skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We're always going to need some prisons. Because as much as many people are possible to rehabilitate, there's always going to be a (rather small) percentage that are simply dangerous to just about everyone and everything around them. See, some of the worst examples of serial killers. You don't really want to risk the possibility of letting them near anyone else, and house arrest (or a traditional psychiatric ward) might not be secure enough in a few cases...

But we should be sending a far lower percentage of criminals to prison, yes.

On another note, could virtual reality potentially be an interesting punishment here? There are a few articles online about the possibility of having someone experience what feels like 10,000 years in 8 hours, and the concept could potentially be used for literal imprisonment too (like say, in The Matrix). You could give someone who's simply impossible to rehabitate a virtual life that fits their own worldview...
This is a hard problem, though, since a lot of jurisdictions don't allow drivers to send or receive written messages, or operate phones, while driving, and the drivers often can't pull over in time to deal with a message legally.

Maybe they should use text-to-speech?
A further complication for us is that the Mathworks is rich and amoral while GNU Octave is tiny and idealistic. If we ever become large enough for them to notice us, we have to make sure that we never give them the slightest argument in their favour. Should our code ever end up looking similar (similar variable names, similar structure), we have to be able to say that it's purely coincidental.
Your lawyers are peddling FUD because they make money that way. "Hey, it looks like you need another legal agreement, can't be too safe!" The reality is that an "unintentional copying" claim against source code makes for a very weak lawsuit and it's close to unimaginable that such a case would even make it into a court room.

You're free to read whatever you like. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
As tongue-in-cheek as this is, it raises a valid point. Corrections industry unions are large and powerful.
Just wrt the let/match/Ok/Err == ugly comment: I don't know Rust very well and I haven't looked very closely at the code in question, but why would Rust force you to wrap almost any function call with let/match/Ok/Err, though?
I am assuming the issue at hand here is when you call function that returns a Result (if that's the name of the parent of Ok/Err)?
Couldn't one let the return values 'flow up'? For example: if a function starts returning Results and you don't handle it on the level above, you start returning Results too...
Also, I suppose there's ways of flattening results to avoid having nested Results (I would guess and_then does that based on its signature?)?
In this scenario, you could argue that one now replaces match with map at every function call where you do not actually handle the Err and that this is ugly too, but the alternative is hoping that the caller happens to have read your source code (or have checked exceptions), which is, arguably (to be diplomatic), the case for unchecked-exceptions. Then what happens if you change the code and so on and so on...

This way lets you achieve something similar to checked-exceptions, and in addition to gain composability of Err (and the like), without adding another language construct (which a language without exceptions would have to do).
Got a great deal of experience in other languages that does this, and it's worked out pretty good so far for at least for me once you get the hang of it (i.e. functional coding).

Where I am sitting, that would be a wise choice for Rust, at least if I am understanding it correctly, as it tries to be a safer alternative to other system languages. However, arguably (:), it is OK in dynamic languages or similar that aims trades in correctness for conciseness and, arguable (again :), speed of development to simply have unchecked-exceptions.

Also, it is possible I misunderstood your comment and/or how that code was ugly, in which case I hope the downvotes/replies won't be too harsh :)

EDIT: typo/clarity
And to this day (?) Korean farmers had pigs eat human feces. And the word for pig-sty and out-house are apparently of similar origin?
Definitely not what weekends are for. I've looking over the past 5 years of my life and it fills me with regret at not having a lot of new experiences. I love coding but I'm going to disengage for a bit and find new hobbies. I don't want the highlight of the next 5 years of my life to be Github commits.
15 things you didn’t know you could buy from Amazon
More proof, since some on HN seem to disagree with facts: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/average#Usage_notes
A person who is not comfortable with an anonymous, fictional, and harmless interaction with someone who uses curse words or claims they will rape them can avoid this problem by not engaging in the specific components of internet usage where that may happen. Browsing their favorite news sites, shopping on Amazon, or booking airline tickets will likely be unaffected, meaning your comment is obvious hyperbole.

Some online behavior that crosses into the real world will and has always been illegal and actionable of course, as I noted in the original comment. Most of what people consider "online abuse" isn't in that category.

If you don't want to see rippling abs and cleavage you have to avoid nearly all advertising these days. If you don't like guns you can't watch movie trailers. The modern world has many such dilemmas. Ignoring the things you find objectionable shouldn't be discounted as a simple solution.

As I said, I realize I'm out of the mainstream. But I've been called horrible things and even doxxed and stalked and threatened in the real world by online commenters a couple times over the past 20 years. I've found that "not caring about it" has been a shockingly useful and effective tool.
> They make software engineer money doing this.

