skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They aren't really in the minority. There's a huge amount of overlap between tech folk and the majority in California. The main difference is encryption, and even there, that's largely a matter of education to overcome apathy and misunderstandings. Convince people that encryption backdoors aren't "reasonable," and that they're actively detrimental to their own safety and interests, and you can change that.

In any case, our entire system of government was built around the idea of protecting against a tyranny of the majority. For entirely valid reasons, a majority of the people might support a disastrous policy. Ideally, our system is able to protect against the implementation of those policies. Doing so doesn't make your efforts corrupt and illegitimate.

Money is always going to be involved in politics. There's no getting around it, and anyone who argues that you can "undo it" is deluding themselves. You can, however, push for policies that increase accountability and make sure that funding takes place in the light of day. But that's an entirely separate, complex issue.
Wow! That looks like my new favorite quote
> While we're at it, we could also make taxation less regressive

> As much as possible, we should be taxing consumption, not income, savings, and growth.

These two desires are in complete opposition to each other, because the poor by necessity spend a much larger proportion of their income than the rich. What you are proposing is impossible.
Thanks for posting it, this is very nice indeed. Kudos to him for sharing the credit. Maybe he's not that of an evil person as I have pictured before. But the discussion around here made me realize once more that there is still a problem lying around here. People tend to attribute the works we see around to a single person when in reality it's a team's work. And I'm not only talking about the very close circle these people are working with but also many others in the service industry that we interact daily in an indirect fashion. This is very dangerous. It makes people think that their work is inferior since it is not as useful as what these "celebrities" are doing and eventually leaving them the only choice to give up and rather worship these people instead. This is what I see everyday.

Also note that, while you can see these kinds of notes lying around, there are also many places these don't exists at all. If I were to know Donald Knuth from his wikipedia article, I would not be aware of his secretary at all. So there is some credit but not to the extend that I would like to see.

I think this is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with. Maybe anonymous writing could be a solution, I dont know..
A lot of zoning restrictions were an attempt to circumvent anti-segretation laws for schools and housing through policies such as redlining.
This sounds very similar to the bankrupt idea of "I have nothing to hide from the government." It doesn't matter if you're currently comfortable; all it takes is a change in a law, or an new interpretation of an existing law to make you a criminal.
Thanks for the link. So the precedent is asset backed securities granting slices of royalties for ten years. Time to talk to someone at the SEC
I had the privilege in 1979 of traveling in Eastern Europe and crossing the border in a rural area between DDR (East Germany) and BRD (West Germany) with my US passport.

The East's border was two 3m (10ft) fences topped with razor wire, with a 10m (30ft) gap of ploughed land between them. I assume the ploughed land was a minefield, but I didn't ask. There were towers with fixed machine guns and searchlights positioned closely enough together to allow the soldiers in them to monitor everything.

Inside the border was a 5km exclusion zone.

The West German boder? A small guard post, with a passport control officer dressed in blue jeans, and a sign saying Wilkommen in BRD. (Welcome to the German Federal Republic). 5k inside the western border was a sign in English saying "no US military personnel beyond this point." (At that time the post-WWII Allied occupation forces were still in place.)

What does a border look like that prevents the passage of determined people? It looks like that, or like the Wire of Death. It's doggone ugly.
Thank you Herbst for taking the time to describe these issues. That was very kind of you. I will work to get them resolved.

Thanks again!
This article says the detached boosters fire rockets as they are landing and deploy landing gear. Was that ever demonstrated to work? I'm curious of there is precedent for this prior to SpaceX or just wishful thinking.
Muzak predates Amiga by at least a decade I'd say ..
For the vertical landing, this would seem to work against them

Actually, an inverted pendulum -- where most of the weight is on the top -- is easiest to balance on top of the rocket thrust. Coming down at high speed, this would be aerodynamically unstable, but this is why they have the grid fins, to move the center of aerodynamic pressure behind the center of gravity.
In other countries it may very well be different, but in America people mostly make their own luck.

As to working hard, that isn't what counts. It's making the right choices, i.e. working smart.

Sure, lots start out with many disadvantages and will have a tougher road. But if you're able-bodied, you do have choices.
5 Things Fans Want to See in Life Is Strange 2
I guess my reaction to that is "So what?" So long as the grade has minimal real world meaning, why should I care that someone is "cheating" to bulk up their directory of Coursera PDF certificates?

