skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A agree, that's totally true. That "exercise" was just my thought experiment about what might be for "the greater good" (whatever that might mean, precisely).
Thomas, you talk a lot about raising your rates and I believe your points are valid.

How do you go (being completely remote) from nothing to have a high quality client (as in corp/high net startup).

Take these into consideration:

- Can live off savings for the next 2 years.

- Can expense 3/4 travel costs for US/EU/Asia.

- Can setup offshore US/HK company and bank accounts.

- Doesn't mind if the process take 2-4-6-8 months.

- Doesn't mind traveling, staying late, taking calls anytime, etc.. if it can give me an edge.

What are the steps to take to land the first whale. Also, I have the following skills: Cryptography/Security (still a beginner), Blockchain (somewhat good), DevOps (medium), Web Development (Pretty good experience).

Bear in mind pretty much most of my clients before were low quality clients (making wordpress sites for the average business, made me decent money but only for the cheapness of the country I live in).

Would appreciate any advice!
Precisely.

And the opposite is true. I'm now working on the first code base so huge that every time i open a file, i annotate all the lines a touch.

That's a beautiful thing.
Although it has been 27 years since then. I would hope the same article would be written differently today.
Keep them, but calling them "clean" is pure grade A bullshit. Sure, they're "cleaner" but they are absolutely not clean, yielding a waste product that stays a danger to every single living thing near it for tens of thousands of years.
Ask HN: Need advice to change career at age 31?
Hello HN,

I am 31, and am working in a call centre. I do not like this job. Pay is very low. It is becoming very hard to continue in the same job as I never wanted to work in the call centre. Somehow I got into it.
I always want to work on my ideas, start a business and help make world a better place.
I want to learn programming so I can execute my ideas. I have never programmed anything. I don't know anything about CS.

Is it right choice to start learning coding at age 31?

What should an ideal roadmap be for learning, executing ideas, and starting a business?
sononym-dev answering questions on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/comments/8irsik...
No. Object.keys() does not allow iteration on strings or `arguments` or HTMLCollections. It only returns an array of indices not values. You can call Array#forEach() on the resultant array, but you'd need another iteratee signature to process them than you would for a proper forEach or for Lodash's method, or you'd have to dereference each element manually. At that point, you might as well run a for loop, since the code will be nearly identical.
While I don't know if reparations are the right solution, I think it's a bit rich to suggest that descendants of slaves aren't "people affected" given the enormous disparity, in almost all metrics, between black and white wellbeing.
solar, wind, and hydro don't leave a persistent waste product that takes hundreds of thousands of years to become safe to stand next to. Nuclear has a special class of unclean all on its own - it's both much cleaner than coal on the immediate term, and way less clean on the "beyond timescales that humans can understand" scale.
Some people say that segregation never really ended, see this thread on askhistorians

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hd4u7/what_...
Actually as the article explains it's a little more interesting. Naively even in a thick window pane we would expect interference patterns from light reflected from the front and the back of the window pane. The article explains why we don't.
Good thing then that Ta-Nehisi Coates argues by more recent events.
Talking about Braun, I've been disassembling all kind of devices for a few monthes, and you can appreciate differences betweens brands a bit. Braun and a few brands, do have better materials, better internals. I guess 90% of consumers can't give a damn about that but it registered in my head. To the point that I would even start a website about that, some sort of ifixit for everything but phones.
There is a self-enforcing cycle.

A good album sells merchandise, which quite often is using imagery from the album front. T-shirts, posters, ... you name it.

Yes, the merchandise is bought as a reminder of a good experience but once it's out in the open, it becomes a form of brand advertising. Familiarity breeds interest (as well as contempt), and interest generates sales.

NB. Unrelated to the other part of your comment - I would happily buy a shirt with The Division Bell's cover even if I didn't like the album. There are limits, though. I'm NOT paying £75 for a cycling jacket with that image - such a thing was available in the V&A exhibition.
> we know small companies often win against much larger ones

We do? They do?

It seems to me that this statement requires context in order to say much of anything. I don't know what to do with it as a standalone general statement.

Do they win when the far larger business actually cares, in head-to-head competition? I doubt that happens very often. When counting the successes there also is significant danger of survivorship and selection bias because the David vs. Goliath story resonates so deeply with human listeners.

Or do they win when the larger business doesn't even know it is in the race, like an ant screaming at an elephant oblivious to its existence "this pebble is mine"? I'm sure the chances of success here are pretty good.
That is not what article is about.
OP here. Why thickness should matter is precisely the question.

If you look at the treatment of this on Wikipedia or a physics text it is the phase difference beteween the front and back reflections which matter and not the total path length.