You say like that is a bad/surprising thing.
Salaried employees are not paid by the hour. They are paid by the week, regardless of how much work they've done. I'm not insinuating anything, I'm explicitly stating that this type of work agreement should not be banned.

If you don't like it, demand something hourly. Just don't prevent me from working however I see fit.
I feel like there is so much unknown here as well. Fat tail risk in these kinds of experiments always seem to be ignored. A + B is not ALWAYS greater than B
which company is using Rust?
"...the Dutch are housing Belgian and Norwegian prisoners to fill their prisons"

Exporting prison space! Wow!
Spoken like a truly out of touch academic.

Here's an incident that took place last week in a town near me:

A man with a beer and a condom approached a random couple on the sidewalk and declared his intention to have sex with the woman. When she declined, two of his brothers and a fourth man appeared from behind a bush, beat the man into submission and dragged the woman back to their apartment. They barricaded the door and raped her. The criminals had multiple previous charges including DUI and were illegal immigrants AND they had sneaked into the U.S. a 2nd time.

But I suppose letting them "live with and be closely supervised by a family" will straighten them out. /s

What the author doesn't acknowledge is that prison is the best thing we have come up with so far. We all want something better, but we don't have it. And his touchy-feely concepts are perhaps adequate for shoplifters and soft-drug offenders, but not a family of gang rapists.

The true problems with the prison system are the overwhelming numbers of non-violent offenders who are disproportionately ethnic minorities. It would also be a good idea to improve rehabilitation efforts.
Check out Wox - getwox.com - an open source launcher like Alfred for Windows with plugin support. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612105
Elliot Gant, Marketer of the Button-Down Shirt, Dies at 89
This problem exists mainly because the most used os doesn't have a package manager/app store or a secure and safe way to install software and it still doesn't because there is a huge av/security industry built to solve the problem it creates.
Frankly, SQLite is the exception that proves the rule.

For all the complexity of the SQL Language, and efficiency constraints SQLite needs to have, plus all the algorithms it has to implement, it still got a pretty well-defined task. It is not easy to transfer that experience to other systems. Say, your company's backend API. Completely different constraints.

It could still be the case that, had Rust existed when SQLite was being created, that it would have taken much less engineering effort. Which is the metric that matters, as given infinite manpower, you can write anything in any language.

I do agree that rewriting SQLite now, which is a very battle-tested piece of software, would probably do more harm than good. I bet people will still try, for fun if nothing else.
He amended the article after getting comments like yours.
I also have Fortran, Cobol, SWI-Prolog, OCaml, Elixir and Erlang on my computer, so I guess we need to re-implement core utils in these languages too. Using the followings in any technical arguments is just plain stupid:

- it works on my laptop

- but I already have it
I wouldn't read an educational material about how a submarine works, a helicopter works, and a microwave oven works all on the same day. I don't imagine many people would - especially if it were more technically laden in its vocabulary.

Likewise - I wouldn't read all of 'Thing Explainer' in a single sitting either. A page every now and then and you don't get bogged down with reading simple language for hours on end.

Reading over simplified things gets as tiring as reading overly complex material - because both can be quite mentally taxing. The increased difficulty of reading "eight and one" instead of "nine" gets more tiring than one might think...
Science!!!!1
I was not aware of kcov or its basis bcov. Thanks for pointing those out.

However, a quick glance at the bcov source code leads me to believe that it only does source-line coverage, not branch coverage. So, unless my quick reading of bcov sources is mistaken, I couldn't test a Rust SQLite as well as I can test the existing SQLite because kcov/bcov is missing the ability to measure coverage of individual machine-code branch instructions, and the value I get from static analysis is much less than the value I get from branch-coverage testing tools.

That's not being pedantic, btw. The difference between source-line coverage and machine-code branch coverage is huge. The latter really is necessary.
That sounds more like we need insane asylums not prisons.

Politically we find it easier to deal with people that can't function in society as criminal than sick and historically Insane Asylums have been really nasty places. However, I don't see the advantage of keeping criminals in the same place as the insane.
I don't have any opposition to bigger storage, where did you get such a strange idea?

Clearly you are much smarter about this than Apple is. Their failure to understand the market as well as you have has undeniably lead to shrinking margins and market share, eventually to their exit from the premium phone market. It's a shame nobody buys their phones anymore.

More seriously - there are good criticisms that can be made of apples strategy, but they aren't the ones you are making. Your complaints show a naivety about how such markets work, and why.

In many markets, price is not a function of cost but a function of value (perceived or otherwise). In fact, this can be viewed as the defining characteristic of markets a company like Apple wants to be in, vs. those it doesn't want to be in. Competing in a commodity market is brutal.

