skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A particular medium is not (necessarily) to blame. Even the proliferation of what can be perceived as low quality examples of a medium isn't purely to blame. A large part of it is in how you interpret it.

Even with books, it's all in how you intepret it. If you just read the story without giving it any thought, it's no better than watching "mindless TV". I just think there is probably a positive correlation between people that are willing to think critically about a topic and those who are willing to put in the additional effort of reading vs watching.

To put it another way, if you knew nothing of painting or any the history behind it, the Mona Lisa would likely be indistinguishable to you from some random photo on someone's Facebook.

I will admit that some forms of media are easier to mindlessly consume than others. I am just sick of seeing the "X is only for stupid/lazy/ignorant people" (where X is TV, internet, videogames, etc.)

tl;dr you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

Edit: to get back to the topic of Facebook, I think the format of social media is not the cause of the issue, but I definitely see a problem in people having high exposure to insular opinions. Mostly because there seems to be a large number of people who only use Facebook as their source of information. Like any tool, you can use it for good or bad.
EURUSD: Strengthens, Remains on the Offensive
I'm not even sure why they were given the contract in the first place. But it might have been "political". https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/politics/whitefish-energy-hol... FEMA says they wouldn't support it. The FBI launched an investigation, and the PR governor wanted the contract to be cancelled because the investigation was a distraction. http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/14/news/economy/prepa-whitefish... Whitefish claims they quit because PR was $86 million behind in payments. https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/20/us/puerto-rico-power-whitefis...

Edit: They're not a consulting company, they were supposed to be (hiring subcontractors to) get actual work done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitefish_Energy
Landing.ai – AI pioneer Andrew Ng wants to modernize manufacturing
> Walmart said the new initiative is intended to help workers avoid costly payday loans and other debt traps, and reduce the stress that comes with financial hardship.
The English forced the Irish to grow potatoes and then withheld grain shipments during the famine from their abundant surplussed stores.

It's a situation the English have repeated in numerous countries and eras and one of the reasons I think England has a lot to answer for.
I'd be more impressed by somebody fitting a 27" screen in a laptop.
Sure. But, from his numbers, if you were buying it at MSRP as a consumer, the $800 upgrade would cost you around $1100.
unfortunately HN has been using downvotes as disagreement for past couple of years.

Downvotes should be reserved for offtopic comments not disagreement.
Completely agree. The movement in the animations keeps grabbing my attention. The first slide took multiple attempts to read without getting distracted. Maybe my attention span is just bad, but I really want to understand the slides! :(
Say I agree (at least I get your point ;) - I'm curious how does one test (in the empirical science sense) a systems perspective with regards to predictions / scenario's? Because at least in popular opinion the Club of Rome is known for a pretty grim worldview and political advocacy.

Perhaps I'm too much schooled in traditional economics but Robert Nobel wasn't too kind [1] and even in my environmental economics classes we spent quite some time deconstructing the Club of Rome.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome#Critics
Yes but you can only really "have enough" once you've cashed out into a medium that has a negligible risk of being worth nothing. It still takes major cojones to leave that much in BTC for so long, thus my kudos
The US network is being spun off.

But for instance they will own Sky - the biggest commercial broadcaster in Europe, and the UK's second biggest ISP...
Awful UI on that page ... whoever designed that should be shot!
This was very far along when that April meeting occurred. Many people speculated that this was going to be their answer to the Pro market, but they took the feedback, held that meeting and promised to release a new "modular" Mac Pro.

So, this isn't what they are releasing in response to that feedback or what they were discussing in that meeting.
I am not a researcher, so I'd like to get some answers.

Why do people publish papers. Is it to get acknowledged for the work? Is it a requirement for getting PhD? Or is it so that world could benefit from the research?

Also, can someone simply use a paper, copy that idea to make a product, and make money out of it, without giving anything back to the researchers?

