skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This Freakonomics-style argument doesn't work. The only price that matters is the market clearing price. Appraisers don't know that more than anybody else. The only thing an independent appraiser would do is use (well-known) comps to anchor the price, which is not something a seller wants. Rather, a seller wants competition among buyers.

I used to think that real estate agents were a waste of time until I lived through several difficult transactions. Each real estate transaction involves negotiations for loans, inspection objections, and various legal details. For example, a good real estate agent will make sure the title commitment documents are in hand early enough that you have time to review them, because they often have a lot of mistakes. This can kill a closing and/or require post-transaction work to correct.

I bought a house in the middle of a flood (Boulder 2013). The inspection objection had already been negotiated before the flood occurred. Getting the deal done was a huge task, because the seller was lying about the house being affected by the flood. I still wanted the house, but I needed proper compensation for the remediation. My real estate agent did an amazing job of bringing the deal together by tossing in some money and getting the other broker and seller to contribute a bit.

I'm now living with the above real estate agent, and she's on the phone right now at 7:45p working on a deal. I have watched her pull together deals, and the important thing is that all her clients are happy. I have met many of them, and they are very grateful for her work. I know there are many other agents out there like her (maybe not quite as good :-).
Making a Presentation to Investors the Sequoia Way
The US Government is currently dysfunctional, so at least someone is making affordable housing.
FWIW, I completely agree. It is super frustrating that our local governments here, outside of Seattle and a handful of efforts elsewhere in the region, won't make the investments that are needed.

But we need those investments, somehow, and I'm willing to let private businesses make them while we also have the public debate over getting our governments to get moving.
If this was the Bay Area, I would be inclined to worry, but the governments of Seattle and the surrounding towns, while far from perfect, are not nearly as dysfunctional as San Francisco's. We actually are building tons of new housing, areas are getting upzoned to allow denser construction in areas that previously only allowed single-family units, and there is lots of investment in public transit (i.e. ST3). This seems more like Microsoft chipping in to help out even more, rather than taking it upon themselves to fix a broken government. (Although see my other comment regarding how useful this can actually be in practice)
Right, I remember this coming up with Iceweasel because of Firefox trademarks.

https://lwn.net/Articles/676799/
There is a common trope that developers lack social skills and business understanding and need a "people person" to "handle the business side." This is basically why almost every technical person at big companies is beholden to PMs (who may not even have any technical background) who get paid just as much, if not more, to write word documents, make powerpoints, and tell you what to do. And while it's true that a lot of developers have bad social skills, I'm willing to guess most developers who want to start a company and raise VC money don't fit that stereotype.

So maybe it's non-technical cofounders implementing a vicious cycle of grifting off the technical people, I think it's more likely it's just due to the fact that we have pervasive negative stereotypes surrounding technical people's ability to do non-technical things.
Brilliant. That was so much more interesting than I expected it to be. Thanks for posting.
I just learned that the term "redneck" actually comes from an old coal miner union strike that showed solidarity by using red kerchiefs hanging around their necks.

I can't use that term in the same way ever again, fwiw.
Bad- when times get bad (recession) companies will stop doing these things. If people rely on them for important services (like housing), then they'll be even more screwed.
If I can ask a somewhat ignorant question... is there no way to render a traditional HTML page from a normal (Django/Rails/PHP-style) server-side template, and then add React on top for interactivity? Is it that everything has to be built in React and it can't work with exising DOM elements? or just that it's easier to do everything in React and not have a separate static template, or something?

Is the answer any different for React Native? (I guess you lack a server-side renderer at that point, so maybe it's easier to plan to do everythig in React if you plan on using React Native?)
This was really interesting and it gives a fairly easy setup for catching blatant botnets manipulating social medias.

I don't understand how the platform owners don't put a stop to this when it's this easy to detect.

I guess engagement is a key metric that looks good to shareholders and advertisers.
Very sad to see this.

Bogle spent a lot of time (and gave up the opportunity for a lot of money) preaching to people about how wealth can be accumulated. He really had a heart for helping people.

Watch some of his interviews on YouTube. He speaks very clearly, but it's easy to see he was a brilliant man.

Unless you're already a 'Boglehead': If you get ONE thing out of today's Hacker News, take an hour and learn the simple message John Bogle preached. Your future self will thank you profusely.
You can search by password here: https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords

If you're as paranoid as you should be about then you can use an API to search using k-anonymity: https://api.pwnedpasswords.com/range/{hashPrefix} There you can replace "{hashPrefix}" with the first 5 characters of the SHA-1 of your password. It will return a list of all SHA-1's that start with the given 5 character prefix, as well as how many times they've been 'busted'. Ideally it will not return the full SHA of the password you're testing, meaning you're in the clear.

