skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
see experiments with basic income

Nah. There will always be demand for people to do things. People want all kinds of goods and services. Not all of them will be automate-able. People will do those things. And they'll get paid for it.
Actually, there are some commercial libraries that make working with even complex Excel spreadsheets pretty straightforward. I've used Aspose.Cells a lot and was very happy with it:

http://www.aspose.com/products/cells

[NB I have no connection with Aspose, just been a happy customer for many years].
Has being well-informed about the news ever helped you in any way? Beyond, say, traffic and weather? National/international news, especially, since that's usually what people seem to care about for some reason? If it has, has it helped you enough to be worth the time and mental effort expended on it over the years?

I guess I can see how being unusually well informed in news relevant to a very specific economic sector might help one make a good investment choice or something, especially if you get that information before most others do, somehow. But general news? I think it's very unusual for that to improve one's life in any real way, especially compared to the time it takes. Knowing in detail the daily developments of e.g. the war in Syria or Trump's cabinet picks is of little more personal use than knowing who's backstabbing whom on Days of Our Lives. It's entertainment or a fairly low-value hobby, even when the reporting's well-done.
hahaha idk why but for some reason that made my day.
I've resuscitated an older Windows PC, after years of exclusive OSX.. I've changed the CPU cooler (Intel Q9550), added an SSD drive - and my old PC is back up, with the SSD it has enough juice to do the tasks I need it for - run Visual Studio 2015, browsing ... plus I can also play some (older) games on it, which is a lot of fun.

I miss the old days of being able to play with the hardware, buy new video or sound cards, overclock the CPU and so on.

Years ago when I was using Windows 7 it seemed the best OS Microsoft has put out so far (and I think since).

But after years of working on a mac, I have to say that Windows feels like a huge hack in comparison. There are countless UIs you have to access in order to configure the OS, all kinds of voodoo utilities, registry editor hacks and so on.

Should I also mention the daily blue screen of death ? Probably my fault somehow, but still..

Yes yes, I remember.. this used to be the Windows experience - I used to liked that.. It was what made me an 'experienced' user.

But I don't anymore. I'm not sure what the Windows experience is today, but I'm not eager to spend a lot of money to find that out...

Of course I'm curious about the Surface hardware - but not as much as to accept an inferior OS experience.

After all, these little things, the details, the polish, the smoothness ... they trickle down into the creative work that I do, they do influence me subconsciously.. all the time.
The very next sentence in the article reads:

>Even when the researchers controlled for established cardiovascular disease risk factors, they found about a 70% increased risk of ischemic heart disease in the years of followup.

Your point isn't invalid, but the authors do seem to have made efforts to address it. Though admittedly it is difficult to evaluate the validity of their controls without reference to the actual study.

Generalized anxiety has been shown to be a reliable predictor of coronary heart disease[1], so it doesn't seem like a stretch that the subset of health-related anxieties would as well.

[1] See, e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22075746
>> I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Apple will never back down on USB-C.

Nobody's pissed at Apple for going USB-C. I think everyone knows they're the future.

But people are pissed that they dropped the other ports in the short term.

You can argue about the future ad nauseum, but people want a computer that is present-friendly and future-resistant without a lot of inconvenience. Inconvenience is highly subjective, because I see a lot of people here are willing to put up with dongles on Macs instead of having to switch to an operating system or laptop form factor they don't like. That's perfectly fine.

While I get a Mac lover isn't going to switch to PC over Apple's changes, it's worth noting that just about every other PC who makes a laptop with USB-C/TB3 offers dongle-free legacy ports. The ones that don't have legacy ports tend to include some free dongles in the box.
I hate Python 2 and Python 3, but I love Python
I was sort of in your situation a while ago and wanted to learn vim, but was a bit put off by all the legacy that it carries (also spoiled by sublime's multiple cursors).

I then discovered kakoune[1] and liked its design. I started getting familiar with it and using it more and more, and I think its core is much more solid than vim/emacs. It definitely doesn't have the same community support and plugins but it's already quite feature rich.

[1] https://github.com/mawww/kakoune
My answer here is more relevant to an e-commerce company but the basic idea can be adapted to any company.

So, back in 1994, my dad and me started an ecommerce company (bikeworld.com) that sold bicycle parts online. It was an extension of his brick-and-mortar bicycle business and I took a couple of years leave from college to help him build it.

He did one thing early on that generated amazing word-of-mouth support: send a little treat in every order box. Our company was based in San Antonio, TX and Dad decided to include a little local flavor with each order to make us stand out from the few competitors we had back then (incumbent mail order outfits). At every good Mexican restaurant back home, they sell Mexican chewy candies at the cash register when you pay after your meal. My dad and I loved these things so he went to the manufacturer in town and bought a few cases of them. They were really expensive, like $0.50 each, and it became a big expense but the customers went nuts. Dad printed up a little card that he put in the bag with the candy, explaining the tradition and thanking them for their business. It worked well--we quickly became one of the largest online bicycle stores of the late 90s.
Well, someone must be, since there is even a subreddit for it: https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/
So according to Microsoft, based on their numbers, which they won't release, more people are trading in Macs for Surfaces than before. There's also no way of knowing if this claimed increase is in any way significant.

