skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I feel like I’ve heard similar statistics before and they completely dissuaded me from ever desiring lasik. Minor eye issues would definitely cause me great stress - I developed a somewhat prominent vitreous floater three years ago and it still sometimes bothers me intensely.
Likewise, I'd have to carry safety glasses if I didn't wear regular glasses. And with bifocals, I never have to search for my reading glasses, because they're always on my nose.
"What exactly would a therapist do? Saying consult a therapist seems a bit like a trope. It isn't within itself an answer."

Seeing a therapist won't magically make your problems disappear, but it could give you insight in to their cause, and if the therapist is good they could help you overcome those problems.

No one should be under the illusion that it'll be the therapist doing all the hard work. The hard work will have to mostly come from you. As the saying goes, you have to want to change.. and also you have to be able to put in the work to change.

The difference between this and trying to go it alone is that you'll have a trained professional on your side helping you to see your own blind spots, making suggestions you might not have thought of, and hopefully helping you to open up and look at issues you, your family, and your friends aren't trained to or necessarily willing or able to uncover or face.

It's no guarantee, however. Maybe you'll wind up with an ineffective therapist, or a therapist you can't trust, or a therapist you don't like, or one that's using the wrong methodology for you, or maybe you just won't be willing or able to put in the hard work or face the pain you might encounter along the way of self-discovery and change. No guarantees. But hope and professional help and support -- things you might be lacking if you've tried to go it alone and failed.

Some of us are stuck in a loop and need more than another self-help book or blog post to make progress with our issues.
I've long said that I could probably pay someone to stand behind me with a whip, and make more than enough from the productivity improvement to cover their wage.
Instead of LASIK I got Visian ICLs and am pretty happy with them. Going on 3 years now.

My eyes feel dry occasionally and for the first year or so I had night halos, but things have mostly settled down now.

I think most of the light distortions came from the iridotomy procedure rather than insertion of the lens itself.
It's hardly a solved problem, but it's getting much better.

Wordwide undernourishment rates went from 19% to 11% from 1991 to 2015. [1]

Another couples decades of human progress and starvation will be rather rare. :fingerscrossed:

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment
Perdon por amarte
That’s the song I want to submit
> To put it bluntly, your semiconductors are insignificant if we can’t house and feed our population.

I am glad you brought this up.

Because you should be aware that we are at an all time low in the entire history of the world, for things like percentage of the world living in extreme poverty and hunger.

Yes, it very much is about feeding and housing the population. And the facts are that we are solving those problems, better than any other point in time.

Just go read ANY statistic at all. Go read the UN world health metrics, poverty metrics, hunger metrics. It doesn't matter. They all show massive gains, compared to even 20-30 years ago.

We still have a ways to go, in order to solve all the worlds problems. But this fact doesn't take away from the other true fact that the world has made massive gains compared to the past, and this is recent history (IE, comparing the world to 20-30 years ago).
Moreover you tend to need more space, and therefore a more expensive house, if you have children.

Also without children you can live somewhere regardless of worries like school catchments.
Why have hex mode toggles at all? Just use 0xa1b2, and so on. 0x... -> hex, 0... -> octal -- invent a syntax for binary.
European Commission Claims It Is Not Subject to the GDPR
> Most startups are not competing for talent that would otherwise be making $400k.

But why not?

Obviously you shouldn't only hire $400k-TC engineers. But if you're going to hire a team of 5-10, wouldn't it make sense to hire at least one more-senior engineer to help lead and mentor the more-junior ones?

When I was an early-stage startup founder, I was told by various advisers* that $150k should be the absolute upper limit on engineer salaries, and that I should try to talk engineers down to $110k or even sub-$100k by selling them on the "vision". I was told I should make up the difference in equity, but also that I shouldn't give an employee more than 1% in equity or maybe 2% for a "rockstar".

Do the math here. A company raises a typical seed round at $6M valuation cap, and is offering 2% over four years (considered VERY generous!). Even if we pretended that was preferred stock rather than common, it's worth $30k/yr. So you're trying to hire senior engineers while offering less than half their previous total compensation.

