skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Lost the popular vote and won because of approximately 100K votes in three states.

Electoral campaign strategy is endogenous so to speak. Why would he bother campaigning in a state if he was sure he had enough there to win just a bit over the margin.

I understand if it was a single state that flipped but it was multiple states that flipped, and most importantly it seems he knew he needed just enough votes to flip them. And campaigned exactly there in the last weeks before the election.

The other question is why did Clinton campaign in California and never even set foot in some states that flipped? She was the one supposedly having the most experience and stellar team managing the strategy for her.

I think it is important to not minimize or reduce his winning to chance, it wasn't a random and and not a slim margin of error. Consider he didn't even start on equal footing. He was a TV personality with no political experience, with all mass media against him, with the president against him, without all the Wall Street backing him etc. That means he is even less of a random fluke. I think he is a symptom of something. If we don't understand why he was elected we'll have another Trump and another worse one and so on. Not saying I have a clear answer yet why but I think it is worth digging more in there, mostly on the self-reflecting side than blaming and name-calling side, thought I've see more of the later not the former in my circle of acquaintances.

> I hope those electors lose a lot of sleep.

It was sad really. There was so much talk and a small glimmer of hope that electors would flip against Trump and in the end the opposite happened more flipped against Clinton (5).
I don't think that the parent comment disagrees with you. It's just pointing out that the business links thing is a distraction. This is a purely evil policy, unconstrained by financial concerns.
I am having issues with 2 scammy companies and I would love to employ this method. Would your friend be willing to opensource his script?
https://github.com/tangentstorm/blackmail?files=1

https://www.sqlite.org/cvstrac/wiki?p=ExperimentalMailUserAg...

Hell, Thunderbird uses SQLite I believe as well...
My mistake, SCOTUS nominees are still subject to filibuster, it was just rolled back for cabinet nominees. Although it could be changed.
US immigration policy became broken long time ago. Why the rage only now? I'm not a US citizen and entering the US used to be a major headache every time. Every freaking time. Nobody cared during Obama's time but now all of a sudden it's "time to take a stand". I suspect it's way more about the despise of Trump than real concern about the current state of US immigration policy.
So basically you're saying that once an ISP gets enough, you stop complaining? Giving every other service provider an incentive to reach the convenient place of no expectations.
Yes. And I believe Solaris was the first to discover this. Here's a paper Netflix put out covering their first attempt. Measurable gains, hopefully more coming in the future.

https://openconnect.netflix.com/publications/asiabsd_2015_tl...

edit: check this post first

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12037748
Fearless Canadian singer-songwriter handles giant Australian spider
While we're using weak copy/pasta without real discussion, I have one that some people here believe:

Then they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the globalists, and I did not speak out because I was not a globalist.

Then they came for the SJWs, and I did not speak out Because I was not an SJW.

Then they saw that pretty much all problems had been fixed so they stopped coming for people. America was great again and everyone lived happily ever after.

Fin.
Let me first start with saying this specific case is really shameful.

The form and the app UI in general, is designed like it explicitly wants to go against all commonly accepted look & feel defaults.

As if someone who was completely not qualified for this had to complete it in half an hour.

And it's PayPal! Well not exactly PayPal, but the company which provided the Italian PayPal card, which is called Lottomatica. But PayPal should require some minimum quality standards, shouldn't they?

You can see how drastic is the change when browsing from the PayPal page to this one, from the link below and then clicking on the top right "home banking" button.

https://www.paypal.com/it/webapps/mpp/prepaid-discover

It really leaves me with the feeling that the attitude of the Italian company is: "hey we're letting you check your PayPal card balance without charging you anything, so you get what you pay for".

In Italy, banks, TLC companies and other big companies, charge for stuff that you don't see in other countries. For example initially when filling up your phone credit, say 10 euros, you had to pay 2 euros for "fixed costs", so that real credit was 8 euros. This was later considered illegal. Or the case of banks which charge you for non existent costs per year, just because they've always done so.

And when these big companies are forced to adequate to the rest of Western world, being forced to give the user free services (like letting them check their balance, or change your PIN) they do that in the laziest possible way. Also to transfer money between my PayPal account and my Italian PayPal card, I had to wait 2 full days, while I'm sure that in other countries it could take at maximum some hours.

I really would like that some spotlights would be pointed at them and make them ashamed for all the frustration they cause to their customers and this general attitude these local companies have here.
Build your cities on
the slopes of Vesuvius.

--Nietzsche
No need, the hackers beat him to it.
it's not like emergency services will have any trouble getting into locked rooms. This was a giant inconvenience rather than any real danger.
You are more optimistic than I am about the prospect of a GOP-controlled congress impeaching a GOP president.

