skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How do you measure productivity in an information economy? A failed startup may have been very productive at churning out code at an astounding rate, but the problem it tried to solve turned out to be irrelevant, so all that productivity went into the trash. When talking about the correlation between productivity and the overall efficiency of a society, we always have to know whether the end goals succeed in delivering real value to the society. Otherwise, we are busy, advancing nothing.
Those polls don't necessarily mean that people aren't choosing the lesser of two evils. Those questions aren't asked in a vacuum. Most of the polls ask about people's opinion of the candidates in a Clinton vs Trump context. Even if that wasn't the case, people might still feel that they have to support one candidate over the other.

It's hard to make people throw away their biases and ask themselves why they really support something.
It doesn't make sense to compare bank developer salaries in one market with all developer salaries in another. Further, what do you mean by "going rate"? Is that the net income or the cost of hiring one (with all the overhead that entails)?
I worked at BBN in the late 90s, started a month before the GTE purchase was announced.

One of my favorite memories was their warehouse of old equipment. Walking through that was like visiting a computing museum, including the only IMP I've ever seen. (Grabbed a 1GB Xyratex hard drive for an experiment; weighed 40-50lbs, IIRC. Huge.)
I was initially unimpressed by the phone...however after reading/watching the Verge review about it[0], I'm considering it as my next phone (but I'll probably get in a bit later when they have better deals on it)

[0] http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13304090/google-pixel-pho...
- No replaceable battery

- No SD card

- Only 2 years updates

- Same price range as the iPhone

No, that isn't what I was waiting for.
Preordered mine as a switch from Apple. Mostly because of the Daydream VR line, and I have found myself strongly disagreeing with a lot of Apple's vision. (Lack of VR, Lack of aux)
None of your points actually refute that white men with above median income have influenced and been listened to in the past 40 years

Or to say it another way, just because those things have happened, doesn't mean anything against what the parent poster wrote
I'm pretty sure this will be my next phone as it is available on Verizon and I have to get out of the Droid Turbo trap. Having gone through three Turbos (2 Turbo I and one Turbo II) I'm strongly looking to jump away

This is an overwhelmingly positive step forward, even if it isn't up there with, say, the iPhone (which I don't think it is in terms of looks, ease of use, app ecosystem, etc) When the rush of orders dies down a bit over the next weeks, I'm going to be placing an order to replace my Turbo II.
Relevant quote:

> Facebook is writing a Mercurial server in Rust. It will be distributed and
> will support pluggable key-value stores for storage (meaning that we could
> move hg.mozilla.org to be backed by Amazon S3 or some such). The primary
> author also has aspirations for supporting the Git wire protocol on the
> server and enabling sub-directories to be git cloned independently of a
> large repo. This means you could use Mercurial to back your monorepo while
> still providing the illusion of multiple "sub-repos" to Mercurial or Git
> clients. The author is also interested in things like GraphQL to query repo
> data. Facebook engineers are crazy... in a good way.
To some extent, this is a choice many Americans intentionally make. There are many jobs that offer European-like benefits, working hours, and employment stability in the US (e.g. Federal government jobs and some companies) but these are frequently viewed as undesirable -- it is not a first choice for many people if circumstances offer something better. The tradeoffs tend to be similar to Europe if you take one of these jobs. Lower pay, less opportunity for advancement (these kinds of environments tend to have promotions that are more seniority based), and you have to work with more people that put in the minimum effort required.

The concept of "quality of life" goes beyond the hours you work to also include having the opportunity to go after your ambition, if you have one. Culturally, I think one of the ways the US and Europe differ is that Europe imposes an environment designed to limit expressible ambition to the lowest common denominator, whereas US culture allows much greater variance in ambition. Or to put it another way, if it is your nature, it is easier to be ambitious in the US and easier to be non-ambitious in Europe. But all other things being equal, I prefer having the opportunity to be ambitious. Americans are not required to be ambitious, but many Americans take the opportunity nonetheless.
As an Android person (and someone who was a fervent iPhone user until the iPhone 6), I've definitely been waiting for a phone without all the usual Android carrier crapware, with a great camera, and not a phablet.

