skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's been a problem for a long time with which I've had first hand experience. Years ago when I was in college a collector called my parent's house after being rebuked by me and convinced them to pay off the "debt" by appealing to their parental instincts. The very next day they called back asking for more stating it wasn't "paid in full". This despite the fact that they had told my parents the "debt" would be satisfied upon the requested payment. It was literally an outright lie, no room for interpretation, no grey area.

These people are the scum of the earth and I hate to say it, but all the misfortune the perpetrators suffered in the article is well deserved (in my candidly vengeful opinion).

This may not be the soundest advice, but IMO once you've gone to collections, the credit damage is done, and it's not worth paying them off strictly for the risk that they may be scamming you. It's sad that that murky corny of the industry has been allowed to continue harassment of consumers relatively unabated. I see people in this thread getting down-voted for calling out the FTC and other agencies for lack of action, but they are dead on.

If one man in his free time during the evenings can bring down a $1bn+ fraudulent operation, how can you possibly think the government is doing enough? Perhaps Andrew should be hired by the FBI.
That's an extremely interesting suggestion!
I remember reading Jack Crenshaw's "let's build a compiler" tutorial in the 90's.
Though pretty outdated, I can definitely recommend it to everyone interested in compiler construction, because it's written from the perspective of, well, a compiler creator.
How to Launch a Mobile App Startup with No Technical Background
>I can also verify that the vote that I submitted was actually recorded and included on the public blockchain.

Would this allow you to prove to someone else how you voted in the election? If so, that's not a desired property.

Currently there is no way for you to prove, to yourself or someone else, who you voted for in an election because nobody gets to see your ballot and you cannot take a photo. This makes vote buying and coercion much more difficult. I'd like our voting system to keep this feature.
What I learned from my recent experience is that if you've given them insurance information, and they haven't billed the insurance, it's not your bill yet. They have a year to do so, after which neither you nor the insurance are responsible. Now, I am not a lawyer and there may have been state laws in play that don't apply to you, BUT - that's worth keeping in mind. I ended up having to pay a co-pay after mine was reprocessed. Had I not been so proactive and persistent and a couple more weeks had passed, they would have had to swallow the debt.
I’ve been waiting for Oracle to slowly die for 20 years. But they kee growing. Enterprise, once gained, is really hard to lose. Novell is still in business, as one example.

The article touches on this, but it’s a factor of new companies eventually growing up without needing Oracle. That could take 50 years.
If Google is only using .dev internally, and there won't be any public .dev domains, then who cares? As long as my hosts file routes .dev to the proper localhost nooks and crannies, nothing changes.

Unless you've bound yourself to Big G's browser. We only use that for last-minute rendering tests because management doesn't trust it not to leak info back to Mountain View.

Also, does Medium have a minimum word requirement? For some reason Medium articles always seem unnecessarily extra large.
>What other kind of endeavor could it possibly be?

Debt collection begins its life as a cost of doing business for the lender or service provider. It could be forced by law to remain that way by disallowing the sale of original debt.
I'm not sure that's new information. It's utilizing inferences.

Basically, humans are much better at stereotyping / categorizing objects than machines currently are. But that could change (and is changing).

Watson, for instance, seems pretty good at making inferences.
(about GCE) "An unsatisfactory customer support experience only compounds their problems"

... sounds about right
Yes thank you! The other NPR show I listen to religiously!
Your viewpoint is myopic to say the least. I was also born in a country that was exploited for centuries by the Russians and the Austro-Hungarians (and before that the Romans and the Ottomans). But I can keep things in perspective and make the (pretty obvious) conclusion that yes, the Allies were champions of freedom.
that's not hard, they just let anyone rate stuff... just like Amazon/Google/etc does... One day, you might get sued for doing it though...
> Oh, wish that it were so, friend. But I'm American, and have lived in the bay area, Seattle, Utah, NYC, and Alabama.