For testing purposes, the SHA-1 of "Passw0rd" is "21BD12DC183F740EE76F27B78EB39C8AD972A757".

---------

Edit : I previously stated you could search directly by the SHA-1 of your pass alone (in the regular web interface). It looks like this feature has been removed since he's added the k-anonymity feature. So your options are searching directly by password, or using the k-anonymity hash prefix API.
Out of curiosity, what was your reason for moving away from Gatsby? I found it very pleasant to work with. I actually moved from Next to Gatsby for personal projects because it felt more intuitive for me, and I like the plugins that they offer.
I lead our database team for a while, and picked ArangoDB. We started to regret it pretty soon thereafter. While I was there, we found that our cluster would just die. I think they got put fix in for that, though my memory is hazy.

After I left, they came to really regret it. My team was working at scale, and basically found themselves doing QA work, trouble shooting with the Arango team. To their credit, the Arango crew was extremely responsive and helpful. Maybe they've fixed things up since then; it's been a year and a half.

At this point, I would hard pass on any database whose name doesn't start with PostgreSQL. Just got burned too hard.

Graph databases ostensibly let you write queries that would otherwise be unwieldy, but it turns out PostgreSQL's `recursive` keyword lets you achieve roughly the same things, sans having to learn a whole new query language.
$5 a month for Office 365 Essentials, includes email, and online versions of office.

https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-offi...
Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum (and probably other coins) all work over SMS. They are actually substrate-agnostic. You can technically deliver your transaction to a node with a pigeon, as long as the node accepts pigeons.
But now we're relying on Microsoft to solve our problems. How is that any better?
Sounds like the Prius is styled more European than most sedans. Makes sense it has more head/leg room given how boxy it tends to be.

Anyway, I looked it up, and for comparison a tundra:

headroom: 39.4 vs 39.7

legroom: 42.3 vs 42.5

(so fairly similar on the head/leg, what about big in the
other direction)

shoulder: 55.0 vs 65.7

hip: 53.4 vs 62.6

Hmmm not so similar. Also, the tundra has the least headroom of any full size pickup. The GM/chevy's have 4" more, which for tall people is literally a life/death choice if they get into certain accidents where their head impacts the ceiling.
This ignores the "has many interactive elements" part of my comment. Having server-side render react code that can also hydrate and then be interactive (or at least parts of it) is not that simple.
Two Murderers Were Spotted on an Old Mark Jackson Trading Card
they should get the Nobel Peace Prize for this.
Fascinating use of a data structure... but why are they blocking by ip address is the better question.
I think it depends on threat model. If you’re looking to do anything illegal, probably no VPN is a good idea.

But if you care about privacy in general, a VPN is always a clear win. No VPN will ever be perfect. But for a VPN, this is pretty good with regards to security.
I think this is pretty impressive on all accounts. I'm also wondering is DeepSqueak is a play on DeepSpeech. I'm kind of hoping it is - the thirst for knowledge is reminiscent of a mindflayer. Anyways, thanks for sharing!
We've been using Google Meet https://meet.google.com which is the current comparable to Zoom, Webex, etc. It's pretty solid. Actually like it more than other services. Curious, what issues did you face?
What's this 'tac you speak of. Tacoma is outrageously cheaper than Seattle. 'tac don't have a problem compared to sea'.
I'd much rather see Microsoft (and Bill, Steve, the estate of Paul Allen, etc.) pay more in taxes to the state of Washington and have that affordable housing built that way, but this is better than nothing. Good on MS.
Link for reference: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/microsoft...

From that article:

- $225M of the $475M will be loans below market interest rates, directed at middle-income housing.

- The remaining $250M of the $475M will be loans at market interest rates, directed at low-income housing.

Other than optics, I'm not sure what the point of the $250M in market-rate loans is. I'd think that the main constraint on the development of low-income housing is that it's unprofitable, not that it's difficult to secure financing.
Homie.com here in Utah seems to be doing well.
Good for short-term results, bad at the degree to which it indicates our institutions are ineffectual and broken. America is a rich nation, Seattle is a rich city. With reasonable taxation and competent government we could easily maintain decent metropolitan infrastructure and services (mass transit, schools, clean water) as well as provide affordable housing, food security for everyone, etc.
It is even more evil than that. Those below-market interest rates will be deducted from MS's tax bill. In a few years, MS will be earning profits from these loans AND the government will be chipping in via the reduction in their corporate income tax.

Frankly, given the amount of money each of the big tech companies are sitting upon, they should all be branching out into banking. Maybe charitable loans are a way of doing this without actually going through the hoops of becoming a bank.
> It’s the same argument people make when they say people buy Apple products because they are a status symbol.