Quite excited about the Pixel
Shocking how average people accept the salaries they make and tax rates they pay.. smart people know better.
Having worked for a newspaper and, later, it's larger media conglomerate (late aughts), I can say that newspapers have intentionally created a terrible web presence. It's tough to tell whether the company thought it was a fad that would die off and not worth the investment, or if they believed that a terrible web site would drive people back to the physical paper. Either way, the move from print to online was a failure driven by upper management.

As one anecdote, the paper ran an advertising campaign telling people not to use the website on Sundays. Ironically, the commercial ended with a URL for a website with a coupon for the Sunday paper.
Fighting the Zika Mosquito in the Florida Keys
The issue is it's hard to imagine Apple deciding to stop making phones, it's fairly easy to imagine google deciding to drop the minor product line or stop supporting it.
Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12733024.
Amazon Launches 32GB Paperwhite for Japan
Man, that is some ugly flatware.

I have some 10 year old flatware that I picked up from a yard sale in college. I'm pretty sure it's just as dependable and useful as his...

While I completely understand the maniacal pursuit of "the best" (I've developed obsessions with mattresses, digital cameras, and shaving razors at various points in my life) deeply caring about every single one of your possessions seems way more exhausting than it's worth.
Many people dislike growing plants for Ethanol production because they compete for arable land that can be used to produce food. Solar and wind farms can be built in places where agriculture is not viable.
Yeah, there is quite a bit of project management and juggling needed to set up a ScalaJVM/Scala.js shared project. Maybe this would help you? https://www.scala-js.org/libraries/skeletons.html
> you're willing to pay for a $10 coffee with a 95% profit margin than a $5 Monthly subscription

One of those is $10, the other costs infinity dollars.

There's a large, and IMO underappreciated, amount of friction involved in subscription payment plans, given how often people are trying to get customers to sign up for them.

I'd buy a $50 tool more or less on impulse. A $10 or even $5/mo subscription is something I'd need to think over, not even because of the cost, but because I know it's something I'm going to have to deal with later on -- it means another place that I need to remember to update my credit card number whenever it gets changed, another thing that I might have to deal with the hassle of canceling later... overall, beyond the potential for the costs to add up over time, it's the construction of an ongoing relationship when all I wanted as a consumer was a sort of "one night stand".

Lots of vendors are looking for commitment from their customers, and I think a lot of potential customers are getting tired of it. Subscription business models are attractive for obvious reasons on the vendor side, but I wonder how many drive-by customers they pass up.
> They claim to be amazed, but surely if we've learned anything over this election cycle, it's that the worst systems you'll ever find are systems in use by people in government.

These are email servers mostly for Trump's private business.
This comment deserves more attention.
>How happy are they working that extra 25%? They are richer, sure. But I don't think being rich is an indicator of your overall state.

They aren't that richer either -- if anything the majority is less rich in standard of living than most western European and nordic countries. Getting some more money in your salary is not worth much if you have to give most of it to medical coverage and basic services.
LG V20 is the phone I've been waiting for but it looks like it will not be sold in Europe. :(
The tracker is not always accurate because loading too many jobs can exhaust its RAM. Jobs are loaded in batches, so it may be that there are many more jobs to go.
I don't understand your point. There was no smiley face. If the online portal vice.com cannot handle a sudden increase in pageviews it's not necessarily a denial-of-service-attack.
> I don't get why professional developers would use the consumer version of Windows.

Because most computers/laptops come preinstalled with Windows Home.
Yeah, the touch response, camera, and battery life may be all great -- by Android phone standards, but they still lag the iPhone.

