skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hey Paul Graham, one of the most respected intellectuals in the world wants to engage in a conversation you decided to be a part of. Do you care to retort? (Paul Graham is one of the founders of YC. Earlier this year, his defense of income inequality caused a stir across the internet: http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html)
Sure, "shareholder values" is not the same thing as bottom line profit and it might be subjective depending on a number of factors, but it is also not the same thing as value to the broader society; it can be at odds with it depending on who the shareholder is. The duty might be vague to define in practice, but it still is very much in existence.

I don't think that article claims this is untrue, just that the fiduciary duty is broader than the dollar amount in the financial statements.
From my personal experience, I have to agree with wapapaloobop. I put a spoon of raw cacao in my morning coffee, because I love the taste. However I drink (and eat no) sugar whatsoever and found the taste disgusting (in the sense of spitting it out) when I accidentally drank from my girlfriends coffee some time ago.
Reminds me very much of this:

https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com

A list of what the Daily Mail has reported will kill or cure cancer. I won't spoil chocolates outcome.
Baking Software
Great article.

Doesn't Musk/Space-X now review any launch if anyone has a concern? What does NASA now do?
RISHIKESH – FROM BEING a LAND OF YOGIS TO a HUB OF TOURISM
Some time ago, I came to similar conclusion - problem with automation is essentially a problem of social (wealth and income) inequality.

I think it's actually a transition from economy constrained by available labour to economy constrained by available natural resources. And I think the similar transition occurred in other times of history (like Roman empire?) and it wasn't pretty. It also shows that capitalism (or free market) isn't really that nice system when it works under global resource constraints, despite the claims to the contrary.
Linkbait. What Hawking actually said was far more measured. The author then ran with it to express his own opinion.
I won't even argue if the study is bias or not. Let's just say chocolate is good for the brain. But is it advisable for people to consume them in certain amount daily?
Well, back in the days, there were numeric studies about benefit of tobacco too.
You can disable the "acceptable ads" in adblock plus. This seems like... an ad for uBlock Origin.
You can, but why not opt in to acceptable ads? Why do we have to opt out? uBlock Origin does the right thing - assumes you want all ads blocked.

By the way, we're in no way affiliated with uBlock Origin. Just think it's currently the best ad blocker out there for users.
Crowdfunded Game Console Is Made Out of Tape, Cardboard, and Fake Circuits
> I don't think that article claims this is untrue

"There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and “shareholder value” — even if this means skirting ethical rules, damaging the environment or harming employees. But this belief is utterly false. To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”"

How much clearer could it be?

Note that shareholders can and will sue companies, the board and the executives for whatever reasons they feel will hold water, but suing is not the same as winning that suit, and that the final interpretation of what your required course of action was in a given situation is in the end up to a judge, not up to a shareholder.
> If ad blocking continues to grow, which we hope it will, other ways of funding will be found.

What ways can you imagine? Within a few minutes I came up with:

1) Someone else paying for you seeing ads.

2) You paying for using the site or an associated service.

3) Someone else paying for influencing what the site does for you.

4) Someone else paying for your data on that site.

And, the one that people rely on too much:

5) Someone else paying for nothing, hoping the site can be sold later at a profit.

One that can realistically cover only a small portion of sites:

6) The site being run as part of a charity.

Do you find one of those generally more preferable than 1), or can see a point I'm missing?
One thing about OpenJDK is that the debug symbols are freely available so you can try and create a core dump and analyse why the JVM crashed. You can't do that with Oracle's or IBM's JDK AFAIK.
Talk to Google/Facebook about that. Maybe you think subscription is better way for...search?
Exactly. This is about someone. I don't know if I wanna know though.

A general story about ethics is always good. Satisfying my curiosity is probably not the best I can get from this blog post. :-)
Earlier discussion here (under a misleading title):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11223032
> Never again will you have to hunt through your tabs to pause your music

Not exactly the same thing, but in Chrome, you can enable "Tab audio muting UI control" in chrome://flags which allows you to click the speaker icon on tabs that play music to mute it. Click again to unmute. Very handy for when you get a phone call!
I find discussions on HN about advertising very amusing. If advertising would magically disappear tomorrow, most of the people visiting this site would be jobless.

Something to think about.
25k is a decent civil servant salary well above the minimum starting pay. The only "senior civil servants" earning anything like that are the 2 or 3 at the very very top of the civil service on first name terms with the prime minister who have 40 years experience essentially running the country.

If you think a junior developer fresh out of college knowing a bit of javascript is in any way comparable in terms of the value they deliver then you're wrong. Simple as that.
Blogspam of a blogspam of this Reddit AMA post: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama...
Ironic this ends up on the top of a VC's forum
>> Ads are a lazy way to monetise anything

Ads can be also a way to monetise something that doesn't reach the value threshold where people will pay directly.