I agree that gaming tests is something that Coursera should presumably care about because their business model presumably depends on certificates meaning something in terms of people getting jobs etc. someday. But, as things currently stand, it's hard for me to get excited about people fooling themselves to rack up virtual MOOC karma.
It's an interesting and often-repeated theory, but the data is overwhelming: People born in poor environments do much worse than those born in wealthier environments.

The massive difference in resources seems like a place to start. Compare the percentage of kids who get into college from poor urban public schools, where many kids aren't even functionally literate and classes lack books, and wealthy suburban public schools.

But whatever the cause, the bar is far too high in poor neighborhoods for most people to get over.
Thanks for the advice. Would love to post about it - hadn't really thought that it could be of interest to anyone :-)

Mostly my interests are within cloud computing, machine learning and web development, so more or less mainstream fields. E.g. a topic could be to utilize some cloud computing patterns or machine learning in a given setting. I just lack inspiration for the setting.
I use vinyl cling material to cover up the cams, but what you described is much better and exactly what I want. Got any pics?
If you need to support older browsers without Flexbox, another option is to use a tiny (less than 1kb) CSS grid system called Pocket Grid.

The grid system lets you position blocks of content side-by-side similar to Flexbox, and blocks can wrap to another line when there isn't enough space. It's not an equivalent to Flexbox, but for some types of layouts it could be used as a possible fallback.

Pocket Grid has been around since 2013, it's a shame it hasn't gained more attention:

http://arnaudleray.github.io/pocketgrid/
At a direct cost of around 1.5 billion dollars per flight. This includes a lot of flights that were essentially milk runs, bringing satellites into orbit or doing other light work that could have been just as easily done with much cheaper capsule flights.
As usual, RMS is content to sit back and complain rather than take action to try to effect positive change.

Has he written any code in the last decade, or is he still going around giving the same tired speeches over and over?

Do his anachronistic computing habits contribute to his continued irrelevance?

Ubiquitous broadband connectivity has changed the world and it seems RMS is still living in the past. I hate SaaS models just as much as the next user, but I am also a realist. There's just no reason for corporations to take RMS's "ethical" route when the profits lie squarely in the other direction. Lofty academic ideals don't buy your family groceries.
Not only is the Culture series post-scarcity, it is post-singularity as well. It is so different from our current world that I'm surprised someone brought it up seriously in a policy debate.
Super helpful, thanks!
AuthorInvestments Email to the SEC
Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11453036

An Email To The SEC Chairman:

Hello,

I'm Allison Mobley, CEO of a startup called Author Investments looking to sell modern day "Bowie Bonds" http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35280945
backed by author catalogs rather than musical ones.

The startup is only a few days old and we've already received interest from investors in regards to guiding our course moving forward, and their advice was try to make a contact as high up in the SEC as possible as they would know best how to advise our going about creating these securities, so here I am.

I'm a programmer, please tell me where to start.

Regards,
Allison
The boosters as tested did not. It were plans for a later revision of the launch system, which were cancelled due to eyewatering costs (– by Soviet standards, the US wouldn't have been able to do a single Shuttle launch for the price of the entire Buran program).
Perhaps because it takes every opportunity to point out how Buran was superior, sometimes correctly (better automation, for example) and sometimes not (reused boosters, and the thermal protection bit seems dubious), while never once mentioning anything the Shuttle did better (reuse engines, or actually do something useful).

Still, great reading.
Not sure that the whole ideal of job creators really holds up in the light of day. Or rather job creators as 'elites' with enormous amounts of capitalism and economies of scale dont drive jobs growth.

I guess its a matter of scale... A single WalMart certainly employs less people and provides lower salaries than the 20 small businesses it replaces...

If by elite we are including the typical small business owners then yeah they are job creators...

If by elite we are talking the investor class executive class then not in aggreememt
If the grade has no real world meaning, then why pay for it? That was the OPs question.
No, that isn't redundant, and it isn't a "tooling" problem. There are too many places where having 52 "controller.js" files in a project could be a problem, beyond the editor/IDE. And I can't speak for everyone, but I don't like folder names in my tabs. Also, while in the simplistic examples, the folder name always matches the file names, it doesn't have to (see the John Papa style guide example).
I don't agree - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia

There were two launches - the first of a "fully armed and.. oh" space battle station (I shit you not), the second of the Buran.
How does Datalog compare to Prolog?
If not already, this seems like a job that could be done by specially designed robots.
I grew up in poverty. I was poor and I only knew other poor kids until I was 18. When I first started associating with people who grew up middle and upper class I felt like I was in another very foreign world. I have plenty of childhood friends who did the "right" things (some went to college even) and work just as hard as I do but are still poor for various reasons.