I'm an American too :). "Driving is a privilege" is covered on the first day of every driver's education course.

> Please, then why are judges so reluctant to take away licenses from people for reckless driving or DUIs compared to other developed countries?

Because the United States has comparably poor public transit infrastructure and the vast majority depend on driving for their basic livelihood.

> As a transportation and land use nerd, I've seen over and over again how people in the states react to parking being reduced: with fury. Especially when it's "their" parking (read: public parking that they've become used to). Take away a parking lane to make room for buses or bikes in a growing major city? WAR ON CARS!!

I've lived all over the U.S. and Europe and people definitely crab about inconveniences of all kinds. Americans are more attached to cars (and largely for good reason--there aren't better options in most places). I've never heard "war on cars".
> Once a block is found, the miner that found the block will pull as many transactions as possible from the mempool and put them into that block and sign it on the blockchain forever.

Might be a nitpick, but you mean the miner puts as many high value transactions as they can fit into a block and then searches for a valid hash?
(committer on Antidote, author of Lasp, both SyncFree projects)

Antidote is designed for DC deployments, in the hundreds of clusters. It provides causal consistency and transactions.

Lasp is designed for high-churn, edge deployments (with CRDTs) and provides eventual consistency: it's designed for 1,000+ nodes.

They share a bit of code, and you might want to evaluate both to determine which is a better use case: Lasp might be a better fit for the IoT application, because it was designed for that.

Here's a HN post on Lasp's scalability:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15444156

Here's a HN post on Lasp:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14300763
A Critical Look at Decentralized Personal Data Architectures (2012)
Popular Google Searches by year, by my estimation.

2016: "what is bitcoin"

2017: "what is ethereum"

2018: "what is a wash trade"