Even for a windowpane there will be some wavelengths where the two waves are in phase and others where they are out of phase. The true explanation is that for a windowpane these two kinds of wavelenghts are clustered densely together and therefore even for tiny wavelength ranges the interference effect averages out.
Originally, i heard about it here[1]. You can read about the variability here[2]. But i would recommend searching for the raw data of the experiment, which i personally have not done. I would also recommend you read [3]. It is equally fascinating and horrifying. What is more, it is eerily prescient about where society has developed since Merloo wrote his book. To summarize (criminally), people do bad shit when they are forcefully conditioned to do so, and even then they fight back against this conditioning. You can hear it for yourself in the original recordings of the Milgram experiments; the actors tasked with being the "scientists" had to prod the subjects into doing the dirty. Make no mistake, i am a conservative that is deeply committed to the concept of the "fallen nature of man," rather, people are fundamentally flawed. We need very little assistance in acting selfishly. But history, science, and life is painfully clear: if you want to get people to hurt others without a selfishly motivated decision to do so, you have to work very hard.

[1]https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/180092-the-bad-show/ (~14:00)
[2]https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-loo...
[3]https://www.amazon.com/Rape-Mind-Psychology-Menticide-Brainw...
You can't honestly know what subconscious effects seeing that cover had. To say it had zero effect is pretty disingenuous when you take into account what we know about human decision making and a massive global ad industry.
Sure, but there is also the biological clock ticking of the female. Add to that if she wants multiple children, that adds up even further.
I have a tangential question, and hope someone can help find an answer to it. I searched a bit but didn't find anything.

It seems this man was still in early twenties when he was freed after the civil war. Further, he was a new arrival and not descendant of generations of slaves who had been Americanized and had made the new place their home just as their owners had.

So my question is: why he and other new arrivals like him didn't try to return home? Wasn't there any support and means for new arrivals to return? FYI, I know about Liberia, and I specifically want to know about new arrivals like Cudjo.
Have you tried Calc? It's loosely modelled after the HP-calculators and it's my first choice of calculator when I have a full blown computer at my hands.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/calc.htm...
Your first link has exactly zero value in determining the economic value of contributions.

Your second link has this paragraph

"The answer is "0"; slavery did not create a major share of the capital that financed the European industrial revolution. The combined profits of the slave trade and West Indian plantations did not add up to five percent of Britain's national income at the time of the industrial revolution."

So I am confused about what I am supposed to take away from the links you gave.
Lithium will never be a problem. Cobalt and rare earth elements will be.
It's funny that the record industry trots out the line that 'artists deserve to be paid for their work', while trying to stop teenagers downloading...
> the two men hammered out the contours of a handshake deal: For $1,500 (approximately $10,130 in 2018 dollars) dad would deliver three paintings.

> In Ellis’ Midtown office, the last painting was delivered. Ellis cut him a check and said something to the effect of, "Oh thanks very much, these are great,” dad recalls.

Am I missing something here? Seems obvious why lawyers won't take on this guy since 1) there was no contract and 2) the no-contract agreement was not broken.
It’s funny when you get a window first time, but turn up with a kid the next time and get the overflow room upstairs.
> I believe we have more in common than we have different.

Your feelings and beliefs are irrelevant to the question of reparations. Again, this may be an abstract issue that can be dismissed with platitudes to you but many people -- especially the victims -- do not feel this way. Whose feelings merit greater consideration?

> But reparations for the crimes against them aren't incoming, nor do I believe they should be.

Not sure what this has to do with anything. I guess because some criminals escape justice it's not worth pursuing any justice?

> Get off your high horse.

Your argument boils down to "Get over it." You might dance around with it platitudes about common goals (in fact African Americans are still subject to systemic oppression in many states) but, just to be clear, this is what you are advocating.

Again, it's the sort of argument which is only possible from an extraordinary position of privilege and the goal is not justice but rather to perpetuate that privilege.

> I care about this issue,I consider myself a humanist, I just believe there are more effective strategies than fighting a racial conflict.

I'd suggest that more often than not, thinking in terms of some monolithic "racial conflict" is not an effective way to initiate change. Focus on real people, their lives, and their struggles. Name names. Get concrete. Otherwise you risk glossing over the crucially important details and perpetrating the very injustices you might seek to fight.

[1] Though there are some who suggest slavery wasn't a crime before the 13th amendment. This argument is at least honest though it leads to the conclusion that all state-sanctioned genocides aren't illegal. Then you've got those who suggest the Federal government wasn't the perpetrator of said crimes. This is actually a position I think is quite tenable. But it's all the more reason to let the courts do what they do best. Investigate the evidence, compel discovery, establish clear chains of evidence and harm, rule on the facts, identify the perpetrators and deliver justice.