Working hard doesn't, by default, lead to financial security.

Working hard can lead to financial security but there's a lot of luck involved as well. Not to mention planning - unless you count that as work.

Trust me I am not saying working hard doesn't lead of results or don't work hard. I am saying that poverty isn't synonymous with "lazy" or even "not working hard enough."
No he's right, several apps listen in on your conversations for advertising purposes. Tons of similar stories can be found online.

The FTC just made an announcement about SilverPush, an example of such software:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/03/ftc-i...
I guess you studied some technical subjects. In this case, best students are usually doing their pet projects that take all their time, so going to lectures and typing notes in LaTeX will reduce the time they can spend working on their projects and learning from hands-on experience.
Isn't Papa a big deal in the Angular community? Wish the big React people would do something similar. Every project I see has a different structure.
Then why not give that choice to everyone else as well? Most of us are working because we're being "threatened with hunger or homelessness". I think it's bad and as a civilization we're reaching the level when we could - and should - end that, but that is a completely orthogonal topic to whether or not secretaries have important jobs.
I like it..by, Evon Latrail
This is a complex topic but the article is dead-on. Scott Alexander wrote years ago that the US has created a divide that he calls Blue Tribe vs. Red Tribe that is far deeper than Dem vs. Repub - it's cultural.

Today it is extremely common for someone in the "blue tribe" to know no one who is in the "red tribe" - people who (to use a few stereotypes) are Christian, enjoy NASCAR, and unabashedly eat at chain restaurants. People in either tribe don't encounter each other daily and as a result both tribes have little understanding of each other's worlds or the number of people who are not in their tribe.

Inequality is deeply problematic and there are no easy solutions. Liberalism recognizes this. The problem is that the tribal line now runs along an economic fault line. Red tribe hasn't been doing well - red states are full of disadvantaged people. Worse, because of identity politics they have been made "the other" and rendered relatively voiceless.

Liberalism can champion the disadvantaged but it has to approach them with solutions. As technological displacement of workers continues it is hard to see what they will be.

I am blue tribe but I flinch when I see my colleagues in the tech industry complain about things like the injustice of having to go to a whiteboard in an interview to get a job in a Crèche-like work environment with play-balls while people outside the industry are lucky to get jobs driving cars, cleaning tables, or lifting boxes without health insurance. We don't see our own sense of entitlement. It is transparent to others despite our liberal signaling. This isn't going to be a pretty ride.
Will You Sprint, Stroll or Stumble into a Career?
There are tons of documentaries on TV of rags to riches musicians, actors, etc. It does make it seem straightforward. There aren't so many documentaries on the more mundane and much more likely paths to a better life.
Vaultedge will not store the actual files, only metadata about the files. We plan to encrypt the metadata and also optionally allow user to control the keys. We will also have 2-factor authentication. Please suggest if you have any suggestions. Thanks for asking.
'investor class'

you realize that businesses don't spring out the ground like plants, right. typically, someone has to invest
Even big computers (e.g., VAXes running Unix) used to transfer e-mail by way of dialup. In the days before everyone had internet access, some hosts would only have intermittent dial-up connections to other hosts, and they'd transfer e-mail over UUCP. If these machines were in underfunded organizations like university departments, they'd make their calls at night when long-distance calls were cheaper. It could take a day or two just for an e-mail to get across the country, and another day or two for the reply to get back.

For more on this, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Mail_routing
Doesn't matter if he implied or not. What I'm arguing is that we would see famous secretaries if it was really a respectable job.
The U.S. made the right call on lightbulbs
Some of this turned into a broader discussion.

But, to the OP's question, no--I don't think there's value in paying beyond edge cases (e.g. proof of continuing professional education) and any personal gamification benefits.
Except you can retake the exams until you pass.
On engine difference, which is critical but has not been pointed out:
- Buran had no launching engines, whole Energia rocket has been lost (apart of boosters?)
- Shuttle did, thus the most expensive part has been returned back
This resulted in a fact that STS launches were expected to be much cheaper [citation needed]
I think one of the other linked articles said that only 10% of the Dutch population at the time had an understanding of electricity (I would guess the people close to the fence were rural population, because most of the cities are in the west at the sea). Which makes the whole thing so dangerous.
So what you are saying is that in your personal opinion you think the carefully designed and executed study reported here is wrong, because you disagree with it. Because the study specifically says that when taking notes, handwriting outperforms using a computer.