2019: "can you eat squirrel"

~~~

A separate thought I had. Libertarians are > 95% male. I would not be surprised if bitcoin holders are > 95% male.

If bitcoin is the "next big thing," does it become... an enormous transfer of wealth to tech-or-libertarian-leaning men?

(n.b. I have no faith in bitcoin retaining its value)
>is a thing of the past.

No, governments, corporations, and people lied just as much in the past. It's just more transparent to see these days.
I'd actually be interested in your experience. Personally I have a degree in Physics. Only two classes in programming (majorly self taught) and work in simulations. How does the software engineering field see people like me? I've applied to programming jobs in the past and just never knew if I was under qualified, didn't stand out, or just slipped through the cracks in the large amounts of applications places get.

And to OP's question, look into simulation. There's a lot I learned on the job, but having basic programming abilities will go a long way. A lot of engineers are weak at programming compared to what I see in CS.
If I understand you correctly, wouldn’t that open up an avenue for vote buying? Confirm what you voted for at home?
The money shot:

Show me the evidence. In other words, show me where you got this number $3,762.20. The Georgia Legal Services lawyer told Jake that if you're standing before a judge, and you say, OK, I don't recognize this amount that you say I owe and I want to see some documentation, I want to see account statements or whatever, because I have no way to know with certainty that this debt is really mine, the judge will usually turn to the other side and ask for the evidence. And, in all likelihood, they'll have no documentation and they'll drop the case.
Dotty 0.5.0-RC1 on the Fifth Anniversary of Scala 3 on GitHub
I dunno about that quote, Treedoc works pretty well.

In general there are tradeoffs to CRDTs and not everyone loves those tradeoffs. As time goes on we find CRDTs that make better tradeoffs.

For example, the earliest examples of CRDT sets grew linearly with the values added to the set, without regard for deletion. For all time. That's a pretty steep cost.
The easiest way to dismiss most nuanced discussions is to relabel one or both positions with broad emotionally appealing words.

Some good examples would be the "death" tax, the "Patriot" act, "Common sense" gun control, etc.
> One of the things that I wish we had across browsers was a consistent UI so we could reliably inform users of the indicators to look for.

The UI was consistent with a green address bar as agreed in the cab forum. It was Chrome that broke away from this consistency.
Austin, TX taxes you for the amount impervious cover[1] that you have on your property. I'm not sure if the tax is large enough to really incentivize businesses to keep large portions of their property unpaved, but I do see many parking lots with trees and many areas set aside for storm water collection.

[1] http://austintexas.gov/faq/impervious-cover-what-impervious-...
why not just use https://github.com/zalando/patroni
I hope let's encrypt will support someday EV, without the extended validation.

Yes, without. Because this is supposed to help people, not machines, and people will never tell the difference. The ones who make the effort to understand this rainbow of colors around the url bar will not be fooled anyway (and if they are, the attack was very successful anyway).

All this said, I would like to have the name of my blog next to the green lock because it looks nice. For free that is.
> over a million bucks per mile in rural areas

This is a commonly repeated myth, but is not usually true. Road costs are far lower than often claimed. A 2-lane asphalt road construction costs about $800k on average and lasts approximately 30 years with proper maintenance. (Using MDOT numbers, since that's what I happen to have on hand).

In Wyoming, this works out to $1,600 per person per year ($133/month/person). But that assumes every single road in Wyoming is paved -- they aren't. I don't know the accuracy of this, but the University of Wyoming claims only 20% of a county's roads are paved in the state, on average, so real costs are probably much lower.

In states with any significant city whatsoever, the costs drop dramatically. Michigan, for example, has 120,256 miles of road serving 9.9 million people, 75% of which are rural. That's a total road cost of about $360 per person per year ($30/person/month).
Thanks for posting. I was already wondering, if SpiderMonkey didn't get the memo of Quantum coming or what, because I never heard much about it when seemingly every other team was touting their horn.
You sir, deserve all of the up-votes.
New performances might show up, maybe
That is the reverse problem. Flippin' gas stations STILL have a problem with this that you feel acutely because the large holds. A similar problem exists with hotels, where they'll put a lock on a ton of money in your account.
But since it's a general computing device, he can simply change the agent.
Unless you follow Saudi Arabia's lead and start granting citizenship to robots. Then you can't use them as labor for counting paper ballots, as that would turn them into electronic voting machines.
This is probably what you refer to, right? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7135833

(or if not, it's very helpful and worth a read)
Kudos.

Also, this is a fantastic format for an article if you're looking to communicate developer value to a wider audience.
If you can verify your own vote after the fact, then you can be compelled to prove what you've voted, thus making vote selling and vote under threat possible.

