skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The answer is and always has been to judge people by the output of their work and nothing else.

Should it not be to judge people by the output of their work relative to their working conditions?

I'm much more interested in hiring someone who operated 5 servers in a culture of manual configuration over ssh by introducing automation than someone who operated 500 servers by following existing procedures and using Ansible playbooks that they didn't contribute any improvements to, even though the second person produced quite a bit more output.

(If by "output" you mean to count in this way, then sure, but a lot of people don't—for instance, lots of people want to see GitHub activity without asking whether the previous employer had onerous IP rules, or the candidate has a family they're busy with on evenings and weekends, or whatever.)
Copyright, the First Wave of Internet Censorship
As a non-white male who has succeeded in this industry based on talent alone, I couldn’t disagree more. I also take offense to people suggesting I need some sort of handout or special attention. Feels infantalizing and quite frankly terrible.
> HN would not allow a post on this topic from an opposing viewpoint to get to the front page.

Proof?

> Moreover, this particular point of view is from a radical organization

Define "radical."

> you can't really have intellectual discourse with people who refuse to see any other position than theirs.

How does one tell if this is the case? How does one tell _which_ party refuses to see things from another position? How does one tell if it is in fact miscommunication, or lack of a shared understanding? How does one tell if in fact one of the parties is not discussing in good faith?
The apartheid government no longer exists because it caused the country to descend into so much chaos that the rulers gave up trying to continue.

So, by the standard you imply with your comparison, the apartheid government—even more certainly than the present regime—did not know how to run a country.
I think this is a decent summary:

https://youtu.be/nOvmjs0J_QQ
Wait, you don't think "the gig economy" of Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Doordash has anything to do with the underclass? That's the workforce that actually does the job that they consistently try to stifle and pay less under the guise of being "a tech company".
This is also the game people in click fraud vs click fraud detection are playing.
Open Letter on Congress Vote to Extend NSA Spying from EFF Director Cindy Cohn
Took quite a bit of negotiating to get to a figure we could afford ;)
Yep. EVs are both exempt of MVA (GST/VAT) tax and registration fee, whereas combustion engines vehicles (CVs?) are most definitely not. Thus EVs are thus cheap or at least affordable by function of contrast.
> Should it not be to judge people by the output of their work relative to their working conditions?

No we shouldn’t look at that. I only care how you can produce in the role you occupy.

To clarify by “output” I mean work output, not public display output.
Leaders are between 1 and 2 standard deviation on top of the average. It's been studied already.
Tech Crunch: New Way to Learn Hacking and Coding
Perhaps some of that $50 billion valuation can be used to pay their workforce a proper wage and give them benefits? Just a thought...
Very interesting but hard to come up with different packages for different types of clients (here 3 I guess ? not counting people who pirate your product) if you're not running a SaaS
Highjacks my scrolling to make it "smooth" as well...
> Firstly, I'm aware of human-based captcha-defeating systems. You describe captchas that "cannot be outsourced to a mechanical turk-based API". I'm wasn't aware such systems existed, that sounds scary. Do you have any examples?

Google's latest captcha specification (and similarly sophisticated systems) must be completed in a small window of time, change rapidly, have a varying number of "rounds", and are extremely antagonistic to being reloaded in e.g. a frame.

Practically speaking, you can't consistently outsource that to a third party API that uses humans to click and verify the images.

> Secondly, I'm a little confused by your mention that #1 will simply raise the latency of the request to 10-20 seconds instead of completely blocking it.

For captcha systems which can be defeated by humans, they will tolerate an extended period of time before they're solved. This means the amount of time it takes your crawler to send the data to the API and receive the challenge response, then send it to the captcha on the page will not cause the test to fail. It will, however, introduce a significant amount of latency in your requests.

> Thirdly, in the case where a captcha (eg, ReCAPTCHA) can be defeated by a captcha-filling service... well, such services are extremely cheap, and there's no per-account fee or overhead. It sounds plausible that one could simply sign up for the captcha-filling service multiple times, and submit captchas to defeat in parallel. Could this work?

Sure, but what are you gaining? These things are usually priced on a per-captcha basis. So you could have multiple accounts, but you'll be paying the same as just sending multiple requests to the API, and the concurrent requests are routed via the API's backend to different human operators for a solution.
Maybe I should tell the (abridged) tale of XMPP. Once upon a time, XMPP was an open standard that allowed FB, Google, and independent clients federate at once. The reason Google and FB were able to become such popular messengers is because they allowed all sorts of clients to federate with them. This was the world of Pidgin, Trillian, GTalk, Adium, and others. Then Google and FB both closed off their XMPP support, citing overhead in maintaining a federated service.

Facebook thought it was a better use of its resources to build a Snapchat clone named Slingshot. Google decided it was a better use of its resources to build a social network named Google+.

