skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The reasoning in my post is nearly self contained.

For more, mostly all you need are just two boxes of common data:

First, you need the historical data, especially the ice core data. No doubt you can find that data via many sources on the Internet. See also the video clip I mention below. For the rest of the data, just look up the Medieval Warm period, the Little Ice Age, and the cooling from 1940 to 1970. That's enough for what I wrote from the data and its analysis.

Second, you need the results of the models, and I gave a reference that showed the predictions and compared them with the actual measured temperatures. You are welcome to chase down the detailed predictions of the models, one model at a time for some dozens of models. I confess, I didn't do that chasing down.

For the explanation in terms of sun spots, that the sun spot data fits the temperature data and the explanation in terms of cosmic rays, see the video

The Great Global Warming Swindle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg

As I recall, that video also explains the 800 year lag in the ice core data and the Medieval Warm period.

If you want to argue with the video, fine with me. My main objective is to debunk the claim that CO2 is a threat, and I did that without mentioning the video.

The video argues the sun spot explanation, and so far it appears to be the best, e.g., at least it appears to the only at all reasonable explanation that even begins to fit the darned data, but otherwise is tough to check -- e.g., how cosmic rays create water droplets that result in clouds to have a significant cooling effect.

So, if you don't like the sun spot explanation, then fine: The CO2 argument is still solidly debunked and refuted just by my little post.

Oil company money? My interest in this subject is only as a responsible citizen. I'm being paid by no one for this interest. And I seek and expect no payment, fame, or anything else but just to contribute as a citizen. Here I'm taking time from my startup to be a good public citizen.

The idea that CO2 is a threat of significant global warming stands on nothing solid and is easy to debunk and refute, and I did that quite solidly and thoroughly just in my post. All that is needed to pull down the claims is JUST my little post. The argument, the subject, really is just that simple. No peer-reviewed papers are needed to say that jumping off a tall building is dangerous or that the claims of a threat of CO2 are nonsense.

The claims that CO2 is a threat are a flim-flam, fraud, scam driven by money -- the video clip explains a lot about that.

Really, as I wrote, it's better just to follow the money.
I am not sure if I am overvaluing Medium but I feel that I owe the existence of my recruiting agency to them:

- In November 2014 I published "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech" (https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...)

- I immediately started getting CVs from people who googled "work in Switzerland in tech". Then, I asked local startups and firms if they would pay me if I find them engineers. This worked out and now I run https://www.coderfit.com.

- After 2.5 years I still get a couple CVs a week due to the blogpost on Medium.

If one only has one or two blog posts (like me in the beginning), Medium is probably the best place to write. But now, since I want to grow my business, it feels like a waste not using my own domain.

(Fun fact: It took me three days to write this blogpost, and according to Medium 22k people (truly) read it and some even moved to Zurich with their families and their life completely changed. However, it took me one year each to write my bachelor's and master's thesis and the professor and his assistant (maybe) read it...)
Because the road is paved with the bodies of those who have tried and failed.

I mentioned this to you in another thread, but you simply need to be more specific with your advice. Your median smart person trying to do QT does not beat the market over any reasonable time horizon. Most just flat out do worse before quitting.

This person is looking for a solid $10k per year. Suggesting that they do QT is about the same level of usefulness as telling them to write a book and get it published. Sure, it's doable and perhaps even not that difficult for some people, but it's not particularly actionable information.

To provide a contrast, the advice I would give would be something like this:

- Go to stackingthebricks.com from Amy Hoy.

- Learn how to find a niche market of professionals and find their pain points.

- Learn the fundamentals of making a product or service that these people want (e.g., an e-book) and how to market it via Amy's various writings and those she links to (her network has many prolific writers).

- Execute.

This is a formula that is actionable but also has enough abstraction such that the reader can tailor it to their own preferences.

If you could do this for QT, your suggestions will likely stop being down voted so much.
The entire point is that there is no problem with private transportation, as that's on the risk of private individuals instead of the common tax payer. You can have a system like the Hong Kong rail, operated and owned by MTR Corporation Limited. A monopoly that is profitable without subsidy by government but instead by companies; it remains one of the cheapest transportation services in the world. It pays for the privilege of being a monopoly to the government of Hong Kong. But yes, a publicly subsidized private enterprise is the political-industrial complex; and it's becoming more rampant at the expense of competition, along with the tax payers. The Hong-Kong MTR demonstrates that there is no reason why tax payers need to subsidize significant private risk, when private individuals can do it alone, especially in cases where they stand to benefit the most. If Elon Musk was so sure of his technology, he wouldn't hesitate in taking a loan.

