skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Apple actively uses data about expenditures to build a profile about individuals and then has its retail pawns lie and deceive unknowing customers into unnecessary purchases. Same level of moral bankruptcy, only much more egregious because they present themselves innocently in an immensely self-serving manner. Zero ethics
> Tesla has done more tangible work towards removing carbon from the atmosphere than probably any other entity in history.

Think you might be over-egging it here - think about the shift from coal to less co2 intensive sources (e.g. gas) for power generation at national scale, which has happened in many countries. I suspect that's responsible for some fairly gargantuan savings in co2 compared to Tesla, which is still a small minority player.
I do, actually. You have no evidence, so spread whatever rumors you like. If you start fabricating evidence then I would like that to be illegal.

I think there's also a distinction here between a good-faith claim with minimal evidence by the nature of the claim (e.g. "this happened between the two of us privately") and a bad-faith claim because there's no evidence because it never happened. I'm not sure how exactly to draw the distinction, but I do think that we shouldn't treat people who genuinely believe a thing happened (whether or not it happened) and are unable to provide evidence as equivalent to people who intentionally made up a claim. I think there are ways to figure out which case you're in, but if not, the principle of "presumed innocent until proven guilty" guides us to not punish either.

(To me "presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" is a check on government power which would otherwise be unchecked and unappealable, a statement about due process of law. I believe in it in this context; I don't believe in it as an ideal of a good society and non-government behavior, the way I believe in freedom of speech as both a legal right and an ideal of a good society, because I don't think a good society should bring everything before the courts.)
I feel like you’re implying things are different with space flight, but I feel like they’re the same, no?
The little mermaid statue they show, was it actually placed next to the little mermaid? I never heard anything about a second statue, and here in Denmark, anything that involves the little mermaid is usually big news.
Nah, just start requiring a 14 page fold out on all food like we do on medication. Then you can explain that dihydrogen monoxide is perfectly safe, assuming you don't inhale it into your lungs or similar provisos. Although dihydrogen monoxide poisoning is possible, it is quite rare and known cases tend to be limited to military recruits force fed excessive amounts of it in training due to a track record of under consuming it impairing their functioning.

The law can include an exception for sufficiently small items. The 14 pages of info can go on a website and the item in question can have a URL and QR code.

(Do I need a sarcasm tag here? Inquiring minds want to know.)
How about the good engineer, employed to design the wrong thing?

I feel like I've put good quality engineering work, in to projects that were completely wrong-headed in the bigger picture, and thereby lost the company money.
Im open to discussion, but I fail to see how any of this would benefit the user in any way.

The first 2 are basically unenforceable, and depending on the definition would happen so often as to make it easier to hide real issues, or would only happen when a public disclosure should happen, like user data was compromised. (I say "should" because I'm not sure if it's required in the US right now, and if it's not I absolutely think it should be).

The last one makes this situation worse, as now the incentive to correctly fix it is gone. Who cares if further issues with the fix are found? Their liability is limited, so they can half-ass whatever fix they want and be safe. Not to mention that it basically requires the federal agency to have full access to the source and development of all (I'm assuming publicly traded) companies code. Even if I trusted the agency with that information, now it's another target for attackers, and it still doesn't do anything to make code safer for the user.

I understand those were just discussion points or suggestions you are putting out there, and I get that you don't claim to have all the answers at this point, but I genuinely don't see any way that this can help the user in any way at all.

Edit: immediately after posting this I had a thought from re-reading your comments. I'd be open to an "OSHA for programming". An agency or group which creates guidelines or rules you must follow to safely handle data in companies. However I think we would need to be VERY careful to not enforce specific ways of working or specific algorithms to avoid a cryotographic monoculture or codify exploits into the law. And it would need to target only practices which are grossly negligent to avoid being a "shutdown any company at any time" button.

I'm honestly not sure it's possible to make a group like that and ensure it doesn't get out of control, or become so toothless it's just a waste of money. But if that's what you were trying to say, I can see the merit in the idea, but I still don't think it's a good idea.
Humanities knowledge is just a tool which may and may not be used for good. FAANG already hires tons of humanities and social science PhDs to understand user behaviors. Whether that's used for good or ill depends on what the corporations are incentivized to do, not on the number of humanities grads employed.

(I'm speaking as a social science PhD employed at FAANG.)
Yes and no. When it comes to Google I have a choice. When it comes to credit I do not.
Ferraris are plastered with ads
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_SF71H#/media/File%3A...
> Do you ever notice that your in-flight magazine has ads?

Yes. And on a recent trip to India, it got even worse. SpiceJet (domestic airlines) has ads on the back of the headrest of EVERY SEAT.

Physical paper printed Ads!

