skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Monopolists always have this response. Bell said similar things before their breakup - that their scale allowed them to provide a standard of service and price point otherwise impossible. History has repeatedly shown that its not true.
Chris Kresser -- despite his many virtues -- is not a doctor. Moreover, he has never published any research indicating his findings or results are statistically significant. While his advice is often good, there is no reason to believe that it offers 'cures' to diseases hitherto considered uncurable. If anything, the fact that you think he's a doctor with magic cures suggests the need for ever more regulation, and thus bureaucracy.
Other quirkiness:

- Finland has 45 firearms per 100 people (3rd highest in the world) yet is was ranked the safest country in the world.

- Enough saunas that the whole population could do it at the same time.

- Most heavy metal bands, per population.

- Annual championships in wife-carrying, air-guitar, boot and phone throwing, sauna, cattle calling, swamp soccer, mosquito swatting, ant nest sitting, etc.

- Mämmi: food that looks like diarrhea.

- Candies made of tar.

- Birch branches are used to whip yourself with in sauna.

- New years tradition of throwing melted tin in water. The shape tells of the future.

- Easter tradition of kids dressing up as witches and going trick-or-treating.

- No trespassing laws, so you can roam and camp anywhere (although not too close to anyone's home).

- Finland is a 3rd world country by the original cold war definition (politically non-aligned with either NATO or the Communist block).
The water gun emoji controversy got considerable press coverage and is easy to find in Google. Apple was behind it.[1] But they were pressured into it by a New York anti-gun group.[2][3]

The Unicode discussion for the "no" symbol (COMBINING ENCLOSING CIRCLE BACKSLASH) suggest the use of "No" on the gun glyph for "no guns":

No guns ⃠

That's a combining mark; you can apply it to anything.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-gun-emoji-change-squirt...
[2] https://metro.co.uk/2015/08/07/activists-want-the-gun-emoji-...
[3] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/apples-new-squirt-gun-emoji-hi...
> As a counterpoint to your "gains nothing" view, many "average citizens" used bitcoin for transactions in the early days, only to find out that holding some of their currency in bitcoin made them rich, so they did gain something. Even if that is only a small possibility, the possibility is still there.

Confirming that it is preferable to "HODL" than spend this currency...and any gains were at the cost of new bagholders who in turn expected to sell their coins for an even higher price.
> The idea that someone could make 61 different purchases over a span of years, and then go back and think that they are entitled to refunds for all of them is a little crazy.

There is an important distinction to be made.

I agree that he should not be entitled to change his mind about wanting a refund, years down the line.

But a corporation should not be entitled to unilaterally declare itself a sovereign entity, where it becomes both the defendant and the judge in lawsuits brought against it!

So sure, right verdict, but based on really terrible legal reasoning that needs to be overturned.
That was a well written and entertaining article. A bit long for my taste and I feel like it could have been said in fewer words, but like I mentioned, it was entertaining.

What this makes me wonder is how much effort should go into each User Interface. You describe a web GUI (in this domain) to be a good place for people to learn about something new and maybe kick the tires. It can also speed up their interactions via visual tricks. However, you mention that productive, at scale, and "more money" use occurs more in the CLI. Does that mean companies should make their UI better at educating the CLI and worry less about doing things in it and make the CLI be the encouraged primary form of "Doing"?

On top of that, making a GUI requires front end/backend development, UX, visual, research, and a whole lot of time while a CLI requires UX (maybe) and backend development and is overall simpler. I feel like the positives and negatives described in this article don't really support making a UI do anything more than discovery and education on the CLI. And CLI are finally attempting UX improvements like your example from Yeoman. They are taking the best bits from the Usability of GUI (color, shapes, iconography, recommendations, etc)and putting them in the CLI. Does that diminish the relevance beyond education and marketing of a GUI in this domain even further?
I did not know that, thank you for sharing.
I thought that an equilibrium in which the energy is distributed evenly is a state which the universe can reach. In that state, there wouldn't be something that shakes after a long while.

But yeah, maybe energy conservation principles alone can explain that it keeps shaking. But it still feels so unintuitive that it doesn't slow down or cool down.

I still have those other models in mind that the universe expands and then collapses or it keeps on expanding (which seems to be the case) or simply stop to expand but also doesn't collapse (and proceed to have maximum entropy level). Those were the three models I got taught. It seems that the universe is flat and will expand endlessly, so the model I thought is right (the universe just stops to expand) isn't true and my related assumptions (that maximum entropy levels get reached and absolute zero) are also not true (for some different reasons like quantum certainty and - it seems - even simple Newtonian mechanics).

related SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-06-02
My experience is the same. I set up a VPN for a coworker, who used it on 3 separate weeks away, connecting in total maybe 30 times. There were several MB of logs detailing illegitimate connection attempts.

