skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Everyone is part of society. If society "collapses" (which can take many forms), the responsible, respectable reaction is to stay with it and try to restore it, not cut it loose -- retract to a shelter somewhere with "lots of guns and ammo" to wait it out.

When disaster strikes it may be very natural and expected to save oneself, if possible. That's survival instinct. But prepare for it is not admirable, to say the least. It's being selfish with intent.

Max Levchin says this in the article "It’s one of the few things about Silicon Valley that I actively dislike—the sense that we are superior giants who move the needle and, even if it’s our own failure, must be spared."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam
United States Withdraws from Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
We have an even-increasing supply of dangerous nuclear weapons on this planet, and no short supply of individuals who may want to use them. I can envision a lot of scenarios from that which could lead to societal breakdown.
Ask HN: What suite of management tools runs your small business' finances?
Those of us who run small businesses, what combination of affordable tools handle your finances -- accounting, invoicing, reconciliation, and other related functions?

How did you move from checking bank-statements against a spreadsheet of invoices every month, to that sweet solution you're using? What software stack integrates best, and gives you performance, reliability, and confidence in the company? QuickBooks + iZettle + Zoho? ClearBooks + Stripe + Salesflare? Or have you gone all-in with a single provider for everything?

If your business is based on per-appointment fees (e.g. lawyer, courier, hairdresser) how do you reconcile appointments with fees/invoices, and coordinate appointments with client details from your CRM system?

Keen to hear from very small UK-based businesses under 10 employees in particular, but all experiences will be interesting to read.
Anyone can do it right now.
> The current version of Cage only supports dependencies written in a requirements file

It might be worth looking at pipfile.

Great project though!
+10 on the dental floss. I've been trying to find a way to buy (the remainder of) a lifetime's supply in case of thermonuclear war.

Once out of floss, I can either pull my teeth out (Well, OK, every _other_ tooth) or kill myself. Life w/o floss is unimaginable.
> The work they do is all perception-management stuff. Shuffling around work tickets, setting up/attending meetings, etc., when they are supposed to be individual contributors. Meanwhile, they contribute nothing.

I've got a colleague who worked someplace where there was a lot of this going on by most of the tech team. He got chastised in a review because he wasn't closing as many tickets as others. What most others were doing were inflating ticket count - taking one ticket, making 3-5 smaller tasks, doing those, then closing all 5. Sometimes there was more work in making 5 tickets than just doing the original work, but their numbers were "way up". My friend was counseled to do the same so everyone's numbers were "up". As it was, he was the only 'low' number and it was bringing down other numbers, and no one was happy about that. Didn't matter that the same amount of work was being done (or... actually more 'make work' was being done vs real productive fixes)... the numbers mattered to the whole place. And... I think they were trying to get lots of positive metric numbers to beef up the sale that happened less than 18 months later.
I feel the article is written in a way that's crystal clear for those who know what it's talking about, but looks like a strawman for those who don't. I understand instinctively the kind of people he means, but the wide brush he paints with makes it seem like he's going off stereotypes.
I don't know if I'd necessarily wear it with shorts and t-shirt. It can be interpreted as the "this guy only has one watch" fashion faux pas.
Same gripe I've had on iOS past, could never figure out if my response was going to go over sms, imessage, or email, and if email which account, so I just avoid as much as possible, and don't setup additional accounts on my iOS devices or ones i set up. Mostly to avoid getting "why am i getting email responses to my text messages" questions etc.

Not saying it's hard or complicated, just hard and complicated enough for me to avoid. When I send someone a message there should be no guesswork involved. Not sure how both google and apple could mess this stuff up so badly in their attempts to make it "just work." Or how much of the issue is the "use only our ecosystem or your shit may to break" mentality.

:grumble grumble:
Are there any super successful people here? If yes, how did you set goals? (since definition of success can vary from person to person, for the sake of the question please consider the following definition- You are successful if you really think so, or if you think that the society think so)

Goal setting never worked for me.
[Edit] But If I were to set some, it would be something like (Thinking.....)
1. Eat, Sleep and Exercise well
2. Surround yourself with amazing people (both professionally and personally)
3. Find something you truly love doing, and something that has value in the market
4. Work your butt off
5. Take time off & Forget the rest
Let me check , if writing it down helps
Try to explain that to a hungry crowd watching your well-fed family leaving a bunker.