What ends up happening is you hire people straight out of college or away from other startups. But you cannot hire a senior Google engineer.

In my opinion, a tech-oriented startup should plan that exactly one of their first 5-10 engineers should be a senior engineer for whom they offer a salary of $200k-$250k and equity of 3-5%. Aim to poach an L6 from Google with this offer. (But only hire one such engineer early on. A team with too many senior engineers can be even worse than a team with none.)

Or alternatively, make sure one of your co-founders is such an engineer and is able to focus their time entirely on engineering, not other founder duties.

* Advisers all say different things, often contradictory. It's probably best not to listen to them, TBH. Yes, that advice applies to this comment as well, and even this footnote. Have fun.
I had LASIK two years ago, and it was the best money I have ever spent.

It was made clear that I will likely return to glasses as I age, but I’ll hopefully make it another 20 years.
IBM Streams sounds pretty dope.

That's a good thing
I had Lasik done at a university teaching hospital by a surgeon who had done thousands of surgeries. This was in 2003. Every follow-up was by a resident and then the full surgeon. I had significant dry eyes and blepharitis (probably from the dry eyes) for about 12-18 months.

15 years later, I can still see 20/20 in one eye and 20/25-30 in the other. I still occasionally have dry eyes and blepharitis. I wear glasses at night while driving to feel comfortable and I do get halos at night. My left eye, when it is dry, I get slight double vision.

Ultimately, I'm OK with having had it done and don't really regret it. However, folks who ask me about it, I tell them if they can still wear contacts, not to have it done.

I could only wear rigid gas permeable contacts. Being a computer programmer who doesn't blink often looking at the computer (like everyone), I wore ulcers on my eye. So, could only wear glasses. I was legally blind without them, so I feel like I'm in a much better situation now, albeit with some downsides.

With how bad my eyesight was, I will definitely need reading glasses. I'm in my early 40s now, and am starting to show signs of it.
I didn't, no. I don't really like how most goggles make my eyes feel.
Has anyone tried refractive lensectomy for astigmatism and/or myopia? Think cataract surgery, but for improving near/far sightedness, etc. So you end up with artificial intraocular lenses.

It costs about double what LASIK does, but doesn't seem to have the side effects.
bingo!
thanks :)
I'm considering eye surgery. I'm mildly farsighted and have strong astigmatism, so I'm not suitable for LASIK and have been recommended Implantable Collamer Lenses (ICLs, sometimes known as contact lens implants).

I'm very interested to hear from people that have had positive LASIK experiences or even an ICL procedure done. So far on this thread it's mostly negative.
Special treatment for tech CEOs on the social media/PR front of an incubator.
There's a great NPR podcast on a related topic to this - talking about how society's expectations of disabled people can prevent them from living their best lives.
https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-be...
Many years ago when I was thinking of getting it done I was told by the sales rep/doctor (I forget) the machines are limited in range. Women tend to have larger pupils than men apparently this wasn't thought of during the design phase. Kind of weird to go through all that trouble of designing and building a machine that needed just a few more millimeters of range. I passed on the procedure.
It surprised me that an octal mode wasn't available, or a binary one. But that's a minor gripe.

The only other thing I could see being useful is the ability to define "structs", for binary-headers, etc.

But agreed, this is a neat tool.
I tested adding things like tweets and reddit comments to our language model, and it didn't help the target model at all, even when that used less formal language.

Note however that the fine tuning stage adapts to the target corpus - it just doesn't require starting from random weights (so it's orders of magnitude faster).
We live in Chattanooga.

I love the outdoor culture, weather, low cost of living, focus on healthy eating, local restaurants, EPB fiber, small city vibe.

It has been compared to Austin and Boulder. The city schools suck because they don’t get enough funding. There are good private schools downtown and a good elementary.

The suburbs have some solid schools if you do your research. Suburbs like Ooltewah are growing and remain super family friendly. You’ll love the parks and town squares. Iron man has hosted here often. It’s 2 hours from Atlanta and Nashville.