Refer to my initial comment. Elon Musk is using massive subsidies to support his businesses, and Hyper-loop will be no different (even escaping externality costs). A mag-lev train is not speculative, a subway system is not speculative. There are many cheaper ways to create a transportation system for similar performance. Musk's isn't particularly needed at all, he is solving a problem that doesn't really exist. There would be no problem if the technology is proven to be significantly beneficial to everyone. There would be no problem with a private company paying and taking the risk on a large-scale Hyper-loop. But in Musk's current attempts, he is creating a redundant enterprise that only benefits the rich, at the expense of the common tax payer, which is money that could be used in any other government branch that has proven benefits. In general, the government should not subsidize unproven technology being implemented at large-scale with unknown real benefits to the common tax payer.
Ask HN: How do you decide what goes into the next version of your app?
On your team, how do you all decide which features will go into the next version of your app?

Note the possible answers listed below are not mutually exclusive, nor are they exhaustive. I'm just trying to helpfully give you a prompt :)

Analytics?
Intuition?
Qualitative User Feedback?
Highest Paid Person's Opinion?
Majority Rules?
Waterfall Roadmap?
Whomever on your team argues the most effectively decides?
Defining "applied math" as mathematics that has found applications is disingenous, IMO; what is and isn't applied can change rapidly in the course of a few years. A number theorist can go from pure to applied because someone else found an application of work done by other people in his field?

Taking an example from TCS: Probabilistically checkable proofs. They allow you to encode a proof for a statement so that you checking the proof requires looking at in only a few locations. Back when they were conceived, in the early 90s, all constructions were efficient only asymptotically, with galactic constants. Only in the past 2 years have constructions of PCPs been realized that are sufficiently efficient for (some) applications to checking program executions.

PCPs were for years what most theorists would consider a core theoretical object with not many hopes of finding application, and indeed 99% of research in the field focused on "negative" uses of PCPs for finding hardness of approximation results.

> If the work is being paid for, then commonly it matters a LOT to some of the people paying for it.

What makes an industry with a lot of money in it, like online advertising, worth more than study of something completely theoretical?
You've never lived in a place without city parks.
20 years ago:

* 420,000 LOC

* 260 people

* $35,000,000 / year
Copied from elsewhere in this thread:

- Go to stackingthebricks.com from Amy Hoy.

- Learn how to find a niche market of professionals and find their pain points.

- Learn the fundamentals of making a product or service that these people want (e.g., an e-book) and how to market it via Amy's various writings and those she links to (her network has many prolific writers).

- Execute.
Reading this I get an urge to reach back in time and tell the author about all the amazing programs and languages this work will lead to, about Emacs, Scheme, Clojure, ...
I think I understand what you're saying, but have you considered that user accounts exist not only for putting email addresses in a mailing list?

Anyway, what would you suggest?
Voice:
- socially embarrassing
- prohibitively imprecise (when is precision not necessary??)
- low work, but also low quality
- currently popular methods require some outside company handling your audio
- also require a good network connection, which shouldn't be treated as a given

These are all related to my own situation and preferences, of course, and I'm sure that there are some people where your list of positives vastly outweigh my list of negatives. No one's served well by assuming that everyone has the same requirements.
You can make this argument on any new transformative tech, but in the case of the Hyperloop, there's actually no new transformative tech as of yet. It's merely science fiction, which is the point of the article: it's more fun to talk about science fiction and less fun to maintain and improve the solutions we already have.
It's a joke, we don't actually use neither left-pad nor is-positive-integer...
Arial? There’s the problem right there.
> Serpentines work

Yes, for gas pipelines. Not for a track that carries passenger vehicles at 700 MPH.
There is a functional limit for induced demand! But it effectively can't be reached in urban and suburban areas because cars scale really poorly. Cars don't scale well for three main reasons:

(1) Cost. Building roads and highways inflicts both huge upfront capital costs and maintenance costs. A typical highway line has a throughput of 2,000 cars per hour.
(2) Real Estate. Building the level of roads necessary to meet induced demand+ would take up an extremely large amount of land that can only be used for vehicles.
(3) Local Roads. Local roads can only absorb so much capacity and they have functional throughput limits. If you wanted to make them faster, homeowners couldn't have driveways.

If you really wanted to, you could possibly make a city where driving is king and there is effectively no congestion. It would just be absurdly expensive and hostile to everyone who doesn't have access to car.
You'll be amused to know that similar experiments have been run for music:

2006: "Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market" http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.p...

Salganik & Watts 2009 "Web-Based Experiments for the Study of Collective Social Dynamics in Cultural Markets" http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_watts09.pdf

2008: "Leading the Herd Astray: An Experimental Study of Self-fulfilling Prophecies in an Artificial Cultural Market" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785310/
> We aren't doing "optics" anymore;

What does that even mean? Optics as in internal and external perception and politics is fundamentally important to a company. Leadership only works with trust and respect.