Deniable voting — aka not being able to verify a single vote — is a feature of paper-based voting, not a drawback.
This is exactly what I've been doing for years and got my current workplace doing.

We set up `*.l.example.com` (where example.com is our company's domain) to all resolve to 127.0.0.1. I personally have nginx set up to map `project.client.l.example.com` to `/path/to/webroot/client/project/`.

All of our infrastructure has hostnames under our domain and references other pieces of infrastructure using those hostnames.

Why is everyone putting so much effort into trying to operate outside of the established domain name system? To avoid paying the $10/yr?
Vacation in Europe is _much_ nicer than here. I started with my company with 3 weeks, the equivalent role in Europe has something like 5 weeks at start.
Then what political development do you mean?
N.B. ending an English sentence with a preposition is fine, c.f. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/grammar/ending-sentences-w... - it's just aping Latin style
Personally, I specialized in cryptography, did a few years of research in security, and now work in security. Note that I always liked programming (in fact I kind of chose math over eng pretty much randomly). To your point, I don't do a lot of math on a daily basis -- I see it more like painting/singing, you keep it as a passion, you don't do just that for living.
> Modern society works by having everyone contribute for the greater good.

Whose definition of "good" are we using? Clearly not mine, as my definition of "good" demands consent.
Is there reason to believe that sort of congestion won't reoccur?
You either have bad lawyers, or are a bad client.
(seriously)
If you're in the US, file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They will at least try to get a point of contact for the business to respond to the complaint. In general, there are a number of good answers to questions and strategies here when responding to collectors:
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/category-debt-colle...
Trolley Problem Performed with Real Subjects
Just yesterday I finished Merchants of Doubt (the book; I didn't know there was also a documentary). It's a really good book, and very informative. Side effects include uncontrollable anger and hate towards certain industries.
Our not. The comment was about the right for people to claim their innocence.

I have no idea who the guy is.
They don't hold the bitcoin, they use a payment gateway who processes it into dollars instantly.

They stay clearly why they're not supporting bitcoin, it's because the time that it takes to mine the blocks means that often the transaction is processed after the payment gateway times out. And the mining fee is too high to make it viable for consumers.
You know what I think is the best alternative digital currency for Steam? The Steam Wallet!
"Moving first is a tactic, not a goal….It’s much better to be a last mover."

That reminds me of the fact that I always find things in the last place I look.
See also: the European Currency Unit. Not a currency, but sort of acted like one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Currency_Unit
Are libertarians pro bitcoin? Seems like some of the biggest names in that space (Schiff, Ron Paul) aren't very pro bitcoin.
> But Hillary wasn't a liberal.

I don't know why you're bringing her up. You're using the term 'liberal', but I haven't got a clue what people mean when they say that anymore. What's your definition?

You say what Hillary is not, but you don't say what she is. I don't separate her in any way from the Democrats politically - at least those who hold power currently - not the rank-and-file of course.

> We are now in the world perception of Democrat = Liberal and Republican = Conservative and its just wrong.

I disagree, you're just assuming everyone's stuck in old tribal thinking when there's so much evidence to the contrary. Haven't you noticed the tectonic shifts in media over the last 5 years? The boomers are starting to die off, their power is waning, and the younger generations are restless. #metoo works because the majority is disgusted by what they see. Look at how many congress-rats are jumping ship at the end of this cycle.

The Republican party is dying for abandoning their base in order to cling to power, despite their fundraising. The Democrats are losing seats everywhere, have not been grooming enough replacements for the old-timers, and won't shake the loser 60's radical ideology - they might as well just die too.

> Case in point: Increase the wages and benefits = less government funding.

Why would you believe that taxes are a zero-sum game? Not that it always works out this way, because the economy has cycles, but you can stimulate economic activity by taxing less which does create growth that yields net increases in tax revenue.

Ask yourself, could your "tax more == more revenue" mental model be too simplistic? Who put that assumption in your head, and why is that idea so powerful for them when you accept it? (My theory is: a human tendency to treat the top of one's conceptual hierarchy as god/religion and the desire to sacrifice to the gods. If government is at the top of your hierarchy, certainly taxes are a worthy sacrifice to the good!)

I'll posit a related question; I don't know the answer because I'm not an economist, but I think it's a good one nonetheless: is there a scientifically/statistically optimal tax rate that we could tweak once a year based on forecasts and trends? Why have we not done this already if maximizing revenue is the goal? I go so far as to claim that for most people on the left (radical or not), maximizing tax revenue is never the goal, just a standard talking point when discussing tax cuts.