It’s a very progressive city given the context of Tennessee and the south.

I could go on. If you’d like to know more, hit me up. I also work remotely.

We would consider moving to Colorado or Europe. That’s about it.
The density of WTF and GTFOOH moments in this article make it a quite a read.
YMMV of course.

But I got LASIK done just over a year ago. I'd worn glasses since I was a kid and don't remember a time without them.
Things I love after having done LASIK:
- Being in the rain
- Boxing
- Not fumbling for my glasses after a shower, waking up
- Being able to just rub my eyes
- Wearing 3D glasses

Things I don't like after having done LASIK
- night vision is really quite bad. Low lit streets, driveways can be hazardous.
- light sensitivity. Not sure if this is a byproduct of LASIK but I feel disoriented in rooms with low fluorescent lighting.
- dry eyes aren't as common as in the first 6 months but I do take more screen breaks to moisten my eyes
- blurred vision. Doesn't happen often and I can't say this is purely related to LASIK as I often get this after a long day of coding.

I got my LASIK done at the Eye Institute in Auckland and they sat me down for close to an hour to talk through it. Will I need glasses in the future? yep, they mentioned that. Dry eyes and blurred vision? Yep. For the first 6 months after the operation I had regular checkups.

It's been a freeing experience overall.
Ask HN: Python development on Ubuntu best practices
I'm typically a developer on Windows, and I've done a decent amount of Python on Windows.

My workflow is I install the version of Python needed, we're on 3.5/3.6 so we stay pretty current, then use venv and install all my dependencies.

When using Linux I've read I really don't want to use my system Python, even if it happens to be the correct version.

With Ubuntu specifically, and its package manager, how do I install a different version of Python or how do I de-couple Python from the OS?

It would be simple to create some sort of virtual environment and install the requirements inside it but I want to make sure I'm doing the right thing from the start.
I think you have to consider downside risk, if the economy goes bad or you lose your job how easily can you make rent and survive? At 75% you have much less margin than at 22%.
I actually like my glasses! I like wearing them, and only rarely do I dislike having them. Maybe it is because my vision is not that bad without them. I can imagine that if it was worse I might hate them more.
I remember reading about a procedure where you surgically insert a lens into the eye to correct the vision, and one huge benefit was the process is completely reversible compared to Lasik.

Seems like a much better option?
I really wanted something like this when embedding serial numbers and keys in ROMs. At the time I was mostly working in C and PHP, so I was imagining something closer to a template language, but something like this would have given me a good intermediate step where I could have used PHP to render this text format and then ran that to produce the necessary bits on disk.

A decade late for me, but still looks cool.
Ask HN: Any recommended books/resources to improve one's personal finance?
I had ICL done about 4 or 5 years ago. Wasn't a good candidate for either LASIK or PRK due to severe astigmatism. ICL is a lot like cataract surgery, but instead of replacing the lens, they implant what amounts to a permanent contact lens behind the iris and in front of the natural lens.

Ive had really good results from it. 20/15 after 5+ years. I still have effects from the astigmatism, but less than I was wearing glasses/contacts, really only a problem when fatigued. I'll need reading glasses as I get older, but for now, its beautiful.

They did mine in 2 stages, one eye at a time over 4 weeks. Normally recovery is pretty quick, but I had a lot of swelling in my first eye done (anesthesia wore off in the middle of the procedure), I was blind for 3 weeks in that eye as the swelling came downm. Second eye I had nearly perfect vision straight out of the OR. The preop work is pretty painful as they use a laser to zap blood vessels in the iris to allow it to dialate enough to insert the implant.

There are side benefits, too, such as full UV A & B protection for the retina.

