skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
100-200 Hz displays are the next logical step for laptops and mobile phones.

Check out iPad Pro devices with 120 Hz display. It makes a big difference in readability of scrolling text (try to read a web page while it's scrolling), responsiveness and smoothness of motion.
I really love the Onion, but I think I have laughed much more at The Hard Times these past two years. I’m not sure what that means, but I hope some of the Onion guys maybe make it over there.
> When I lived in the US I would follow the phone menu for 30s or so, but at some point I would always a get annoyed enough and just hit random keys until the robot says: I don't understand let me connect you...

I don't remember which ones, but I've found several companies whose automated systems hang up on you after giving you a certain number of 'tries' to enter a menu option.
Hey Hacker News,

I'm Andrey, the host of the podcast. The episode has started off as an exploration of Merkle Trees and their role in decentralized software (spoiler: they are everywhere). As I was interviewing people I became curious about how p2p protocols work in general, what are common traits and practices, what can we as developers learn from them and how can we use them in our projects.

It was a fascinating journey! I've learned a lot and it changed my view on the future of software architecture. The client-server model that we're used to now seems outdated and flawed. So I'm curious:

* What do you think about the future P2P protocols? Will they stay a niche toy for engineers or will they become more widespread?
* Did you build anything on top of IPFS, Dat, Scuttlebutt etc? How was your experience as a developer? How was the experience of the user?

Also, I'm always looking for ways to make the show better, so please send in your feedback and suggestions.
Dependency is different than addictive behavior.

If you read the whole page, it goes into more detail:

“Addiction, or what is sometimes referred to as psychological dependence, includes people misusing or craving the drug not to relieve withdrawal symptoms, but to experience its euphoric or intoxicating effects.”

Also if you read the link on addiction you’ll note that benzos are not listed as drugs that elicits true addictive behavior.

Can you become dependent on benzos... yes that’s possible. But people typically don’t seek out ever increasing doses to get high, which is an important distinction. And people who abuse them are often self medicating due to untreated anxiety disorders rather than to party or get high.

Stigmatizing medicine like SSRI and Benzodiazepines as addictive like opiates is misleading and harmful.

Benzodiazepines, if used under a doctors supervision and for limited duration, almost never cause dependence. Opiates on the other hand, even short term doses, can lead some individuals to become quickly addicted and start drug seeking behavior.

Doesn’t mean benzos are totally safe all the time, but it’s just not fair to compare it to opiates or Kratom.
> Serious question: Is there a field, or even a social context, in which doing so would actually be rewarded?

Health care is putting considerable effort into creating psychological safety and just culture, in front line staff and in the board, to create the ability to question what happens.

This is to prevent things like the Argon Beam Liver Tattoo doctor from carrying on without being stopped; or to ensure boards question the serious incident reports they get.

So far it's had a limited effect, but culture takes a long time to change.
Servo seems to depend pretty heavily on hardware acceleration, which we don't have, so it probably wouldn't work too well. We don't have time to implement that; but someone else is certainly free to put the time in...
Helping to write a sort of compiler for a new chip architecture.

The previous job I had (I've only had two programming jobs - used to do engineering) also wasn't CRUD - it wasn't as algorithmic but it did involve lots of low level USB programming which was interesting.

Are non-CRUD jobs really that rare? Surely if you don't want a CRUD job just find a company that wouldn't need to write any...
I remember when Rails moved onto github and someone did an animation of the repos history shortly after. A firework it was.

Signed, Github user 3527
Wow, I had the same error as Hotz's last night, it crashed the program after about 15 min of calculations, which then had to be rerun. I couldn't even blame myself, because that was someone else's code.
Online Optical Marker-Based Hand Tracking with Deep Labels – Facebook Research
The new CEO had previously been CFO since 2014. If his actions turned an unsalable company into a company that could be sold for $465 million then I'd say he's probably worth the $11 million. And the founding CEO surely drew a reasonable salary despite the company making a loss.
HTML's readability problem and a solution
The Largest Tech Inclusiveness Survey Yet
I'm reaching out to request support to help fill out and share this survey around inclusiveness in tech.

The goal is to understand how people of color, women and the LGBTQ communities feel about working in tech:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9KHMVPG

The main difference being that this is a study being done by minorities, as opposed to by tech companies (which often means biased and untrustworthy results).

Would be great if you could fill it out and share with your networks!
The Largest Tech Inclusiveness Survey Yet
I keep getting back to one word, whether it's hiring good teams or public displays of purity: humility.

On HN, we try to assume positive intent. Many times I fail. But it's that effort, that humility, that makes productive conversations happen.

