skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The lenders’ weapon of choice is an arcane legal document called a confession of judgment. Before borrowers get a loan, they have to sign a statement giving up their right to defend themselves if the lender takes them to court. It’s like an arbitration agreement, except the borrower always loses. Armed with a confession, a lender can, without proof, accuse borrowers of not paying and legally seize their assets before they know what’s happened.

This is nuts. It says "they HAVE TO sign a statement giving up their right to defend themselves if the lender takes them to court." (capitalization is mine).

Does anyone know if the borrower can refuse to sign and still get the loan?

Also why is this arcane clause still in the loan docs? And do mortgage loans also have this?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but there is nothing dysfunctional about office politics. Politics is how you get something done with a large group of people who have different individual goals, that's it. It's a necessity for achieving something greater than any of those people could achieve on their own.
This is absolutely terrifying.

Fwiw, Zach Mider won a Pulitzer in 2015 for his explanatory reporting on US corporate tax evasion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Mider
How about Ly, the terminal display manager: https://github.com/cylgom/ly

F yeah, dude.
There will always be issues, but school choice resulted in

- general confusion; the guide to high schools, for example, is bigger than the Yellow Pages, and that's with all the information of a high school summarized into a single-sided page. Couple that with Bloomberg splitting failing schools with five schools in the same building and it's just far too overwhelming.

- horrible commute times. Schools were designed to serve their local neighborhoods and usually aren't placed well, particularly in the outer boroughs. If you have to go to a school other than your neighborhood school it can be quite the schlep, especially once you factor in start times. It's impossible to design start times that work for everyone when students come across the entire city, and the lack of coordination also affects things like the overburdened public transport, which gets slammed when schools let out.

- extreme stress on parents and students. You have to go around and tour schools. You have to meet with teachers and principals. You have to attend multiple massive school fairs with staff pushing their schools on you. It's like a college application process, already stressful enough, except you're doing this to children going through puberty. It's absolute madness for even wealthy parents with time to do all of this; working class people working long hours or odd hours or multiple jobs basically don't have a shot. And can you imagine what not getting into your top choices does to kids' well-being?

If school choice were limited to the borough level, it would be more manageable. But at the city level it's far too much.
There is no "the actual supernova". That's the whole point of relativity.
It’s as if you’re not reading my comment.
for those decrying the limited use of 2d barcodes in the US or in europe, you've never set foot in a manufacturing environment.

2d barcodes are used for cradle-to-grave inventory tracking by systems like Glovia and SAP. everything from transmission gears to soda pop are tagged during manufacture with numerous 2d barcodes that change at different stations, and at different times.

it doesnt matter what your new standard claims to achieve, it is useless without industry adoption. Toyota, Honda, Yamaha, Ford, Dell, and countless other manufacturing titans have invested collective billions into the QR implementations of their factories and arent going to re-tool just because your standard has colors.

QR is also massively resilient to failure. Try this experiment: cut a QR code in half, try to read it. It will succeed. This resilience is pivotal in harsh environments and especially during international/trans oceanic shipping.

black and white QR can be engraved on shipping containers and is resistant to corrosion, solvents, and the environment around it. QR codes are regularly burned at thousands of degrees as part of the heat treatment process for hardened steel, and still perform. Vision systems for forklifts and robotic cranes at shipping yards (most are robotic yards these days) rely on near/far vision systems developed by Intermec and other companies to read a code the size of a postage stamp from up to 150 meters away.
>I really think that running a LAMP server for the average beginning developer these days would be just as complicated, maybe more complicated, than running a single deployment on Google Kubernetes Engine.

Back when I first started doing web dev I went from knowing nothing about server setups or Unix (i.e. running off managed hosting) to a reasonably secure FreeBSD server with a working content management system in 3 days. This included installing the OS. The same FAMP setup (with modifications and updates, obviously) continued to work perfectly fine for the next decade.

Re-edit: In the original version of the post I drew a parallel with several teams at my previous job "figuring out" AWS Lambda for several month, and stumbling over gotchas, multiple ways of doing everything and a myriad of conflicting tools. Since there is a reply to that statement, I guess I will add this note.
Reminds me of the infamous 畂桳栠摩琠敨映捡獴.
If i can carry a bucket on my shoulder, why get a car to move it?
There's no compelling reason to conclude that any of the bubbles have been caused by fraud. I certainly agree that it's possible, perhaps probable, but Gox/Willy and Tether are mostly compelling narratives; when you dig down into the specifics, it's hard to connect them to price action.

These stories fit peoples' expectations for fraud in Bitcoin, they lust for scams and intrigue.

