skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Completely agree. Declarative approaches define the palette of available options ahead of time, but if wish to do something out-of-scope, it's back to the drawing board. Imperative approaches instead give you a low-level computation environment, and hooks into manipulating the outside world.

Most facets of the original Web are declarative: HTTP is a complex state machine, HTML is a declarative language, hyperlinks are declarative ways of specifying outgoing edges of a node in a graph. Javascript enhanced that with imperativeness, which is why it's been leveraged to extend the Web in new ways -- ways that are ad-hoc reimplementations of behaviors that have not (yet) been otherwise codified.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9667809 was contemporaneous with the introduction of pocket. The top comments are probably representative:

> It is so unlike Mozilla to introduce something like that, I ran a virus scan and checked what programs had been installed recently -- I assumed it had been put there in the same way that IE users used to get the Ask Toolbar installed.

> It says a lot about Mozilla when they decide to bundle fad features like these after spending years stripping existing features out of Firefox. During their effort to dumb-down Firefox, it was common to hear that removing those features didn't matter, as they should be provided by extensions instead. Apparently that cheap excuse is ignored when the feature when it is convenient to do so.

> Worst of all, there has been almost no communication on this. I subscribe to Planet Mozilla and read everything that seems interesting to me, and I still didn't know this was coming.

> They bundele it because they get payed for it. Same story with the new suggested site advertising. The alarming thing is that this way Mozilla is loosing it's independency.

> I didn't know I ever had to read the fine print with anything from Mozilla, and it turns out I was wrong.

(These are remarkably similar to the criticisms leveled against the current situation)
Yeah, I have a love-hate relationship with Medium.

The fact that every comment is another "article" is bizarre. Also, comments have become increasingly hidden behind suggested articles and require a click to load.

But I like that you can highlight a word or sentence and comment on that. The clapping thing is kind of interesting because you can give more "internet points" to better articles.

The one thing that Medium is great at is getting an article into the eyes of the people who want to read it, which is something that my personal blog will not do.

Also, there is something nice about consistent look n' feel with the same font when reading blog posts, so someone who is used to medium might be more likely to click on a medium.com link than a ceriously.com link.
It kind of says a lot for the influence of Facebook where suggesting that perhaps you shoot an email to a friend seems like an impractical thing to do.
I'm gearing up for a 2018 "no social media on weekends" and I tested it this weekend. When I logged in to FB this AM, I had 10 notifications:

Most were:

Britt added a new photo.

You have a new friend suggestion: Gloria.

Tiffany updated her status.

Jeff updated his status.

June updated his status.

Lily updated her status.

These are people that I assume the algorithm thought would "suck me back in". It was really fascinating to see how the algo was stuffing my notifications to fuel that dopamine release.
Is this the one?

https://github.com/dae/anki
That's a (self-admitted) assumption made by @Hellchick. The Facebook post in question could have been relegated off of feeds for a different reason.
i have a python curses app that i use. it plays audio and opens browser windows with giant text that say: take a break. after years i just discovered the killer feature: locking the keyboard/mouse.

now it locks input for 5 min, and even if replug usb its still locked. only reboot easily clears it.

its been amazing. that little kick makes a huge difference. triggers 5sec of rage everytime, and then im up walking around. its beautiful.

usually i do 40 min with 15 min break, but keyboard only locks for 5 min.

after the lock, the firs keyboard/mouse input resets the timer automatically.
Definitely agree, I've never understood why so many seem to end up connected to the internet at large, or through some easy to pass through gap. Even before Stuxnet it never quite made sense, and post stuxnet it's hard to argue that it's not negligent to have a setup like that. The only thing I can assume is that because having it as a separate lan that's not routed to the internet (arguments about vlans being sufficient, etc are a different discussion) would cost more in both hardware and maintenance.
I've been considering doing a static/semi-static blog system which just notifies the user of discussions on referring sites, and makes it easy to link to and excerpt interesting discussion. Possibly even gives an easy way to submit links to start discussion on preferred sites.

That way, everything displayed on your blog is explicitly added there by the author, but once an interesting discussion has started you can easily direct users to it and they can participate under moderation rules of whatever forum that is.
Yes, see here for a download: https://apps.ankiweb.net/
We were talking about ownership...
I agree completely. I'm not leaving Firefox over this. They made a silly mistake, with no sinister motivations (can't confidently say the same about any other major browser)
They may have some naive people running things. when you have millions of people running your software stuff like this tends to blow up. I personally don't see it as a huge issue of a breach of trust but I don't fault people for being mad about it.

This is nowhere near the level of naiveté that google had when they had a real name policy for some of their services that outed dissidents, LGBTQ people, and other marginalized people. Not even the same ballpark. If Mozilla really wanted to do something nefarious or bad they could have added things into the codebase directly instead of as an adjunct. I still trust Mozilla personally and I believe they are a net benefit to the internet.
I totally understand that this was not okay, but at least Mozilla apologized and is in the process of making things right. To the best of my knowledge, Mozilla is not a greedy, power-hungry org that serves its own interests first.