I'm okay with being correct and moral and having strong convictions -- and the world not agreeing with me. That's because who knows? I might be wrong. Been wrong a lot before. But once I drop that humility, then it's only natural to go out seeking wrongs to right. After all, I have the high ground!
Well being physically more demanding than programming doesn't say a lot!
I don't think fidget spinner relied on the rich for it's success.
I never thought of that, but on reflection I think you're exactly right that hand-drawing is a good way to focus the reader's attention on the content of the text and not on the surrounding visual context. With a screenshot, the user might be consciously or unconsciously wondering why the terminal window looks different if it's a different OS/terminal emulator/font.
These days even mobile phones can drive external monitors at 4k 60 Hz. I think it's reasonable to expect next gen MacBook Pros to be able to drive two 4k monitors at 120 Hz+.
If you like lower risk and lower gain, sure.

The most important thing is being educated. Every time this topic comes up on HN it appears that many people are unaware that liquidation preferences are a thing and many sales that are down-rounds have no money falling on common.
CVS served its purpose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_version_control_...
The Lockheed Martin F-35: one of the most colossal pieces of shit ever created
> Lying isn't bad. Hurting people is bad. There are many totally honest ways of hurting someone.

While I agree with your first two sentences and think that they are well said, the third doesn't demonstrate the first; it demonstrates only that "hurting people can be done without lying", not "lying can be done without hurting people."
It's probably been discussed to death, and I apologize if you are rolling your eyes at its mere mention: I really, really like the Solarized colour scheme.

It's now deeply ingrained into my "visual muscle memory" that a terminal without Solarized just looks wrong to me. Even text editors look strange and jarring without those familiar and soothing colours.

It's interesting that the colours in that Swiss Style Color Picker (linked from the article) seem to be taken from a similar visual family of colours (shades? hues? I am not literate in colour's language).
Ugh, I did my PhD work in a lab that did both Alzheimer's and diabetes research, and the "type 3 diabetes" label drove me up the wall. Especially considering type I and type II have totally different etiologies anyway (athough there were totally crazy attempts to unnecessarily strongly connect those, by PIs looking to justify grant money)
you don't happen to be a project manager?
The answer given by the article:

> There's no such thing as timeless design, because it's too dependent on its context, but one can shoot for longevity.

E.g. Obviously, there is no such thing perfectly timeless, as the only universal constant is that things change over time. But one can minimize dependence on current context, and attempt to tap into the slower changing, more fundamental aspects of today's world. In this respect, the artist shares some similarity with the scientist.
I consider that a feature in a way.

For a very long time I had the opinion because the German plugs are reversible they are inferior in design however what I learned is that it encouraged safer device design because it both line and neutral are not exposed on devices as a result.

Similar rules apply to bulbs: since you generally cannot tell safely if a a switch is on or off it encouraged the installation of RCDs and mandatory wiring plans that let you switch off parts of the installation.
Have you tried psychedelics? They’ve been reported as being effective at setting the world straight for many people. Probably need to do a good deal of research first, and conventional medical information sources will probably be unhelpful.
> those preferences only really affect equity payouts when the company’s in distress

Liquidation preferences and bankruptcy priority only matter when a company is distressed.
Practically all woke criticism of capitalism says that it would be impossible without wealth and income disparity and untold "externalized" ecological costs (including human ecologies, such as those that result i.e. people who can't rise out of poverty in the richest country). Those things are havok. Meanwhile, everybody likes to ride high on the idea that they are making the world a better place, with capitalism; but this requires one to consciously, one might says, conspicuously, ignore what it takes for the things they take for granted to be produced, the shoes, phones and "sharing economy". To answer your question, Venture Capitalism is capitalism, so that's the conclusion.
Frankly, I find the notion that people are too busy to fight for causes they believe in laughable. Either make the effort to effect change or accept that you are part of the problem. Face the truth.

I don't understand how someone can believe in something, but only when it's convenient.
It seems as though our profession has such a low barrier to entry, especially with open source, that a lot of tooling is seen as having no associated cost.

To draw an admittedly flawed comparison I work at a contract engineering and manufacturing firm. There are some products that we produce by the tens or hundreds of thousand and benefit greatly from a lot of automation in both assembly, testing, packaging, etc. We also do low count production runs that quite simply don't get much automation because the per unit cost would end up being astronomical. There's no reason to tool up for a 100,000 piece run if you're making 10 pieces.

In our field the barrier to entry seems free though. So while git was designed to meet the needs of the linux kernel, people also use it for their own person 1kloc side project. It doesn't stop here of course, introductions for making a simple web app are often filled with tooling, frameworks, etc that need to be included, configured, and used. Undoubtedly these make sense for large projects, but are used for personal sites as well.
You are wrong - the supply of corporate software developers outstrips the supply if qualified nurses - in London at least.
From the perspective of a founder, I would be quite nervous about accepting an investment and drawing any kind of salary if the deal didn't include liquidation preferences. They are so standard (at least in North American tech) that if they were missing, I'd worry about their competence.