It makes me curious what's really going over the wires and airwaves we love to hate for their low capacity and high cost. How much of that traffic is junk?
Just signed up, and looking forward to seeing the content, even though I'm just auditing this year.

I have a question, though. In the "What industry do you plan to launch your product in?" question, one of the responses was "Diversity." What exactly do you mean by "Diversity Industry" and can you give some examples of companies in this space?
> That's consumer products. DoD wants generality even if it costs more.

Ah, I missed that this was the DoD whingeing about the fact that they can't get people to design complicated systems for them for free.

However, even the DoD doesn't want only generality. The DoD generally has hard constraints on power and size and that fights against (and generally beats) generality.
Those of you who are getting lots of sleep and also consume caffeine during the day you probably don’t realize that if you cut caffeine you would require much less sleep. Try it sometime for at least a month.
I get the impression that you didn't read the actual article. There are three complaints all basically about the contractual conditions Google imposes, two about imposing Google search and the most interesting one about Google forcing manufacturers to choose between selling only Google's version with Play Store & Google apps or never Google's version. This forced in particular the big ones to commit fully to Google's version and companies like Samsung that might have been interested in providing a phone with Cyanogen, Lineage, etc etc simply couldn't do it.

It's a plain and simple competition case where Google was exploiting its market position "buy only from us or never from us". Your scenario doesn't make any sense whatsoever. In fact Samsung can produce Tizen phones already and still does as it's not a competing Android.
It's not that complicated.

The Google apps and the app store are not open. Everything else is.
How about Google just allows OEM to license without preventing them to customize as they see fit best for their customers? Or allow them to build other solutions, not forcing them to do it the Google way?

Its the exact same evil business practicr Microsoft did in the 90s, surprising Google got away with it that long. But also Microsoft wasn't fined until something like 10 years later...
Why is being awoken by an alarm stressful? It never bothered me. In fact I find it more stressful to not have an alarm set due to the fear of being late for work or an appointment. If I wake up before the alarm it's easy to turn off.
Honestly I didn't learn about this company until after I'd started but they still only have an 80" height. Nowadays I'd not do it due to my pickiness regarding materials. Also I think that width wouldn't fit into my bedroom (which I measured before selecting the condo).

That being said it inspires me to build yet an even more gigantic bed in the future.
Well, cash is king. I would take quite a bit of a discount on a cash deal, anything more complex I would advise you to get a lawyer involved that you pay for yourself. That way you have at least a fair chance that you will be getting quality and objective advice.
Amazon locked out a seller's account because they changed their Kindle's profile name to "Daddy" (in Chinese). Amazon asked for the seller's ID with that new name, and no amount of support escalation was enough to fix it[0]. It took an absurd amount of bad PR for them to come out and fix it.

Google is bad, but Amazon is really just as bad. They both have absurd policies with no recourse, that work in the 80% case and fail very badly in the 20% left.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/5gvgdl/using_a_amaz...
The magnitude of the data systems migration is usually discounted as well.

Insurance companies generally have atrocious IT (it's not their core competency) and consequently inflexible IT stacks.

Elimination the layers and layers of bureaucracy also means change / rewritting all the places that's embedded in code.

... and the real kicker? Those changes have to happen on both sides of any party / counterparty transaction. While supporting a normal volume of work.

Small example? ICD-10 code support https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/ICD10/index.html
And for a comparison in the same tech era: Facebook had more than a billion users after 10 years.

The "its still early days!" argument holds no water.
The Manual – How to have a number one the easy way (1988)
I find my creativity improved when my mind is tired, but once my focus returns and my dopamine levels are lower the following day, I tend to conclude that what my mind wanted me to create wasn't actually all that good...
All American (aircraft)
Don't forget safelane pos 1 feeding at minute 6 and typing "gg mid no gank"
Who is going to use Android with no app store and a bunch of crappy bundled apps? The answer is nobody. Look how far Amazon has been able to push that with all their engineering and marketing muscle.

Apple is a niche player only because they clung to their margins like a bag of heroin and let cheap Android phones eat their lunch. If it weren't for Android they would have zero serious competition.

I find myself in the very odd position today of having for the first time some sympathy with the Brexiters.
The only Maya city with an urban grid may embody a creation myth
New York-London in 3½ Hours? Supersonic Travel May Be Back
> If a company creates damages exceeding billions of dollars, it's quite obvious that they should receive penalty worth billions of dollars.

That is entirely tautological. It omits the reasoning under which that spectacular amount of irreparable damages have actually occurred to consumers.

"They have a lot of money and we would like to have that" is not a valid method of calculating damages.
Seems like SpaceX is a light year beyond these guys. Do they just get coverage because they're a private space corp?
I find the argument that advanced growing alien civilizations would construct "Dyson Swarms" pretty convincing. These structures have the huge advantage that no new physics is required- we could start building ours now with today's technology.