"Oh please, what you're doing is morally wrong. Shame on you!"
I work with someone like that right now, and it still baffles my mind. There are several people that even openly acknowledge it, but nothing is ever done about it. There are times I feel like I am in Bizzaro world.
I've had companies remark about code I've "written." It was merely code I forked and they made an assumption.
Agree, "super-rich" makes me think of Zuckerberg, Saudi princes, Russian oligarchs, etc. - "buy a yacht because you're bored" types.
I've never worked at Google, but... didn't Larry Page announce a full-blown program to fight that like 3-4 years ago? Work on features/depth rather than new products?
The sad reality is that all too often these people end-up in management position. I've worked for at least a couple of such folks. They were technically incompetent yet could say enough in meetings to appear like geniuses to upper management and non-technical folks. Master manipulators at all levels. It is interesting to note this is the very thing politics is about.
This is a nerve-wracking process as there's little to no feedback on how this process is progressing, but it does work! I migrated my Google Voice number, which was long since my primary, out of Google Voice over to my cell carrier about a year ago.
Let's be real- this article is more a lifestyle piece on the excessively prepared, i.e. type A, silicon valley super achievers. Apparently, this is an article about these folks who have their shit together so far ahead the rest of us, that this otherwise genius for productivity goes into form of deranged overdrive.

Let's also look at this article's source, the New Yorker, as a vicarious observer and critic of anything that veers off their path of caring/obsessing about depresssing novelists/filmmaker s and actors, fashion, and all things analogue as the solution to the salvation of the light of humanity and culture, of which they perceive themselves as the clear torchbearers.
Did any other dealer ever refuse to sell a car on similar terms? "I would like that car. What is your flat, non-negotiable price?"
Dear Sir:

I have been requested by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company to contact you for assistance in resolving a matter. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company has recently concluded a large number of contracts for oil exploration in the sub-Sahara region. The contracts have immediately produced moneys equaling US$40,000,000. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company is desirous of oil exploration in other parts of the world, however, because of certain regulations of the Nigerian Government, it is unable to move these funds to another region.

You assistance is requested as a non-Nigerian citizen to assist the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, and also the Central Bank of Nigeria, in moving these funds out of Nigeria. If the funds can be transferred to your name, in your United States account, then you can forward the funds as directed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company. In exchange for your accommodating services, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company would agree to allow you to retain 10%, or US$4 million of this amount.

However, to be a legitimate transferee of these moneys according to Nigerian law, you must presently be a depositor of at least US$100,000 in a Nigerian bank which is regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria.

If it will be possible for you to assist us, we would be most grateful. We suggest that you meet with us in person in Lagos, and that during your visit I introduce you to the representatives of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, as well as with certain officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Please call me at your earliest convenience at 18-467-4975. Time is of the essence in this matter; very quickly the Nigerian Government will realize that the Central Bank is maintaining this amount on deposit, and attempt to levy certain depository taxes on it.

Yours truly,

Prince Alyusi Islassis
Not really.

Fun fact, most dealers for a certain mfgr withing a metro area are usually owned by a single business and re-branded so they can collude on prices.

You find this out when you start shopping across state lines. All of the dealers in one state didn't want to come down on price until they found out I was talking to other dealers in another adjacent state, then they changed really fast.
Some companies are explicit, e.g. Backblaze, Code42/Crashplan, Mega.nz, and Tarsnap.

That said, none of their applications are fully open source, so who knows if they can be trusted.
WhatsApp?

(Disclosure: I work for Google, for three more days.)
It's hard to say since they added features over time. Hangouts launched in May 2013, then got one side of the MMS features working via Google Voice numbers in September 2014 http://www.droid-life.com/2014/09/10/mms-now-a-part-of-googl... Depending on your carrier, it might send the SMS recipient a URL to the content instead of a real MMS. And even now, there's no way to search messages from within the Hangouts app. You have to search from your gmail!

There was some other limitation for a while that kept me from moving. Group messages, or voicemail maybe? They did eventually fix it though, so I can't remember.
Interestingly, in the American Southwest guns didn't really challenge bows until the introduction of the Colt revolver.

Even Kentucky long rifles which were very effective against infantry were pretty much worthless against mounted natives who could fire dozens of arrows a minute.

This was the case up until about the 1850s.
The British TV series, "Yes Minister" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister) and "Yes Prime Minister" was a satirical series based around exactly that premise - a clueless politician who felt he was making all the decisions, and the actual power-behind-the-scenes bureaucrat who did. Although aging, it is still scarily accurate, if not more so.
Evidence isn't really the issue here. We're not trying to answer a definitive question here of whether or not there have been advanced civilizations.
We're trying to reason our way into a statement of probability. Just because it isn't currently provable doesn't mean it isn't a question worth investigating.
In one of the "fake news" threads here, someone suggested The Economist as a good weekly recap. I got a subscription for my wife for Christmas (she wasn't thrilled, but it's growing on her). We've both been enjoying having the physical magazines around, as we can pick one up and read a good 5 minute story with coffee or before bed.
Some articles have a clear moneyed establishment slant, but there's a lot of quality research and writing and a minimum of fluff.
The wost-case scenario is civil war - in which case society very much does break down like that.