What's truly extraordinary is not just that the USA never offered redress slaves and their children but that there has never even been any kind of official commission to establish the facts.
> We work with Google, Amazon

What kind of work do you do for Google/Amazon?
Ask HN: Need advice from seasoned entrepreneurs
As the founder of a young startup, how should a person handle employees with less productivity?
I would have explained it by the irregularities at the surface of windowpanes. Huh, is it what is said in a more mathematical way in the link?
Mortality rate in deaths per trillion kilowatt hours:

Source Rate
-----------------
Coal 100,000
Oil 36,000
Biofuel 24,000
Gas 4,000
Hydro 1,400
Solar 440
Wind 150
Nuclear 90
-----------------

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
I'm sorry if this comes off as recklessly condescending, but the history of humans, good and bad, stretches far past what modern education has decided is the only relevant data point in the "good vs. evil" discussion, that being the holocaust. You can subtract the entirety of World War Two out of the equation, and you will still be inundated with examples on both sides of the spectrum. The idea that the atrocities of WWII were unique or different is a travesty of intellect. What makes WWII notable is merely scale, and the ramifications of this fact are damning to the legions of folks who like to pretend that religion is the greatest source of human evil. WWII is the biggest and best example that science and technology are demonstrably more destructive when applied to the problem of "opposition erasure."
The artist entered into the agreement knowing full well what it was going to be used for.
"providing the good and services people needed"? Nobody needs to watch videos or like memes on Facebook.
It's just a cheap type of stimulation that can easily become addictive (because it's designed to become addictive).
Judging by how gushing you are about those services, and how they represent progress, one could be excused for thinking that you're referring to some essential scientific invention, instead of the internet based fast-food of the mind.

And it's funny that you're challenging people to fight Facebook & co in the process of government, which has been subverted by lobbyist money from... Facebook & co.
Why do you think that the US government is asleep at the wheel when it comes to privacy? Because they're paid a lot of money to not worry about it. And with enough money changing hands, it becomes easy to think that in fact those services are needed by the public and they represent progress.

So no thanks. The self-appointed guardians of the public are smart to use different tactics.
The real distinction is between "paid upfront a specific price", known as "work for hire", versus a royalty-based system.

It's all about risk and option value. Most creative works never make a profit, so how much is a profit share worth? Most people need cashflow; if you need to pay rent at the end of the month, how much is a payout worth that's distributed over your life plus 70 years afterwards?
That does not strengthen that point, quite the opposite, one might argue:

People who were never exposed to having money to begin with don't know what to do with it. Having money from the start (rich parents) gives you a head start.
> Where and how exactly is the radiation release of coal plants happening?

Coal plants don't burn pure elemental carbon, the black stuff that is dug up from the ground contains a lot of other stuff as well, such as sulphur (acid rain, etc.), and, yes, various radionuclides. So when the coal is burned, part of the radionuclides go up the smokestack, others are left in the ash.

Realistically, compared to all the other environmental destruction associated with coal power, the radioactivity release is a non-issue. At the same time, it's good to keep in mind that except for major disasters like Chernobyl, an operating coal plant releases orders of magnitude more radioactivity to the environment than an operating nuclear plant.

> I definitely don’t wanna promote coal, but where are these numbers proving coal killed and harmed more people than Fukushima and Tchernobyl and the many smaller incidents?

You cannot usually say that person X died due to coal power production (except for things like coal mining accidents (which are quite common), maintenance worker falling etc.), but at a population level coal pollution causes an increase in respiratory illnesses, strokes, etc. which, again, at population level kills people. If you want to learn more, you can start e.g. at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

> Also i often wonder - where could science of reusable energy and reduced consumption be if the billions invested in nuclear research were invested there instead?

I'm not sure what "reusable energy" is supposed to mean, but yeah, sure, energy efficiency would probably be better than it is now. Would it be better enough to cover the loss of nuclear energy, and it's partial replacement by fossil power such as coal? I doubt it.
It has fewest deaths per TWh, and zero carbon emissions.

It's safest the same way, airplane is safest form of transportation.
Our baby cried because of cow milk protein allergy. The milk protein came from the mother drinking cow milk and breastfeeding. When we figured that out it took a few weeks and then she got happier and quiet and could sleep again. Also the dry spots on the skin vanished.
> What about space?

Great in principle, but sending nuclear waste hurtling through the upper atmosphere strapped to a tank of rocket fuel seems like a really bad idea in practice. You'd be one mishap away from spreading radioactive dust over a huge area.