Every company makes mistakes. Mozilla are really, really, really trying to actually make the web/society a better place, and they deserve support from anyone who actually cares about these things. I get that stuff like this isn't cool, but at least they are responsive.

We are as close as we have ever been to a complete corporate takeover of the web, and now is not the time for those of who support Mozilla to turn against them or each other.
UNPAID? After all that? lol
If a sailor died of cirrhosis at 40, though, the Navy wasn’t too bothered. Alcohol is more of a heath threat these days partially because consumption has tended to rise, but also because people aren’t dying of other things as much.
The point is that they make a browser. I don't want anyone installing random stuff for a TV show into the program I use to access the internet without my consent.

Another example: https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-i...

> This experiment also includes the data collection tool Cliqz uses to build its recommendation engine. Users who receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz will have their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers, including the URLs of pages they visit.
I think the evidence in this post suggests that a real friendship needs to go beyond some curated communication system where some one else (or some algorithm) decides what you hear from each other. Otherwise you may miss significant events in each other's lives.
The Great Oil Swindle
Not a link. Just a pop-up.
When people understand, that facebook is programming masses psychologly ? Why do you use facebook ?

Are people aware of facebook's former bosses whistleblower storys ?
what I am not happy with mozilla is the 'internal review'. Firefox is opensourced, Mozilla is non-profit. Although there must be something need be keep in private, I don't think the review process falls into that category. In fact, Mozilla, why don't take the opportunity to make yourself more transparent?
John Carmack had a music CD. He would track time using how many times he had to play the CD from the beginning.
Arg. Well thank you for posting. The hn title lacked that word and I didn’t catch it in the study but it is indeed there.
Yeah, it can get pretty ugly lookin' in the mirror ;)
You can now register as a DMCA agent without using nonfree JavaScript
My instant reaction is this is a terrible idea. Can't get past that feeling either. There are much better ways for people to monetize than use a tool like this. Cool tech - wrong reason.
I'm sorry to hear about your experience, but I don't think that it represents the nation at large. Here is why...

According to the most recent census data I could find (2015), there are approx. 27M businesses in the US[1]. Assuming half those businesses are wage thieves, that would mean 13.5M businesses are currently in violation of the the law. The DOL can place a $10k sanction on the business owner for a first infraction[2]. This would then mean that the US gov't stands to make $135B by placing sanctions on these businesses. To catch each business, let's say it costs the DOL $2500/business. After looking into each and every business, they would run a total of $67.5B. Now they have made $67.5B after all expenses have been made. To put that in perspective, the US gov't has put aside $9.7B for the DOL in 2018[3]. As you might figure on your own, $67.5B is nearly 7 (6.9587628865979381443298969072165 if you want to be super accurate) times the DOL's 2018 budget. Now if you mean to tell me that the gov't is going to leave that sort of money on the table, then you and I need to figure out how we benefit from this.

You might well be thinking something along the lines of "The gov't is inefficient, etc. There is no way they could reclaim all that." You're right this is definitely a perfect world scenario, but even if they could only claim 1%. That still makes up a 10th of next years DOL budget. For the gov't , these numbers only get better as more businesses commit these crimes.

Now we have to look at this from the perspective of a business. Again there is only roughly 27M in the US. To make it fiscally responsible to take the $10k bet of sorts the business must save at least $10k/violation, obviously. For the sake of this argument let's say violations are handed out per person per month. ((404)7.25)+(((3024)-(404))(7.251.5)) = $7250, that is how much you make at minimum wage including overtime... If you worked literally every hour of every day for a month (30 days, technically). So if we assume the business thinks a person is going to report the violation, they are better off just paying minimum wage upfront. Let's reel this in a bit and say you work 40/wk/mo in overtime. ((404)7.25)+((404)(7.25*1.5)) = $2900. So now the business definitely comes out ahead. They would risk $7000 by trying to save, what, $1000? Remember, this is an extreme case, not everyone is going to work 80 hours a week. Even if a business isn't more likely to hire another person to cover your 40 hours of overtime a week, they can only save $580/mo compared to the $10k/violation.

I know that there are businesses that will literally do anything under the sun to make a buck, but I find it hard to believe that even half of businesses would go against some of the math above.

[1]: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2015/econ/susb/2015-susb-...

[2]: https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/elg/minwage.htm#Penalites

[3]: https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/FY2018BIB_0.pdf
> Rails is awesome but people hate Ruby

Is this sentiment common? It might be just my personal echo chamber but I've often heard the opposite stance, i.e. people saying they hate Rails because of all the "magic" but at the same time they like Ruby as a language because of its flexibility.
Crypto-what? A fun, beginners guide to cryptocurrency parents can understand
I'm sure Facebook has tested it experimentally. But yeah I would have guessed posts from people that post infrequently tend to be marginally more interesting out of some novelty effect.