I think they would only do so if he did something that was obvious to everyone to be a serious existential threat to the US's existence as a country.

I mean, it'd have to be something even more beyond the pale than ignoring the Constitution and transforming the US government into an authoritarian regime without the rule of law. Like, nuking China for no reason, or something.
Game Over for Democrats?
SMASH OR PASS? (CELEBRITY EDITION)
Neither feeling need be mutually exclusive.
If you claim to still want to live in a democracy, this is a completely ridiculous suggestion. If you truely believe in democracy you have to regain power using the structures of democracy, not by employing the tactics of those you are fighting against.

The only way to effectively get change is to change the attitude and beliefs of those who support what you are fighting against. In this case, those Trump supporters. I'm sorry, but short of Trump doing something silly (likely I know) and him being impeached, you are stuck with him until the next election. You have until then to convince his supports that he is not the answer they were looking for. You also have to have a credible alternative who they can get behind.

People who populate Hacker News are almost by definition educated and analytical. They are people who are able to identify falsehood and participate in a logical discussion. They tend to believe that information is valuable and of a sense that "information should be free".

Please don't discard your values and call for censorship just because things are happening that you don't like.

Be yourselves, stand up and have calm and sensible discussions, present your facts, support your facts with evidence. Understand that overcoming the negative attitudes that have invaded our society will take time, but in the end, the truth always wins, even if those who have changed their view, may not ever admit that they have changed.
I could see myself getting annoyed if it's a student I have never seen before. I absolutely adore and love it when the same students come to office hours every time. For some reason, it makes me very content and happy, and it's just such a pleasure to see eager students utilizing resources like that. Those students, I am much more casual with, and couldn't care less if they talk to me on that meta "can I ask you a question?" level.
Turn to Twitter.
Also the problem isn't the "amount of power", the problem is using that power badly.

That's disturbing, but not surprising. I guess unchecked power is ok with you as long as it's policies that you're OK with being implemented.
That will never become best practices, simply because there is too much benefit in being able to control IoT/embedded devices through the web. The only realistic solution is to develop technology (and associated practices) that are more secure against hacking- And yes, there will be lots and lots of pain on the way to reaching that goal.
Trump’s immigration ban impacts 76 Microsoft employees
Not quite the same situation, but in my travels abroad, I've encountered a pretty significant number of places that require a key to leave the room/apartment/house. Lose that key, and you are effectively locked inside. I think it is mainly done to prevent break-ins (e.g. you can't just break the window next to it and reach in to unlock the door), but it's always concerned me from a fire safety standpoint.

Anyway, at least in some countries, this is pretty common. Not that's it good. But, common? Yes.
"Limited in scope" != "fake news"
Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing
Which polls were so far in error? The presidential vote polls were ~2% out and I think most in this thread on this topic will concede a 2% error either way.
I'll amend that to say "can't be opened without the application of unreasonable force". The possibility of a power outage causing the same scenario also worries me.
It would take them a while to get to every guest, and it would require them to break the doors. Not exactly a small inconvenience and likely to ruin many vacations.
> By the time you're protesting Trump's abuse of Obama's (or Bush's) increased NSA powers, it's far, far, far too late.

...And what is the precedent for "if you didn't protest back then, then you're just fucking screwed so shut the fuck up"? People who didn't vote Trump aren't happy about the current state of affairs, but I don't think they believe America has descended into a fascist state.
Submitting that change.
Future historians would be stunned that Trump received 42% of women vote and more Hispanic vote than Romney did. People voted fully knowing what would happen considering Trump had spelled out his actions as president almost on daily basis. Sometime I just don't now if I'm living in a bubble here where everyone around me in tech industry is in protest mode. Could it be the case that people in South/mid-west are rejoicing with all these executive orders? Could it be the case that people protesting are only in slight (3% ?) majority with people who are supporting Trump's actions? It would be great to know what is going on with outside the bubble.
That's my first reaction too. While I'm not condoning this action... 10x that.
"We did it HN! We solved politics!"
"Until we can figure out what is going on" is not the language of policy, it's the language of demagoguery, and thus your trying to read it as straightforward statement of policy is a mistake. Further, Trump's willful disregarding of the facts in for instance the matter of where Obama was born, and his general willingness to traffic in conspiracy theories about various topics including Muslims should have made clear to you that he was not being truthful about anything he implied about a supposedly temporary and limited policy change while certain facts were ascertained. He's not interested in ascertaining facts, he's interested in acting on his beliefs, which are not amenable to change by contact with facts. Welcome to the world you say you voted for - with luck you will live long enough to have plenty of time to regret it.