I'm rather puzzled that even with this complete lack of data, which The Verge seems also skeptical about, they still decided to write an article about it.
Washingtonwon his first elected office because he had an open bar at the polls
Yup. I decide on form-factor primarily based on whether I can easily bring the device on a brisk 30 minute bike commute without sweating (too much).
The author might not be suggesting that you make decisions immediately before going to sleep, but rather suggesting you make certain decisions about the next morning some time before you lay down.

On the other hand, I have a strong morning routine that is largely driven from previous night preparation, and it doesn't bother my ability to sleep at all doing some minor decision-centric preparations right before bed.
> I don't know if Microsoft has reached parity with Apple with professional development machines

I assume they are still way off, and may not catch up in the near future. But I also think for Microsoft that's not a problem: when professional developers buy a nice Dell or a Lenovo model instead of a Mac, and run it on Windows, that's still a win for Microsoft. Surface is also meant to show that PC's do not have to suck.
Microsoft is doing excellent stuff with hardware. It's a pity that it comes at the price of being bundled with their user-hostile nightmare of an operating system.
Users switching from macOS to Surface last year: 100

Users switching from macOS to Surface this year: 150

"Best year ever!"

--

When companies say things like this and refuse to give actual sell through numbers, the above is what I think. I'm sure I'm not alone.
Many would use Surfaces with Linux. They are excellent hardware, albeit tricky to run Linux on as they include some exotic components for touch recognition and dreadful Marvell network adapters.

See https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/
Around the World in Bottom Pot
Alternative opinion: the character trait not talked about is focus & drive. Obama is focused on doing his job the best way he thinks possible. So is Zuck. That means they don't have time for playing the "what should we eat tonight?" game with their SOs. And they simply don't care what they wear.

I'm aware of studies suggesting a set amount of decisions each day and that does make sense. However I don't think removing the choice of what you're wearing (and other menial decisions) measurably impacts your performance. It's a symptom of your ambition and drive for efficiency.

I recently went to a startup weekend. A group of young men started wearing the same shirts each day after reading the Zuck story. I think that is missing the point entirely.
Given those issues, I'm wondering if returning the laptop for a new one might be in order? For what it's worth, I've been using the new MacBook Pro with the touch bar for a few weeks now, and have only experienced one hard freeze.

Contrast that with the steady stream of issues I experienced with a similarly specced high-end Dell XPS 15"--power cord whine, wobbly and noisy fan on the graphics card, severe overheating to the point that the BIOS trigged shutdowns, repeated keys (an ongoing issue affecting multiple Dell models based on support forums), suspend/resume failures, laggy touchpad, and numerous issues with Wifi & sound across several distributions of linux--the new MacBook Pro has been a delight. To Dell's credit, they've released BIOS updates on a regular basis, but the laptop is still plagued with annoying issues, even on Windows.
Have I have fallen in love with Python because she is beautiful?
I'm north of 550, about half unplayed at this point.

After a grueling year of work ending in a layoff in 2007, I took a full year off in 2008. Played a lot of games, but also watched 4 films a day, became competent with several instruments, read a lot and started myself on the path to changing careers.

I have a stack of technical books on topics I'm deeply interested in that I don't have time to read. At this point, I see work as a major impediment to doing what I want with my life. It's a problem that I desperately want to solve, but I don't really have hope for a solution. I'm on the low-end of developer salaries.
"I told them I took a shower once a month"

That is disgusting.
Didn't someone already debunked this? or was it proven right?

"Our daily willpower is limited"
Last year's thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10599147
This is a really well written article. I knew nothing about telomars, their importance in the field, nor the controversy surrounding their length.

While some of it was over my head (specifically that image of telomar transformation(?)), the author did a fantastic job of giving an overview of the field, create a compelling argument (at least to a layman), all with several links that (I hope) support and cite his arguments.

Good lessons in persuasive writing here.
I've been using Macs since 2008. My next machine will probably be a Thinkpad or a Dell. Apple has dropped the ball too many times now, both hardware and software vice. And somehow everything Apple does now feels stale and off mark.
Click the 'web' link above on the line that looks like the following:

... points by prostoalex ... ago | flag | hide | past | -----> web <----- | ... comments | favorite
> took a shower once a month

is this a typo?
Ruby 2.4.0-rc1 Released
On 4k hidpi monitor fonts and UI looks great.
And you can run windows on Mac :)
Highest end X1 Carbon, and yeah I absolutely love it.
I have lots of shirts and pants but just take from the bottom of the pile, put back on the top of the pile. Or left of the closet, put back on the right of the closet. I don't look like I have only one outfit but never obsess over what to wear.