So you are staring at it for the entirety of your trip. I kid you not.
If I have seen your ad multiple times and not taken action, it is time to show me another ad, or fix your checkout flow.

In general though ad tech is so primitive it is embarrassing. I am an Atheist (and have plugged this into Facebook), then they try to sell me ads for magic crystals. An Atheist would by definition not be interested in that.

Then they tried to sell me gas, from a gas company 300 kilometers away. Then, after I had filled out the section about my education, showed me ads for the exact degree from the exact university I had told them I got the degree from.

I am a single man, so Facebook decided I wanted to be showed crappy for pay dating sites[0]. The only dating sites where I would have a chance are the big sites and you don't get big in the dating space by charging.

I searched for and got an apartment, then google showed me six months worth of ads for a crappy apartment finder site.

Google any electronics and you get ads for it weeks after you buy it.

Instead of figuring out what people by after and then show ads for that -- I might still be interested in buying custom fitted curtains, for example.

There must be products and services out there that would actually benefit me, and I certainly have the capacity to purchase them, but somehow those never show up.

[0]: you should never use them http://static.izs.me/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dat...
While I guess there are arguments for not banning users just because they have a whole bunch of nasty accusations against them, or for requiring high standards of evidence to do so, that wasn't the actual justification from what I can tell. (Indeed, I think arguing that rape accusations shouldn't automatically be believed is probably a bannable offence on all the instances involved.) It's more like they don't think community insiders should be held to the same standards as other people, and reckon any outsiders who do so are so obviously in the wrong as to justify banning the entire instance.
Thank you for that.

I thought a lot about ranking and hope that site can be a semi-permanent ranking of the internet's favorite audio books (right now it seems to just be a joke about keeping Broke Back Mountain at the top of the hopepage).

What do you think about this idea, like wikipeia for audio books,.
The idea is so obvious and yet so innovative. Good luck!
I like to split the theorem in the following way:

P(Hypothesis|Data) = P(Hypothesis) * evidence_factor

P(Hypothesis) is the prior probability of the Hypothesis being true, in other words the probability we gave to the Hypothesis before seeing any of the data we are using in the theorem. When new data is observed, we use Bayes' theorem to update our believe in the hypothesis, which in practice means multiplying our prior probability by a number that depends on how well the new data fits our hypothesis. More precisely:

evidence_factor = P(Data|Hypothesis)/P(Data)

So it is the ratio of how likely our data is if our hypothesis is true, compared to (divided by) how likely it is in general. If it is more likely to occur in our Hypothesis, our probability of it being true increases, if it is more likely in general (and thus also more likely in case our hypothesis is not true, you can prove mathematically that those two statements are the same), then our believe in the hypothesis decreases.

TLDR: Prob(Hypothesis after I have seen new data) = Prob(Hypothesis before I saw the new data) * (how likely I am to see the data if my hypothesis is true, compared to in general)
You point out a good principle which is to be willing to give to your greatest enemy the power you desire to have yourself.
Why not just put them in cardboard boxes like with sodas?
...which is why it seems reasonable to sue the user who circulated the list publicly. However, there should be no difference between an actual document, published to a public forum, and an entirely fictitious one published to the same - all authors excepting the one who published it should be irrelevant.
Did you deliberately misunderstand my point just to nitpick something fully unrelated to discussion? :/
In essence those words are used pejoratively in comparable situations.

The word “bitch” however literally means “female dog” and is, in fact, used in a non-derogatory way in dog breeding circles.

Context is everything, but calling a female coworker a “bitch” is not acceptable in a professional environment.
Rich and privileged people have always been the main people concerned about the risk of having their reputation tarnished in a widespread way, if for no other reason than rich and privileged and the existence of a widespread reputation to tarnish ordinarily co-exist, so it seems like a weird thing to just recently notice.

The difference is that technology has taken infamy to a global scale, making available a global reserve of vicious, unchecked sadism to those who can figure out how to point the cannon at their desired target. The only thing left to do is to fight over control of the cannon.
A little alias that rewrites

clone foo/bar

into

git clone --recursive https://github.com/foo/bar

is one of my favorites.
>Just seems honest to me.

It is honest, but the developer is the one who put the "annoying" ads in in the first place.

That feels like a real slap in the face.
So a beam of light with a head start, half-way across the universe from you, could "wrap around" and eventually reach you. But the beam of light couldn't "wrap around" and reach itself, because the universe constantly moves the goal post before light beam gets the chance?
> is the income distribution for SWEs becoming increasingly bimodal?