Edit: sorry, you didn't say you voted for him, just that you supported his campaign.
Sure you can comment on the absurdity of it, but it's only funny at the expense of the victims.
> I was shocked that the best I could do was Comcast.

I can't help but feel that all of the providers are at this point happy to not compete with each other. It's expensive to build out infrastructure, and where they don't compete, they can charge more. This feels like there should be a monopoly case against all of them for effectively being in league with each other, even if there has been no explicit agreement.

On top of that, states like Tennessee blocking cities from expanding their own networks to help reach those who only have one provider? And the providers trying to argue that 10mbits is broadband?!

I'd like to see that where this is barely competition, municipalities take over. But, that doesn't necessarily mean much as in SF we've passed two resolutions for city wide wifi, and it's basically a sham.
What is the relationship here with the idea of Sovereign Immunity. Which I (quite possibly wrongly) understand that you can't sue the US government ... unless it allows itself to be sued. Does this mean in his matter the US government has allowed itself to be sued. And then how would it go about disallowing itself to be sued. Can it decide tomorrow to say "no, can't sue us anymore regarding immigration".

I didn't find immigration here for example. Maybe I missed it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...
I remember during Alito's nomination, the Democrats stomped their feet, huffed and puffed, but eventually confirmed him anyway.
Off the top of my head and on mobile leaving a protest, so forgive the brevity but...

I mean, the LGBT+ community can very clearly point to a huge amount of support, funding and policy execution to improve our role and protections in the US.

And if pointing out that the conservative media executed a racist and outlandish hate campaign with such accusations as "you are not a citizen" and "you are a secret Muslim" and "Obama death panels" (all FOX news headlines, researchable) is "Obamapology" then I say: you are normalizating racism.
Putting aside languages in which loops may be expressions, you (and also village-idiot) are talking about how a program does things, not what it does, and what I am saying is that the case for map, etc. improving readability, reliability or productivity over the equivalent loop-based code is not made through simple examples. I am inclined to believe that functional programming is a better paradigm, but I did not arrive at that opinion from simple examples.
It wouldn't be an urgent TV address, that would take far too long. There are direct lines of communication in multiple ways between the US and China, both at the political level and militarily. The White House would also issue an immediate release to the press, which would be global distributed essentially instantly.

Further, both China and Russia have the ability to detect that long range missiles are being hurled at them.

There are an awful lot of crazy notions being floated in this thread. The unnecessary hysteria is getting out of control. It's like the old Reagan days times ten (we were all supposed to be dead in the 1980s because Reagan was going to get us killed in a global nuclear war).
Where I come from, not being able to exit your hotel room is a very serious safety breach and this hotel would be looking at very significant fines, and probably ordered closed immediately until they fix this "feature".

While this may be fine for high-security bank vaults, it is completely unacceptable for hotel room doors to operate in a fail-secure mode without a backup non-electrical unlocking mechanism as is the case here.
That's called pushing on the crash bar or twisting the handle/knob so it opens. It's fire code for a reason.
The /boot bug is unreal, I just ran into that a few months ago.
Why Agile is not Successful in some Companies
As great as Ubuntu is, I've always thought that a project of their magnitude and their resources (which I grant is not a lot) should focus on QA, specifically with these sorts of issues.
> Wholesale bans of everyone from certain countries are.

The actual 120 day ban is bad enough, there's no reason to lie about it. People with green cards/existing visas need to be re-approved, they're not "banned". There's no intention AFAICT to keep people who should be in the US out of the US.

FFS people, Trump needs actual opposition, not knee-jerk virtue signaling, hyperbole, and hashtag protests!
I downvoted you for "grandma friendly." My grandma remembers when LaTeX was "new" and was one of the first people to professionally use computer-based typesetting. What exactly does "grandma friendly" look like to her?
No worse than Scalia is a pretty low bar.
No, 3 in 4 LPR spouses of US citizens don't go on to get citizenship --- LPR status without citizenship is the normal case.
Sergey Brin joins protest against immigration order at SFO
> Nope. Both had executive orders blocked by the judiciary.

Yes, and? Would you like a list of decrees ignored by previous Presidents? The balance of power between the judiciary and the executive really only finds resolution in the legislative. I find executive orders, presidential findings, and the like extremely undemocratic. But the extent to which Presidents are adversarial and seek "workarounds" is clearly dependent on the administration in power and the context.

You might find the survey of executive orders and their interaction with judiciary helpful to review[0]. Most reviews are about how the executive order is implemented, not the sub stance of the order itself. The same will most likely be in this case (e.g, how to properly resolve the status of those affected and detained right now but not the denying entry to others)

> Under the proper use of the term, of course someone has standing to challenge their own detention.