> CEOs are largely just figureheads these days

Looks like that's the case at soundcloud but in normal healthy corporations, CEOs do actually make decisions and drive the company. They can and do become the face of the company but that's just part of the role but not the only thing they are.
As one of the engineers in those 40% fired, I asked myself if I should try to start a startup: use this [0] money, plus try to raise more in the current situation. Say, to implement a good old vision of SoundCloud - a cozy creator-driven music catalog, with communities, and features like real time streaming. But I guess, even if we succeed initially, the company will be eventually killed by the major labels, copyright infringement cases, etc. It's a rough territory.

[0] http://www.thefader.com/2017/07/26/wetransfer-soundcloud-emp...
I wonder what is the best strategy to this problem:

You take the initiative and develop a new feature, automate a task, increase productivity, optimise costs, or increase revenue.
You would like to reap the benfits (promition, bonus) but not increase your workload or take the blame for bugs that are unavoidable in the new tech.

1. Automate tasks and keep it to yourself or your immediate team and hopefully work less.

2. Talk to your boss before you reveal your solution, such that he will 'discover' it and let it be his idea. Depending on your idea, this might be hard.

Any other ideas?
Wow this really makes me grateful for the team I work on. This past 4 months we had to build some stuff that was off of our usual platform using Python and none of us had any real world experience with python, but we all buckled down and became quite proficient. None of us really complained (ok we did complain some about the import system but other than that we were good) and we were able ship a great first pass at the problem quickly. I guess curmudgeon devs are just curmudgeon devs.
It turns out that it was, indeed, the Burgin/O'Connor translation, and the reader was also very good.

Maybe I just spent too much time looking for an overarching plot instead of enjoying the ludicrous situations.
john . titus @ gmail
Yeah, I'm not. It was an honest question.
React: Dependency Injecting Components
Good domain name.
Ah, but HN often doesn't link to general news sites - most of them are dedicated to certain disciplines.

If you're in the US, as an exercise, look up the news site of your local newspaper, and read the comments there. They're often of higher quality than the larger state/national news sites, and even then they're mostly crap.
Why can't Debian switch back. This systemd is causing so many problems and is conceptually a train wreck.
I said that because it turns out, it doesn't even matter if Hyperloop works or not. In the best case of implementation, it's still not even beneficial to the common tax payer.
I reviewed a paper for a little local conference last week that I think was probably machine generated, or the person who wrote it was on some very heavy medication. There was a similar one last year which I also rejected. I suspect that the team is trying to get them accepted so as to debunk the conference, which is small, but I like to think reputable - perhaps this is a widespread effort though?
He attempts to monetize without resorting to ad networks. A laudable goal, even if the methodology is idiosyncratic.
> I think the comments section at the end was intended more as a place for lengthy reaction posts... It often feels like Medium has made a product for what they want online discourse to be, rather than what it actually is.

That's exactly it. Medium was developed to solve online journalism, and instead of ranking articles & comments by clicks & pageviews (leading to clickbait), their metric is Total Time Reading, on the assumption that people won't keep reading an article they don't enjoy or find useful.

There's a bit more info on the Business Insider interview with Ev Williams:
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/inside-the-meltdown-of-ev...

“The state of tech blogs is atrocious. It’s utter crap,” he told Bloomberg’s Brad Stone in 2013. “They create a culture that is superficial and fetishizing and rewarding the wrong things and reinforcing values that are self-destructive and unsustainable.” .... His idea back then was an algorithm that recommended high-quality stories not based on clicks, but on how much time people spent reading them.
Tools for Remote Software Development and Pair Programming
Don't underestimate the value of a known format. I have just as much distaste for Medium as the next person, but at least I know how to navigate the site and I don't need to constantly be subject to the unique style choices of the individual. If it's your site, you can obviously do whatever you want with it, but realize that deciding on Helvetica Neue Ultralight on a low contrast background is only broadcasting your unique lack of design pragmatism.
What I did was using two modes: in development mode, the shaders would be (re)compiled on the fly (causing some latency), and stored in a bank. In release mode, the shader-bank is used, and a shader compilation would be done if a shader wasnt found - supposedly rarely.

As far as I can tell it worked pretty well.
Yep, writing an ebook for 10k is a great idea!
They are available, but only in NY and one more (not sure which). I have confirmed this with their support. I am not sure if they are planning to introduce them in other regions anytime soon. I think NY is pretty much a good global location for America + Europe markets.
WW3 STILL ON RUSSIA SHOWS OFF MILITARY HARDWARE
This is so true.

The right has always had its own junk - things like Fox News, various 'Think Tanks' and academic institutions who are quite blatant in their bias.

But in the last few years, at least, I've been amazed at just how obvious it is when the left pushes a narrative, regardless of whether it's a hit piece against Trump or any of a dozen other themes: immigration is needed, climate change will destroy us all, women are bullied in tech, etc.