If researchers publish out of necessity or to get acknowledged or so that the "world knows", can't they just put it on Arxiv? Why spend money on costly journals?
fingers crossed for firefly season 2
Do You Need to Type Fast as a Programmer? How to Type Faster on Your Keyboard
Same thing there: to get the actual thing: a 5120 x 2880 IPS LED screen you have to pay a pretty hefty premium. Quick search shows the LG is around $1300-$1500. (?)

You can get a computer with "80-90%" the specs of this, and pay 50% the price. But the point is if you want to match 100% of the spec you'll likely pay 100% if not 110% of this price too.
García Márquez himself read One Hundred Years of Solitude in the Harper & Row edition and pronounced it better than his Spanish original: https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2014/04/alumnus-was-gabriel-...
While I love my MacBook pro's for dev, if I needed beefy machines for work, presumably 3D graphics related, I can't imagine paying those prices. That is really, really rough. Especially considering that you could make a monster of a machine for $5k, let alone $13k.

Like, I justify my $3k laptop, because it's a quality piece of mobile hardware. Yet, I don't lug around my desktop everywhere.. The "quality" that I interact with is the OS and the keyboard/mouse, nearly nothing with the monitor/computer. So.. what am I getting for that $13k? It just feels so crazily over priced.. am I wrong?

Hell, my $3k laptop is blatantly overpriced imo, but I pay it because there's not many options on my personal ranked list. This however... I can't help but feel there are a ton of options. So I'm honestly asking, what am I missing here? Clearly they think that some people will feel $13k is reasonable.. but why, specifically, is it reasonable to those people?
I've never used a Magic keyboard. Is it a lot like Macbook keyboards? Do people prefer it over a mechanical keyboard if they want their wrists to not hurt after a day-long use?
Also this: https://xkcd.com/1227/
The 2013 Mac Pro launched at $3000 (4 core) and $4000 (6 core), and the LG Ultrafine Display (closest thing to an official Apple 5K monitor) is $1300.

$5000 is about the right ballpark.
How does it compare to buble in terms of speed? (And yes, I realize buble does not support a variety of es2016 features).
So, I'm curious: why not engage in some neo-progressive trust busting?
We are the federation, we come in peace. We just want to trade.
It appears similar to Google vs Oracle, where google won saying Android is not Java so no need to license.
I consider Oracle lawyers poor - for example I can take an Apache Java jar and run it on Android.
> The Bay Area gives you the chance to be on the cutting edge of change

can we stop perpetuating this myth!? Sure a lot of innovation has happened that area in the past but so much innovation happens elsewhere in the world. It's not the only tech Mecca and definitely not the best.
Mongodb vs. Mysql
Originated in the 'magrittr' package. The early tidyverse used a different pipe before depending on magrittr's version.
Functional style makes it easier to have a natural semantics that corresponds directly to the language proper: you can use a small-step semantics where evaluation is just reduction, and you then have a very simple and natural denotational semantics (the denotation of an expression is just the value it evaluates to) that obviously corresponds directly to your operational semantics. All that is much harder to do with programming styles that make use of pervasive, implicit state.
Silent meditation
Have you looked at other people on the list.

Elected First female Chancellor of Germany vs wrote a book about microservices.

Yes hurting for credentials in this context. Most people have no idea who she is, her only claim to fame is writing that blogpost.
How do those look now? I imagine the beneficiary of the transaction is clearly Patreon. The fact that they happen to have another transaction that pays money to someone else is fine. I mean, we don't expect to have to write several checks to various patients and families when we give money to St Jude. Or, more interestingly, look at how escrow works in a real estate deal, where the buyer and seller transactions go to the escrow company, which is then responsible for distributing it to the various parties.