Animal Farm: "Four legs good, two legs bad"
Google: "Don't be evil"

Animal Farm: "Four legs good, two legs better"
Google: "You can make money without doing evil" [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil#cite_note-Goog...

In the old days, this was called Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Black Mirror’s mind-reading tech could be here sooner than you think
love these guys they do awesome work!
> Protip: calling me a troll, paid shill, downvoting honest questions doesn't work on people like me.

It doesn't work on anybody.
Did you even read the article? It says Q2 2018
Since we're going with anecdotal evidence here: My wife worked at a start up in SV that had a 'management' consultant agency come in and set up cult-like team building events, where employees would shame someone up on stage in front of each other. Predictably, people were brought to tears. My wife was threatened to be fired (and lose her work visa) when she walked out and refused to participate. She and a couple others were lucky to find new jobs quickly, but not everyone could. The startup has since stopped the events because they were sued.

Just because you don't personally experience it doesn't mean that it's not happening. If there is data to show that people are being marginalized in the bay area, then odds are it's happening even if you haven't seen it yourself.
Agree, however the market would have an additional significant competitor, as well as a blue-print and success example for others to emulate if they decide not to defend their value prop.
Suppose you have one person in custody that hates another and is totaly up for pointing finger at the other person even though they are innocent. Oh yeah, that guy is planning an attack. Of course, we could both stop making things up...
I think this was well written. There were a few instances where, upon first reading it, I objected. But rereading it, I thought the language used was chosen well.

I have one main gripe, though: The scope limitation to tech.

> "Toxic tech cultures are those that demean and devalue you as holistic, multifaceted human beings. Toxic tech cultures are those that prioritize profits and growth over human and societal well being. Toxic tech cultures are those that treat you as replaceable cogs within a system of constant churn and burnout.

This is __not__ a tech specific problem. This is a systemic aspect of labor in an overly-capitalist society. Not bashing capitalism, either. But, spare me the 'woe is me, tech bros are out to get us'. Sure, some are. But these problems exist in every industry; the service industry, Hollywood and film, architecture and construction, finance, etc.

As I said, I think the rest of the article was well written and on-topic. That, though, is trying to paint rice grains with a broom.
You would observe the theory not blowing up. :)

The key feature she never names is known as a "UV fixed point".

UV = UltraViolet, which in this context simply stands for "high energy".

Fixed point... for that you need to know that the effective values of coupling "constants" aren't actually constant in quantum field theory; they depend on the interaction energy (i.e. how hard you bang your particles together). So they are called "running" coupling constants. Yes, it's contradictory.

That dependence on interaction energy is described by differential equations (known as the renormalization group flow equations, which may sound impressive but is actually a misnomer), which you can integrate to see how a coupling measured in the lab at low energy will change when your descendants finally get enough funding for a larger accelerator.

One interesting behavior is the coupling going to zero when you increase the energy towards infinity. That happens in QCD: counterintuitively, the harder you bang quarks together, the less they affect each other (via QCD, that is; they also have other kinds of interactions which behave differently). So QCD is called "asymptotically free": in the limit of infinite interaction energy, as far as QCD is concerned, quarks are free particles, completely unaffected by each other's presence.

In asymptotic safety, as opposed to freedom, the coupling does not go to zero as you increase the energy; instead, the rate at which it changes goes to zero, and it does so at some finite value of interaction energy. So, as you crank up the interaction energy toward that value, the coupling constant "runs" slower and slower, and once you get there, it stops "running" altogether. From there on, you can raise the interaction energy all you want, and the coupling constant stays... constant.

And that is a UV fixed point.
Most time on the project is spent on making a sensible binding at all. The ergonomics could definitely be improved. Rust has powerful macros that could make it simpler to use these bindings. My development time is finite.
Because it took hundreds of good developers to find one who was experienced and was willing to work in lisp. /s
Why can't you start with Raspbian and uninstall most of the apps?
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruc...
I enjoy meeting people and learning about what kind of work they do. What I've found is that some of the best opportunities to have a meaningful conversation is during meals. Flights, too. It's a small world full of interesting people.
What if tech became less of an identity and more of just a job that you did with your co-workers not to "change to world", but just to make money?

GREAT question.

I've often pondered this. Shooting from the hip I would wager this question is easier to answer if one considers the source of one's income.

I'm a political science graduate, who fell into tech early in his career. For me, tech is just a job that's paying for my continued studies. It's a means to an end. It's why I absolutely loathe talking about work when I'm not at work, and in general talking about what I do for a living. Not for a lack of pride, I am definitely proud of where I am and how I got here given the circumstances, it's just not my passion and no I'm sorry I don't want to troubleshoot your tech issues at 6:30 on a Thursday or any other time.

