skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I still don't get why a developer would want to use Windows at all when he wants to use GNU/Linux tools. I don't know how to call it, but there is a mutant inner platform effect at work (or is it mutant outer platform?) . There is a lot of unnecessary friction and important things, such as git, work a lot slower. It is far easier to run a dedicated Linux machine, and install whatever is needed with a packet manager. After becoming used to work with tmux and i3, which allow nearly all work to be done without the hands leaving the keyboard, I also find using Window's window management unbearable slow. I also cringe every time I forgot that I can't use the Windows key.

(By the way, I also don't get the affection to use dual-booting or virtual machines. Sure, if you are a poor student which which $300 is a lot of money, a VM might be worth the fuss. But in practically all other cases, it is far more effective to just set up another machine and use Samba or whatever to share some of the filesystem. Alone the time lost with Windows updates is a good reasons to quarantine Windows a bit.)

Ah, and one thing that really helps for keeping the workflow unified is just to use Emacs on Windows - that makes it needless to do the mental switch to different keyboard shortcuts every time, and allows to consistently use powerful tools such as org-mode. And vim users probably have equivalent tricks.

And apart from that, Windows is, specifically in forums and developers social media, massively advertised to to be associated with Linux. But advertising very much creates false connections, using a shell on Windows it not productive and no substitute for working with a free (as in libre) and open system which is controlled by the user. Linux is about freedom. Windows is not. Stallman might be annoying to some, but when you draw the balance, he is too damn right.
I do see men willing to change the status quo. They may not see exactly what needs to happen and their motives are different than those of women. But my ability to make it to the leaderboard as a woman in an overwhelmingly male forum tells you something about the men here too, not just about me.

Men are also fucked over by historical gender roles. It is not true that they get all the benefits and women pay the price. Men get maimed and killed by their well paid jobs. Men have a shorter average life expectancy. Most homeless people on the street are male in part because if you can't pull your weight as a man, society basically says fuck you.

The way forward is to start by acknowledging that fact and speaking to the need to improve the lives of both men and women. Simply being angry that women have less money and taking that anger out on men doesn't work.

I am not simply angry that I am poor. I am angry that I am willing to work for a living and the entire world makes that an uphill battle in a way it does not do to the men. I am angry at listening to people talk about what good people they are while either actively ignoring my pleas for help or actively being in my way.

Perhaps having a cow about that will get me banned or shunned or otherwise shut out of any hope of getting what I need from HN. But after 8.5 years, it is clear to me that being polite and patient isn't opening doors. So I am dead in the water anyway.

I get very frustrated when women try to support my position on HN. In most cases, they are only undermining 8.5 years of very hard won progress on my part.

When women make comments to me rife with their manhating personal baggage while positioning themselves as on my side, I feel both used and pissed on. It looks to me like I am being taken advantage of.

If you have such admiration for me, you can stop being part of my problem. You can follow me on twitter. You can email me. You can read my blog writing and promote my blog writing, sharing it socially. You can leave a tip or support my Patreon. And maybe in a couple of years you will have learned enough to be able to make useful productive comments on HN about solving gender parity instead of making comments that make me want to tear yours to pieces just to distance myself from the blatant misandry.

This is an overwhelmingly male forum. A lot of the men here are well heeled movers and shakers. Sharing your opinion that men are just assholes who don't want the status quo to change is a case of putting out the fire with gasoline. And it makes me extremely sympathetic to why so many men don't try harder.

Keep your day job. Don't try to pretend to be a diplomatic ambassador in the peace accords between the sexes. You aren't qualified.
Also related - the "backfire effect" - where challenging a person's core beliefs only entrenches them further. Nicely explained and illustrated here by The Oatmeal: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
The ones I've seen were all ideas made up on the spot. The whole point of brainstorming is to make up ideas on the spot.
I'm curious how you define top-tier in this situation, especially tech-centric. I agree the U.S. has more "top" institutions from a reputation standpoint (partially due to us living in a US-centric western world), but they are also astronomically more expensive to attend than their Canadian counterparts. The University of Waterloo is probably not a "top-tier" school by any formal metric, but I would be surprised if it doesn't rival or beat the very top schools in the U.S. in terms of top engineers & tech entrepreneurs produced on a per-capita basis.

Waterloo, for example, has a co-op program that (at least when I attended it years ago) had me graduating debt-free, with built-up savings, and 2 years of tech. experience (including in SV). Many of my peers went to work for MS, Google, or Amazon (the big players at the time) right after graduation. Basically, if you wanted to go south of the border, you could, but of course many want to stay in Canada. I think similar opportunities are there for students from Toronto and other institutions. Accounting for population difference, I don't think the gap is that massive.