That isn't to say that there aren't good arguments about why 32GB base would be better, but COGS delta isn't one of them, and focusing on it demonstrates a pretty fundamental lack of understanding of what market this phone is in.
I posted this a few days ago but got no answers.

What's the best way to 'read' the xkcd Time storyline? I saw an animated gif someone made a long time ago but it was hard to follow requiring pausing on frames to read text.
Pro-tip: don't make exclamations when you don't know if what you are saying is true.

The entire point of a contract is to get permission to do something that otherwise is not allowed.
Police hunt suspect after Islamic State kills 30 in Brussels suicide attacks
Show HN: Using Swift for low-level kernel code
Ask HN: Commercially using a GPL fork now marked as non commercial?
Based on the point at GPL's website http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.en.html#TOCModifyGPL I am curious if the fork's change in license for non-commercial use still valid.
Not a direct answer to your question. But possibly related.

First of all, I think we need a pretty large experiment to reach a conclusion, this because I don't think we are ready to measure the outcome until the experiment has had time to alter our perception of what is desirable. I'm afraid current measuement would be to tied to the current way of thinking, where productivity and gdp is overly emphasized.

I'm a proponent of basic income and do believe there are many economic and social benefits in practice, but it's primarily an ethical conclusion. So even if the theoretic benefits turns out to be false, I'd probably still need something else to change my ethical reasoning.

Like Thomas Paine, my primary argument for an UBI is that it is the way to make property rights fair. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism , but in general my line of thinking is that the right to exclusive control over a resource is not derived from labor alone, as is the popular interpretation of Locke today, but from the agreement with all competing interests. From that I derive that property title must be bundled with full compensation for the opperunity cost incurred on those who now lack access to the resources. To me the most efficient way to implement such a compensation is to demand a rent, equal to what the next highest bid for the resource would be. This rent is distribute equally to all citizen, and thus acts as the compensation for respecting the property owners exclusive rights.

I also happen to believe that it would be an effective way to balance the hoarding effect of capitalism. In the simple tax and divide scheme usually thought of it would at least create a flow in the other direction, increasing circulation.

But hopefully it would also remove some of the rent seeking possibilities from the market and make sure that resources are employed for more productive uses.

However, if you implement UBI my way you probably won't reach levels that would make most UBI proponents happy, which means an additional grant must be distributed according to those people. Perhaps the failure to recognize the true ethical reasoning and instead insisting on treating it as welfare would make me lose hope in ever reaching a workable implementation.

If you insist on treating it as welfare you're probably going to end up taxing he middle class to support the lower class. That would probably turn out pretty horrific for everyone.
I think author forget that prison ALSO means that we are isolating someone dangerous, someone that is dangerous for society, that's why we lock him up. There will be no other solution/place for murderers etc. Period.

I really would like that authors of that kind of articles go to areas where there is a lot of gang activities and live there for couple of months. I am sure they would change their mind.
Haven't they just about alienated all developers at this point with their ridiculous token system?
I'm not sure I believe punishment is even possible.

My personal view is that if someone needs to be separated from society for the good of society or for themselves, it should be done in the most humane and least restrictive way possible.
It's been flagged off. You need showdead enabled in your profile to see it. It links out to https://docs.google.com/forms/d/153HRp3cKx2wMWckCOGGJIttLDX2... . It doesn't appear there are any responses at the moment.
If people are looking for something similar without RFID tags, there are sites like http://chronograph.io. It synchronizes stopwatches and timers between anyone viewing the same session.
I had to read that part twice as well. It seems that it's in addition to whatever they are offering 'per bug' - you basically get a 10% bonus on the average of everyone else's payouts.

So for example:

Bug 1 - $2k

Bug 2 - $3k

Bug 3 - $6k

Bug 4 - $1.5k

Bug 5 - $2k + 10% of total commuity average payout as bonus
So in other words, like a multi user version of Shadowbanning?

It's an interesting idea (and I'm 100% sure it's been done before), but it doesn't really work out on any site with a significant audience. I mean, all you need is one of those trolls to access the site at work/school/wherever and notice their posts are being shown if they're not logged in, and then suspicions are raised.

Too easy to bypass and figure out. It's like how people figured out Twitter's shadowbans, because people who followed them said off site that they weren't seeing their messages.
One day we'll have to make it official, men are lame are judging nature wonders, which is amazing most of the time.
Not a duplicate. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Scientists%20warn%20of%20peril...
I see this all the time but you can't compare apple (doctor) to orange (software developer).