The null hypotheses is boring but also quite plausible: bitcoin sees bubbles because price has been steadily rising and this eventually triggers positive-feedback cycles that cause the boom and bust. The insensitivity of Bitcoin price to news/events supports this hypothesis: price is the news.

The fraud narratives are more tea-leaf reading than actual analysis. Just dive into the Willy bot oeuvre if you'd like a sense of that.
Show HN: Ganbreeder: A collaborative tool for evolving images
This is so sad. Something has to be done with all the plastic if it can't be recycled.
What about all the people that can't afford to make their babies super smart? Their kids would quickly become second-class citizens, and it would get worse from there.

That being said, if this tech existed (and was proven safe) I would hold off having children until I could afford it for each one.
Door Into Summer also predicted Roomba, but with a 50s sexist brand name:

```
What Hired Girl would do (the first model, not the semi-intelligent robot I developed it into) was to clean floors . . . any floor, all day long and without supervision. And there never was a floor that didn't need cleaning. It swept, or mopped, or vacuum-cleaned, or polished, consulting tapes in its idiot memory to decide which. Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray on its upper surface, for someone brighter to decide whether to keep or throw away. It went quietly looking for dirt all day long, in search curves that could miss nothing, passing over clean floors in its endless search for dirty floors. It would get out of a room with people in it, like a well-trained maid, unless its mistress caught up with it and flipped a switch to tell the poor thing it was welcome. Around dinnertime it would go to its stall and soak up a quick charge-this was before we installed the everlasting power pack. There was not too much difference between Hired Girl, Mark One, and a vacuum cleaner. But the difference-that it would clean without supervision-was enough; it sold.
```
Any way you could share your domestic US trade secret recipe? I promise I won't leak it to China.
True, but there are frames of reference that make understanding (and the math) vastly simpler. I can calculate the orbits of the Saturn's moons using my location on earth as the origin. It will take me a lot of work, but I can do it.
Where does it end? At some point a real profit generating product must be sold, otherwise who is paying for ads?
Some datapoints: http://www.fuelly.com/car/toyota/verso
Great feedback, I appreciate it. Our office's page is how we make money. Offices embed the button on their webpage and receive your report upon which they're able to prescribe certain preventative plans.
Well, some people believe people's opinions matter. And some people believe that intrinsic motivation is important. And some people believe that autonomy is something worth striving for. Of course, there are plenty who disagree, and you should feel free to associate with those who hold your values.
Back when I was doing tech-work in the financial districts of Chicago and NYC (late 90s, early 00s), some of my very favorite people were salesmen and analysts who had built these intricate and complex applications on top of Excel or Access or FoxPro or whatever.

I was just starting out as a programmer (professionally) myself, and once I was finished doing whatever I was sent to their office to accomplish, they would pull me to the side and show me their applications and pick my brain about ideas and ways to improve them or if it made sense to try a "more serious" programming language.

I was always completely floored by how much they had accomplished with every-day tools that people generally slog through out of necessity. Some of these guys were selling their applications for a solid slice of monthly income and support as well. "Normal" people building real, and truly useful applications with real domain knowledge are an absolute inspiration for me.

It reminds me a lot of web development, actually. Because everyone in their potential client-base had Excel, just as we all have browsers now. So building in Excel made perfect sense. I see the same thing happen with Wordpress or Shopify these days. Building these amazing applications that extend far beyond the purpose of the underlying application.

My early interactions with those people them helped me immensely when I went on my own full time, where I would walk into a small business and see this complicated app built upon - something - by an overworked "tech person of the office", who was clearly a bit sad that their creation was about to be replaced by some stranger. That was the person I was going to get to know and work with daily to get the application right, and I made sure they were part of every conversation.

Most of my projects are greenfield these days, but I still hold those programmers - in the truest sense - in the utmost highest regard. I still love to discuss their projects with them in the rare cases that I get the opportunity.
I think your response was well-worded and appropriate given a comment which argued that we need to look at historical context - after some of that context was already given - then proceeded to give an invalid context.
There has been some good advice on how you can work on your social skills but that's only part of your problem. The other part of your problem is the type of customer you're dealing with. Sales/marketing folks are often highly non-linear thinkers who live and die by their soft skills. So you are probably going to find that how they feel about you is going to dominate your relationship and status with them more than any actual results. In most sales/marketing environments I've seen you can pretty much toss things like logic, formal processes and written specs out the window. The mental space they live in and environment they operate in is very different than say finance or engineering which tends to be at the other end of the spectrum.