Also, Sam Altman is a big fan :)

While researching his piece Bruni spoke with Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, one of the best-known providers of seed money for tech startups.

Bruni asked him if any one school stood out in terms of students and graduates whose ideas took off. “Yes,” Altman responded. Bruni was prepared to hear Altman tout his alma mater Stanford. After all it’s famous as a feeder of Silicon Valley success.

But Altman surprised him: “The University of Waterloo.”
The title is a bit misleading. This directive seems to target 3rd party H-1B contractors such as Tata and Infosys, rather than 'High Tech' companies that directly hire engineers such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Companies that hire H-1Bs directly and employ them onsite shouldn't be affected by this policy change.

I think the linked CNN Money article provides a better explanation of the motives behind this change http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/23/technology/h1b-visa-abuse/in...
While Popper's description of it is popular, it seems Godel realized this as well (as per the article) - while this was after Popper's (1945) I'm not sure Gödel knew about it

According to Wikipedia: "On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gödel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that could allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship"
I find this is more of a distraction than abstraction at the moment, to be honest.

How would this approach generalize to more modern physics?
I don’t blame you if you did, but often times we discover good gems when we push our boundaries a little further.
As if you don't know what the explanation is, illegal immigration and some dodgy legal immigration for the purpose of cheap labour, it is very simple.
Absolutely. It's purely about the involvement of religion that puts me off. If there was a "Catholic church approved cheese" I'd refuse to buy that too.
If that's all you want out of the article, might as well not even click on the comments section.
Subsurface Divelog Program for Linux, Windows and MacOS (by Linus Torvalds)
There’s definitely a fine line, but let’s be real, Facebook was never really about fine lines and nuance.
Well it's a specific algorithm, sure. If that's enough to dismiss it as 'not learning from nothing', then nothing could ever qualify as learning from nothing.

Learning from nothing != general AI.
It actually says so in the article,

“This next batch of abnormally warm air is forecast to shoot the gap between Greenland and northern Europe through the Greenland and Barents seas. Similar circumstances occurred in December 2016, when the temperature at the North Pole last flirted with the melting point in the dark, dead of winter. Similarly large jumps in temperature were documented in November 2016 and December 2015.”

It happens every year? Therefore it's not unusual.

So that makes this, “This latest huge temperature spike in the Arctic is another striking indicator of its rapidly transforming climate.”, uh, what?
That was fascinating, thanks for sharing. I had no idea Disney World was about the size of San Francisco (!). It seems to operate like a sovereign city-state in the middle of Florida.
I think that this is useful for companies who abuse the H1B.

I doubt that any of the big Four (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple) will have any problem with this, but the consulting body shops will be scrambling.

And, this is something else problematic for startups who want to import talent. You need to have some sort of legal/immigration department to deal with this paperwork, and most startups don't have/can't afford that.
One way to look at it is there is a ceiling on American wages imposed by globalization. Above that ceiling you're better off going overseas. But that ceiling is below the market-clearing price of labor in the us.
Small correction to the submission title: it's "Witten" not "Whitten"
I think you've got it backwards. As on object approaches a black hole, an outside observer will see that object's clock slow down and eventually stopping as it hits the event horizon. Conversely, the object falling into the black hole will see the rest of the universe's clocks speed up. It could watch stars (far from the black hole) be born and die. If you take a trip close to a black hole's event horizon and then fly away, you could find yourself in the far future.
First, I'll point out that this is not a "liberal" thing; polling has revealed that republican voters are by and large for keeping the net neutrality rules as well. This isn't a left vs right issue, it's basically big ISPs vs most everyone else.

Second, and more to the point, internet service is generally much cheaper in other countries, but the reasons are most definitely not lack of regulations. It basically comes down to local monopolies, and the usual effects of lack of competition. Giving large ISPs more power will not help. This article gives a decent overview of the situation:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/upshot/why-the-us-has-...
Couldn’t we just be perceiving time backward? I’m no physicist, but AIUI the equations work either way. As a sci-fi–head, sometimes I just like to speculate—“What if the ‘point’ of the universe is the singularity of the big bang?” (Yeah, pun intended.)

If we’re in a simulation, maybe it’s the final result of the computation. If we’re in a black hole, maybe it’s in the past of the universe within, but in the future of the one without. All good material for a short story, one of these days…
And one of the reasons they boil up quickly is that people stop engaging in nuanced debate and engaging each other, instead resorting to cheap rhetoric that triggers baser emotions. You've got good stuff here. I encourage you to lead with this rather than the other.

Edit to add: FWIW, that's one of the reasons I take the time to respond to questions like "don't know why...", beyond just pointing out that it's against the guidelines. It takes a little bit of extra effort to take some time to imagine why a reasonable person may have done so and it's important that we do so. And even if I'm wrong (I can't read minds), I've exercised that same behavior I'm trying to encourage.