It also sounds kind of silly as decisions take only as much brain power as you put into them. Does Zuck eat only one kind of food ever? (otherwise he'd have to choose :O). Does he only have one of everything? Seems unlikely...

It seems much more likely to concern having a signature look (aka Jobs) and to minimize paparazzi since all the pictures look the same and are therefore less valuable.
And a fraction of what a taxi company raised recently. Oh the irony of the world we live in.
Numerai
So you know, I've gone ahead and submitted that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13158883

I do think it's important for people to be more clear about the goals they have for these systems. Do you want them to be accurate regardless of anything else, or do you want them to accomplish particular social goals by deliberately bending the results? There's nothing necessarily wrong with the latter, though you will inevitably find once you're being clear about the latter that even people who are generally ideologically aligned with each other will discover they have different and mutually conflicting goals...

Anyhow, either way, until you have a clear specification about goals you can't determine whether you're accomplishing them. A vague goal of being "nondiscriminatory" doesn't cut it for computers... "nondiscriminatory" is a set of possibilities, not a unique specification. (And if you disagree about my claim it's a set, just try to sit down with one of the aforementioned ideologically-aligned people and try to hammer it out to a coding level of detail.)
Their older models from 2015 or so with 970m GPUs won't boot due consistently due to the hybrid (Optimus) graphics. The situation may have improved with the newer models, though, and their Stealth line only has Intel graphics which should work fine.
> Passively resist as much as possible, and try to outlast the new idiots at the top.

This is why the federal bureaucracies are essentially unconstitutional: people within the rule-making structure are unaccountable to voters, but their decisions have lasting influence on the economy and on people's lives. For instance, many federal agencies define new felony-level crimes (that wreck lives) without a new law being passed by the legislature.

Don't get me wrong, plenty of people within government have a good heart and genuine motives. Also don't think I'm supporting Trump here. Just take a step back and look at the sentiment of your comment holistically: you're hopeful that institutional inertia will allow you to continue toward your goals within government in spite of the people's choice of the "idiot at the top."
"Each decision makes us less creative, less in control and less focused."

Sounds hip but it's also ridiculous. Each morning I select a necktie from an array of choices. That's not making me less "focused" later on.

So Obama and Zuckerburg don't want to decide what to wear because they don't like making that decision. That's understandable and fine. But it doesn't mean that someone who does make that decision every day (because he actually likes to) has somehow depleted his limited reservoir of decision-making ability.
Horses (in this context) are just tools. When they were no longer necessary tools we stoped making so many of them.

Humans are not just tools. Thinking of them in that way leads to conclusions that don't make sense.
I really doubt it's about choice and willpower. It's about giving out a constant image as a public icon.

Everyone knows Zukerberg wears grey shirts. Everyone knew that Steve Jobs wore black turtle neck. If they were to change their looks, there would be news articles about it. It would make a lot of noise for nothing.

It's an uniform. They wear it to work.
I have to say that A&A are expensive, but they are damned good, a case of "you get what you pay for". And in this case, they're also trying their hardest to do the right thing for their customers.
I really doubt it's about choice and willpower. It's about giving out a constant image as a public icon. Everyone know's Zukerberg wears gray shirts. Everyone knew that Steve Jobs wore black turtle neck. If they were to change their looks, there would be news articles about it. It would make a lot of noise for nothing.

It's an uniform. They wear it to work.
@shandor — yeah, there's some secret sauce happening in that impact metric, but this post breaks it down so you get a sense of how it's calculated and how teams are using it: https://blog.gitprime.com/impact-a-better-way-to-measure-cod...
I didnt' watch the video yet. But do you need to be "in ketosis" to benefit from this energy source?

How difficult is it to incorporate this in your diet? And is it expensive?
How to install Linux on a Surface was the first thing popped in my mind
I don't know if Mark is doing any coding now a days, but if you do, you you are making tons of decision's every day. Does that count?
DJI Phantom Drone Open Source Alternative
Win10 is pretty stable, what issues are you referring to?
Do you think your points are valid for an office workflow?
This is the area in question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulles_Technology_Corridor
Sharing .env files full of secrets to bootstrap a project. Typically just dev credentials, not production, but still a nice way to hand those semi-sensitive data around easily, and without committing them to git.
Haha! If only it were true. I think it was more like once every 2 months.

(I'm kidding of course, just in case anyone else is offended by my lame attempt at humor)
Totally agreed.

But the nice thing about the newspaper (The Economist refers to itself as a newspaper, not a magazine) is that they provide pure opinion journalism and as a reader you know exactly where they are coming from.