Dan Luu has written some about this: https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/
Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome on HN, so please don't do it here.
Consumer Reports doesn't have ads.
You shouldn't understand, because I did not say nor represent or imply that.
I believe it. Aren't like 30% of all websites WordPress blogs? Considering people who use WordPress want a one-click solution, they certainly don't care about their PHP version. The other 49% might contain some Joomla and Drupal installations and phpBB (or similar). All those software is known to be easy to install, so most people choose it for their private content.

We are not talking about IT people but John/Jane Smith running their hobby site about fishing or their community to exchange ideas about old cars. They might not even have users but they are still websites.
Downturn Looms as Leadership Test for California, World’s 5th Largest Economy
This confused me initially. Basically, he signs up to Company (not Slack) as noreply@slack.com. Then he creates an account at Slack as support@company.com. Slack sends an email FROM noreply@slack.com to support@company.com. The email gets taken by the helpdesk and detects there is a user called 'noreply@slack.com'. Although this email was not verified, the ticket becomes viewable in the helpdesk.
Can we retire this trite remark about free speech only applying to government restriction?

It’s simply not true. It’s true only when speaking of the First Amendment specifically — but the concept and ideal of free speech and expression is much larger than the First Amendment. It also has a much longer history, dating back to Ancient Greece.
So what does that mean? That we need to be shoved ads in our faces at every step of our life even if we pay for products? Just because someone wants to make even more money? What's your takeaway here?
Even real regular regexes can be used when nesting is limited, which is true for most real-world html, xml, json. Still you're better off using libraries.
This article is terrible:

> Tech companies are spending a large portion of their capital toward paying a limited number of research and development staff to design new products and software, but not toward maintenance and service staff like factory and maintenance workers

The entire article and everyone it quotes then proceed to argue that this wealth should be redistributed downwards.

This is not just unfair - it will also never work. Because some roles (like "low-skilled maintenance and factory work") have far more candidates than openings, while other roles (like high-skilled engineering) have the opposite supply/demand curve.

Now, suppose every single company starts artificially inflating the wages of low-skilled roles, and suppressing the wages for high-skilled roles, to keep everyone "equal" just like this article suggests. What will happen?

Nobody will invest the huge amount of time and effort required to become engineers, since that investment won't pay off. Why waste 4 expensive years in college, if I can get the same pay as a janitor, straight out of highschool and without the student debt?

All tech companies will become desperately starved for high-skilled talent. Eventually, one of these companies will realize it can fill its many vacancies by decreasing the wages for the low-skilled work (with huge surplus of candidates, it will still have plenty to choose from) and increasing the wages for high-skilled work, where candidates are scarce. This company will fill all its openings, poach the best engineers, increase its profits, and destroy its competition. At that point, all other companies will have to increase high-skilled pay to match... And we'll be back where we are right now.

In fact, that's how we got here in the first place.
By this logic, complaining to my friends about my boss should be actionable.
Do they have any IP which prevents other from copying. Further if someone wants to enforce their IP they can just take it to court and get the writ to remove any fake listings from sites.
Why? the most popular CMS is written in PHP, so are many others as well as many of the most popular ecommerce platforms.
> but "found innocent in court".

No, people are found "not guilty" by the court. That doesn't mean "he didn't do it", it means "we the jury are not persuaded to the very high criminal burden of proof ('beyond all reasonable doubt') that he did it". That might include "he definitely didn't do it", but it also includes "he probably did it" and "he almost certainly did do it".
Whether or not there was a gag order they're still unlikely to want to admit to being hacked.
The likelihood of death isn't enough to keep me from from leaving my house, but it is enough to keep me from driving without buckling my seatbelt. Everyone has to do their own cost-benefit calculations, and the benefits of Facebook will not always outweigh the costs of having their personal data leaked.
It’s the problem with news websites/magazines/paper. They live because there are ads in it.

And so would they criticize companies that put a lot of cash on them ? Perhaps. May be not.

In France, we have a news website [0] which is totally independent, and only accessible for paying subscribers. It took them a few years and now they are earning money.

You might or might not agree with their editorial line, but the fact is that they can investigate any company without hesitation.

It’s hard, but I think it’s the only way to have an independent information.

[0] https://www.mediapart.fr
Because your point is pretty shallow, to be honest. The simple fact is that such tactics do happen in virtually every situation you described. Ad-metrics are super important to virtually every industry now; it may not be the backbone of these industries, but no one scoffs at the paycheck once it's said and done.

Your point really doesn't add much to a conversation, since its premise is faulty. We accept such advertising on the web because we accept it in virtually every aspect of our lives.
If you can come up with a way to make people more moral that works, that sounds great. Right now I can't think of any.
Most likely, yes. Hhvm (Facebook) is practically a dead/different language for the rest of us.