They aren't buying things they don't need. They are buying newer equipment to replace older equipment. Could they wait another 2-5 years on some of those purchases, maybe, but they aren't being irrational given the current system and incentives.
I get so tired of hearing this.
In my experience, the majority of practicing lawyers do everything in their power to stop their clients from going to court because they think it's a waste of time.

Most of their clients force them to do it anyway.

Meanwhile, the lawyers take the blame for being forced
to do what their clients ask, despite their clients being
3 year olds about it.
One very important point in favor of paper based voting systems which often comes up on HN is that attacks against paper based voting are inherently not scalable, while electronic voting is prone to large scale attacks by a corrupt government or a determined and resourceful adversary.

I used to be in favor of electronic voting, but after slowly learning more and more about how difficult it is to create secure system, I think voting is one place where we are not yet ready to digitise(if we ever will be).
> Imagine if a webpage posted all the votes (crypto secured of course) such that any voter could verify their vote.

That can't ever happen. It will create a market for buying/selling votes because it's possible to prove who you voted for. It will also create a system that allows for individuals to be threatened & coerced into voting a particular way.
Using Dataflow Properties to Estimate Interference-Free Performance at Runtime [pdf]
Isn’t that an example of what the GP is taking about? I keep hearing the VFX business is terrible, with horrific overwork and low pay, for exactly that reason. See this article http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/feb/25/oscars-protest-li... and this accompanying comment when it was posted to Reddit: http://reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1969o6/more_than_400_vfx...
Why the Ventura Wildfire Is So Explosive
>Pedophilia is an attraction to pre-pubescent girls

Girls or Boys. Pedophilia is not gender specific.
"It's just an ISA" though. Processor design is hard and takes time, yo. OTOH, I hope too!
If nothing else, it's probably that the benefit you get from the government does not depend on your tax burden. So the money they pay to the government has "zero" utility to them. Spending that money somewhere else, even if the utility is very low, would seem better.
Sorry but I beg to differ. That's exactly how it works. The financial officer/controller simply allocates $x for y employees.

And they do this calculation in every quarter, adjusting it if necessary.

I don't even understand how can you think it works differently???
A link (via Internet Archive) in case, like me, you can't access Facebook wherever you are:

https://web.archive.org/web/20171206200104/https://www.faceb...
I've been working on remote for a couple of years now. I would suggest you to try the same although I know not everybody might fit for remote positions.

About how to get a job, well I do move a lot and work really hard.
I have never had to attend to a regular interview and I have never 'applied' for a job.
What usually happens is that I meet someone that at that exact moment are looking for what I can offer, so I offer myself. They set an interview with the CTO, and after a few weeks they can't remember how old I was or what degree I had.

Talk to many people, work hard on your side-projects, attend meetups and hackathons and don't try to screw anyone when working on remote.

My situation might not be common, I feel myself a bit lucky, but I know there are more people like me and maybe my experience might encourage you to do the same.

Good luck and don't give up, you don't need a degree to prove what you are capable of. Work hard!
Any side project is good. I have a few Raspberry Pi that I use to hack with and those are a lot more fun, entertaining, and productive than arguing on FB.

I have never installed FB or any others on my iPhone but if I were wanting to spend less time on them I'd remove them from it first.
No voting paradigm is secure, that's inevitable. But voting machines are /efficiently/ insecure (ie. you can miscount, steal, forge, destroy and change the results /at scale/).
A "tiny" (read: small) C compiler can also be found at:
https://bellard.org/tcc/

It has been unmaintained for a while now, but it's still good as a starting point.

Interestingly enough it's a spin-off of a code submission for winning the international obfuscated C code contest (http://www.ioccc.org/).

Original code (covering just a subset of C) can be found here:
https://bellard.org/otcc/
"Like a small child, your operating system believes in "stranger danger" and doesn't trust self-signed certificates."

[ ] True [x] False

First, is it the OS that distrusts certificates, or is it the HTTP client?

Second, CA certificates such as the ones trusted by HTTP clients (contained in "browsers") are self-signed certificates.

Pre-installed CA certificates in corporate HTTP clients (e.g., Chrome, etc.) and CA certificates in downloadbale "bundles" available from corporations (e.g., Mozilla) are self-signed.
Yup, they seem to be coming in waves. In the past week, I received several robo-calls on how the IRS is suing me, after months or years of not getting any. Before that, it was the "you won an Expedia gift card" wave.
Does anyone have this compiling on Erlang 20?
>Even the true believers have largely switched to advocating the store-of-value/digital gold model of bitcoin.

Which is absolutely insane. What's the point of a currency if you can't use it for transactions? Store-of-value? What value?
Realistically, they won't be storing any bitcoins, they will immediately convert it to USD.