They would look like infrared point sources. Sadly none detected yet:

https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/dyson-spheres-the-ulti...
I know everything I know about the Fermi Paradox from this video (and part 2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNhhvQGsMEc

That YouTube channel is awesome by the way. Say goodbye to the rest of your afternoon!
But that would be s-s-socialism!!
Talisca Çin'de hat-trick yaparak coştu
It's a shame there's no mention of RoHS in this discussion. As an EU resident ROHS and WEEE have done wonders for hazardous materials found in electronics.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electroni...

One thing I am really interested in, and have been unable to properly research is to the extent that ROHS affected electronics sold in non-EU countries such as the USA. I've read everything I can find in academic journals on this subject(next to nothing) and also online(pretty much nothing).

This kind of article that interviews some individual attempting to solve a massive political problem as an individual or a consumer is so typical of the American ethos. It would appear the only opportunity Americans have to resolve such issues is to approach them as consumers, or in this case, criminals. Which ultimately leads to very little positive outcome.
The key difference at that time was that Microsoft had zero real competition and was stifling innovation in the OS and web space. Instead today Android is the only alternative to the most proprietary and richest company in the history of computing, which needs no legal remedies or special favors.
>Altas V (actually built by Lockheed Martin, not ULA)

Er, what?

(Missed this before.)
Microsoft believed that from its inception.
Previous discussions here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14686687

And here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17302924
Is that inherent to emojis, or is it a symptom of the current set of emojis being shallow and humorous?
I took a 2011 model in since I just needed a replacement battery due to bulging. The Apple employee was flabbergasted that I had removed the screws and bottom plate saying I had voided the warranty... on a severely out of warranty device. He was insistent that any device that had screws in it would have the warranty voided if those screws were removed and the device opened, even after showing him the manual which instructs the user on how they can open the device to replace the hard drive in the section labeled "Boost your MacBook Pro" starting on page 35. https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1602/en_US/mac...
Or we will have unleashed highly lethal, self-replicating nanobots in the prosecution of a devastating global war, and the human race will be crawling along with a population at extinction levels. (Or maybe just a good old fashioned series of nuclear exchanges?)

The future can be more brilliant than we could imagine, or darker than our worst fears can conjure. Likely, it will be somewhere in the middle.
What's your source for this version of the etymology? Either Wikipedia is wrong or your version is. Either is possible but one is much more likely.

It seems patently obvious that some jokes are mean and some jokes are not. But it's highly subjective given varying contexts. A "mean" joke about someone at a roast might be considered a kindness by all involved. You could still call it "mean" but you might be the only one that thinks so.

Here's some (mostly boring) jokes. Let's see if you can point out the the meanness in each of them.

"Q: What do chemists' dogs do with their bones?
A: They barium!"

"Q: What did the cat say when the mouse got away?
A: You've got to be kitten me!"

"Q. What did the ocean say to the sailboat?
A. Nothing, it just waved."

"Q. What did Batman say to Robin before they got in the car? A. 'Robin, get in the car.'"

"Q. What do you get when you cross-breed a shark and a cow? A. I have no idea but I wouldn’t try milking it."

"My new thesaurus is terrible.
Not only that, but it’s also terrible."
They probably care very little about desktop Safari. There are few persuasive business reasons to care about it at this point. macOS as a whole seems to be considerably deprioritized.
Lighthouse scores: how to reduce render-blocking scripts
Why do you not consider that to be "top down orders"? Sure, the orders came from a few execs at a few companies, rather than from the president, but it still looks top-down to me. Specifically it looks top-down in contrast to slang changing rapidly due to current events (which was the original context), which involves a bunch of people having a new reference point, and choosing to use that in their speech.
I wonder what kind of criteria Apple has for phone manufacturers in this regard ;) Are they more permissive?
Wow TIL. I have a medical background, so I'm familiar with the "preventive" meaning, but I wasn't aware of the "contraceptive" one.
The same people that were already using J2ME and Symbian apps before iPhone became a thing.

Even Google used to have maps versions that targeted those platforms, before they went with Android.
Re: "[not] really innovative musically."

Innovation is hard to objectively measure. I judge most music by whether I enjoy it, not how "innovative" it is. Innovation is nice, but "like" is much better. Most styles are cyclical and borrow from the past. Disco-esque music has come back twice. Anything "new" is probably just borrowing bits and pieces from different eras.