There is not much friction between 7.0,7.1,7.2, etc, so hopefully at least this 7.x share will continue to keep upgrading.
I am actually considering Singapore. Not sure with what I am going to do. Probably just make more money as fast as I can.
MTV = Mountain View? Had to think about that for a few seconds... ( flashback to 80s )
It's the best app from the last few years. It's radically simple: snap a photo and (by default) it only gets uploaded when you are on WiFi. Later, you'll get a notification that it used AI to find the best pictures of the dozens you took and and assembled a photo album with them.

You'll get notifications telling you that you had an important event a year ago and can see the most relevant photo from that day.

It creates then and now photos, so I can see how my kids have changed from exactly a year or exactly five years ago.

It automatically shares my photos of the kids with my wife.

All this happens without any interaction other than snapping photos freely. For a busy parent, this can't be understated.

Compared to Facebook, I don't have to put up with the noise. And, it only shares with a very limited set of people.

Of course "it" does now know my kids'names. It's pretty amazing and scary to see how it knows my infant daughter's face is the same one as she has four years later. I'm not sure I would see the similarly if she weren't my own.

Lightweight interactions with powerful AI and massive processing power behind it makes for an incredible app. The reviews are not lying.
Innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, solves all the problems here. The testimony of one witness should not be enough to convict someone. It may be enough to open an investigation, but not to convict someone. And if someone isn’t proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, they should be treated as innocent.

These two principles are the foundation of our justice system. If only people would actually follow what is already written into law…
Jeff Hawkins Is Finally Ready to Explain His Brain Research
Lots of previous discussions at https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20true%20power%20of%20regu...
> I mean, how likely is it that 10+ people all had no chance to collect any evidence?

In cases of sexual assault or rape? Very high.

Police departments aren't too careful with the relevant physical evidence[1] and the crime is extremely humiliating and traumatic for the victim - especially in previous decades where "she was asking for it" was a valid defence for sexual assault.

[1] https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Police-apologize-for...
> I can be 100% sure that: `self` is an object with an attribute rfile, `=` is the assignment operator, there is a method `readline` that get's called with an integer argument 65537.

I think this is overstating things, eg, the class `self` belongs to might have
defined __getattribute__, __setattr__, etc, so the things you know for 100%
certain about that line of code in isolation don't really tell you anything
about what it does (self does not definitely have that attribute, and that
might not be assignment, at least); most of that you assume based on common
sense, conventions, figuring the code is "normal", etc, the same as in Lisp.
And that's ignoring a trivial case like if the previous line was `f('''`,
where f may or may or not call eval.
>There is a patent troll who owns creating a frontend from a database.

I'd like to know more about this. Can you provide a search term or two that I might use?
The takeaway is that advertisers don't care what you think and do in fact believe that they should shove ads in your face every step of your life, even if you pay for a product.

Welcome to the world. Half the users of this site are actively perpetuating the corporate dystopia we inhabit.
Modern plastic rings are bio-degradable thou...
There are a number of people I see consistently in the commit logs at work and I am quite confident that they have created more than a handful of new jobs each. So while they didn’t directly remove revenue, these people have an astonishingly bad ROI.
Great resource! Thanks
I pointed it out because the post doesn't make it clear what the sentence means. "The median" is undefined, and to get the implied meaning, there's only one reference: the group of people including the OP. Obviously, it doesn't make sense in this context, but it's never clarified.

Actually, your post also doesn't specify that: median of what group?
In the UK, beer sold in larger quantities than a 4-pack or 6-pack tends to be fully boxed minus the plastic rings.
Without looking at the data, I'd bet that this skews the opposite of that way. In my observation of the world, 70 years olds don't often start up companies (tech or otherwise) - 18 year olds do. Given that, the median will probably be even higher than 45.

I find it interesting that 45 was the average age when starting a top company, and since this was a 5 year mark survey they were all 50 at the time.
I think Eisenhower gets too much credit here. If anyone was ever well-placed to prevent the rise of MIC, it was a five-star general two-term president who just happened to be president exactly when MIC was consolidating its Korean War gains. Ike was like "holy crap this horrible thing happened on my watch but I had no idea!" The most charitable interpretation is that he acquiesced in the burgeoning abomination to protect his son's military career.
Unfortunately, it still wants to move and rename your files. I don't want this. It should be read only.
I think it's a bit sad and funny that the tech industry still seem concerned with this, but when the most extreme cases of data collection are exposed, namely Edward Snowden and Cambridge Analytica, little was done by the people or by organizations to ask for action.

Everybody moved on to the next big headline and every now and then people will shout and complain about "privacy" without actually saying what should be done.

Also, GDPR which I see as an actual attempt to make this whole mess a bit more organized became just a modern version of "I accept the terms and conditions".
I didn’t know he passed. What a remarkable person. Thanks for the update.