So tell me, why is the study wrong?
I'm on my 3rd module of a game design specialisation course.

So far I thought it was good, the content is not super deep but I kinda like it that way because it could fit in my busy schedule easier while also allowing me to practice writing. That's really my motivation to take the course, if I can start thinking like a game designer for £250, that's awesome enough. Personally I've 'outgrown'video games but taking the course has reignited that interest and I'm seriously considering a game idea :D

My assessments aren't multiple choice tests though, I had to submit written work every week which is then reviewed by at least two other classmates. I thought that system's pretty good. The forums are useless I find, as it's easy to have so many 'heyy nice to meet you' threads that I don't bother checking anymore. I do wish that we can have access to the tutors themselves though, it's not practical i guess but that would definitely enhance the course experience.
Is it irresponsible if the self-driving truck is believed to be as safe or safer than a human driver? Humans get into accidents quite frequently.
> You can’t contribute to ejabberd when you work on Hangouts.

As a Googler I suspect you could, you'd just need permission (possibly per patch).

Googlers contribute to lots of open source projects. Google itself is fairly liberal in terms of what it's willing to share outside. Exceptions tend to be product specific code (you probably couldn't contribute the Hangouts UI and front-end code), particular technologies that are distinct competitive advantages (search ranking, etc.), or things that are Google specific (I work on Google Compute Engine -- there's a fair amount of code that is specific to Google's infrastructure).
It was only worth a few points each time its submitted. If you're going to post something a few years old, then put the date in the title.
I think the alternative (and we can debate whether it's the right choice) is to regulate companies like Uber that are monopsonies for a segment (in this case Uber is the only buyer of Uber drivers, and works to reduce the elasticity of labor supply so drivers will stay with Uber). That could take the form of a minimum wage for drivers, or regulation that establishes a separate market for drivers that ridesharing platforms would need to all use.

The issue is not the job loss, but that the benefits of the disruption accrue not only accrue mainly with the employer, but are less valuable to the employer and the economy then the loss of taxable income and stable jobs. The Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony isn't a bad read.
And those were really just sections of stout metal tube. They didn't have things like high precision turbopumps in them.
Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch Camera E-8
I knew Make was terrible when I was first introduced to it.

This is why I think everyone should learn programming first and linux second - since many linux tools are terrible.

As expressed in the SICP book - the programming language should allow you to build abstractions. Make doesn't at all allow that.
In the year 2020 a 12 year old girl could operate a fleet of 50 trucks through an open source NPM package (orders, planning, monitoring). You'd never suspect when you see her in person.
Agreed, society is full of "slavery" jobs that needs to be dealt with.
Yeah, if you can actually pass an entire course as a non-comprehending algorithm, it's not much of a "certification".
> This is where the Buran comes in, they largely copied the shuttle, but did they have the foresight to improve the poor parts of the design?

Largely, yes. With the added benefit of hindsight they were able to give it much safer heat shielding and boosters, and did a million other small improvements.

But the size remained, because Soviet intelligence couldn't quite figure out what the Shuttle was supposed to be good for. The Buran was essentially a just-in-case program: Once they figured out what the US wanted to do with it, they'd have the launcher necessary to copy it.

Unfortunately, the US never figured it out either. For the roles the Shuttle ended up being used in the 80s and early 90s, existing Soviet hardware was more than a match, so the Buran was cancelled.

Only much, much later was the ISS planned around the Shuttle's capabilities and found a limited use for its construction. (Some Shuttles, the earlier ones were too heavy to reach the ISS with any useful payload.)
To be fair, most of the loud political objections they deal with can be considered "needlessly idealized or dogmatic." That's largely the norm, and it's become even more so as the louder minorities within each party have been able to leverage new tech to increase their respective voices. This applies to almost every issue that they have to deal with, and every advocacy group argues that their issue is special and unique.

So it is any surprise that a lot of our legislators (at least those who aren't leading the charge here) are grouping arguments against backdoors into the same category based on their past experiences? They don't have the background or theoretical grounding to realize that, this time, the realities of mathematics really do make this issue unique.

It's a mess, with no clear path in sight. In addition to lobbying and supporting new candidates, any united effort to defend against these intrusions is going to have to include a massive education program meant to inform legislators on the dangers of what they're proposing. And it'll have to be tailored to how legislators actually think about policy. The arguments that work amongst the tech world aren't going to work in Congress. Not because they're idiots or anything like that, but because radically different backgrounds and experiences can affect how information is processed.