Maybe it's feedback loops: people that post infrequently tend to have learned to do so because they made genuinely less interesting posts and got fewer engagements and ipso facto less psychological reward from posting to Facebook. So, they post less frequently. The algorithm notices that posting infrequently is a sign that your posts are less interesting ends up amplifying the effect, driving even fewer engagements to these people, and so on. It doesn't self-correct because the posts are genuinely less interesting, but the would-be posters are penalized disproportionately more than how relatively less interesting their posts are.
If eyeballs is what your metric is, that might be fine, but our traffic needs to convert into something (in our case a form fill, in others a sale). AMP dropped our conversion rate through the floor. And if you want analytics & tracking, you're very limited or you have to use all/only google services.

It's a great way for google to build a captive market of content providers, but once everyone is serving AMP pages, the benefit to brands (SERP) is gone.
The gold standard wasn't infinitely divisible.
I kinda agree, I feel like this very important detail is being overlooked or out right ignored for the sake of raising pitchforks.
> Instead of giving users the choice to install this add-on, we initially pushed an update to Firefox that installed the “Looking Glass” add-on for English speaking users. This add-on was installed and set to ‘OFF’ and made no changes in the user experience unless it was explicitly turned on by a user, but it was added.

Why was this done over asking the user to install the add-on themselves? Given relatively few people were going to use this, why push it to every English speaking user? It's not like enabling an extension or installing one is much different in terms of UX but allowing the former is much more intrusive for everyone not interested in "Looking Glass".
How a Hydrofoil Works
(Somewhat off-topic, but Mr. Robot as an ''activist'' show is heavily steeped in irony. Not only is the show a huge cash cow for a massive corporation, but much of the second season is focused around the main characters realizing this whole cyber-socialist revolution thing isn't what it was cracked up to be. There's also insanity, violence, and heavy drug use, and things become more abstract and more insane as the show progresses. It's very dark and somewhat disturbing. Good television, but not sure that's a message Mozilla really wants to align with?)
No disagreement, as you’re looking at the business end, upon which talent and hard work often have little bearing. I think that people who buy a guitar want to play like Hendrix, not headline stadium tours. And that’s what I’m talking about: if you want get good on an instrument, you’re going to have to pick it up and do the grunt work.

If you want to get good at the music business, as you imply, well that’s another discussion entirely.
Former Spain security guard talks about how son inspired him to become a coder
You mean rescue from facebook's and google's agenda ?

Mind controll ?

Cmon, people love to be controlled Seriously, people want to put whole life in facebook
it promotes firefox to viewers of the show about online privacy... the viewers are probably more receptive than most to changing over to a more privacy oriented browser.
> Also, I think it's fair to point out Riedel is European and has been around for 250 years.

It’s fairly common for companies to make different things for different markets, though. GM is American, and a century or so old, but didn’t exactly sell many Opel Corsas in the US, say. (For the sake of pedanticism, as of this year Opel is no longer a GM brand, but anyway...)
Quite by accident, I've discovered that taking a microdose amount of the antipsychotic (!!) seroquel/quetiapine dramatically improves sleep quality and amount. I use about half a 25mg pill every night. You have vivid, happy (no, really) dreams, and you sleep like the dead for 8h. In fact, the depth of sleep is the only drawback, IMO, as you can't take it if you're late to bed, or you will miss work.

A moderate dose of seroquel for actual psychosis would be like 400mg, and a typical off-brand use for sleep would be like 100mg, which is what my partner was on when I decided to take one of her pills (with her consent) and see what was up. I can't recommend higher than 25mg, however.

A nice indica also helps, in my experience.

It wouldn't surprise me if bedtime use of both these things are discovered to protect memory in older adults.
I notice that these re-engagement notifications tend to do an absolutely terrible job predicting which people I would care most when they post something.

Maybe my Facebook posts drive people to close their Facebook window or otherwise engage with ads less, so Facebook is encouraging me to stay away.
I wish these social media sites just gave me everything in reverse chronological order and allowed me to fine tune the results..
This was not the failure of an algorithm. This was the failure of a person to keep in touch with an individual they wanted to call a friend, but couldn't be bothered to occasionally reach out to.

Facebook enables this sort of behavior in that you can outsource many of your social interactions, but at the end of the day, you as an individual have chosen to outsource those interactions.

I quit Facebook nearly 3 years ago, and it certainly 'cost' me some superficial relationships. At the same time, the relatively few relationships I've worked to maintain outside of Facebook feel more fulfilling and way less anxiety inducing than when I outsourced everything to FB.
I've noticed I barely get any responses on Facebook anymore unless my posts have pictures. They recently added a feature where you can add a big color background to your textual posts. My guess is that they're pushing users towards creating big flashy posts so that ads can blend in better with the stuff from your friends.

