skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> So if that's it, this is just a numbers story.

There are certainly those who view it that way.

> But not as much of a story to write about intrigue and malfeasance at MIT.

MIT is a big place with a lot of opinions about "what makes it MIT". The admins have one point of view. Sometimes that aligns with the current students and alums.

There was an element of cerebral creativity in Senior House that one might argue does not fit well in the corporate mold or play well to the numbers game Barnhart chose. It nevertheless strikes me as a societal loss to see it go away. To steal an analogy from the article: Tor will not make its Senior House creators rich, or bring in gobs of cash to the MIT endowment. So the numbers story tells us it's a pretty terrible return, and we should shut it down, but the real error is that my chosen monetary numbers don't tell the story.
There are tons of advantages to an Android phone (I know, as I own a bunch of them), why do you and the previous posters resort to childish antics rather than sticking to the actual facts which are more the sufficient here to make your point?
Emissions is a problem that could go away with technology as well.

But speed advantage over other cars on the road is a mostly emotional desire that matters to human drivers. Cars with speed advantage are marketed as such right now. I do think that marketing will disappear when cars go driverless.

And don't forget we are in this case talking about people illegally speeding. You are not legally entitled to use your speed advantage to drive at twice the speed limit in a neighborhood with a school zone, even if there's a smoky pickup in front of you. And yet, if we don't put speed bumps in the way, some people will choose to do so anyway, putting others at risk. A kid in my neighborhood was killed just a couple of weeks ago by someone speeding, and there are several speed bumps near me that were installed immediately after children were hit.
I think that after 30 years of lively interaction, my relationship with Lisp can be considered to have gone beyond infatuation.

Whether that's a good thing is debatable, of course.
Betting on the Web – Why I Build PWAs
Why would you think it's a matter of lack of comprehension? In such a disproportionate conflict, the vulnerability of the West is local popular opinion. The fact that the population supports Hamas is a great way to justify repressive measures.
I decide what to learn mostly from looking at job requirements of similar fields. Most companies usually adopt things that work and save them time. This was also how I picked up on the Kotlin wave before it went mainstream for Android.

If something makes me uncomfortable, I try to look at it. Usually it's things that seem really powerful, which people hate, but don't really justify why. React and MongoDB are prime examples.

I find that most of the "fun" and interesting tech isn't really that helpful to work with. The best tech is tiresome to learn, especially in Android.

I freelance, so usually I would allocate a couple of days just to grind up programming skills in certain things. I used to do something like 30 mins a morning to warm up my typing speed, but it doesn't stick when I have to deal with deadlines.
im guessing their concern is the drone malfunctions and drops the goods over an elementary school. They want hand to hand transactions with consenting adults
Most apps should have two things:

1) A style guide or component library that is used by both design and engineering for any commonly-used component. In some projects this could just be vanilla Bootstrap.

2) An inline style strategy -- there are now several good options to choose from (Styled components, glamorous, etc). A cool idea here that an engineer on my team implemented recently is using a webpack loader to convert our SASS variables into javascript variables so they can be shared with your styled components.
That's never been tested in court, and requires some rather large leaps of thought.
Speak for yourself! This hacker had no trouble using it and I deleted my Twitter account a month ago!
Love to find one in Los Angeles. Tried making one, a free hackers coworking space for years, but could never get it off the ground. It was there, Drop Labs, for years, free and empty. Evening events drew people, but beer always does that.
I agree with everything you wrote here. I too see the problem as primarily systemic.

The problem here is also that users are kind of "captive consumers" of software; i.e. more often than not, there's no other choice besides either using or not using a piece of software. And even if there is a choice, it's usually between two or three pieces of softare, all competing with each other on shiny features and accumulating bloat at tremendous speed.

The frustration is there though; it shows in the rare cases when there is a partial choice. For instance, I know plenty of people who refuse to use Facebook app because of the battery usage, and instead choose to go to Facebook mobile site (which is objectively more annoying and less user-friendly than the app).

> Which is why if consumers made a big enough stink, the problems would get fixed more quickly.

Which is why I do my part in making the stink, complaining about the bloat and waste in places where both users and developers can hear, besides trying to ensure my own backyard (at work and otherwise) is as bloat-free as possible. I guess that's the best I can think of without going into full advocacy mode.
> Whilst I am in favour of the optimisation of resources (and use these sources) we are willingly moving the "View Source" model to for profit entities like github.

It's not necessarily an either/or. We invented sourcemaps so that we can continue to debug the code we write. There is nothing stopping us from copying our sourcemaps and source files to Production for ourselves (let's face, we all sometimes try to debug Production) and even for those next generation programmers that get curious how we build what we build.
This isn't occurring st some subset of stages; it's been steady throughout my entire life. And I've grown more and more cynical with age. It's a decision that I've long intellectualized.