A more accurate comparison would be: Apple Owner A complains about the price of apple products, Person B comes along and asks if said person has considered if they NEED an apple product. Totally reasonable. It's the initial complaint (about the cost!!!) that makes the question acceptable. Many people don't TRULY consider needs (as you rightly point out, it's a spectrum from need to frivolous). If you consider it and decide you do actually need the truck (or the apple product, or whatever) then that's totally fine. (well, tragedy of the commons global warming stuff excepted, but that's a society-level problem).
Also a shame that Project Pat[0] is not included

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pat
"Stay the course"... a key phrase. You must be a fellow Boglehead!

(Bogleheads have a handful of short phrases that describe the simple foundations of Bogle's investment philosophy. As you say, it's simple but takes time.)
Maybe WeWork Is Just a Real Estate Business
Uses a satellite to broadcast bitcoin. Nothing novel about the broadcast mechanism and it does not use "blockchain" pseudoscience scam to progagate anything. But bitcoin does have a real blockchain so that might be confusing.

I admit this is confusing as 99.999999999999% of everything with "blockchain" in its name is a scam
Hurray! This is stupendous! I wish other CC brands follow the lead here in slaying this nefarious anti-pattern. There are so many services which require _you_ to actively go and cancel when all you wanted was to trial something, but they required you to commit a CC knowing there'd be a large percentage of people who forget to cancel.

Thank you MC for raising the bar for other CC brands.
I'm going to switch to Mastercard for this single reason alone.
It has one of the LOWEST fees and has great returns I put my full 401k into VTSAX, as I have other diversified savings elsewhere.
Can someone explain why there aren't that many autonomous _trains_? And I don't mean SFO airport train and others like it, but a real, full-size train moving people or goods around the country. Seems like every other year a train flies off the rails due to nothing more than negligence of train's engineer. Why not automate this completely? You don't even have to steer.
I won't claim to know what incentivizes developers to build, but below market interest rates for construction seems like a tiny factor in whether a private developer would choose to build affordable housing vs market rate housing. Does anyone know if this difference in interest rate would actually make it more worthwhile for a developer to build low cost housing vs market rate?
Generics and Variance
Financing is a pain to put together.
This is a way to go in many use cases. This though doesn't work super well if the same content/components in some contexts/pages needs to be rendered on the client side and in other cases needs to be rendered server side.
Mixed reviews from me on GCP. Some of their services don’t offer many of the network controls that you might expect. IIRC network rules with cloud functions and managed database services were a painpoint for a pet project of mine.

Whereas with AWS, there might be quirks, but the ability to configure your network across most services is done so well that it’s a huge differentiator.
Huawei Is Target of U.S. Criminal Probe for Trade Secrets Theft
> Those below-market interest rates will be deducted from MS's tax bill

This is true of all charitable giving. They still make less money than if they invested their money at market rates. I don’t see why every good act requires a negative knee-jerk reaction.
This sounds like either a joke or vapor ware designed for PR.

I would be willing to bet any takers here (a gentleman’s agreement) to be fulfilled via PayPal transfer $100 USD that this does not actually happen in the next 5 years (or ever for that matter).

Let’s save the outrage for things that might actually be a threat.
Yeah. If you actually want to pull something heavy - or just want to accelerate fast - that flat torque curve you get from an electric motor will leave ICE trucks in the dust.
Ask HN: Best blog service to use if you don't want to make your own?
Looking for the best service for a simple blog that takes care of responsive design, RSS, image uploads, but is not bloated or slow to load. Happy to pay if it's good.
Adding some context:

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/08/18/a...
"SeaTac" is the common name for the airport and also the City of SeaTac, Washington, located next door to Burien.

http://www.seatacwa.gov/
I know this will sound very NIMBY, but while I believe Eastside cities should contribute municipal funds to alleviate the affordable housing shortage that is truly a regional problem, I don't know why they need to build those in the Eastside area. The Eastside has, to my knowledge, basically never been a cheap place to live. It was a middle class suburban area that transformed into a very wealthy suburban area with denser parts that are also very wealthy. Maybe some small pockets of people were gentrified out, but what you're talking about seems to basically be just moving the people gentrified out of Seattle into an even wealthier area for some reason. It's also very car centric and spread out, which isn't so great for poor people that don't own cars. Sure the Eastside rail is getting built but that will only cover a limited part of the region.

But of course, like I said, they should still help solve the problem monetarily.
I hear you about the ending of subsidies. It is likely one of the first meaningful steps to take to resolve multiple issues we face wrt Ag/trade/aquifer/environment
So if you make bad decisions with money you get institutionalized? That sounds monstrous and unethical.
Strict cancellation is just a scam. Airbnb is asking you to spend thousands of dollars on something you haven’t even seen with your eyes.

Their pictures are notoriously decieving with the wide angle HDR shots.