It's nothing personal, it's just I do this sometimes upwards of 60 hours a week and outside of those hours, I'd rather have a normal life where I can do things that appeal to me. No offers of buying me a six pack or a free dinner can really change that.

Different strokes for different folks, though --and that's perfectly OK if other folks DO want to live this way through their chosen professions.

The answer to your question is probably ultimately answered by YMMV.
This course is the perfect blend of hand holding while getting increasingly more difficult.

There are definitely some kinks to work out but there is a lot of potential. Much better than the CISSP lol
Good Lord, people truly just don't get it. Hospitals are not evil; they are tasked with saving people's lives. People who nobody else can save. All the worst medical problems in the world--sometimes sudden trauma, sometimes a festering problem left to burst--they all end up on the doorstep of the hospitals, full of doctors, nurses, and technicians who are humans just like you and me. And they work ridiculous hours saving as many of us as they can, dragging bodies back from the footsteps of Death itself. Some of them making great money doing it, but others just because it's not in their nature to do anything but help. And yes, like any organization, hospitals scramble for cash to keep the lights on and keep operations going for a mission they hold sacred. But you show up at an ER, and you will get a minimum standard of care, no questions asked. And that's pretty amazing.

Disclaimer: None. I don't work in the medical industry.
I'd see it as cities charging more taxes than they are actually willing to collect. I.e. the city is happy collecting less % of taxes already, just that most dont have bargaining power.
Kimbal Musk is leading a $25M mission to fix food in US schools
Apparently, E911 is just the technology that delivers a location to the emergency call center. Collecting data about the actual location is just a range specification: https://www.fcc.gov/general/enhanced-9-1-1-wireless-services

They allow network-based location (like signal triangulation), where the location needs to be withing 100 meters for 67 percent of calls and 300 meters for 95 percent of the calls, and handset-based navigation (like GPS) where it has to be within 50 meters for 67% of calls, and within 150 meters for 90% of calls.

Within those guidelines, I think that the phone provider can propose methods to use and have them approved by the FCC. But I guess whether your "precise" location gets tracked depends on the level of precision you're thinking of.
Similar to what is required for bitcoin futures on cboe
I co-built/run Theneeds [1] for about 5y. We shut it down during the acquisition. In our case, we weren't sad or anything because the website was "just a frontend" to the recommendation engine, that was in fact the IP that we sold.

As a counter strategy to avoid shut down, I'm building most of my projects on free hosting/api. Of course very limited functionality. Examples: Has Gluten [2], personal dashboard for cryptos [3].

Despite this, I had a project [4] shutting down due to Runkeeper suddenly turning off their API access. I still run on avg 1mi/day, and I had to go back to manual/spreadsheet counting in 2018.

[1] http://theneeds.com

[2] http://hasgluten.com

[3] http://priceeth.github.io

[4] https://github.com/runwithmark/runwithmark.github.io
Wine also runs on Windows (Not sure how stable it is given that it is not the main focus)
You don't want cars overall to start with.

And as wealth increases, the negative utility of a 1% increase in price of a certain good decreases for that buyer, requiring higher taxes to have the same disincentive than for lower income buyers.

Also, cars (especially luxury ones) are highly unproductive assets.
You are entirely right. But if we admit that education’s purpose is mostly signaling (without denying that some parts of it do have uses for some students), we can’t justify spending so much on it. From the introduction:

“At this point, one could object, ‘Though education teaches few practical skills, that hardly makes it wasteful. By your own admission, education serves a vital function: certifying the quality of labor. That’s useful, isn’t it?’ Indeed. However, this is a dangerous admission for the champion of education. If education merely certifies labor quality, society would be better off if we all got less. Think about it like this: A college degree now puts you in the top third of the education distribution, so employers who seek a top-­third worker require this credential. Now imagine everyone with one fewer degree. In this world, employers in need of a top-­third worker would require only a high school diploma. The quality of labor would be certified about as accurately as now—­at a cost savings of four years of school per person.

[…]

Suppose you agree society would benefit if average education declined. Is this achievable? Verily. Government heavily subsidizes education. In 2011, U.S. federal, state, and local governments spent almost a trillion dollars on it. The simplest way to get less education, then, is to cut the subsidies. This would not eliminate wasteful signaling, but at least government would pour less gasoline on the fire.

The thought of education cuts horrifies most people because ‘we all benefit from education.’ I maintain their horror rests on what logicians call a fallacy of composition—­the belief that what is true for a part must also be true for the whole. The classic example: You want a better view at a concert. What can you do? Stand up. Individually, standing works. What happens, though, if everyone copies you? Can everyone see better by standing? No way.”
This is a form of "painting the tape"[1] -- influencing the price of a security by artificially manufacturing volume. Obviously, massively illegal on the stock market, it's pretty common (and well-documented) when it comes to crypto-currencies.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/paintingthetape.asp
>Converted an un-safe warehouse district into prime, central real estate and a thriving neighborhood (South Lake Union)

SLU was not un-safe. The idea that there is a seriously unsafe neighborhood in the city of Seattle is laughable. I remember SLU before Amazon. It has become extremely expensive and gentrified, that's it.