We have to encourage people to maintain good faith arguments with each other. Discussions on HN are a great example of this: so many ask "why can't we talk about X" and so many of times when a discussion starts about X it devolves when people stop discussing in good faith. The only way we can have those discussions is to remember that other reasonable people may disagree with you. Applying a little effort to thinking about why that may be, and (asking for confirmation if needed) engenders better discourse.
Thank you for this, indeed the speed differences are large.
Seems like you work strictly sequentially. What would help is to bring in more dynamism based on your mood & time of the day.

Dynamism = mixing of subtasks from various tasks in a way that optimizes your energy spend and work satisfaction.

Let's run with your example of 3.5 days worth of task-1 followed by task-2. So at the start of day 4 you have a sense that only half a day or so work is left on task-1 that might be mostly testing, addressing review comments and deployment. On the bright sunny morning of Day 4, I would keep that grudge work on hold and put my energy into designing a solution for task-2 (deep work that I would enjoy, requires more R&D, thinking, research etc.). Then you could pick up remaining task-1, the known stuff requiring less energy in the latter half of the day and finish it.
Not tolerating intolerance is not a license to be horrible to other people. I suspect this is a bad application of the philosophical idea, as with just about every other idea once it hits practical use. The challenge is synthesizing the idea into something consistent with the original idea yet simple enough to be effective in practice.

My guess is that many people in favor aren't actually consistent themselves.
Talking about other secure knots wouldn't be complete without mentioning the Granny Knot and what Ian says about the secure knot:

> NOTE: For normal activities, the Ian Knot or other standard knots should be quite secure. I believe that many people seek more secure knots because they are, without realizing, tying their shoelaces with an un-balanced "Granny Knot". Please see my Granny Knot page that discusses this in detail.
Whatever else you might say about Musk and company and their various ventures, they are actually solving real problems, with real innovation.

NOT a bunch of talk about "too soon" or "focusing on core competencies".
And on balance we experience trade deficits. It's nice to have a free trade environment when it's reciprocal, but what has happened is that economies like Japan and China can play loose with the definition of free trade than most, and we kind of just put up with it. Few presidents and congress are willing to push the issue hard. Maybe Trump will finally call their bluff and impose sanctions.
I still wouldn’t leave my car just plugged in somewhere while I walk away for extensive amounts of time. Call me paranoid, but in urban Europe people will steal and vandalise the shit out of anything that looks slightly unprotected.
That might be the case, but it is surely not a virtue of expository or persuasive writing. Generally we want people to make the point plain.
Black hole does not imply singularity.
Sorry I disagree, first many people who work in IT are _forced_ to use Windows as their primary host at work. Next, even if you install a Virtual Machine it might not work as seamless as having an Unix shell natively, thus some use Cygwin. Regarding poor students, would you prefer to commute daily with multiple laptops? One for Linux one for Windows? I doubt so. Other than that, if your work is not just coding but doing _anything_ apart from code itself, word processing, spreadsheets, graphic design, cad and you still need to run something from Linux ecosystem the WSL is currently probably your best option.
Go King go Queen black history
> As long as america continue to allow free trade our wealth and jobs will flow out of the country as countries seek cheaper labor and sell it right back to America with no restrictions.

Settings aside the fact that the US currently enjoys very low unemployment, with a steady rate of job creation that is now the longest jobs expansion in recorded US history, why do you believe other countries are willing to manufacture things and give them away to Americans for free?

Dollars are only valuable as a medium of exchange for American goods and services. Chinese companies will export goods and services to America because there is a demand for US dollars to purchase American goods and services, which are generated by labor and sold for a profit.

The idea that wealth and jobs could flow out of the country as a result of trade - whether free trade, or otherwise - is literally impossible.
Agreed. I think the solution is to really pluck at those grey areas, as of course it's easy to work in black and white. To generalize, I think the general best course is to first understand why the intolerance exists, its validity, and then address it from there in ways still consistent with tolerance. Easier said than done of course, but I'm not intending to write a philosophical dissertation here fully.

As a reminder that many who likely support this view need, you should be intolerant of intolerance, not people who hold intolerant beliefs or practice intolerance.
There are quite a few videos of Tesla S's beating motorbikes. They are expensive but not million dolar expensive.
Good article but I really wish they'd stick to one unit of measurement. And the world standard measurement at that.

Was hard from the beginning to understand the severity of the situation with no units denoted.
I mean, if they weren't low then why would farms pay money for the more expensive seeds?

Farms aren't mom and pop shops anymore. Even the small ones are major, multi-million dollar businesses. This is big company VS big company.