It’s just really hard to find a quality place on Airbnb amongst all the noise. They come nowhere close to the customer obsession Amazon has.
Yelp Tried to Remove Bugs on App, Artificial Intelligence Deleted Everything
Good to see the promise of free market competition at work, although it is happening within a duopoly bubble.
Or we could just normalize it as just another shape.
> AWS's Golang support for Lambda involves including their library and passing your function to a Lambda initializer function

AWS announced 'native' Golang support last year - since then there hasn't been a need to use a Python or node 'shim' to bootstrap the golang executable like this. You just upload your compiled binary to S3 and provide the path to AWS lambda
"Experienced" and "effective" aren't necessarily correlated. I have worked with a handful of experienced developers who have been writing C and shell scripts since the '80s and have gotten really good at writing C and shell scripts like it's still the '80s. If you ask them to build something you can operate with an SRE team instead of with a sysadmin one (and not even in those words), they get very confused. So you give them problems where you can use their very specific experience very well.

Both inexperienced and experienced developers can work effectively in problem domains where there is no clear path to a solution, and where even the problem itself is underspecified and changing. It takes some practice to figure out how to work effectively in such an environment, but at some point you run out of opportunities to have gained deep practice because the problem is too new.
What do you think should be done to restore aquifer strength not just in that region but also every where else..like out west in CA.
I tend to agree, but also take the opinion that if the comment above had expanded on this, the reaction wouldn't be as negative
Exponentially increasing output followed by utter collapse is the characteristic pattern. Of course it is not limited to modern capitalism. Lots of civilizations have collapsed -- just rarely so spectacularly, and never so global, as we have coming.

98% of forest-floor insects in the Puerto Rico jungles vanished. Amazing! 75% of the Great Barrier Reef bleached. But these are just the first cracks in the dam.
Whatever happened to the one-time-use numbers that cards like Discover would generate on demand?

Why wouldn’t that work for a trial-to-buy setup that’s programmed to fail once the trial is over?
Something might actually get done
A good example is SiriusXM. They give you a lowball initial offer, and the fine print says that at the end of the offer period the subscription will automatically renew at "then current" rates. To cancel you have to call their 800 number (which of course will put you on hold long enough to make you give up.)

MasterCard is making an awesome first step here. The next step is to insist that companies must let you cancel subscriptions online, just like this California law: https://www.cnet.com/news/companies-must-let-customers-cance...
I’m curious as to how you would do this without them becoming public companies (at least from the POV of the SEC)
That's cool, I deleted all of mine
Electric motors should deliver more torque at lower RPMs, not simply flat torque, because power is torque x angular velocity. If we hold power constant, lower angular velocity means more torque.
I can't recommend privacy.com enough for this very reason.
Kernel of Doubt: Testing Math Preference vs. Corn-Eating Style
It's potentially an interesting demonstration of how keeping an area capable of housing low-skill workers can be beneficial to keeping their own high-skill workers' neighborhoods staffed with those low-skill jobs.

Something I always find really interesting, as a San Francisco resident, is that people seem to think that the market is incapable of resolving the problem of the purported loss of low-skilled workers to act as the baristas, servers, deliveries, etc, because rising cost of living drives those people out. But there are many obvious avenues in which this resolves itself, the most obvious of which is that the prices of those services simply rise until it becomes worthwhile for those people to commute further, or that they can start to move back into the city. Now, maybe this is yet an alternative to the more straightforward equilibrium, wherein some of the employers in the city begin to provide lower-skilled workers with housing for the benefit of their own workforce.

I have no idea what Microsoft's motivation for doing this is, but it would be an interesting possibility.
Brokers have to present all offers.
And depending on who is running the government, the government won’t help people who need it either...
I recently sold a home through redfin and was able to negotiate down to 3% total (2 for buyer 1 for seller)

if you have the time have you attempted hosting/selling yourself? I know it sounds ridiculous at mentioning but I purchased my current home without any real estate agents, we did work through lawyers and there were fees there... but likely minimal (I paid under $1500) and I actually enjoyed working directly with lawyers rather than having real estate agents inbetween, this would be my prefered method if I were to sell/purchase again.
Yes, it seems a sandboxed iframe can offer an extra layer of security preventing XHR calls for instance.

In my case I do not want user code to gain access to the DOM.

Wondering if anyone's wrapped a worker inside an iframe to offer that extra security.
The first paragraph suggests you'll need to explicitly aurhorise the first payment.

The third paragraph suggests you'll just receive cancellation instructions before the first payment.

The former would be a massive improvement. The latter is similar to what most (sadly, not all) companies do already.

Not sure which is the case. Anyone got a better source?
ID number in South Africa. Assigned at birth, used for opening of any account. Not considered private at all, can be requested by any company who might want to check that you are you. Also: ID card with number, photo and details on it, separate from drivers license.
Link to original source:

https://newsroom.mastercard.com/2019/01/16/free-trials-witho...

HN Guidelines say: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html