The Facebook feed has become an awful way for communicating with friends.
> For regulators keeping a worried eye on increased drinking, Marteau suggests encouraging the use of smaller glasses. After all, water is a bit safer to drink these days.

Can you please stay out of it? Just because port glasses from the 1700s have less overall volume than tasting glasses from the 2010s, doesn't mean it's anyone's job to say how big they should be. At most, the volume of the pour has increased by maybe a factor of four, while (compared to the wine that went in the 60ml glasses) the alcohol content has decreased in a single step, from fortified to straight.
It often breaks with different query parameters for example on YouTube videos, but I just created a couple of bookmarklets.

hn:

javascript:window.location.href='https://hn.algolia.com?query='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href)%20+%20'&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story'

reddit:

javascript:(function()%7Bwindow.location.href%20%3D%20%22https%3A%2F%2Freddit.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Durl%3A%22%20%2B%20encodeURIComponent(window.location.href)%7D)()
Look, I don't like Facebook. I reluctantly caved because there was too much going on there that I was missing, but I'd rather not be a participant.

But you're ignoring the fact that Facebook is effectively the first opportunity in history for a universal "push" mechanism for friendship.

If your best friend died, would you really know how to contact everyone he/she was friends with? You could dig through their Rolodex in the old days, which would cover some percentage but also pick up a lot of outdated contact information and business relationships with no friendship involved; you could send email to everyone you could find in their mailbox, but that surely wouldn't hit everyone; you could dial all phone numbers in their phone, but same problem.

And obituaries are pull-based, and tend to be localized.

FB, for better or worse, has the potential to be the most effective way in the history of mankind to tell everyone who knew someone that person has passed on.
> This is basically Microsoft using Windows Update to install a desktop icon promoting the latest season of The Voice.

Mozilla have said that this test was meant to be invisible, so whilst this is an accurate analogy of the end result, it's also an accidental one.
I'm thinking about this as less of a newsfeed thing and more as pub/sub maybe being a bad model for keeping in touch with friends. Especially when it's curated pub/sub.
Volafile seems like a better alternative to this.
Ahhh, so there was an exchange of benefits after all.

Their "an unpaid collaboration" phrase is an attempt to spin it as if there wasn't.

Doesn't seem like honest wording in their apology then. :(
They just do this on request? Isn't this municipal lighting for everyone?
I'm not a parent (also not the person you're directly responding to), but I think one day I might be. Right now we're encouraging the productive people to pass on their assets, but not the ability to create wealth - which would be better for society, and (totally my own subjective opinion) will lead to a better life for the child as well.

There's still the option of living a comfortable life being totally unproductive - but why let that option waste an unnecessary amount of our society's assets?

This would be an extremely strong move by the government, you're right, but I think most people would be behind it, especially since it would affect less than a percent of the population. We're not headed down that path currently, but I thought it was an idea worth sharing.
If you frequently use indica to help sleep, you'll find it even harder to sleep without.
Heaven forfend suggesting making a phone call, which is how I keep in touch with friends. Real friends, that is.
Of course, a witch hunt does no good to anyone and to my mind, it's a mistake (albeit a bad one).

My issue is that the public bug was closed off early. In future, perhaps the Mozilla team might take it into account that communication might be smoother if they keep things more transparent.

I'm a massive fan of Mozilla. In fact, I'm trying to get more folks in my org to use it instead of Chrome (it's a hell of a lot more stable, and the Chrome team tends to break our web apps frequently). I largely trust Mozilla far more than the Google team, and this unfortunate episode, for me at least, just made me mad because it was such a major cock-up that it was entirely unexpected.
Words are just words. Actions though... lets wait and see what their follow through is like. :)
>I'm sure Facebook has tested it experimentally

Probably, but with primary goals of ad clicks, prolonged FB time on site, etc.

Worth noting that the old, unoptimized system would have worked fine for this case.

Facebook's goals just don't align with visitor goals.
Haha, your choice in emoji gives away your age in any case.
I dunno about other people, but I almost completely ignore those big background posts. I think my brain sees them as adverts/spam and just filters them out.
The increase in the volume poured is actually more like 4x, the article clearly explains that the glassware tax encouraged, in the region, glassware which was meant to be filled close to the brim, while modern glassware is meant to be filled to a about a third (or if you're not at a dive, often a quarter) full. Furthermore, the difference in sugar content (and overall in non-water contents) is almost as important as ethanol's share of the volume.
I've got a static blog with both. You don't even need JavaScript for analytics, when using something like GoAccess[0] (I haven't noticed any meaningful differences after switching).

[0] https://goaccess.io/