Things will have to get much worse before that outcome is likely, though.
Nice - google voice is the one google service I use consistently. One thing that I think could improve it would be a usable / documented API or something like federation with other messenger services - could probably get by with a rate-limited outbound endpoint which starts one of the e-mail conversations you get when using the 'forward to e-mail' option. I wrote myself a google voice app at one point and wasn't able to get something non-hacky working- it feels a little bit like the current service locks one to android / ios, whereas some of their competing messenger services (e.g. messenger / skype / whatsapp) also work on windows platforms- not everyone uses that, but I think it's good to have freedom of choice of hardware.
"The problem isn't thinking machines, it's letting machines do the thinking for you."

Whether powered by algos or people, any rating system is "letting a machine do the thinking for you". Take the ten(?) minutes you spend researching the thing to watch ten minutes of the thing, and I bet you more often than not you'll know whether you want to watch it.
> The fears vary, but many worry that, as artificial intelligence takes away a growing share of jobs, there will be a backlash against Silicon Valley, America’s second-highest concentration of wealth. (Southwestern Connecticut is first.) “I’ve heard this theme from a bunch of people,” Hoffman said. “Is the country going to turn against the wealthy? Is it going to turn against technological innovation? Is it going to turn into civil disorder?”

This is already happening and I would expect it to get worse. We have a chance now to develop policies that will help mitigate the negative effects, if we choose to.
Article is clearly written by an idealist.

I've worked with plenty of people who are superb in their field, but need constant whipping to stay on track.

The threat of your manager sticking their head round the corner is a stick that keeps on-site employees grinding along.

Good management helps, but positing that you should only hire people you trust with your life (or whatever nonsense it is they're saying) is silly.
I work with Ruby on Rails in my day job in NYC. I see that plenty of companies are using Rails. I recently switched jobs and had a slew of interviews lined up before selecting my current place. I think the greater issue I saw was that companies were more focused on experience level than tech stack. It's pretty hard for a junior developer to land a gig, especially since the market is flooded by bootcamp grads.
you might want to check out some of these ed talks for ideas.

http://bigdata-madesimple.com/12-ted-talks-on-artificial-int...
nobody will give me anything unless they are legally obliged to do so

I can't think of a more polite way to say this, but going by the attitude you've shown in the two posts I read, I can't say I'm surprised. Perhaps you're the problem.

Consider this life advice.... or not.
I think what they're describing is that there can be a problem in that the pursuit of compensation causes the disalignment of incentives. "Pay me to solve an artificial problem."
And what's up with the beefed up security guy with a kalishnakov who looks like he's some steroid version of Neal Stephenson? At least they got their marketing for this article right.
Is it the /d1reportSingleClassLayoutXXX flag, described here?

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2007/05/17/diagnosin...
Myself included, many people read that to be Multiply Resistant, AKA resistant to most (all?) antibiotics.
Quote from the article:

Online versions of the scam originate primarily in the United States, the United Kingdom and Nigeria, with Ivory Coast, Togo, South Africa, Benin, the Netherlands, and Spain also having high incidences of such fraud

I suggest the parent takes some time, do a little study and call a criminal act what it is, rather than lazily labelling 200m people as scammers.

Edit: grammar
Most of it is due to
Fundamental Christian beliefs along with extreme right wing political beliefs.
maybe he is oversimplifying too much

I think that's it. Even distilled down to two variables ("smart" and "work"), you're talking about three "extremes": [1.0S,1.0W], [1.0S,0.0W], and [0.0S,1.0W]. Most people are probably in the 0.25-0.75 range on both variables.

There are almost certainly more variables, and "smart" and "work" are terribly named.
It amuses me greatly that Peter Thiel is listed as one of the people who will bug out if things turn bad.

I suppose that's the backup plan when his libertarian utopia doesn't work out?
The reason why open floor plans are so popular is likely due to cost. Think about how much more space / structure complexity you need to implement a non-open floor plan. Decision makers likely look at the options and think 'hey, not only will everyone be forced to communicate and collaborate, we will also be much closer to fitting the office project into our budget and cost projections. '
I'll second the post above -- if you miss Scuba, honeycomb.io is for you. https://honeycomb.io/blog/2016/11/honeycomb-faq-in-140-chars...
Size of Qt has stopped me from ever thinking of making a small application that uses Qt. It bumps the size by... 20MB at least. I'd love to try Lite sometime.
Its the 'need direction' part. Working from home can be a little isolating. You have to be able to direct yourself.
For most people that resource cost will be sunk. If you note take on paper the chances are you'll still have a computer. The reverse is possibly not true.
I'm pretty sure the real damage is at least 100x larger than that. But hey, this will allow some US authority to declare victory and their heads will get bonuses/promotions.