If it were easy, anybody with money would make a hit. If they make a catchy song, I give them kudos regardless of how they made their sausage. To quote a pop song: "Shuddup and dance!"
And what are they? And how probable are those conditions? And how often does life start under those conditions?
Why would Google continue to license Android to Samsung when it can no longer make any revenue from Samsung phones? At that point it would only make sense for them to throw all their efforts into Pixel and catch up as best they can.
>orthography also changes

Not of things already written down. The long S written in the Constitution is still there. It has not changed, and there would be outrage for anyone to go and change it. Changing the emoji from one meaning to another would be like changing the encoding of utf-8 so that a now means e and e means a, meaning that and and end flips in every utf-8 encoded file that is viewed.
Google doesn't need to stop licensing GMS to OEM's. They simply need to stop giving it away for free and start charging OEM's to license it. And the OEM's that do license it will, of course, pass on the expenses to the consumer and raise the cost of the device. If the EU wants to stop Google from forcing OEM's to install their apps then congratulations you've now put OEM's in a position where they will now pay for GMS licensing and increase phone prices. Ironically, this decision will favor Google as the additional revenue from GMS licensing will allow them to decrease their dependency on search and further diversify their revenue streams. That 5 billion dollar fine will quickly be replenished with EU GMS licensing fees.

>The free distribution of the Android platform, and of Google’s suite of applications, is not only efficient for phone makers and operators—it’s of huge benefit for developers and consumers. If phone makers and mobile network operators couldn’t include our apps on their wide range of devices, it would upset the balance of the Android ecosystem. So far, the Android business model has meant that we haven't had to charge phone makers for our technology, or depend on a tightly controlled distribution model.[1]

https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/andro...
Unfortunately, almost always. Approximately zero percent of websites take accessibility into account in any real way.
It's not relevant. The reason why all the semiconductor companies are buying each other is that it is more cost effective than trying to pry a design win out of somebody's hands that might or might not result in volume.

Or, more directly, someone who already has the design win can probably undercut your price and still make a profit (don't have to redesign anything so all the NRE is already sunk). So, if you want the design win, you have to take an initial loss and then hope you can squeeze the cost of the chip to gain some profit. Not a good bet.

The pot of money for semiconductors is effectively fixed for right now so companies are going to just keep eating one another until that changes or governments step in.
As I was studying math, I noticed this as a trend: somebody defines addition, and everything works fine until somebody comes along and suggests "inverse addition" which introduces this whole new class of numbers that we call "negative numbers". Somebody else defines multiplication and everything's fine, it can even be worked to account for negative numbers... until somebody suggest inverse multiplication which introduces the complexity of this whole new classification of numbers called rational numbers. Somebody defines square roots and now we have irrational and even _imaginary_ numbers. And, of course, somebody defines differentiation and everything is completely straightforward until somebody else defines inverse differentiation and we have this whole class of, while not numbers, problems that are intractable.
Sending 1 probe might be low resources. Try sending 1 probe to every star ever 10,000 years. Because without that the odds of any probe being near us is rather limited.

As to self replicating probes that's freaking dangerous. Get something wrong and the universe becomes a very hostile place.

PS: In terms of cost consider the % of humanity's GDP spent on SETI projects. Now consider those at least have the possibility of some benefit in your lifetime. Extra Solar probes are unlikely to get much in the way of resource investment from most civilizations.
How to Detect Lying Clients by Reading Their Facial Cues
Not asking my parents....but I have thought of it as a pie in the sky thing...
This is a fantastic insight, it crystallizes a sense of foreboding about Google I have had for several years now since a friend got locked out of his GMail account by Google and had no redress. Dealing with Google is like dealing with an insect colony in contrast to Amazon or Apple support. Other large tech firms like Atlassian offer excellent support as well. I think hguhghuff is right: they don't seem to want a real conversation with their customers. No human touch.
a process which favors looking good to the general public when there is no consequence of fudging the numbers.
Do you already have awareness of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parameterized_complexity ?
Amazon Web Services is essentially unrelated as a business from Amazon.com. This is even less relevant than someone trying to compare the policies of some random end-user service like Google Photos with Google Cloud Platform. I personally had serious issues (not account suspension problems, but an inability to get things like basic tax paperwork to correct addresses) with Amazon Flexible Payments (which was part of some seemingly unrelated-to-everyone division), but I count absolutely none of them against AWS (which wasn't involved in running the service).
Based on my experience (working around insurance IT during ACA implementation), the best solution is setting performance goals, then rebating some of the savings to the party for exceeding them. With the rebates tailing off after a number of years.

This allows the party cutting costs the flexibility to reallocate now-redundant people directly to problem areas, without having to procure additional funding. The rebates cover the cost of retraining (maybe mandate this for for-profit parties).
I'm seventeen and need 10 hours of sleep to run at full capacity the next day. But with school I have to wake up at 7 and going to sleep at 21 is impossible, so I feel like a zombie very often and am only productive in the afternoon.

I have always hoped this could get better with age. Are you saying this will get worse?