Yes, there are two classes of people here. A relative handful who have a legal visa and are being denied entry who may have standing and millions outside the US who have none.

I believe the order as written (and copy-pasted from a previous Obama administration executive order denying entry to a similar class in 2011) allows for a case-by-case exemption by DepHomeSec.

[0]: http://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/executive-orders-in-court
I believe the strategy is usually to demand an amount that is enough to be annoying but not so much that it is prohibitive. Ideally, the target is willing to quickly pay the money to unlock their systems.

> The manager said it was cheaper and faster for the hotel to just pay the Bitcoin.
Based on the discussion on /r/republican and /r/conservative, there appear to be very few in the GOP who thought that this was what Trump promised or are happy with it. Many wanted more curbs on illegal immigrants, and more vetting of new applicants for legal immigration from certain countries...but not many thought that people who are already here legally on temporary or permanent visas should be blocked from reentering if they leave temporarily, such to visit family over a holiday.
Ask HN: What are the main risks of Trump, and how likely are those scenarios?
Electronic locks have been around for a long time, and the earlier systems were not Internet connected because it would've been additional cost at essentially no advantage. Now it seems like hardware/software has become so cheap (and unfortunately more complex, thus more likely to contain non-obvious bugs and misfeatures) that in some ways it's easier to develop products based on Internet standards than isolated proprietary protocols, putting the "does this really need to be connected to the Internet?" question mostly out of mind.

I don't think it's about "best practices" or any sort of dogma, but more of a common-sense evaluation: do you really need your lock systems accessible from anywhere on the planet, which connecting to the Internet enables?
A previous employer's office had electronically locked doors (magnetic, I think?). The studio head said that they were designed to 'fail open' (i.e. unlocked) in the case of a power outage. Then the power went out a couple weeks later, and the doors were locked.

Oops.

Our emergency exits were old-fashioned analog doors and still worked, at least.
This is a wise and sensible comment. Having said that, I'll caution that in the long term we are all dead anyway.
Seemed low as as well, but making it too high would have meant the hotel might have just called a locksmith to break the locks and then decided to replace the system.

Any good parasite knows not to disturb the host system too much.
I'm actively looking for things to praise. If he implements an effective carbon tax like Musk hopes, I'll be on the front lines cheering him.

Oh, I just heard that the Director of National Intelligence and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs were removed from regular National Security Council meetings to be replaced by.. Steve Bannon.

I really, really want Trump to start doing (some) good things so that I can cheer him, but it seems like every day is a new horror.
> The biggest issue with illegal immigration is that is does not benefit the United States.

Yes, it does. Empirically.

> A country is not a charity.

Countries are obliged to admit refugees.

> It sounds mean but job of the US govt is not to rescue poor people in third world countries, it's to benefit it's citizens.

"Mean" is an interesting way to put "contrary to domestic and international laws and universal human rights [1]".

[1]: See the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 14.
Why don't you get an internship and take a leave of absence afterwards if the company will offer you a full time position? If you don't want to finish your degree and you can get a job offer you don't need to go back. It should be noted that this will make getting into grad school ever next to impossible and getting a work visa outside the USA very, very hard at best.

For Physics try the Structure and Implementation of Classical Mechanics. It's SICP for Classical Mechanics. I will leave to others the reasons to know in depth Discrete Mathematics and Calculus.

If you have so many ideas for a senior thesis, such ability in Phyics and so little desire to do the courses, why not try and get out of it? You say you can talk intelligently to Physics Ph.D. students and do good work with them. If that's true could you do enough meaningful work to get second authorship on a paper? That would go a long way to persuading the relevant person to waive one course's requirements. But you need to be really, really persistent and annoying. I have seen people make an entire semester of tuition disappear by being really persistent, and get bureaucrats to make up a transfer of credit agreement just for them by being really annoying.

All that is more work than doing the classes but possibly more fun.

I do highly recommend doing some decent humanities courses though. You're unlikely to ever write at such length again, to such high standards.
If you ask for too much you'll have serious law enforcement coming after you. Ask for only a little bit and the focus is more on the fact that the hotel was idiotic for letting this happen then it is on the hackers.

Especially with the standard policy of "we do not negotiate". That policy is really hard to justify when the amount is so small compared to the damage of delaying payment.
Yes, a big question I have is whether Mr. Trump will learn to draft his executive orders a little more carefully. If he doesn't, then needless crises like this will be a regular occurrence.

And if they are, then I don't think the country will endure that for four years without someone eventually taking it into their head to stop him one way or another.
Good point. I just copy-pasted the headline, but it's Seattle and King County that is responsible for the decision, even if it is the first safe injection facility in the U.S.