And if those mult-million dollar businesses believe that they can get better crops by paying Monsanto, well I think I'll trust their expert opinion on it.

If these products are so sub-par, why would the competing, large corporations buy them?
Don't forget H-power, Hawaii incinerates trash on Oahu and has been pretty successful with it.
User-engagement optimizing "tricks" used by social networks and news sites will stop working eventually, and leave users with a bad taste of your company. Using data mining and A/B testing we are basically enrolling all users in a constant social science experiment so they can help us better hack their own brain. But following it blindly is incredibly short-sighted.

Yes it works, but every time you trick someone it ekes away at their trust and happiness using your platform. But this occurs over many such interactions so it won't show up in your metrics until much later, and then only in general stats so it's nearly impossible to measure the effect with the time scales that we actually record and test. Heck, the users themselves probably won't even notice anything specific but just have a slowly growing distaste for interacting with your platform.

Anecdotally, I've noticed this happening to me and people I know on many news and social sites. (Though, my sensitivity to this is turned up really high.) But this effect can help explain the cyclic nature of social networks, and perhaps Facebook's recent decline in the US.

Do your users come away from your site feeling good about their engagement? Assuming more is better may be hurting you in the long run.
Creating things that last a long time is hard. If for no other reason than forecasting the future is hard.

I have this weird thought that this project could be undone by fracking within 100 years.

Current well map shows how much is in the area: http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/oil-gas/major-oil-and-gas-formati...

(FYI, the Texas Railroad Commission is the regulTor of oil & gas operations in the state. )
You're still only pointing to two different basic models: companies that recover R&D expenses through vertical integration and direct-to-consumer sales (old AT&T, Apple, Google), and companies that recover R&D expenses in markets mediated by patent protection (Intel's wireless business, Qualcomm, Broadcom). Is your point that the former is preferable?

Also, you're comparing apples and oranges. AT&T today sells a different, much more valuable product than AT&T in 1970. Back then, a household might have one phone line and demand growth was basically nothing. Today, households have multiple cell lines, they're willing to pay much more for them, and demand keeps exploding. Likewise, Google is more profitable than AOL was at it's peak--it sells a different, much more valuable product.
1. Actually that is incorrect. SegWit transactions are several bytes larger than old style transactions.
Not the other 30% or 49% or what have you that's not owned by the national company. But the nature of how the national company handles so many services for the partnerships means that 'negotiations' can change how the money flows around year after year in a way thats controlled by the national company (I say national company because they really are more than just holding companies, they handle large pieces of the business as well).
>> greater yields

Past performance is no indicator of future returns. I am long cryptocurrency as well but the main attraction from an investment standpoint into cryptocurrency is twofold:

1) Volatility is incredibly high (useful for various reasons; does not come without a downside, also obviously)

2) Yield curves of US equities are trash

A portfolio that is predominantly cryptocurrency is... pretty silly. It would be hard to reasonably argue against a majority share of equities and basic portfolio advice from someone like Buffett, with heavier weighting on higher variance items like cryptocurrency.
I hear that. Just for the sake of interesting conversation...I think the AGBS industrial complex is pretty well covered elsewhere.

That’s interesting on verisign. Never would’ve thought of them.
Truly, I look forward to trying it out.

Knot related: Patrick Novotny[1] has a youtube channel with 100+ ways to tie your tie. A fun intersection between knot enthusiasm and attractive attire.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/user/PatrickNovotnyRemax
From what I've seen it is rather the opposite.
>> one never needs more than 20% annual return

Talk about the understatement of the century. 20% annual return, that's it? Should be easy...
In my experience attempting to get an entry-level programming job at Microsoft (while I lived in the area), they get a lot of hires through hiring agencies, all of whom ask you what your legal residence status is as their first question (which I have to say is highly discouraging when being unable to score an entry-level CS job in one's own country).
> The West is currently in the process of committing suicide.

This one of those lines that, when it appears in an article, you know there's an error somewhere in the preceding thousand lines of argument, as surely as if it were a proof that 1 == 0.

> an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy

I'm more worried about intolerant minorities of privileged people who are currently in power destroying democracy, not least because they actually have the power.
But it’s not inflammatory. The response was “yes it can” which I think is totally valid.

In fact, I’d go one step further and say that maybe the problem is that we don’t spend enough time studying how situations lead to genocide, and therefore we kinda suck at preventing it.

Just my two cents, but that was my rationale for supporting the paren’t statement.
Upvote for the McPhee reference. Annals is the compilation of his 4 books on geology. Your reference is from Rising From The Plains, I think. They're excellent reads on how North America came to be. Even as a non-geologist, they're among my favorite reads.