The iPhone is the definitive smartphone. If you have an iPhone budget, you may as well buy the real deal.
People keep talking about Chinese everything. At the risk of being downvoted into oblivion let me ask you... would you use a Chinese email provider? Chinese Facebook clone? Chinese Twitter clone? I don't know about you, but I'd think twice before feeding my child Chinese formula or taking a flight in a Chinese made airplane. Physical products are one thing but informational products are clearly another.

China's reach is China. They may have a billion person market but last I checked that was only 1/7th the world. I'd venture to say that most folks would rather use some other option than something made in China.
I suggest you look at usernames.
And if you ask me the reason why no charges cause they got greedy and thought they could nail the big fish when she had no idea what was going on and gave immunity to all the people that probably actually did cut corners and should have gotten in trouble.
Lol. "I appreciate this discussion because, just the fact that there is a discussion, proves I'm right"?

It proves your beliefs are not universally held by the community. It supports my points, not yours.
Maths Research Is Making Sense of Abstract Nonsense Behind Future Breakthroughs
CTO of RhodeCode here.
This is exciting, we need to take a look from our side how this would affect our product.

I really like that Mercurial is gaining some traction with the big guys, which tries to solve some nice problems at scale.
> [Altman] If Peter said some of the things Trump says himself, he would no longer be part of Y Combinator.

In the US, at least since Citizens United, money is speech. By donating to his campaign and vocally supporting Trump, Thiel IS SAYING what Trump says.

Also, Thiel is no friend to freedom of speech or freedom of the press. That should have disqualified him earlier, even before this whole Trump affair.
So? Then they are wrong as well then, at least in that particular, their eminence notwithstanding. Appealing to authority makes your position no more tenable.

Principles that are abandoned when under duress are no principles at all.
AES as standard has only up to 256 bit keys, and I haven't followed closely what was going on in crypto lately.

Which secure 512 or 1024 bit symmetric encryption algorithm should I use to be 'quantum proof'?
I'm not a fan of either. I've considerably more experience with Android.

My point is that familiarity need not breed love.
You're going to have to be more specific about how you interpreted my definition of ad hominem, and your sources that counter that idea. That search turned up some interesting ideas, but I have no idea which ones you espouse, and we'll never get anywhere on this unequal footing.
Okay, now it makes sense :) Thanks!
My observation:

- most trump supporters hate the corrupted system, the establishment, but they do not generally hate average hillary supporters.

- most hillary supporters hate trump and trump supporters.
> it's harder to move from a class to another compared to the US.

Not true: social mobility in US is lower than in Europe and Canada.
There are lots of incremental improvements that eventually amount to something major, depends on how old is the device you're coming from. Compared to my Nexus 6, the Pixel XL is a major improvement.
Google Pixel review: Home run
I disagree because this community has a tendency to ignore other "soft" problems (like gender equality or diversity in tech) that are very relevant and important. If we keep it too narrow, then there is no hope to ever solve them.

While you may not feel concerned by the misogyny and bigotry of a Trump or Thiel, it's essential to minorities that already haven't felt very welcome in this community.
Worth pointing out that GAI was co-founded by a STEPHEN K. BANNON which, coincidentally, is the same STEPHEN K. BANNON that runs Breitbart and is currently the campaign chairman for DONALD J. TRUMP.

Possibly not the most unbiased of sources, I think.
It's nice to see Google totally nail the hardware and overall experience. The camera sounds impressive.

The problem for me is that the $700 phones aren't twice as good as the $350 phones. The midrange (or low-high-end) has got good enough that I can't justify doubling the expense.

I've got a LG G4 with a faulty mic due to water damage. If I can't repair it I'm seriously considering buying another one because I can't see anything else as good at that price point and nothing that makes me want to spend more.
Poor Kenyans Remain Excluded from Banking Services
> major problem with Muslim refugees in Europe

I'm a theological noncognitivist so I couldn't care less about what religion is more "evil" but move any group (Muslim, Christian or even a bunch of Pastafarians) from such a condition to the middle of Europe, and you will get similar results. They are more human than they are Muslim.