Structuring a deal without LPs would mean that founders could push for extremely early exits, cash out with modest (though life changing) returns and investors could lose most of their investments. Adding that kind of risk would make it even harder for first time founders to raise a round.
What Happens When You Sell Your Startup? A Primer on Liquidation Deal Terms
Chicagoan here.

I grew up in Northern California (moved here for college and have stayed for 15 years). I have nothing but the utmost respect for the environment, for minority rights, and for helping the less fortunate.

But here in Shitcago, I get shouted down as a traitorous, MAGA-loving nazi because I criticize the very obvious flaws that we have in our welfare programs, pensions and unions. Welfare cliffs like these ones are borderline inhumane, robbing people of their ability to improve themselves as human beings and to have the self-respect of being a great as they would like to be. We arguably hurt people with these programs, and we PAY TO HURT them.

Now this isn't to say that there aren't great programs that we can undertake to help those in need by redistributing wealth in productive ways, but it is not at all clear to me that supporting our current welfare and educational system is at all synonymous with supporting the idea of helping and educating people.
Just thought I'd chime in for this. After my cochlear implant surgery I had all these symptoms.

I was put on the same medications. After a while I started having seizures. Over time, I managed to stop the tramadol, and the others only leaving the gabapentin. Seizures still happened. (the electric shock thing I used to encounter, was probably related).

One day I come across side effects for it and one of the big ones was "causes seizures". So, trying to stop that gabapentin was one of the hardest things I've ever done, such extreme withdrawals, far worse than any tramadol, oxycontin etc.

As soon as I had stopped the gabapentin, all my symptoms disappeared, and I've not had another seizure since.

What we think happened was I had an infection, that had caused the aforementioned pain and shocks, so we went with the medications which obviously masked a lot of the symptoms. However it wasn't until I was free of the meds, that things were actually better, and it was very easy to pinpoint what was causing havoc with me.

When reading about Gabapentin/Pregabalin all over the internet, some people have had such bad experiences with it - and on top of that, doctors give it out like candy in New Zealand as a fix-all, because it's marketed as a very safe drug.

I hope your wife is feeling better these days mate! :)
Ask HN: Why aren't you using serverless computing in production?
I've seen a ton of write-ups on the benefits of serverless computing (AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, etc.) and spent a decent amount of time playing around with the Chalice framework [1] on a couple personal projects. I'm currently debating on adopting it for a new project at my day job, but I've encountered some rough edges that have made me realize that, for all of the positives, there are still a lot of negatives. I was curious what issues other people have experienced and what the dealbreakers ended up being.

So, effectively, I'm asking HN to convince me to not go serverless :)

[0] - https://github.com/aws/chalice
Some people are more influenced by fairness. Some people are more influenced by their desire to compete and win. Both are built into humans. Don't judge the whole humanity by your personal temperament.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uq9pp586AE

Experts Agree Giant, Bioengineered Crabs Pose No Threat
Similar reasoning solves one of my favorite brain teasers:

“My wife and I greet 4 other couples. After the handshakes, I ask everyone how many people they shook hands with and get no duplicate replies; no one shook hands with their partner or themselves. How many people did my wife shake hands with?”

This puzzle stumps everyone I know that hasn’t been exposed to combinatorics.
If you're shocked or surprised by this, you should give Venture Deals, Third Edition: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson a read.

https://smile.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capita...
>Never needed a data structure or algo that wasn't in the standard lib.

Either your definition of algorithm is absurdly narrow, or you are working on some very simplistic problems.
> Ending one person’s life kills you a little on the inside, too.

Are you saying this in a metaphysical sense?

Secondly, if you don't want to put your dogs to sleep, no one is forcing you to do so, just refuse it and allow them to live in pain till they die of old age. It's not the choice I would make, but then I don't have your views on euthanasia.
There is most certainly timeless user-interface design.

Look at a book from 500 years ago compared to a book today. While the underlying tech is completely changed, the fundamental principles of book-user interaction remain the same.

A lamp in the 1920’s had a screw bulb and a switch.

The piano has kept 88 keys and 3 pedals for centuries.

The asdf keyboard layout will never change.

When it comes to website design, we see some standardization happening across the industry for what a website ought to be. I expect the homogenization will continue as websites get measured for business results and find local optima for solving the various problems.
Having recently raised a seed in the UK; there is simply no reason to accept any sort of prefs for a seed round. There is plenty of SEIS/EIS money about - and part of those tax relief schemes is the investors need to take ords or they lose the tax-relief.

Your mileage may vary etc.
Wanting to become a hacker is what got me into programming. Never became a hacker. Now do software dev for a living.
"Justice" is the ultimate social construct – that everybody constructs to his or her needs.
Regardless of the TIMELESSNESS of UI design matters having THIRTY percent of TEXT emphasized is REALLY quite annoying.
> Even a 60% marginal tax is very strongly disincentivizing and makes it difficult to justify most any feasible long-term plan for increasing one's productivity from a poverty level.