Something to seriously consider is trying to get out of that environment... it's not for everyone. You don't necessarily need to leave the company, but rather as you develop your social skills try to start building relationships in other departments and use them to find a path out. Politics are everywhere but the degree to which politics drive things can vary considerably from department to department and is often less dominant in less 'squishy' parts of the business.
Educating takes a fair amount of mystic to make people believe in you. That's the hardest part.
Tumlbr at least used to let you add arbitrary HTML to your blog, I remember putting base64 encoded gifs on mine that the browser would render. Unless they removed that (which IMO, would pretty dramatically change the general feel of the site) there's a real limit to what they can block.
You say it's an ignorant statement, then you support that with an entirely personal opinion? Okay, here's mine: I loved Starship Troopers, read every other book he's written and loved them as well, with the exception of Stranger in a Strange Land, which is most people's favourite for some reason.

But almost all of my favourite modern sci-fi authors list Heinlein as a major influence, and he has more Hugo awards than anyone else (Hugo is the major award for science fiction). I feel like he gets a lot of recognition.
Holy shit, this is totally insane.

The worst part is, is that there is a viable market for short term business loans that don’t involve APYs over 300% or loan snarking, or counterfeiting legal documents, or plundering unrelated accounts, or exploiting every legal loophole known to man and lining the pockets of NY “marshals” while you’re at it.

The level of corruption is mind boggling. I’ve often wanted to learn more about the industry and was very interested in the rise of P2P lending, but when you have to compete with scum like this, obviously that makes it near impossible.
Ask HN: Privacy alternatives to Xbox? Any Indie games console?
I have a Xbox One which basically won't let me play without internet. It wants my login, it wants to share my details with every game publisher, I have to create logins with them and receive commercial mail. Its infinitely tough to find games with No ads and No fees(I don't like spending money on games. I am happy with Hobbyist's developing games).

Any suggestions for Xbox alternatives?
The website https://jabcode.org/ gets a solid 100 in Lighthouse - NICE!
I'm going to provide some contrary thoughts.

1. Your superiors should be shielding you from workplace politics. Developers and engineers shouldn't be subject to most of it. If your work is miring you in politics, get out ASAP. You should always be looking for the next gig, and this is one reason why. This isn't happening to you because you are introverted; it's because your workplace isn't as nice as you deserve.

2. Don't feel bad for being that "odd" guy. Chances are people aren't thinking of you that way as often as you think. One way you can remedy this, however, is to find at least one workplace friend. You don't have to be everyone's friend, but finding at least one person on your wavelength helps a lot. If you don't find this person then, again, find another company to work for.

3. You're not going to change the company you currently work for. If you stay with them, try to maintain a zen-like state while doing unpleasant things like communicating with other departments. While I'm sure you can work on our communication skills, it sounds like they are having you work with people who suck at communicating to engineers. Most of the time, you should be working through someone who can communicate through both parties and know what they want, while you focus your time on engineering. If your company doesn't already do this, it's unlikely that you are going to be able to fix it. Find a different company that doesn't expect developers to simultaneously act as project management or liaisons. Sometimes that kind of thing is necessary in our profession, but if it's constantly driving you up a wall then it's likely the company's problem, not yours. Not everyone should be expected to be good at such things, so don't let it get you down.

I keep saying that you should look out for a better position at another company, which is what you and everyone should do. Why? Not just because there are companies out there looking for people like you, but if your current company wants a developer to deal with that kind of bullshit(yes i know it's subjective), then you can help them by freeing up that position for some other developer who will take it with a smile.
I've found it just pushes the complexity elsewhere or opens up (or silences) performance or security problems you wouldn't have had if you'd stuck to the old fashion way of doing things.

Keep checklists and script what you can. I find it helpful to follow edge whenever I can so if I hit a snag the developers that made the change still have that change fresh in their mind. It really doesn't take that much time to keep things updated if you don't go hog-wild on different libraries and if your stuff is reasonably well tested.

As an aside, I've been thinking that there should be a stack that is designed and built for the sole purpose of staying stable over decades. Something with a bunch of stripped down technology. As robust and stable as possible. Only allow security updates. Only allow certain character sets. Something built on a language that is just stupid simple and secure. A Swift or Rust subset maybe? Lua? Lisp without the macro insanity?

If the future needs some sort of tech that we didn't anticipate (say, something to handle quantum computers breaking cryptography) then the stack should be setup in such a way to decouple the varying layers with minimal work.

I liken it to building codes. We should have pre-setup combinations of technologies that are stable, simple, and combinable. Sure, go outside them for skyscrapers, but for the day-to-day buildings things are getting too complicated.
Today the number of people that don't have to work, both in raw numbers and as a percent, has absolutely skyrocketed. I mean if a person is simply interested in e.g. pursuing research and not so much with material niceties then it's extremely easy to live abroad in developing nations, indefinitely, starting with around $200k. Bump that up to a million and you can live practically anywhere so long as you have the discipline to live far below your means, which is perhaps the hardest part of it all.
It's a terminological difference, and I totally get your point of view. I also agree that some amount of politics is the cost of doing business (but per my point about rising in the corporate hierarchy, it shouldn't be something that impinges on the average employee's success).