I'm not going to go on about how not actually that bad the situation is because that is not the point.
Chatted with a fellow HN user from Germany! It was nice chat to make my day :) Peace!
How many years of updates will it get? I'm not spending that kind of money to only get 2 years of official updates when the iphone gets 4-5 years of support.
This isn't what you said, but just to be clear to all readers: don't fall into the marketing trap. The Pixel is available for all carriers: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/psa-if-you-like-updat...
... touché...
Is it just me or did we have a much better selection of phones a few years back? It feels like most phone are trying to mimic the iPhone and that is precisely the phone I don't want.

We used to have "hacker" friendly phones with hardware keyboards etc.

Does anyone remember the Nokia N900?
Nobody is stopping you but why would you work 60 hours a week for some boring European company that only pays you EUR60k when you can work the same hours in SV on something interesting and make $150k+.
On the other hand, my phone is the one device that's always with me, so it's one area where I am tempted to spend a bit more. However, what I'd pay extra for is better stability and a better experience for core features rather than new features.

But two new features well worth it this round of phones: Water resistance has been a long time coming. Also hoping unlimited high-res storage for photos in the cloud becomes a standard across all vendors. I know you aren't supposed to trust these services with your precious files, but I've been a horrible steward of my own photos and I'm always out of space on the device.
You describe the OnePlus One (cannot comment on the successors after they broke up with CM).

The Pixel seems to be a phone loaded with Google crapware instead of carrier trash - and is (I agree with the GP) far too expensive in my world if you look at the hardware alone and want to dump the 'value added services' anyway.
From the article:

> I lot of the smartest and happiest people I've had the privilege of meeting have a habit of simplifying.

Simplifying doesn't necessarily lead to minimalism. For example, when I'm stuck on a problem, I enjoy noodling around on my guitar. Some days I work from home, some days I go to my office. The minimal solution would be to carry my guitar everywhere, the simple solution is to buy a second guitar to keep at work.

I wonder what the writer things of people with pets or kids? They complicate every decision and often limit your options in the moment.
I think you're going to have to be more specific about which of my arguments have something to do with 'ThomPete's deficiencies as a person or his personal unsuitability to be making statements about Trump or Thiel or Altman. That's an uphill climb, because I don't know anything about 'ThomPete, so I doubt I've made any such arguments.
The tax difference is generally less than people think. 5-6 European countries are very high, with Belgium in a class by itself, but most are not that many percentage point above the US.
There's something to be said for both. It's true that there is a scaling intrinsic to the Bitcoin protocol (which it had to have, as it was based on fast functions) to allow arbitrary slowdown at the brute-force level. However ideally it would be nice to have an asymmetry there.

Just think of it purely in the manner of "why run exactly one unit of the work? why not run a hundredth of that unit to validate the proof?" An asymmetry allows you to more quickly verify the ledger, which is both a startup cost and a lesser ongoing cost for everyone.

I'm wondering however if there is a connection with asymmetric encryption, though. Imagine a one-way function h and two functions f(x), g(x) such that f(g(x)) = x. Suppose the task is "find M such that g(h(M)) lies within some narrow subset," then if g is much slower than f, you can verify a pair (M, g_h_M) not by verifying that g(h(M)) = M (slow) but rather by verifying that f(g_h_M) = h(M) (much faster). The importance of h is just that for the most obvious application (f(x) = x^E modulo N, g(x) = x^D modulo N), you also have that g(f(x)) = x, and this is a relatively common property of inverse functions.
Security Tips for Dealing with Online Service That Requests Your Personal Data
Over here: https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/4.0sprint

> - Goal is to open source the server, once it's more than just slideware.

So you might not be able to look at it just yet, but hopefully soon?
> Traffic jams are almost ALWAYS caused by human error at some point in the chain.