Doctor is more "trustworthy" (perception-wise) as they get older while Developer is more in-demand when they're younger.

Doctor also technically made way more money than Developer (in general though, the statement may not stand if you compare Silicon Valley but you get the idea, even in other countries, Doctor probably made more than Developer).

Doctor also keep their job longer than Developer.

Doctor can read but does not necessarily have to demonstrate that to their prospective employers while Developer can't just say "I read Objective-C for Dummies therefore I am an expert of Objective-C".

These were just ones of many things that I can think of.
There's a very interesting thought experiment devised by the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smitg and outlined at the end of the excellent book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" by Jon Ronson.

Quoting from the book;

“Let me ask you three questions,” he said. “And then you’ll see it my way. Question One: What’s the worst thing that you have ever done to someone? It’s okay. You don’t have to confess it out loud. Question Two: What’s the worst criminal act that has ever been committed against you? Question Three: Which of the two was the most damaging for the victim?”

The worst criminal act that has ever been committed against me was burglary. How damaging was it? Hardly damaging at all. I felt theoretically violated at the idea of a stranger wandering through my house. But I got the insurance money. I was mugged one time. I was eighteen. The man who mugged me was an alcoholic. He saw me coming out of a supermarket. “Give me your alcohol,” he yelled. He punched me in the face, grabbed my groceries, and ran away. There wasn’t any alcohol in my bag. I was upset for a few weeks, but it passed.

And what was the worst thing I had ever done to someone? It was a terrible thing. It was devastating for them. It wasn’t against the law.

Clive’s point was that the criminal justice system is supposed to repair harm, but most prisoners — young, black — have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time — bad husbands, bad wives, ruthless bosses, bullies, bankers."

The point of it is that we punitively punish people for many crimes while doing things far worse at the same time. Should we really be putting someone in prison for burglary when there are people who rip millions of people off with legal price gouging or break up a family by cheating?

We should think and question the legal system, and what effect it has on people unfortunate enough to become embroiled in it. If the legal system is there to punish behaviour that isn't in the interest of society or to protect communities from those who'd harm them, are we actually punishing the right people?

It's a very deep question. Not something that HN will answer in a thread. I think it's worthwhile spending some time on though.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the HN guidelines. This is not a legitimate use of throwaway accounts on HN.
The Bulletproof Guide to Making One Article Work 5x Harder for You – SumoMe
Society has infringed upon the "fundamental right" of procreation numerous times. Forced Sterilizations have been used many times for a variety of reasons throughout the history of Western Civilization including the modern US, and "voluntary sterilizations" happen more often than they are discussed still to this day.
Include in the doubts, that some of those places were doing really abhorrent things (gassing whole villages and burying them in enormous berms with bulldozers). To stick your head in the sand, because some mad bombers, is a moral issue all it itself.
The question is hypothetical. Sometimes the answer would be yes. Sometimes the answer would be no.
But then, in theory "getting some breathing room to make a move elsewhere where there may be jobs available" is exactly how a properly designed welfare system for people unemployed and looking for work is intended to function, without the added expense of extending the subsidy to stay-at-home spouses, early retirees and trust fund kids.

There may be many design flaws in the system that prevent people most in need of getting those funds from getting them, but "not being available to every citizen" isn't necessarily one of them. Plus if you're saving huge amounts by not subsidising the voluntarily economically inactive, you have an awful lot more to spend on helping those actually desperately in need.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2016/03/ille...
> Your lawyers are peddling FUD because they make money that way.

No, the SFLC works pro-bono.

> You're free to read whatever you like.

I wish that were true, but many current laws say otherwise. You do not sound like you are aware of those laws, so I take it you're not a lawyer. You're just hoping the world is as free as you say it is. I wish it were too, but we have to be pragmatic and work in the world we have while we strive for the world we want.
Well actually no. I am fluent in several shells (ksh, bash, fish, zsh) but I would not say that UNIX shells are awesome. Most of the CLI tools written for UNIX-like clones are fixing the shortcomings of shells. On the other hand you can do a lot (and I am not even fluent) with PowerShell while not needing a huge "core utils" equivalent on Windows. I used to work for a company that ported PowerShell features to UNIX so we could do lots of things that otherwise would have been impossible or very hard to do only with coreutils + shells. UNIX is old and it has many flaws but it is also wide spread and people think it is "awesome". In fact, if you look to other systems, for example VMS those had better features than UNIX (and clones). Again, I have something like 15+ years on Linux and other UNIX-like clones.
Please don't post uncivil comments here.
Use service like cloudflare, it's 250 dollars and you are UDP attacks completely free + a lot of TCP ones.