Now, since it's basically acting as an escrow payment, Patreon might have some laws restricting what it can do with that money while it's holding it. For instance, they likely cannot legally earn interest on that money. Similar to how the security deposit held for a rental cannot yield interest unless that interest is paid to the renter.
*lose
The problem with autoconf is that it detects every conceivable Unix featuring going all the way back to the 1980s, not that feature detection is itself that problematic.
I am using my discount broker's API, pretty much every one now offers an API
Don't conflate being critical of the CoR of not being afraid for our environment. Mostly I am saying that the global market has shown to be more robust to changes in population and that supply and demand has been able to accomodate more changes than the CoR held for possible. That's positive point for our global system. It seems robust within the parameters of the last 150 years.
they weren't too "early". people cloned luciferase into tobacco 30+ years ago. the problem is that there are limits into how much you can make a healthy plant glow. Also, the guy working on this didn't really know enough bio to optimize the expression levels.
Peter D. Schiff
"How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes"
It's a fairly new engine and the competition is fierce. Give it some time.
> I read a great article years ago where a Disney executive argued that they had to view pirating as a competing business model, and provide a better experience instead of just trying to shut it down.

This is exactly how Spotify get my money. It's so much easier than trying to manage a pirated collection.
No, I've never seen it enforced by tools. Physical (index cards) kanban boards have an implicit space limit though, and this is one of the too-seldom-acknowledged reasons why they work as well as they do. Unfortunately the software clones of physical kanban boards copied the unnecessary part (visual appearance of index cards) and not the necessary part (limited space at each phase).
The Congress shall have power...To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8

Yes, patents existed before the US Constitution, but the reason the practice was formalized in the US was to promote progress.
There Is No Steady State Economy (2011)
The amazon delivery drivers in my area are not part of either of those groups, they are amazon fulfillment employees, I've talked to them in person.
Well... you didn't read the article, did you?...
> Why do people publish papers. Is it to get acknowledged for the work? Is it a requirement for getting PhD? Or is it so that world could benefit from the research?

All three of those are correct.

> Also, can someone simply use a paper, copy that idea to make a product, and make money out of it, without giving anything back to the researchers?

Yes, although it's usually not that simple. The focus of research is usually more fundamental in nature, that only leads to products far down the road.

But note that the researchers are funded using public money, so if there was anything to give back, it would be to the public (which sort of happens through new companies).

> If researchers publish out of necessity or to get acknowledged or so that the "world knows", can't they just put it on Arxiv? Why spend money on costly journals?

"Acknowledgement" goes beyond that - it needs to be considered good in order to qualify for further academic positions. See https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-ca...
> Oh please: how do the homeless streaming into NYC find their way over in the first place?

If it's anything like the mentally ill streaming into SF in some parts of recent history, they are shipped there by outside localities (lots of that's happened with one-way bus tickets for homeless in various directions on the west coast, too, aside from Nevada shipping mentally ill to SF.)

> But let's be charitable: we can fund a one-way ticket back, first class, to their state of residence at a vastly cheaper cost than for housing them on expensive land they will never be productive enough to work their way out of

Which is a good way to collapse wages and overwhelm infrastructure, both physical and social, in the place they get shipped (which won't be their “state of residence” in most cases, since that's where they are now), but I don't see how that solves any problem.
> There's also the case of some of those potential features threatening to go against the Zen of Python

It seems like "Zen of Python" is applied inconsistently, especially the "one way to do it" rule. Python is horrid about "one way to do it"--list comprehensions vs loops, decorator syntax vs `x = decorate(x)`, try/except/finally vs with, etc etc. In particular, if we are going to force a choice between iterative and recursive based on "one way to do it", then I would vote recursion + tco. Of course, this is a false dichotomy and we could have the best of both worlds.

> if you are going to require high-performance * , or things that collide with the Global Interpreter Lock, etc, then simply Python is not the best choice.

Unfortunately, people rarely realize their performance requirements until they're neck-deep in Python. Basically if you ever, ever, ever think you might need decent performance, there are performant languages that beat Python at its own friendliness/maintainability game (Go comes to mind).
This has been a long time coming... I was in the market recently for a new laptop and rather than dropping >$1700 on a new MacBook I opted for the new Huawei Matebook X. I didn't even let Windows boot up, plugged in a USB and got it up and running on Linux under 20 minutes. Downloaded my git and got all of my settings in place.