>Grown a progressive, thriving economy that has in turn supported development of mass transit (ST2, ST3 - citywide light rail)

Has massively inflated the population with wealthy transplants over a short period of time, pushing non-tech workers into the suburbs and requiring the citizens to pay for the added infrastructure costs due to Amazon-caused overcrowding without chipping in to help the city.

>Pushed the median household income up 13% over the last decade

You don't actually believe this is due to Amazon? I'm sure they helped a little.. mostly by pushing the poors out...

>Seattle ain't perfect, but there is no question in my mind that we'd be worse off without the thriving local tech economy.

Agreed, and Seattle has always been home to a thriving tech sector which is great. But other companies behave better with respect to their local community. Microsoft set up shop across the water, with a big campus so that employees could head into Seattle but didn't invade it and has adopted the culture of the area fairly well. Employees are treated well.
More assault on backyard science, the guy is NOT a terrorist, he has good intentions from what I have seen (except I don't agree with his SCARIAC).

These kinds of shows inspire kids to get involved in science, something we are dreadfully lacking in the US
I agree, and this is a problem of government. Amazon is exploiting it. Good for them. The ones that have to get their act to gether are local govs.

Seattle and San Francisco already screwed it up big time. I am hopeful some city will lean heavily towards land value taxes instead of income and prop taxes, and then companies like amazon would go there naturally and economic propserity is relatively assured as rents go up.
KDE is famous for configurability while providing useful defaults at the same time. So it's only fitting.
What I like about this is he is also teaching them to be capitalists. The kids grow the food, sell the food and get to take home the profit of $400 each.

The first city is my original hometown of Detroit. There is so much unused land in Detroit I wonder if after graduating the program if some ambitious youngsters will start their own farms.
Can I ask what you did in your role as a manager?

Where I work, even though there are some titles that have the word "manager" in, the organization refers to anyone that have people report to them as "people leaders".

They are responsible for the well being of the those that report to them. If you take away the part where you are responsible for your people, what is left?

Even if you take the most clinical and robotic view of the role, you still have to effectively allocate your resources. This means balancing strengths and weaknesses, allocating team members to places they are more interested in to improve performance. All this boils down to getting to know your people and making sure they are happy...

> You should just be able to work and separate yourself from your task in any emotional way.

This is also a crazy statement coming from someone who has people report to them. People don't turn off their emotions just because they are getting paid to perform a task !??!
I agree with essentially everything in the article — and I'm not a marginalized type (white male, actually).

• Avoid the "cult-like" trappings.

• Avoid "genius worship" and call bullshit on the "reality distortion field".

• Get a life (that is, a life outside of work – build stuff in your garage, hike, play in a band, paint, whatever).

• Stay healthy. You're valuable to the corporation, they will allow for you to take exercise breaks, go home when you're exhausted, use your vacation time.

It probably isn't exclusive to the tech industry — I suspect the same is true on Wall Street. Perhaps it is the Temple of Modern Corporate Culture that we should shun.

And good advice is still good advice for the non-marginalized.
If you are struggling with such issues, you might find some of the resources at Hoagies Gifted Page helpful. I don't read it myself anymore, in part because it is the smart version of poor little rich boy. In other words, it whines a lot about "Oh woe is me. I am so smart and it is ruining my life." But if you are having social challenges as a smart person, that isn't necessarily a bad thing to be exposed to.

You can also search for social and emotional needs of the gifted for additional material. You could look up Beyond IQ as well.
I have a somewhat off-topic question as a complete TensorFlow beginner and it seems like you'd be in the know:

If I want to train a TF model distributed over many machines in GCP, it seems like I could use Cloud ML Engine or deploy Kubeflow to a K8s cluster running in GKE and train it there.

What should I consider when choosing between these two options? Is there another option I should consider?
In Canada, developing an accidental MRSA infection after a routine surgery will trivially turn a $5000 procedure into a $25,000 package of life-saving treatment and associated hospital stay.

When things go bad in medicine, your bill grows really, really, really fast.

Also, unlike a mechanic with a car, your doctor can't stop working on you after they blow through their quoted budget and ask if you still want to pay for treating the complications. I mean, they can, but unless you've got a death wish, you're not going to say 'no.'
If I actually abstained from all things that “would bother someone” I would never even be able to leave the house. No matter what you do, I guarantee that there is someone, somewhere, who will be gravely offended by it. This doesn’t even include the people who are out there actively looking for things to take offense to. Trying to please everyone is not a winnable game.