Sometimes, sure. But there are a lot of key areas where urban roads / freeways are simply past usable capacity (even with smarter self-driving cars communicating together).

Most major cities have experienced significant population growth in the last 10 years, and have also built little-to-no new freeways or additional car capacity in the last 10 years. If I had to guess at the future, I would predict both of those trends to continue.
This is the first I've heard the term "deep work". Is this a more common term or something coined recently?
aes256 is fine.

This is a bit different for block ciphers and hashes.

The very brief / simplified explanation: Block ciphers have a security level of their key size, so aes256 has a prequantum security level of 256 bit, which means a postquantum security level of 128 bit. Hashes however have - due to the requirement for collision security and the birthday paradox - a security level half of their size. Therefore for 128 bit prequantum security you need a 256 bit hash and for 128 bit postquantum security you need a 512 bit hash.
It would mean for one thing, that universities would have to change the way they fundraise and accept donations. A lot of endowment funds are earmarked for particular purposes. Which could be anything from an endowed professorship to a large donation for a new building. Not too long ago, Harvard got $400 million for a new engineering school. Would that same donor have been happy to give the same amount for a scholarship fund? Probably not. I work in university publishing. We have a fund that helps defray the production costs of some books. It was endowed to us for that purpose, and the funds can only be used for that. College endowments are made up of hundreds of such funds. While it would be great if we had bigger scholarship funds, people who think universities should spend down their endowments have no idea how these things actually work.

And at least some portion of the government spending is going to pay tuition, at least for graduate students getting RA stipends. That money comes out of research funds.
I'm with you. I'm really unclear about why this is exciting to people... it seems like an iPhone that runs android.
Just had a good chat with "myself". I learned a lot about myself.
> Americans love to moralize and punish each other. Instead of saying that they think somebody is wrong they like to make the other person into some evil person who can't even be argued with because they are so evil. That's why there is no real political discourse but just people screaming at each other.

It used to be the monopoly of the right in US, now it's interesting to see that the left engages in the exact same rhetoric, techniques and tactics. Or maybe they always did, it's just more blatant today how both sides are extreme and if you don't fall in line you're either Satan or worse than Hitler.
> and you have to pay large health insurance premiums

This part still bothers me after 10 years in the US. Health insurance might as well be a tax if you have a family or any ongoing health issues. Hearing people say "I don't support universal health care because my taxes would go up" drives me insane. If the proposition was higher taxes but less overall money spent on healthcare then it's a net gain for you. Of course there would still be many issues to resolve (is it 100% public or a public/private mix, how do you control costs, how to you serve the massive rural areas here, how to manage the job losses from removing insurance/billing from the industry etc) but tax increases is a shitty reason not to at least look into it. It also amazes me that the same people opposed to tax increases aren't the ones screaming to remove the burden of health insurance from employers.

There are many things I love about living in the US but I am still often amazed at how much the US accomplishes despite some of these barriers. Perhaps I am naive to assume the US would be even more dominant in the world if we could sort out basic issues that other countries seem to have already resolved.
GDP per capita in the US is more than 25% greater than Europe.
Two years and another of security updates.
>I am no scientist, my question is this: wouldn't it be a zero sum game at best? You are taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, turning it into fuel, which then is used in CO2 emitting engines.

Indeed, it's a losing game, not even zero sum. But it's suitable for some scenarios: absorb the renewable production peaks (broad daylight, wind blowing, massive output from solar panels and wind turbines), now you have a reserve for when production is lower than demand. Bonus, this reserve is not just a battery, you can fuel cars with it. Or fill a lake if you really have a lot. whatever.
Phasing Out SHA-1 on the Public Web
> (e.g. Federal government jobs and some companies) but these are frequently viewed as undesirable

Federal and government (city, state etc.) jobs (perhaps excluding IT) are some of the most desirable jobs in US, with long waiting lines. Got try get a city job in NYC....