E.g. Niche blogs sometimes have a lot of visitors (they are providing some value) but not enough to get paid directly. Even patreon most times doesn't work.
Wow, surprise; no sarcasm, to me, this means they already have one and believe the public will support its release.
Can I have an email as well, Mr Jacques (in my profile)?

Thanks!
Or fewer men have a choice.

With some jobs they're not just unattractive but one is simply incapable of meeting the physical demands. If you need to be stronger than 80% of men to be able to do a job then there's going to be a vanishingly small percentage of women able to do it. Then you need those women to have no better option, or a strong desire to do that particular job, with a lot of jobs.

It's like jobs with lots of manual dexterity needed, if you have bigger hands you can't do it well - this means women (and in some places children) have these jobs.
That doesn't make it any less useful--even though I find it a bit unnecessary. To note, that a program like that can be made within 10 minutes in Visual Studio (there is a video on Yt for a similar one integrating Fb Messenger).
I no longer visit websites that block people who block ads. Not out of spite, but because the content they produce is of such low value that I have no incentive to pay for it if offered (either with money, or with my attention for your ad supplier). And this is my contention with 99% of content produced on the internet in general.
Yes, and I would add this text is naive (in some aspects)

Being a CEO you sometimes need to enter agreements you can't honour (at the time).

It's condescending

> So, for example, if there is some kind of lucrative short-cut to making a lot of money but it is illegal in your jurisdiction to do so: don’t do it.

Youtube, Uber, Airbnb have been founded on a grey legal area, some other ones have closed because of it (like the one that would stream OTA TV, I forgot the name)
Struggling Kodak launches marketplace for photographers
Sweeney Has No Proof of Evil Plan by Microsoft and He’s Not Up to Date on UWP
It really depends on what you believe about the legitimacy of man-made law. Large segments in the world population do not consider it be legitimate. Even the papacy openly questioned its legitimacy in 1937, quite before Hitler became truly obnoxious. Therefore, the issue is rather about laws that are enforceable. If the law is really enforceable, you may indeed want to refrain from breaking it. Otherwise, it is your own call.
Things You Didn`t Learn in School but You Need to Know Them
Sorry for title change. The original was too long.
Cos it doesn't work with an explanation. Science is about explaining things.
I would argue US should start training their AI already, in combat situation human senses becomes more suspectible for finding threats where there isn't any.

They could use the AI for real-time analysis of video feed in helicopters etc. Highly publized incident comes to mind where the poor camera man was gunned down mistakenly when human operators thought he was wielding RPG, whilte it was likely a camera he was holding. Could the AI have detected it?
> Sure, but only one or two of those 22 are about single neurons...

I count four or five, but I agree that may not be the best example for my point, which is that (even within those few subfields) there are many valid levels of description.

> Is the biological neuron doing something entirely different than what our artificial neurons are?

Yes, very; they are highly non-linear and have complex timing dependencies. This illustrates the point. Once you model all those intricate biological details it's unclear how to translate that into a mathematical function that we can understand for the purposes of higher level computation. Not to mention, we're still talking about spiking models, so we'd also have to abstract away spiking in order to look like an artificial neuron. The gulf between the level of description that you and I want and what biologically realistic models provide is huge.
True and important. But this particular study doesn't seem to be an instance of that phenomenon. So far as I can tell, no one involved was funded by the food industry, and what they did was to look broadly for connections between diet and cognitive function and this turned up.

Now, there are other problems with that sort of data-mining and determining whether they've successfully avoided them all is highly nontrivial (and I haven't tried). So this might still be bad science. But it doesn't appear to be funded-by-vested-interests bad.
If it's not too inconvenient, I'd like to see the context of the post as well.
I think you are on the right track. This is nothing scientific but from personal observation, in Mediterranean countries (where there is much less stigma with alcohol, it's consumed in family environments and kids usually try it) there is less alcoholism and alcohol-related problems. In countries where the laws and societal customs restrict alcohol more, people have much more of a tendency to go overboard when they do drink.

For example, in Spain kids typically grow up buying drinks in shops, drinking them outside (the so-called "botellón") and partying until 5 or 6 AM from when they are like 15 or 16 (sometimes even at 13). It's considered to be a problem but most of the time nothing really serious happens, as they grow up knowing how to control themselves after they have drank too much and been taken home by their friends once or twice. When there are news about people jumping off balconies or doing similarly stupid things due to being dangerously drunk, they are almost inevitably British youngsters on holiday who aren't used to drinking in their country due to heavy taxation and restrictions, so their drinking goes completely out of hand when they suddenly get the chance to do what they never could before.