Some kind of railgun-like launch system big enough to achieve escape velocity could work, I guess - but that technology's not there yet.
It is impossible for modern nuclear reactors to fail like Chernobyl. In the worst case scenario, the damage would be negligible and the reactor would shut itself down.
Australia's number 1 problem is that the grid itself is too expensive. That isn't the Coalition, because it has been happening through the late Howard, Rudd-Gillard-Rudd, Abbott and Turnbull governments. Typical slow government problem, not any particular party. Obviously you aren't talking about that, so I didn't mention it.

Australia's number 2 problem is all our power plants are aging and shutting down. I addressed that; because you seemed to be talking to it (eg, Liddel is only achieving something like 46% capacity). That is a looming issue. The problem here is also not the Coalition, as I mentioned.

Now SA appears to have a tertiary problem which is they have lots of wind energy and not enough storage to balance out the grid. The battery is addressing that and seems to be going well. This is also nothing to do with the Coalition, because the SA state government controls SA and the majority bounces between the two majors. The Weatherill government seems to have had the battery installed extremely quickly despite whatever you think the Coalition did to prevent it.

You aren't assigning blame correctly here. The big picture problem isn't that gas prices are high, and power problems aren't happening because of "mostly the Coalition".
I switched from being an architect to a programmer at around 30. It really worked for me, I definitely had an aptitude for programming.

Its also very easy to learn nowadays. You can learn on your own via things like this..

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/introduction-to-javascript

I think a good 1st step would be to do lots of tutorials like that in your spare time. See if you have an affinity for it.

You should also think about what sort of stuff do you want to make. Programming is just a means to an end. What do you want to do with it? Websites? Mobile apps? I personally got into making games, which is a niche area but after a lot of rumination I clearly decided thats the area I wanted to work in.

....

As for the next steps.. If you have any ideas for any little apps (like stuff you could use in your day to day life) you could build them in your spare time. Start building up a portfolio of your own projects.

Once you have some examples of your work, you could start looking for a job, theres a global shortage of good programmers atm, so in more pragmatic companies, qualifications are not necessary.
If thats not working out in your area, then you could do some part-time or online courses to get some kind of qualification.

I do recommend getting a job somewhere (or a few places) before starting your own business. You will learn a lot about the software biz the 1st few years all while getting paid for it. Even if the company is terrible you will learn what not do to.

Anyway imo the most important step is the 1st one. Learn how to code in your spare time, mess around with it, see if you like it.
This is what blogs do. It's a valid thing, even if you don't value this one. I tend to find their curation useful, when I happen across them. And tracking is optional...
Don't stalk. If you hang out very frequently, you'll get multiple real random encounters.
People seem to overstate the risk of nuclear waste. Surely a few tons of radioactive waste is better than millions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere? Nuclear could provide a solution to our energy needs NOW instead of having to wait around for solar and grid storage to be reliable on a nationwide scale.

Right now radioactive waste is stored in pools on site at the reactor. If the US government would actually fund the Yucca Mountain project [1] the risk would be negligible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...
Sure they do. It's called buildings.

Some nuclear waste can be recycled to lower lifetime waste that degrades on sensible timescales, but let's hate on all nuclear power because it's not magical.
I think the article artist didn't expect more at the time. The "haunting" implies that in hindsight they believed they should have charged more, but that's not really how things work.
So if not everyone, then at least the majority of all people worldwide who work very hard will be successful. I think reality shows this not to be true, hundreds of millions of very hard workers who even exhaust their bodies towards an early and broken death would probably disagree. You are already lucky by birth. Even apart from one's own family, we are placed into environments consisting of culture, institutions and tools developed over millennia. How much the place of one's family within one's own society plays a part depends, some countries are better at letting people from all kinds of families develop, in many others there is a large inheritance factor within families, where family income has a high correlation with one's own lifetime income.
> Easy thing to say. But imagine Zuckerberg had hired you to code the first version of his site, paid you a few thousand bucks, and then he went on to be one of the richest men in America?

That may haunt me, but I still wouldn't deserve any more than what I got.
Wayne Rooney to Dc United?
I thought this was rather obvious. Businesses is all about risk. Every step in business is a balance of risk vs potential reward.

That is why we pay so much for insurance. That is why we pay so much for hedging. That's why we do risk assesments and keep risk registers. All the machine-learning age adds is the potential for better identifying opportunities and the potential for measuring past performance more accurately, in order that we may extrapolate better. It isn't going to answer the big question that CEOs are paid for, and that is "how much risk an I willing to take, what potential reward would I need too make that worthwhile"
When a hydro plant fails, hundreds of thousands of people could die as a direct result. And they have. Where is your outrage?
Quality of Service (QoS) [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service
cut the chase and just show up with a gun next time. You are not building sustainable relations. Quite the opposite.