While I agree a lot with the publication (for example: they argued to liberalize drugs, or advocated gay marriage literally decades before it was chic). I encounter my share of (what I lovingly refer to as) full-of-shit opinions, with which I wholeheartedly disagree.

Overall, though, it's one of the last remaining publications, on which I put a certain amount of trust because they usually know what they're writing about and even on the subjects on which I (partially vehemently) disagree it's always an interesting read.

Because they argue their position intelligently and competently. It won't make me a believer, but it's useful and interesting to get the counterpoint from a reputable and trustworthy publication and sometimes get your dogmas slightly shaken in the process.
> It's mind boggling (no pun intended) how far psychosomatic illness can go, even as far as resulting in blindness, seizures, and paralysis.

While I don't have physical symptoms as severe as those you listed, that's pretty much how my health anxiety manifests. I don't just have obsessive thoughts over being sick. I actually feel things. And my anxiety is not thoughts -> symptoms, it's the other way around. I start having a bunch of symptoms, give it some time hoping they will go away, but they don't. So I can't help but think something is seriously wrong. There are instances where I've dealt with a set of symptoms for a whole year.

A few examples:

- When I'm anxious over a brain aneurysm or brain tumor, it's because I started having visual distortions, tingling, my mouth won't widen on one side when I smile, etc.

- I was once worried about carotid artery dissection, because I could hear my pulse in one ear and it would stop when I pressed against my carotid on the same side (a telltale sign of CAD). MRIs in the ER revealed nothing.

- My heart acts up with PVCs every now and then, and they are so unpleasant that it's nearly impossible not to think I have a serious heart condition. PVCs can be common when people are really anxious or stressed out, but in my case they just come about in my most serene moments it seems.

- I start worrying about colon cancer whenever I get alternate bouts of diarrhea and constipation, coupled with frequent abdominal cramps. This particular anxiety gets to the point where I see blood when inspecting my output in the toilet, only for it to disappear when I blink. Mind you, it's not "hm I think that tiny spec might be blood". I actually see streaks of blood when I first look at it.

- At some point last year I started having sudden weakness in my right arm. I couldn't hold parts of it flexed, and things just seemed heavier. I was sure I had a degenerative disorder of some sort. But then it just went away after several weeks.

I could go on and on and on. It's horrible. Friends and family don't understand me, no matter how much I try to explain to them that I'm not just thinking about being sick (I'm actually trying hard NOT to think about it), but I'm really feeling a whole bunch of stuff. They always revert to "stop thinking about it and it will go away". So frustrating.
I opened it and a Daily Mail story was on the top. IMO, that's a good sign "bias issues" are hardly solved.
My standards may be lower than most, but I bought two https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009HNEBLK/ and mounted them to https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002R9HQLI/ (clamps to my desk) a couple years ago and have been pretty happy with the setup.
Nope. The people who control the robots will control government. They'll make sure that tax bill is as small as possible.
@cbcoutinho appreciate that. i think this should work: https://blog.gitprime.com/rss.xml
Not a downvoter-the opposite in face.

From a rational, logical, and chemistry point of view, one cannot have a balanced view or understanding without positives and negatives.

The only thing that makes it work is critical thinking; or at least rational thinking, though rational thinking is easy enough to manipulate by any sophist. Recognizing the forms leads to recognizing the art of sophistry as it occurs. However, emotion is even easier to manipulate and inflame, ridding one of the possibilities of rational thought.
Software architecture of Free Electrons’ lab
My memory may be failing, but I think Jobs even said as much in an interview.
Why the glass half empty view? $1 Billion is still $1 Billion.
This is a good summary. If grabbing a shirt and a pair of pants that somewhat go together requires too much brainpower to do on a daily basis, maybe you don't have much to begin with.

I especially like this part:

Eat the same few meals. This is in part due to decision fatigue, but it’s also a powerful dieting tool. For example, Tim Ferris’s Slow Carb Diet suggests eating the same few meals to boost adherence.

Yes, it's also very unhealthy to have a one-sided diet. That's why you're losing weight, your missing our on the nutrients a balanced diet offers.
There are a few major players that I can think of that makes money in the compiler/language tools category (JetBrains and Embarcadero are the two that comes to mind but I'm sure there are many more). But I think for a small player it would be hard
This is definitely an example of YMMV, if someone claims that macOS is better than Windows because of a prettier UI and smoother font rendering, I simply laugh.

For me it is more important to have a file manager that doesn't lock itself creating .DS_Store files in the middle of an I/O operation (ex. copying a folder from an external drive).

To be fair, Windows has the same issue with Thumbs.db files, but I can't remember the last time it happened to me, in contrast, with macOS it is annoyingly easy to trigger error -36, just connect a clean drive and copy a big folder...