The same exact story, from out of nowhere, is suddenly blaring at me via CNN at the airport and McDonalds, headlining a dozen different magazines at the grocery store checkout, editorials in all the major papers, jokes from three different late night comedians, surprisingly highly-voted articles on Reddit, hashtags on Twitter, a placement in a popular sitcom or movie...
Are you sad because your open-source project didn't get traction?

That happens all the time with most people, I guess. Someday it may attract some people, but it is not a "fair" game. Chance matters a lot.

I have at least 10 libraries on GitHub that I think should have gained some visibility, but didn't. There are thousands of similar cases.

I suggest that you keep the idea machine on and keep building stuff.
So, let's trust a few who are even more distracted because of demands on their time and brain power.

Arguing for 500 congressman with all the power is arguing for all the "Research Institutes" which write the laws for them.

How many years would it have taken if we had forced those 500 to write just 2300 page ACA/Obamacare?

> why direct democracy is not a always a good idea

Always? When did I say always? I specifically said it had least things working against it compared to other methods. You could have second coming of Christ and these lands will be blessed again in his kingdom, but we are discussing state of affairs till that happens, aren't we?
thanks, I am looking into these. here's one link for anyone else interested https://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/working-with-iarpa/proposers...

specifically, this one looks interesting, with a deadline in the next couple of weeks https://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/research-programs/amon-hen/a...
A foolish petition to open source Adobe Flash
not much. when I interviewed with them the PM director told me the radio listeners were near break even, if they gave people free trials then it was 100% a loss that was costing them money.
With the right priors - self-driving cars, for example.
Because everything has to be SSL these days. Static content, open content, everything. Google, among others, say so.
Tesla Electric Cars Are Coming Your Way Soon
This response is why such measures were so effective.

Many of the tests were so subjective they could simply fail anyone they wanted to. Especially certain groups who had just recently gained the power to vote.
It's a news aggregator, not a source. In fact, it's only really got two primary functions: allow users to post arbitrary links, and allow users to comment on them.

Most news sources however have three primary functions: Identify, Write, and Publish news.

Commenting in HN is key to its existence; Commenting in news sources just happens to be a thing available.

Saying that comments works in HN is like saying comments work on reddit; it's trivially true, assuming the site is in any way functional/popular. But that doesn't mean comments are useful on NYT; take away comments and there really wouldn't be much lost from its primary goals.
> because if just one such technology provides an overwhelming advantage

I don't think an autonomous Kalashnikov can overwhelm a squadron of drones, which aren't the most powerful thing in the US arsenal either.

> There can be no doubt that we'd fire such weapons at Russian armies attempting to invade the Ukranian parliament for example.

Haha well, they'll have to keep invading and leave just the parliament alone then.
Everywhere anything like this has been done, it has been a travesty. Elitists should have the courage of their convictions, like e.g. ancient Athens had. At least there's less bullshit that way.
Money for nothing: The good and the bad of a guaranteed government paycheck
> I see this mostly on reddit with posts simply saying "I agree" or "well said" and if your lucky quoting some interesting part of the article.

That's not what "reaction post" usually means. That's just "reactions" (which I hate just as much as you).

A reaction post is something like "I disagree - here's ten reasons why" or "I basically agree, but here's a different perspective on this particular point".

So a proper blog article, not just one sentence or one paragraph.
Yes! This. SoundCloud should have focused on helping musicians promote themselves, connect with fans and monetize their music. And yeah, this space is pretty wide open right now. The ways people create and consume music are changing, and nobody is really taking advantage of it.

Man, now I really want to build what SoundCloud should have been.
I use 1mb down every time I go to my parents house. It's not fast but it gets the job done.
To debunk the global warming claims needs only my little post here.

The IPCC, Al Gore, Paris Accords, etc. are all just that stupid.

You found nothing wrong with what I wrote. The debunking is easy, needs only very simple arguments, and I gave some.
I believe personally that the Hyperloop is vaporware that will exist only seasonally on the cover of Popular Mechanics. If somones actually produces even a semi-functional hyperloop testbed maybe I'll sing a different tune.
You could consider puttng something next to your contact info along the lines of "I offer consulting services for $X,XXX per day" or whatever.

I've had good experience with putting that kind of offer on open source projects in the past - fewer emails, more respect, and occasionally a few $.
Are you waiting to bet that current President can be "educated" to change his views because he has intellectual curiosity? He is representative democracy in action, isn't he?

Are you willing to say that you support the President, because he is result of representative democracy?

>It takes a certain amount of curiosity to want to do that, and that's something that has to come from within, you can't bring it about directly.

Is that "something within" a requirement for our elected representatives? If not, aren't they just as equally susceptible to the same bubble think?