The $586M mentioned covers 8 years (2004-2012). So $73M/year.

In 2015 they moved $82B.

Edited:

This settlement is saying the amount of money they move fraudulently is less than 0.1% of their total money movements. This seems entirely implausible. 10% seems a lot more plausible.
Can we just get them to stop screwing with all the different services? I have tried for years to use Google apps as my main communication routes, but their reliability is a joke.

My wife just texted me, "Hey, I got two calls today that went straight to voicemail?" I switched her to google voice a month ago, and it generally works. Stuff like this, the syncing issues with their messenger platforms, delayed or randomly missed messages, are just not acceptable.
Ah, the illusion that one can separate oneself from you human society and survive indefinitely. We had the biosphere, we had the sovjet cold war era bunkers, and under tests- the results where always the same. Insufficiently prepared, longterm psychological effects not calculated in - the buried alive envying the dead on the surface.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs
Take it one day at a time and surround yourself with experts.
A friend of mine bought a Rolex Air King about 25 years while he was in college. Paid $1200 (and financed it for $100 a month for a year).

He wears it every day it, to every occasion, and it looks phenomenal. Recently, had it appraised in the $5000 range. He's beat the S&P many times over, not to mention the value he's received of having a nice watch every day.

Yea I get, it's not for everyone. But they're not the worst investments and they're truly beautiful machines. In the words of Ferris Bueller, 'if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.'

And for the super skeptical, here's a video of a man who bought a Rolex GMT Master in the 60s for $120 and had it appraised in the $80k range (despite decades of heavy use). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li0mRLcGbU8&feature=youtu.be
And disasters / apocalypse are distributed by a power law or exponential. The lead subject in the linked article is almost certain to live long enough to experience the inevitable next San Francisco earthquake, at which time he will absolutely die if his glasses are broken and he can't get around, so his prepping by fixing his eyes makes sense.

Most prepping means your survival on the "oops" scale goes up. The media making fun of anything other than business as usual focuses solely on preppers and total thermonuclear war or zombies or utter economic collapse. People sick of journalists, troll them right back, yah bro I'm prepping for the zombie and alien invasion.

In reality, personally I'm very well prepared for legendary blizzards, which makes sense because where I live we get legendary grade "international news story" blizzards perhaps every couple years. Because its very cheap, very easy, and I love my family. But sure, I'd tell a journalist my snow shoes and camping gear are for surviving the thermonuclear winter. Mostly because I hate journalists (just being honest about myself)
I can't see weapon tech falling much below the 1850s.

I can imagine short-term or more localised effects.

The USA could be viewed as an outlier, given the amount of gun-ownership: 22% of the population (and as some people own many guns, the total number of guns is more than 1 gun per person). By comparison, less than 1% of the UK population own a gun.

So in some countries, there may be guns around for the taking, but in other countries, those guns will be in the hands of very few people.

I'd imagine a period of a year or so where more primitive weaponry took precedence, during which we would have to relearn how to make tools, weapons and ammo without the benefit of technically advanced manufacturing.
I'm a lifelong atheist and it doesn't bother me. The public education I received was rather subpar in my opinion and I probably would have fared better in an environment like a catholic school. If a voucher program was implemented I might even consider sending my future children to one. The primary points of contention between the atheist and the religious person are how the universe was created and what happens after you die. Both have very little effect on actual day to day living.
Some of us do quite well on our own thank you. Human society is over-rated.
I am easily distracted and also like the team environment because you can tighten the feedback loop and communicate efficiently. I am the same way as the author-- night owl, ect. Going to an office is a solution for me and an option I wish I had, and enjoyed in the past. I would ammend the authors point:

You should trust employees who have a good track record to work remotely if they want and are sufficiently operating independently.

JR employees should be allowed to work part time remotely after some time in office.

There isnt a good way to inprint culture remotely, and there is a learning curve for jr devs who need senior devs for support/the internal support structure. So most Incs would be in bad shape if all there strong engineering talent worked from 6pm to 9am (as I would left to my own devices) because their jr devs wouldnt grow and other devs with supporting software on dif schedules have to wait.

Tldr not all offices are open plan, growing a team (culturally & skill-wise) is easier in the office, part-time remote work and coordination is a good tradeoff/reward for employees of all skillsets and functions.
Question for remote workers here:
I'm forced to work remotely during the next 3 months (thanks to the US Visa system) and with my coworkers, we're struggling to find a good communication software for our daily huddle.

What we use right now is Hangout for the video and a VOIP solution for the sound. The video quality is not so bad but the sound sucks.

We tried Skype, Slack video and couple of other software but I'm not really satisfied by any of them. Discord has a perfect sound but I'd like to know if there's a software out there more "professional"?
How to mount an external removable hard drive on a robot