Are you aware of any research that bears on this question? Right now we just seem to have dueling intuitions.

Anyway, I already agreed that some people will find it disincentivizing. But again, the disincentive can't be anything like the massive one we currently have with the cliff. Do you really not think that what I'm proposing would be an improvement over the status quo?
Would similar results hold for a portable sauna, e.g. [1]?

[1] https://www.amazon.in/Total-Sauna-Portable-Steam-Bath/dp/B00...
The Guardian view on forcible integration in Denmark: this cannot end well
The Guardian view on forcible integration in Denmark: this cannot end well

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/08/the-guardian-view-on-forcible-integration-in-denmark-this-cannot-end-well?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Submit_to_HN
That's not RN but Expo on top of it.

We tried Expo and very quickly decided against it. I forgot the reasons, somebody else did it and reported the findings and we all agreed.

Besides, why would I add an entire pretty big layer on top of still beta RN (version number well below 1) only to get one tiny component? That only makes sense if one wants the entirety of Expo, and this is where our tester (if we should use it) quickly ran into numerous issues.

I understand that it's en vogue to immediately point to this or that npm package or github repo for every problem big or small, but we don't do that. We look at the sources of every package we include, and we look at possible maintenance issues. Our own stuff is trouble enough, we don't need the added problems of all those layers on top of layers of "stuff". I know it's "move quickly and sort it out later when the business has grown" - but we don't want to work like that whenever we can avoid it. Because we don't have an "exit plan", we ourselves will have to maintain the mess we create now...
What do you want the marginal rate to be? 1%? Just have a $1/month decrease in the subsidy for every $100/month increase in wages.

Personally, I would prefer if all welfare was unconditional and we did all of this tweaking through the explicit tax code, but that is an implementation detail.

>The more generous benefits you want, the more you have to disincentivize work;

What disincentives work is the marginal decrease in benefits. Assuming you have adequate funding, there is no need to increase the rate of marginal decrease. If you don't have adequate funding, then you will need to fund the increased benefits to the not-as-poor by decreasing benefits to the poorer.

There is, admitadly, a decreasing marginal value of money that does behave like you are describing, but its effect is dwarfed at the level of income we are talking about.
It’s not about there liquidation preferences themselves IMO, it’s that they were exercised in this manner. In this case it was the investors pushing for a liquidation under the limit, not the founders
I literally can't parse the semantics of this headline
I’ve seen a recent trend of terminals with red backgrounds that I’m starting to like more than Solarized. It’s not quite as soothing, but easier to focus.
From what gets printed in the press, it appears that lots of unicorns are having to agree to pretty high liquidation preferences in their latest rounds.
Egil the Mean: The violent backstory of a Viking poet
> We really need some kind of consumer protection against IVR gauntlets.

My brain tried really hard to read "IVR gauntlets" as a description of wearables, like AR goggles, before I realised what you meant.
The elm architecture removes the need to make decisions when it comes to structuring the app. The tooling is first class. While I'm not sure, I think elm has a larger community.
I posted this in another reply, but it’s not the liquidation preferences themselves so much as the fact that it was the investors pushing for liquidation at a price point that precluded the founders from getting any money
Best choice is to follow the wishes of the person who’s in the heat of the battle. Be cognizant that those wishes may change as the illness progresses. Do it as being of maximal service to the loved one.
Heh, until they make blocking driverless cars a state jail felony.
SVN has quite workable branching and tagging, as opposed to git. Refs are just a nightmare to work with. The mental overhead that their utterly broken logic creates is astonishing.
Goddammit. I am going to cry.

This was a wonderful piece. Empathy in every detail, while still being open enough to satisfy a reader's curiosity. It read like a book and I accidentally began to feel a kinship with the characters.
Rolling your own is expensive if you’re getting audited for compliance that includes FIPS or other things.

You need to have a Dev who understands and documents everything, your ops guys need to be careful to not fix a security bug in OpenSSL that leaves you with a non-validated version, etc.

Or you can give AWS $5/secret/year. It’s the path of least resistance.
Seems to me its a form of cargo-cult development: its what the ‘great’ hackers did, so we must do it to become a great hacker too.
I am using CVS (and even RCS) and for small personal projects, it's perfect. Maybe there are problems with merges or project history in a larger context, but as things are, at the end of the day, I type the single command `cvs commit' and have a magic backup with revision history as a bonus. Sometimes that's all a project needs.
> But is our lifestyle/life really healthy when looking at it for the long term?

We're basically poisoning ourselves right now. >30 % of children have chalk teeth nowadays, meaning their teeth are utterly broken and unusable right off the bat. Humans are becoming more and more infertile. Cancer rates in children and young adults are going through the roof.