It's expensive, like $4500 per eye, but still probably the best money I've ever spent on myself.
>You just disproved yourself - they call it a veggie burger if it looks like a burger

I don't think this disproves me at all. Consumers understand what sort of product they're buying when purchasing a 'veggie burger' and they'd probably know what they're buying if they were purchasing 'beef flavored veggie crumbles' or 'plant-based beef crumbles' or 'veggie burger crumble.' All of these would be totally clear. When you sell that vegetable based product as 'beefy beef crumbles' though I think you're crossing a line. Maybe we'll meet the meat industry halfway and allow 'veggie meat' and 'veggie beef' but I totally get why they're pushing for this because at the very least the terms 'meat' and 'beef' shouldn't be used unamended.
A perspective from India. I was at one of the big 4 when I made the decision to leave for a startup. (The salaries at FAAMG aren't quite so eye popping relative to other companies in Bangalore and are about 1/3th to 1/10th those in the Bay Area.) I tried to look for a founder for whom I could work for, but the conclusion that I came to, was that it made no economic sense working for an early stage startup (pre Series-A) as an employee in India. Equity had no value, particularly as it not only had all the problems that equity has in a Silicon Valley startup, but given the very weak legal system, it would be impossible to enforce contracts. Post Series-B the salaries are quite attractive by Indian standards (still 1/5-1/10 of bay area). So I went the founder route. The irony is that as a founder, this situation now comes to bite me. It is next to impossible for an early stage startup to hire engineers, even at market rates. You have to pay a substantial premium over market to compensate for the risk the employee is taking. This may be one of the reasons, that India will have trouble starting hard-tech companies. The startups that I see getting traction, are typically market focused -- e.g. food delivery, etc. So are not as tech-heavy as as say a SaaS startup might be, as they rely on scaling up a low-skill workforce (delivery men etc...)
It's almost as if we were hardwired through millions of years of evolution to enjoy and thrive struggling through difficult conditions... Interesting!
The key takeaway for me was: you will complete none of the jobs on which you don't work. If you don't feel like getting started, do something anyway. Just do something, no matter how small, and then do another thing. The hard part is getting started: once there is momentum then getting things done follows.
> Sure. But some people feel unhappy all the time. Sometimes for years, sometimes for their entire life. In their case, it is a mental health issue.

Sometimes it is, not always. When I went through long periods of unhappiness it was because of my circumstances and life choices.
My father had it done due to cataracts, and was satisfied with the artificial lenses and resulting vision.

I had PRK done instead of LASIK (the top layer of the cornea is discarded [it regenerates] instead of being cut and lifted prior to abalation; recovery time is longer, but corneal integrity is preserved) 8 years ago. The recovery time was a few weeks, but I had no LASIK side effects. I highly recommend it versus LASIK.
I’m curious, what’s better compared to contacts? I idly considered surgery for a long time, but then I tried contacts and they’ve been great. I realize they’re not great for everyone, is it just that?
Close cousins to the "bullshit" jobs in the OP are the "gotta" jobs that no one really chooses to do but they have to earn money to live on.

UBI is a compelling way to get lots of people out of that "gotta" hole and enable a much wider range of options and opportunities. Perhaps not a complete fix but certainly a helpful step.
There IS a reason why rent in high cost areas are so, well, costly.

If you go to NYC or SF and make 400k/year after tax, who cares if housing costs you 300k out of that. Especially if you're buying, in which case you can get part of your money back once you sell.
Homepage currently returns a 404.
>How many people are capable of manually flashing an image onto a Nexus/Pixel, and then what subset of that group is interested in a "more secure" ROM?

It's mostly their commercial clients. Very few regular people can use COS for recent devices (for free) since you need to build it from source.
I think this is a unique view, but I've come to appreciate nearsightedness. Partially because I like having the ability to soften the external world by removing my glasses (like wrapping myself in a warm fuzzy blanket), but even more so because it grants me the ability to see things near me in sharper focus than someone with 20/20 vision.

I can put on contacts or glasses to see something at a distance just as clearly as someone with naturally perfect vision, but someone with 20/20 vision would strain to view something as close to their nose as I comfortably can. (Great for reading!)