Not saying that kids getting drunk at 13 is OK, but the other extreme is definitely bad too. Encouraging kids to have their first contact with alcohol in a family environment rather than in a wild partying trip to Ibiza is definitely a good idea in my book.
Can someone explain how Google makes so much money with their ad system and how its related to these kinds of ads? Google originally planned never to do ads. They changed course I think 2002 or so, and are now worth 500B$.
Not to mention that the same article (originally published on Medium) was already discussed here twice:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11195337

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11204726
Thanks for the response, we are already doing blogs on ads and similar content once a week. Do you think thats the right frequency or should we write more often ?
FWIW there is a standard in the works (Media Session [1]) that will enable various use cases[2] for web app users to control with media keys, headphone buttons, from lock screen, notification area, ducking for phone calls etc

1. https://mediasession.spec.whatwg.org/

2. https://github.com/whatwg/mediasession#use-cases
But you could choose to only apply capital punishment in cases where there was substantial premeditation.
I've seen a couple of people that tried to put thoughts such as these into practice. Personally I think this is a very dangerous course of action and given how they ended up I feel that my position is backed by some hard to refute evidence. What you believe should be right is of little or no importance if that conflicts with the law of the land.

There are vast fortunes to be made for those that manage to successfully challenge the law but most - not all - ordinary businesses are not set up for that purpose.
Nowadays people forget that Google was founded on a grey legal area.
Soda is insanely bad for you, why do you drink so much of it that you're lugging around 12-packs with you?

I'm genuinely curious, no judgement.
Exactly...

Brushing over the core issue as if someone else is certainly going to solve it in a timely fashion through sheer pressure in a way that is going to turn out preferable to advertisement.

Is that really all you have to offer?
“No Man's Sky”-Creator: No, I don't feel like god
Autonomous killing machines are a natural progression of military technology. They will certainly be created by someone at some point in the future. Thus, our military should definitely be researching this topic, and that's all that they are doing now.
But those 100K may also contain privacy related information and you want them gone. BB (and other cleaners) aren't only to free some space. Probably that is their least concern. In any case it is just a convenient tool and should be used with care.
Let's cross that bridge when we get to it. We're innovative, imaginative folks around here. I'm sure a solution will present itself.
Linking to a github page is an (implicit) advertisement for github

Saying "no ad is acceptable" is just so out of reality it's not even funny.

I do use Ublock and I do deactivate it for sites I think are worthy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentry_gun

Such as:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGR-A1

Quote:

"identify and shoot a target automatically from over two miles (3.2 km) away."

There are some scary videos of it on the internet.
That's what I keep saying also (at expense of some downvotes).

As most people, I don't like ads. But this is capitalism, a system fueled by consumption. Without changing the system, ads will never disapeer, they will always come back with a different form, they are a necessary 'evil'.

[edit/disclaimer] I don't work on ads, I only curate a niche blog.
I'd venture to guess: no looping GIF ? No video ads with auto-play ? That's why I use an ad-blocker. I didn't care about static images/text but animation prevented from reading the actual content. I am sure I am not the only one.
You can't hold up Youtube, Uber and Airbnb as examples for others to follow, those are extreme outliers that willfully and consciously chose to challenge a very specific aspect of the law. In the case of Youtube the only thing that saved their asses was the fact that they got bought out by a party strong enough that they could stand the heat, the other two had sufficient funding that they could take a chance on the battle not lasting longer than they could afford.

There is nothing condescending about this post and if you feel that as a CEO you 'sometimes need to enter into agreements you can't honour (at the time)' then you've misunderstood what this is all about, if you enter into such an agreement you are actively misleading the other party and they may very well have cause to sue you personally if your gamble does not pay off and this will likely stick.

If that's ok with you, then be my guest, go sign whatever you feel like and to hell with the consequences but do not complain that you have not been warned.
What about Privacy Badger? How does that compare? Is that OK to use?

https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

I've used Adblock, Adblock Plus, Noscript and Ghostery. Since several months I've changed to Privacy Badger. The first time I tried it, I thought it didn't work, but it seems it needs a little time to collect info and start blocking. Since then I've had no issues with it. It's easy to unblock individual sites, if something doesn't work, and then re-blocking it again.

The only problem is that when I want to unblock one specific functionality on a website, it's very difficult to find out which scripts to allow. At first you see the PB has four items blocked. Easy you think, you can try four times, and then it should work. But those four items load another twenty, and then it gets complicated. This is not Privacy Badger's fault, just the complexity of websites nowadays. But if you could allow specific services, instead of specific scripts, that would be great.