Negotiation between people who have a shared idea of what goals are, but different ideas of how to get there is a good thing, and I can see how it makes sense to call it politics. Actively cultivating influence by undermining other people, shifting blame and only focusing on your own advancement is bad, and what I was referring to.
Maybe I should've rephrased... my question is which genetic testing providers give you a raw genome file in .vcf format? If none then I think we're talking about two different things.

https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212196868...
Sketch 52.4 Full Crack Mac OS with Activation Code [Keygen]
I think what makes visual programming like blockly and scratch great is that you can actually see the restrictions of various constructs like loops. The visuals are just a lot less intimidating then just seeing a bunch of seemingly free-form text where the rules aren't as obvious.

The main immediate downside that I can see is that normal programming refactoring tools are probably not going to work... yet.

I feel that this is a big opportunity for AirTable, MS & Google (for their Office software), and Salesforce to look into.

Maybe once AR and VR really take off, visual programming will have a major professional revival.
Absolutely there is. Demand drives production. So even if you for some reason considered the viewing/possession of it as fine, it's driving those who go out and make the material. There's realistically probably not one way to end it forever, but curbing the demand side of it inevitably curbs production. To what degree, I'm not sure anyone knows...
The quantum foam is a shared component, an interface, between our universe and another universe that is majority anti-matter. When particles arise from the quantum foam, what we're observing is the half of a virtual particle pair that ended up on this side of the interface, and it is more likely to be the "matter" particle for some reason.

Lets get hypothetical. Suppose the quantum foam interface is, in fact, the event horizon of a blackhole as observed from the inside. Since we see a bias towards matter, we could expect that the "outside" universe would see a bias towards what we call anti-matter. Further, since we have blackholes in our universe which we can observe, we should see a bias towards matter in the Hawking radiation.

=This post brought to you by a physicist from a not-terribly-accurate sci-fi novella.=
I highly recommend improv courses. The primary thing it helped me with was talking without having fear of saying the wrong thing or having people judge me, but it also taught me the importance of _how_ you say things.
Even if someone didn't do the courses I would still recommend they read Impro by Keith Johnstone.
> Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray on its upper surface, for someone brighter to decide whether to keep or throw away

I wish there was a Roomba with that feature.
It doesn't take a genius, sewer system or fresh water taps to build a dry toilet though. Nothing to do with America.
> The film is a straight up criticism of fascism and authoritarianism

Well, dull, shallow, heavy-handed mockery more than criticism, but sure.

> but it's not a criticism of the book

It is in exactly the sense that it is of fascism and authoritarianism.

> because Verhoeven only ever read one or two chapters of the book.

...because by that point he was convinced of it's fascism and militarism, and felt he didn't need to read more. See, e.g., his response to a planned reboot that would hew closer to the novel: https://www.indiewire.com/2016/11/paul-verhoeven-slams-stars...
Same applies to countries where Software/Informatics Engineering is a proper title certified by the Engineering National Council, not a paper title.

http://www.ordemengenheiros.pt/pt/a-ordem/colegios-e-especia...

https://www.anerkennung-in-deutschland.de/html/en/engineerin...
I actually had to use those switches (well buttons) on an iSeries recently. I’ve never been that nervous with any Unix command.
No reputable loan would have this kind of clause, and no one should ever even consider signing such a thing.

It’s a testament to the miserable state of financial education, poor regulation, and even a corrupt legal system that is willing to even entertain such a document.

Allowing a document like this in court is like letting desperate people sell their organs for cash. It stinks to high heavens, and it seems obvious there’s plenty of fraud at Yellowstone for a decent honorable DA to bring down a hammer on these guys. But will they? Don’t hold your breath.
> There is nothing "obviously wrong" about the standard Copenhagen interpretation.

Copenhagen interpretation showed up when they were faced with a choice between preserving locality or determinancy.

They chose wrong — we know now QM is non-local, and that the underlying justification for the Copenhagen model is an extraneous philosophical proposition.

But much like an extra dependency in a software project, no one wants to remove it now that it’s used everywhere, and there’s a lot of “good enough” stuff using it.

That said, it seems to be one of the major impediments to a unified theory: by dropping the extraneous assumption, we have fewer things to reconcile with GR, and can start looking for GR geometries that have quantized non-local behaviors.

ie, dropping Copenhagen and giving geons another look is probably worth it. (And is basically what loop quantum gravity people are doing, as far as I can tell.)