I fully admit that this perspective is borne out of my attempt to find the good in a conventionally undesirable situation. But having found it, would I trade it? I don't think I would...
Gates was quite heavily involved in making Microsoft's early products, long before they had '60 to 150 engineers'. In the case of Jobs, the really enduring mystery to me is that despite some seemingly disqualifying personality flaws, he managed to both surround himself with very talented people and get them to do outstanding work together. Once, you could chalk it up to luck but somehow he did it repeatedly.
No, any behavior can be mapped to "I prefer world-histories where I do A at time 1, B at time 2, C at time 3, ...". Your coherence conditions are the constraints on the notion of preferences without which trivial-behaviorist preferences can be constructed.

Edit: but yes, human behavior (often) doesn't satisfy von Neumann-Morgenstern utility axioms (the coherence conditions for scale-free origin-free utility functions as prefered by behavioral economics).
Anyone here wear the contact lenses that reshape your eyes at night and then during the day you have corrected vision and no lenses? Mostly I don't mind glasses and contacts, but there are some activities I'd rather not have to rely on them.
Which aspect of USB-C do you require to remain unaffected in transit?
Have you tried this ? https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer
It's not that amazing. I work at a startup, 300k cash comp, plus probably worthless options :-0.
PRK is very similar to LASEK.

In PRK, the outer layer ("epithelium") of the cornea is removed chemically, and the laser ablates the surface of the eye. Over a few days the layer grows back.

For LASEK, the outer layer of the cornea is peeled away. The laser ablates the surface of the eye, and the skin is pushed back into place.

For both of these, there is no flap. The cornea retains its original structural integrity. PRK and LASEK are quite similar in process and outcome. PRK is a faster procedure and gives the patient less discomfort. LASEK has a slightly lower risk of corneal haze.

Having experienced both... I'd never choose LASEK again.
The numbers are positive and I respect your optimism.

I have nothing to add but wanted to say that.
We can get rid of git which is a massive tax on our thought process.

Or rather, we could have a considerably simplified version, with a very small set of commands that are consistent with one another, and 'undoable', and a simpler conceptual model - and only allow admins/superusers to touch 'real' git.

I'm deadly serious, I don't care how brilliant a dev is, I find that git's conceptual model, the variety and inconsistency of the command patterns, and the variety of usage models add up to an unnecessary mental tax on dev.

I don't mean to turn this into a git discussion, but I suggest it is an example of one of many 'sneaky taxes' that effectively introduce otherwise reducible complexity on all of us.
> two years ago

Ok, so let us know how it goes in 20 years.
I'm not sure I follow. Assuming the $1 million is post tax, it equates to $250,000 post tax and nearly entirely disposable income. Compared to, say, someone making $200,00 post tax and spending only 25% of that on rent it is strictly better. The point that the above commenter is making is that if the percentage of income spent on rent is higher, but the purchasing power adjusted income is higher it can cancel out.

I'm not sure what transportation has to do with this. Someone could increase their commute time to reduce rent, but that's the case regardless of income.
Yup. It widens the income gap significantly. The problem with anything that raises average income, is that people without average income are worse of.

If families have at most 1 earner, then the worse case scenario is to have 0 earners, being one down. If most families have 2 though, when you fall to 0, you're much, much worse off compared to the norm.

People with kids vs people without. People with college degrees in high demand profession vs people without. Basically, every time we push people in drove toward a more efficient "lifestyle", the worse off people who don't are.
That's just an example, it's not about actually being homeless but about losing everything you have. It's not as bad as you think, and as long as you're healthy and free, you should be able to rebuild.
Tangentially - there was something I heard on the radio recently that drug testing was restricted by the FDA about 30 years ago to men only due to unforseen side effects possible in pregnant women, and medical companies took the shortcut of just limiting testing to men wherever possible and lifting that thought process is still an ongoing effort. It even impacts animal testing where they might test something mostly in male mice.
Is that "$400k in base salary and max bonus?" or is that "$400k a year in base salary, max bonus, considering benefits and stock grants which are taxed heavily unless they're held 2 years?"

I very much dislike the habit of people not explaining what goes in the knapsack.