I can't give a useful review, nothing more than that it works for me like Adblock and Ghostery have worked.
We Built a Protection Against DOM-Based Cross-Site Scripting into Chromium
Hotel taxes are not the reason rates are so high. One reason is low average occupancy, another is a lot of people dont pay the list price, and get discounted rates, while others pay more, for additional services, so there is a fair amount of price discrimination going on.
It is merely a recommendation.
Science also produced nuclear bombs. Science is pro-nukes. If one disagrees with nukes, that would be philosophical. To say science mutually excludes philosophy is to say that one only believes in the forward motion of humanity. Philosophy would be the lateral motion. It wasn't Hitler's gun I disagree with.
“Surviving Microservices” with Richard Rodger at MicroXchg
Almost certainly the person who owns the credit card is contractually bound such that they can't legally give you permission to use it, you don't have permission because the bank owns it and is the only entity able to give you such permission.
Even without extensions, those things are possible or will soon be possible[1] on the web out of the box (except tray icon but persistent notification with actions can be done to achieve something similar).

1. https://github.com/whatwg/mediasession#use-cases
Also, I couldn't edit my comment, but I meant to say,

IANAL/IANAA, but my understanding is that the IRS reserves the right to assume if wait staff document they made less than 18% of sales in tips, they are pocketing cash without claiming the income.

It is impossible to prove a negative, that they didn't receive cash tips.
Elm – functional reactive dreams and missile command
The only US company I've worked at that was serious about a nap room was Groupon, but that changed part way through my stint there as the office became more crowded.
Google control a huge share of the global ad market, they have every creative type you can imagine, autoplay videos included.
Intrusive ads are not some new phenomenon. Print, radio, and TV ads are all definitely intrusive as well. I don't generally hear the same crowd advocating the end of all such advertising.
“Just Landed” Is Shutting Down
Show HN: A site I made that lets you browse shoes Tinder-style
and same with pacman on Arch (and derivatives)
It's my first project using clojurescript and reagent. Probably not the most common type of website posted on HN, lol, but I gave it a shot anyways.

Would greatly appreciate any feedback you got :)
Not even reading this, but personally I'm more concerned about social darwinism, meaning the idea some people have, where the strongest should naturally dominate the weak in a societal context, just like it happens in nature. There will always be this idea that people who might starve, should starve.

I'm more scared about the ideological aspects of anarcho capitalism, which seems to be embedded in the libertarian ideology. Basically it would imagine a society without state or authority, which to me is the return to an uncivilized world.

So the knot here seems to be about basic income (based on Friedman's negative income tax), and how it would be financed. Somehow it seems to boil down to the problems talked about by Marx, which are about the means of production. Except now, the means of production require so little labor, but I still think Marx is relevant here.

I'm sure politically it's currently almost impossible to make companies give money back to non-contributing citizens in a form of taxes, especially in the US. But ultimately, that's where all the money will be, and I don't think special interests will always be able to argue to not give back.
Many interesting niche blogs are essentially job ads for the writers.
“I have to do a case-by-case basis determination,” Weil responded, before declaring that he has taught immigration law to 3- and 4-year-olds.
Identifying Banksy using statistics
The reason: "The first thing that makes running Just Landed difficult in the long-term is a serious lack of innovation in the flight data industry. An app like Just Landed relies on access to high quality flight data to function correctly. However, since the airline industry is extremely fragmented, and uses antiquated IT systems and many incompatible data formats, it is not practical for a small independent developer like us to negotiate data-sharing contracts with each individual airline, and then unscramble their jumbled data feeds into a usable format at a reasonable cost."

and a secondary one: the app ecosystem isn't worth it anymore:

"With well over 2 million apps by now (officially 1.5M as of July 2015), the iTunes App Store is an incredibly crowded place where it’s almost impossible to get noticed. Despite the persistent myth of the app developer millionaire, it’s extremely hard to make a profit — let alone a living — as an iOS app developer. The Google Play Store is a similar story, except with the added bonus of rampant piracy and a zillion devices to support. There really isn’t gold in them hills, at least not anymore, and independent app development will soon be in sharp decline, if it isn’t already.

Essentially, there’s a massive oversupply of apps, and the app markets are now saturated and suffering from neglect and short-term thinking by the companies who operate them. As competition has intensified, developers have resorted to giving their apps away, often at the urging of the app stores themselves. Consequently, the willingness of users to pay for apps, even unique apps like Just Landed, has declined sharply, while expectations of what an app should deliver have never been higher. Developers have been forced to get absurdly creative with their business models and marketing strategies just to make any income at all, rather than making the best product for their users. Just Landed, being a paid app with high running costs, has been on the wrong side of these trends, and what worked in 2012 no longer works in 2016."
Onus Probandi (incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat)