea strikes, I know I'll chase it.
As the numbers indicate, the H1B system is broken. It was broken by allowing the body-shops to apply for what are basically "temp workers". When I got mine, in 1994, such "temp work" (consulting) was explicitly forbidden. The employee had to work for and at the company that applied for you, not at the offices of a company's clients. When and why this changed I don't know.

What I do know, as the founder of a European expat organization with 7k members in the USA, is that H1Bs for highly skilled Europeans have nearly come to a standstill. This is evidenced by the change in demographics of my target audience. Average ages have gone up significantly. Most newcomers now arrive on L1 (inter-company executive transferee) visas, are older, married, and have a family.

The way to fix this is by going back to the old situation and put the body-shops out of business...
Some have speculated Silicon Vally hood men are the decedents of an ancient extraterrestrial race of reptiles with IQ >= 388. If true no wonder there logic is incomprehensible to the feeble non hood men mind. All the more reason to topple there sinister 'meritocracy'.
9/10, but I was already familiar with the algorithm. Useful features to find the nature of the "artist" for me included the following:

- Is the style of the painting applied uniformly over the whole image? Humans will, for effect, leave parts of a painting less emphasized and developed, whereas this algorithm will generally apply a style to the entirety of an image.

- If a painting has a surreal style, the subject is generally also surreal. Human painters distort shapes and forms. This is not done by this algorithm.

- Humans will add contrast to make objects stand out, even if colours are similar to their background. This is something the computers haven't yet completely figured out.

Still, this is a very impressive algorithm.
I've had nothing but trouble with PayPal. I give them another shot every year or three, but invariably have to jump through piles of hoops to make a first payment, if I'm successful at all. So generally end up using a card directly. Because PayPal is terrible.
"How is this supposed to make you feel?" - I have no idea, and I certainly don't think that in your sorry state you owe a beer to anyone. However, I do think you should say to your fellow losers "I am sorry that you guys are forced play a harder game, and I promise to remember that if I ever manage to leave the losers' bar."
Why Hyperdimensional Socks Never Match
I would like to see data too, but any data would be attacked, or politicized.

I couldn't agree more with the OP. Jobs are hard to get. Even chit jobs are not the chit, I grew up with. They are just Terrible. Even immigrants are leaving them. Unions are declining for numerious reasons. Realeste will be unobtainable for many of us. To top it off--we are being regulated, and fined like no other generation I can remember.
Banks, landlords, schools, employers are taking every cent they can from us. Police are basically revenue collectors in my neighborhood. I don't see people out socializing at night. They safely go to the coffee shop, and just go home.
Let's go fishing--no, the oceans gave been decimated. Let's go for a drive--well there's global warming. Let's just have sex, well some us still do that, but it's so clinical, and in the back of my mind, "Do I really want a kid from this person who's still trying to live up to the standards his/her mother's, mother grew up in?" (In that last sentence, you can reverse mother/father, and the meaning is the same.)
Do I trust my fellow man in business, and moral issues; not like I used to. It's just too cut throat, and I have seen people do horrid things to their brother in order to get ahead financially.

So no, I don't see a lot of happy people.

As to the "good stuff". We don't have a draft. We have access to cheap stuff made in China. Cars are supposedly a bit safer, but I'll take a older vehicle that I can work on over a proprietary computer on wheels. They figured out the genome, but I trust my doctor less than I ever did before.

I ran out--honestly.
Very interesting interview about very interesting topic.

One minor complaint: answer to the second question seems to have missed/ignored the question? I assume the true answer lies in the fact that the technical realization of the stellarator are even more complex than that of a tokamak and there is more global experience with tokamaks.
Todays work places are nearly devoid of physical risks and yet rife with psychological and spiritual ones. Sure, RSI maybe the biggest physical risk. But think of the damage caused by unkind work environments, constant fear of losing one's job, the demand to work 45,55,or 65+ hours per week. Having to work those hours despite the research indicating its idiotic. etc. etc.

People are unhappy because their workplace (and maybe society in generaly) is full of happiness landmines that didnt exist before.
I've seen an estimate that allowing everyone to come to work in the US would result in about 1 billion people moving to States within very short timeframe. I think it could very well be the end of the country (as even the army + the police could have trouble handling the resulting riots and general chaos).
It's easy to pick sides, whether Republican or Democrat. It's harder to understand that both arguments about society have value.

Fundamental Republicans believe capitalism and the free market is the system that "works best" to ensure a level playing field for everyone. True republicans work to ensure a fair marketplace for everyone, both for poor individuals and rich corporations, providing citizens the ability to better their condition and increase their freedom.

Fundamental Democrats believe that the freedom of citizens is constantly at risk from outside factors, and that the government is the best agent to maintain citizen's free will.

True republicans believe that human nature is fundamentally good, and that the government increases equality by maintaining a free market, while democrats suggest that human nature is often weak, requiring the government's intervention to protect society from itself.

In reality, very few Republican and Democrat politicians actually represent these values. Often, republican views of the free market disproportionately benefit the rich, and democratic attempt to redistribute wealth, instead of fixing inequality at the source.

Although I consider myself independent, I personally would side with a republican interpretation of health care. Studies have shown that government programs in fields such as healthcare are inefficient when compared to their private counterparts, as a competitive market increases supply, and therefore decreases costs, as opposed to monopolies or government programs that provide a single source of service.
A lot of companies (Microsoft is one example that I know of) are sidestepping H1-B entirely for college hires (and perhaps other channels of hiring?) for L1. Hire in Canada or the UK; apply for L1; transfer to the US in a year or two.

Apparently it's much more straightforward (and less prone to chance) as compared to H1B.
> The distribution of income seems so unnatural

Actually, what's striking to my mind is how mysteriously consistent the income distribution is with the same family of power law distributions (Zipf-Mandelbrot, Pareto, etc.) that describes such other, disparate, natural phenomena as the frequencies of words in natural languages [1], the sizes of cities [2], the sizes of asteroids [3], the abundances of species [4], the sizes of grains of sand on a beach [5], the magnitudes of earthquakes and avalanches [6], and many other things in the world.

Anyway, my point is simply that the shape of the income distribution should not be so surprising, or strike us as "unnatural", given how often we observe the same shape of distribution for all kinds of things, both in economics and in the natural world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%E2%80%93Mandelbrot_law

[2] http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~xgabaix/papers/zipf.pdf

[3] http://250words.com/2014/07/the-mathematics-of-asteroids-ear...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_abundance_distributio...

[5] http://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0412004.pdf

[6] https://books.google.com/books?id=x8nSBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=P...
Thanks for the suggestions!

I found some more tidbits in these StackOverflow answers:

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145751/has-wh...
>full employment has always been a bizarre fetish for Keynesians, social democrats, Marxists and conservatives

While I agree with much of your sentiment, Keynesian and Marxist economists favour full employment at least in part because in economic terms it raises the reservation wage because there is no reserve labour pool.
I was speaking in terms of the 'eventual' case, not a starting point.

While optimizing syntax/form makes sense in highly specialized domains where no useful alternative exists, I'd argue that the opposite holds true in domains where more 'natural' alternatives are abundant.

Can't say I'm familiar with all of those. For proofreading, meta chars are necessary to indicate edits without the ability to mutate the original text. Musical notation has widely been replaced by tabs for guitar. Shorthand may be useful for writing that isn't consumed by others.

Cursive is a perfect example of a form of language that was created for efficiency. Which, arguably, held true for handwriting. But it didn't add enough of a benefit above/beyond plain handwritten text and was very difficult to duplicate digitally.

Not to rag on Fourth, I'm sure it's probably a very good language but how widely is it used today?

Like I said, no amount of research proving that programmers choose languages based purely on their technical merits can disprove the writing on the wall.

People choose what feels natural to them based on previous experience and/or common convention. Whatever choice requires the least amount of context switching overhead and allows the lowest barrier of communication between devs will win in the end.

That's why Typescript is immensely popular for developers with a strong OOP background that prefer writing code in an IDE.

For C, the low level support for types and memory access make it a natural fit for systems development. I have written low level network code in C#, it's an extremely awkward and verbose mess.

Python wins when it comes to simplicity and the ability to write really powerful functionality with a minimum amount of code. The list slicing as well as comprehensions are easy to understand and increase productivity dramatically.
Well, yes. But that's a simplistic case. Evidence shows that no matter how terrible a job is, some one will do it. It's just that as jobs get worse, fewer and fewer are willing to do the job. The amount of scammers willing to do the unpleasant task of dealing with 419-eaters and Scambaiters at a particular wage goes down.

Free market economics tells us that as the supply of some good goes down, the price almost certainly rises, all things being equal.

When the supply of "service" reps/scammers goes down, we have 3 cases:

1. Demand for that labor stays the same. In this case labor rates go up. This will make scamming less economical, driving some scam factories out of business.

2. Demand for "service" reps goes up: Same as case (1), but worse for the scam factories. More of them go out of business.

3. Demand for "sevice" reps/scammers goes down: this is really a case of "all things don't stay the same", because in this case, scam factories employ fewer "service" reps. Maybe some scam factories leave the market, maybe all scam factories make fewer calls a day.

In any of the 3 cases, WE WIN! Not as many scams are perpetrated, and the amount of calls goes down. Of course, an ideological free market analysis almost always gets things either partially or wholly wrong. We also don't know what the relationship between wages and number of people willing to put up with hobbyist scambaiters is. It's possible that like freeways on a Saturday, even a small worsening of job conditions makes the number of people willing to work at scam factories go way down. Or not. Unknowable. I just think that jerking the "service" reps chains as hard as possible is the only rational response.
It's not brilliant, making up lies about (white) women being raped is a tired trope of the right.

Trump thinks Mexico is sending its rapists to the USA. Marijuana (note the Spanish name) was banned due to propaganda that it was being used by mexicans to rape white women, same story for cocaine and black people, same story for opium and Chinese people. Just handy propaganda to enable state sanctioned discrimination.

One day politicians will tire of inventing problems in order to keep groups down, and start fixing real problems that affect us all. One hundred years of propaganda about rapists yet women are still having to fight to have their accusations taken seriously, to give just one example.
I think this article pretty much shakes all the confidence in Github and for several (good) reasons:

Whenever a new CEO steps in and starts making big changes like that to the company, it usually results in big changes in the product. Whereas before, the product was controlled by programmers, now it will be controlled by CEO, his inner circle, and VCs that have the most influence. That means a product that's more "money-friendly" toward investors rather than users.

The fact that a lot of high-ranking people left and possibly, many remote developers will stop working there is yet another sign that Github as we know it will change. Maybe for the better, maybe not.

One thing that really disappoints me is killing off the remote option. I've always looked up to Github and would use it as the perfect example of how "remote can work, even at scale". Facebook recently (a year or two) implemented the same thing which is a shame.

I won't address the leadership thing but that last quote in the paragraph summed it up perfectly.

Anyways, from the looks of it, Github will become an enterprise-friendly place with less of a focus on ordinary developers and smaller businesses. This makes me think that there is growing space for a new company to take up that "developer-friendly" social network/code repository.
I agree it may be idealistic, especially because part of the problem is people thinking themselves into a category, and adopting it as an identity. It is however the right direction, because all this "racial" problems are caused by categorization of people in the first place.
Your "Then yes, absolutely" makes it sound like it is easy to make a SaaS with a monthly $100 revenue. Is it so?
The Noonday Demon
I was thinking more along the lines of 'maybe you'd better be careful when they're around children' https://twitter.com/templeos/status/666064493881896960
Alternative alternative: Apple wants you to pay Apple a premium to repair your device.
> a white man's opinion on racism or sexism is sort of like a Pacific Islander's idea of how cold it is in Siberia

This sentiment is racist and sexist.
The poster I replied to was whining about being downvoted in order to score upvotes ("Please resist commenting about being downvoted."), when in fact their argument was just a bad one. In another post he made a stupid and offensive reference to the Nazis because someone said they were from Germany. So either he was trolling or he's an idiot.

I'm not sure if pointing that out was what violated the guidelines or just the way I did it, but in future, assuming this has not been banned, I'll try to keep my opinion of someone's argument or intellect to myself. Thanks for the heads up.
Hmm. Those guys can be pretty unruly when they're in crowds.
I know this is probably a losing battle, but I have to try: The cursor is the text insertion point. The thing that moves when you move the mouse and is arrow-shaped by default is correctly called the pointer.