TL:DR Got a Huawei Matebook X (linux installed) instead of a Macbook for less than half the price and I don't miss it.
I see that makes sense. Cheers.
I'm really afraid that this is preparing the final drop of browser support. (We've seen similar in http, where many of the http/1.1 (1997) features, like multipart-http, for-headers, etc. aren't supported by any client for years by now.)

As for MS-Word and HTML: When I finished my thesis in the mid-1990s, I saved it both in the MS-Word version, I used to write it (MS Word 5 for Mac), and HTML (expecting future compatibility). I can still open the Word version, but I may be soon unable to conjure a formatted display of the HTML-version. And I can still display a PDF 1.x...
I had a similar issue deciding to upgrade my newest MacBook Pro. It was $400 to upgrade from something like 500GB to 1TB. I'm speechless with some of these decisions from them.
I don't understand. A summary should summarise. An explanation should explain, an argument should convince, a historical overview should retell events.

Obviously, a summary can't be an explanation + an argument + history. It has to be the most salient points presented alone. Think about an abstract for a paper: it should tell you enough that you can understand if you should read the paper now, and enough context so that you can remember to read it later if your situation changes.

If you feel like the tl;dr doesn't pay full respects to the article, that's fine but I feel like not many readers will mind.
Of course it won't make anything if you count $5-$10 round trip commission, the idea is to use the $100 to start looking into it...

You need money to make money in this world... But if you have an edge, raising money won't be a major problem...
There's a book from 2002 called "The Silicon Valley of Dreams" that seems never to have been mentioned on HN.
https://nyupress.org/books/9780814767092/

It's about the environmental conditions around electronics manufacturing, and their disproportionate impact on immigrants and minorities. Maybe a bit too hardcore for the optimists here (I'd include myself), but it covers similar issues to this Guardian article and is worth being aware of.
Sure, but the US was populated by people moving around who had essentially nothing. California's huge population did not spontaneously appear. Millions come to America by walking across the borders.
Absolutely, I agree with that. But I also think that misses the point that we need to eliminate the notion that pink is girly and blue is boyish - or rather, that there are colors, interests, and pursuits that are masculine and others that are feminine.
Weird is good. We started out as a sub-culture of weird ones.

The problem is, that he doesent teach responsible drug use. Which modern phones and the internet basically are. So if you do not show what is appropriate (1 glass of wine) and by example show what you do not (engage in binge drinking) you are not preparing them for the world.

And we all knew how the kid ended up, who never drank a single drink before the class garduated.
In diapers in the sickward, after he downed a whole bottle of vodka.
> Nowadays Chrome seems to be the new IE but at least they're a bit more open overall.

eeeeeh

"Google Chrome is required to run the new Google Earth. Please try this link in Chrome. Learn more."

"Launching the new Allo Web, only available in Chrome."

"Launching Google Inbox Beta, only available in Chrome."

Granted, Allo and Inbox and the new YouTube design are now available in Firefox, but with artificial performance limitations. Also, even versions of Firefox that support U2F are unable to log into Google with it, because Google sniffs the User Agent.

Additionally, half of Google’s mobile websites are unusable, or haven’t been updated since before the 2013 redesign, on Firefox mobile.

"Best Viewed in Internet Explorer" is back in full swing.
I did ask them, the guy I talked to was an Amazon employee. I wasn't just assuming when I made the comment.
Apple’s iMac Pro is a love letter to developers
> and largely beneficial.

In some circumstances. While being incredibly harmful to some people/ in some other circumstances. These are not mutually exclusive!! You know, kinda' how atomic energy can be beneficial while at the same time being incredibly harmful. These properties can be simultaneously true.