People who don't survive aren't around anymore to discuss whether they are satisfied with their decision. Why would I waste my time talking to someone who intends to talk me out of something that isn't a debate to me? It's a personal decision.
This is more a declaration of intent. I am aware that const doesn't stop property modifications, and I think it's ridiculous.

I try to use "const" to mean "I never intend to change this." And I keep lobbying people to give us a better const keyword.

But thank you, I appreciate the feedback.
The arguments don't pertain directly to writing CSS in JS, in my mind. Writing CSS in JS doesn't force you to couple your styles to your components, or reuse code or not reuse code, or be consistent or inconsistent with your styles. If anything, it gives you more options.

The appeal of CSS in JS to me is one less language to think in -- one less syntax to worry about and format and lint and forget semicolons in. Also, modules and defining constants. Most web developers seem to use a compile-to-CSS language and a module system these days anyway, rather than vanilla CSS.
> OOCSS, SMACSS, BEM, ITCSS, and ECSS

I've been writing CSS since IE6 and I was a big proponent of BEM for a long time. In the end it didn't cut it and CSS-in-JS is the first time I've actually felt that the CSS problem is solved. To hear "you should be using BEM instead" feels like someone telling me to go back to ES5.
Do you guys not use react? CSS in JS is now the standard.
Best compromise I've found: CSS modules [1] (commonly implemented with Webpack) which have you write a separate CSS file but modularizes it by exporting hashed versions of the classnames for you to use in your components.

It's the best of both worlds: you don't have to give up CSS tooling like Sass or postcss, but you gain modularity (which is really the only problem CSS-in-JS solves).

[1] https://github.com/css-modules/css-modules
> The trend started by minifiers like UglifyJS and continued by transpilers like Babel will only accelerate.

No, the Babel trend is decelerating thanks to ES6 being supported practically everywhere. Minifiers (based on Babel :D) are still used but they're not that necessary thanks to HTTP compression.

We have a component model with Custom Elements, encapsulation with Shadow DOM, variables (custom properties) in CSS, JavaScript with classes and modules, and HTTP/2 push to deliver these modules without extra roundtrips. The future is more platform, less tooling.
HBR: The Overcommitted Organization
Reverse-engineering Content Snare after one year of growth
How it can about "for you" if the instance is shared between different users ?
I disagree. With a high sex drive, it's probable that I would reproduce eventually, risking passing on my genes. Suicide ensures that procreation won't occur.
How we architect our pattern library using design APIs
In America this is called "prosperity preaching" and is very popular in the black community, which also happens to be the demographic most affected by poverty in the United States.
> Ambulance crews do not prowl the street and abduct unsuspecting European tourists and force them to donate blood before they're allowed to escape.

Why would they? The US produces a surplus of blood and tissue, to the point that many other countries (particularly in Europe) have to purchase to from the US to address their own shortages.
You don't even need that. Phones like the LG Fortune, which I own and works totally fine, can be bought for $25 new and out the door, no contract, at mainstream retailers like Best Buy.

I also have a moto e4 which I'm using to type this. I think it cost me about $65. (I also have a variety of iDevices and flagship phones for testing stuff I write)

We are in the age of adequate, super cheap phones that aren't awful. I have the option of, but choose not to place my sim card in one of more expensive and flashy devices I own because I'd rather have the thing I carry with me be a "worthless commodity" that could get lost without my caring at all.

Last time my phone broke I just swapped the sim card that day, not caring in the slightest. This is a liberating experience.

You can also do this with prescription glasses - you can pay under $7 a pair online. Anti-scratch, investment preserving upgrades and the feeling of preciousness are all gone. Not having to emotionally invest in things is wonderful.
I would like this to be on Audible, but it seems neither of their books are.
This looks like it was written by someone who hasn't really used a 'CSS in JS' approach. The complaints are actually non existent. Any CSS-in-JS approach is going to have a way to standardize styles across your application.

Regardless, I'm not a huge fan of these CSS-in-JS techniques anyway (although I don't mind Styled Components if I have to use it). CSS Modules, to me, is a far better approach and it sits there in the middleground between 'Pure CSS' and 'CSS-in-JS'

> OOCSS, SMACSS, BEM, ITCSS, and ECSS.

The beauty of CSS Modules is that it basically merges _naming conventions_ like BEM into CSS 'master'. You don't need a convention because the language just sorts it out for you.

Imagine arguing against variable scope in any other language with just saying "hey, just manually namespace your variables!"
Anti-Uber has never meant pro Taxi. Those two positions are mostly unrelated.
Same as when you remove their predators. Fewer of them die, therefore offsetting the balance.
I went to a wedding in the countryside last year (5 miles from a decent town, hardly remote) and was reminded of how things still are outside cities. I literally could not get a taxi from the local firms and had to wait for a guest driving my way to leave naturally.

Though Uber etc. still haven't completely solved the attitude problem of drivers who seem to feel they're doing you a favour rather than providing a service.
Imho, article is largely missing the bigger point: stifling of innovation.

Regulation should be focused on removing FB / Google's ability to unfairly leverage their size to thwart up and coming competitors.

Otherwise you simply freeze the status quo and cement FB and Google into unassailable market constants.

Sure you can regulate them to keep them from acting poorly, but what's the point if they can still squash the next Facebook or Google?

Edit: Curious on thoughts on this, but it doesn't seem to me like a progressive corporate tax rate (including mandatory minimum) based on market share (with the overage dedicated to funding basic research) would be a terrible idea.

If you have outsized market share, you're probably receiving more than your fair share of the commons, so reasonable to pay that back.
Ask HN: Ways to use technology to bring education to everyone?
I was thinking the other ways about what technology had the biggest impact on the world and the first thing that came to mind is e.g. farmers in developing nations that could now use their cheap mobile phone to access information about crops on the internet(e.g. Wikipedia). What other ways are there to use technology to get basic education to everyone? How do you solve illiteracy so that they can read the information?

I'd like to hear some ideas from HN on this topic. :)
Hi Mabcat,

Sorry about that I've been driving home all day, I'm going to look into that straight away and email you.
Secret Ultrasonic Commands Can Control Your Smartphone, Say Researchers
The 5 key elements of a legally binding contract
> where the cost is too great AND the outcome is not good enough can and should get denied.

I'm not completely clear on the point you're trying to make, but this is how things work in socialised healthcare. Not everything is paid for - instead the money that is available is spent on those that return the best value-for-money balanced against not being unfair on an individual level. The question of whether to MRI everyone with tummy pain is translatable into a clinical question and can be tested in clinical studies.

In the UK we work on using a QALY - or quality-adjusted life-year to help with these sorts of decisions. They are used on boards in NICE (for general health-provisioning guidance) and the cancer drugs fund [1] which aims to give quick guidance on the fast-developing and expensive field of anti-cancer therapies.

Sure there are no silver bullets, but issues you bring up are being tackled to a relatively sophisticated degree in other countries.

[1] https://www.england.nhs.uk/cancer/cdf/
Yes, but that is all the CSS you will ever need to have.

If you assume an average of 2.3MB[0] on the common page, that is about 3% of your project size for CSS that will not grow past that (atomic approach implies that you won't change it as we add more styles to your page(s)).

[0] https://www.keycdn.com/support/the-growth-of-web-page-size/
Pretty Rude!
Lots of big people in tech do drugs. Steve jobs did acid and Carl Sagan smoked weed. If it weren't for progressive states like California we'd still be locking these people up. Maybe there's people in jail for marijuana possession that could really be benefiting society if they were free. In theory there could be someone who's capable of curing cancer but they can't because they're locked up over something harmless. Part of legalizing is regulating.
This is essentially executing the "move away by dying" plan in slow motion, because you end up owning less and less of your house as a percentage, so you probably move deeper and deeper into debt.
Happy to see a book I linked the other day is now on that website.
Isn't America the place where in some states it is a criminal offence for 21 year olds who serve in the military to consume alcohol?
It's interesting how in this forum people are concerned more about functionalities that don't justify its price point. But not so much on the aesthetics which is what the regular consumer really cares about. For the average Apple customer, the bezel change is HUGE. It's enough to justify the 1k even though it's not an innovation or some crazy performance boost. People are definitely still going to buy it.
Machine learning optimization of machine learning architecture
I don't really like the name.

Vue Yue Vue Yue Yao Yue.
Very readable article. My favourite line:

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Image macro memes in 2017 is like putting fingers down my throat.
You find it extremely hard to find qualified people - for the price you want to pay, the environment you want to provide, etc. Expect that to continue. Until you start looking for people to work exclusively remotely, you'll have a hard time.
are you including VAT in European prices? Any comparison needs to be worked back to price before taxes.
Are those people with iPhones in Korea and Thailand buying on installment or paying by the month/renting the phones instead of buying?
'Years of experience' is a garbage metric
If these are similar to other "uncontacted" tribes I've read about, they seem to react quite violently/aggressively when confronted (it doesn't matter if it's a reaction to fear... if someone's shooting arrows at you first and asking questions later and you have a gun... most people are going to return fire), so if the gold miners said they either had to kill or be killed, I'm inclined to believe them unfortunately.
Some people really do just want to be drones and are perfectly happy going in and doing a simple mundane task over and over.