> You still haven't at all expanded

But I did... again, in the message you are replying to.
Here, I'll try again to convey the same message, without analogy this time:

Do you believe that the stereotype "gypsy = criminal" would/should be perceived as "largely accurate and largely beneficial" for a (honest) person of Roma ethnicity? Because that's what you were challenging me to dis-prove.

Slavery was indeed "largely beneficial" to the slave owners. Even to some empires/ nations. Seldom to the slaves. See how "largely beneficial" has multiple facets? That's what I meant, I was hoping that for slavery you wouldn't find it hard to believe that it was NOT largely beneficial, for the slaves themselves.
that would be awesome. and heavy
I think you and me have very different definitions of what "good" stands for, so not I'm not inflating prices.

http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-4k-hd...
> One of my favourite functions (certinfo) reports back on when you're LetsEncrypt SSL certificate is going to expire. How handy is that?

I can't help but feel that this is over-engineering to its highest degree. What is a calendar for? Create an event in Google Calendar or whatever and have it notify you a few days in advance. Completely non-technical solution that everybody already knows how to do.
So I skimmed the paper (http://sci-hub.la/10.1103/PhysRevE.96.063107) and it involves passing current through a conductive fluid whilst exposing it to magnetic fields. However, unlike mercury or NaK, seawater behaves interestingly when current is passed through it. How do you prevent the water from being chemically changed from the exposure to electricity; given that such changes will make the vessel easier to detect (especially if they involve the evolution of gasses)?
Would it be fair to say that not all their possible outcomes were doom and gloom but that the media seized on that because it gets the most attention?

That being said... we do know that infinite exponential growth of an economy in a finite bounded space is not possible. Eventually it must either plateau or crash. We hope it plateaus. There are some positive signs in this area including most notably the decline of birth rates with development but there is no guarantee those trends will not reverse.

"Infinite" exponential growth at the scale of the universe might be possible, but the distances between even planets (e.g. Earth and Mars) make separate economies at that scale more or less separate systems. We could colonize Mars and continue growth there until that either crashes or plateaus, but that would not impact the growth model of Earth very much.
3 hours to teach Blockain and Cryptocurrencies
Hi !
I'm a French student in 5th year of Engineering school (INSA Rennes), and I have to present Blockain & Cryptocurrencies to my schoolmates in 3 hours. I can divide this time as I want, for example : 1 hour lecture, 2 hours practicals.

I have some ideas of what to say during the lecture. HN was really helpful to find articles and videos (especially https://anders.com/blockchain/) but now I'm more struggling to find what to do during the practicals. If it is possible, I'd like to create a tiny currency, just for exercise, so that they could actually play with it, study the blockchain etc.

Do you have any idea how to do that, or do you have any other good idea ?

Thank you :)
Fair enough.

I'd like to see that there is an effective communication going on between citizens and their representatives.

Right now, with the current system, I see a few ways to communicate.

Physical letter: form letter or nothing
Phone: automated system recording
Email: form letter or auto-subscribed to email list
Facebook: Ignored, form statement, or banned
Twitter: Ignored, form statement, or banned

What I do see that works is what lobbyists do: they have face-time with their legislators. The current contention rates of up to 500k people per representative makes that avenue nearly impossible currently. Unless you happen to get a glimpse at a talk, you have close to 0% chance of talking with your rep.

With a contention ratio of 30k to 50k/rep, would make meeting your representative much more likely. It would also reduce money effects, since now elections are a local thing instead of a moneyball contest.
It should be mentioned that they gave up the nukes in exchange for perpetual guarantees of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
people that moved here in the 1960s have fought tooth and nail from more people being able to move here

Well that cuts to the very heart of democracy doesn't it? Why would the government of territory X not answer to the taxpayer-voter of X, over people who merely want to live there?

There are reasons why they might of course, enumerate those reasons and the real dynamic will come to light.
But think of the x-men mobies