If anything, this last election should have exposed this. There is a whole cohort of people out there that feel they've been slighted and left behind because of the shift in manufacturing. They feel like they should still be able to go in and be a drone and get paid well enough to raise a family.
The main problem is that NVidia is screwing things up. NVidia is only supporting OpenCL1.1, which means that if you want to use C++ / SPIR, you pretty much are locked to AMD / Intel (Intel CPUs have an OpenCL -> AVX layer, so you can always "worst-case" turn OpenCL code into native CPU code)

NVidia of course owns CUDA, which means they want those "premium features" locked to CUDA-only.

--------

AMD's laptop offerings offer some intriguing features on OpenCL as well. Since their APUs have a CPU AND a GPU on the same die, the data-transfer between CPU / GPU on the AMD APUs (ie: an A10 laptop chip) is absurdly fast. Like, they share L2 cache IIRC, so the data doesn't even hit main-memory, or even leave the chip.

But there's basically no point optimizing for that architecture, as far as I can tell anyway.
I don't think the article advocates for b):

> How can these benign, universally loved innovators be stopped from turning into evil, soulless corporate behemoths? Break up companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon, (...) Or perhaps recognize them as utilities (...) Neither makes sense in most cases.

In fact they advocate for c):
Tech giants should be treated as classical business. Amazon like a retailer, Uber like a taxi comp, Airbnb like an hotel brand, …

For Facebook they talk more about the fact if it was treated as a media company they should keep track of who is running ads and follow regulations on political ads.
It's all fun and games until somebody drains your speed bump.
It's a lot more expensive than it used to be. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.PCAP?locations=U...
If governments didn't create those problems, those problems wouldn't exist, so the blame should be placed at the cause rather than on the consequence.

The disagreement stems from a difference in understanding of what companies are and what their responsibilities should be. Some people mistakenly believe companies should serve society out of a sense of moral obligation, regardless of profits. It's a nice idea in theory, but that's not how a free and fair market operates. History has shown that companies serve society best when profit incentives are left to the market. If consumers care about intangible contributions to society (or "goodwill") such as helping local communities, reducing environmental impact, etc., then profits from consumers' buying choices will naturally end up in the hands of companies that perform best in those areas. If other qualities are more desirable to consumers, the companies that deliver those qualities will capture more market share. In other words, companies should be held to the law (which ideally exists to protect individual property rights, not much more). Beyond that, we as consumers have direct influence on which companies survive or fail based on the votes of our dollars.

As soon as governments try to intervene and force different social benefits than those demanded by consumers, things get worse. The core profit-seeking incentives for companies remain in effect, but they now have incentives to work around regulation in the most efficient ways possible. As regulation tends to favor some companies more than others (as a result of ever-present loopholes and lobbying - or to put it differently, the government's unavoidable tendency to follow money and choose winners), those legislative efforts usually end up only making the situation worse.
Wow. Sorry about all that.

I can't speak to your personal experience, but I'll stand by my experience that the salary is lowball. I would take that sort of listing as a signal that the employer doesn't really know much about market rate for engineers (or maybe hiring engineers in general). It's possible that you're seeing a lot of that sort of employer in your job search.

If you're in NYC, I think a good tactic for a person trying to "break in" to the industry is to attend meetups for tech you're interested in. As you meet people and ask about their jobs, you'll get a feel for which employers are hiring for your expertise. And you might pick up some recommendations or relevant open-source experience, even, which would help in getting a decent offer.

I'll also say that NYC is a rough city for breaking into tech. Rent's a lot cheaper in other cities. The jobs there can vary in sexiness, but an ultra-lowball pay rate is much more humane in a cheaper city. But even there, a ultra-low pay rate should be tolerated only long enough to prove, on your resume, that you are employable as a replacement-level warm body in tech work.
Senior House alum here...

You are load balancing 5 servers. One has a latency issue that causes response time to be 2x the others. What do you do? You wait, it goes to 4x. Now what?

You take it offline, spin up a new instance and investigate.

MIT put them on notice (a year earlier), there was no attempt to improve and the bluff was called.

I wish this wasn't happening, but sometimes you have to actually DO something.
I think you might find some interesting project abroad at https://relocate.me/. As far as I know, they have job openings in Germany and the Netherlands.
I don't think you've contested any of the authors arguements here. They argue that inline styles are difficult to maintain and refactor, because of the tendency to copy-paste.

Also to implement hover or other styles, you have to go back to CSS or use JS which is much worse.

Also, it's not CSS, it's inline styles, and you lose the cascading advantage. Say I want every anchor tag on my site to be the same color, without CSS I have to go stick that style on every one individually. Realistically you would make it component, but it's a component that wouldn't need to exist with just one line of CSS.

I'm sure it's possible to write in this way correctly, but every time I've seen it it's been awful. But that probably has more to do with the fact that the devs writing it really didn't care much to write clean styles.

I'm not saying CSS is definitively better, that's just my opinion. But if you are going to advocate inline styles you have to know the trade offs and be able to justify them.