skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why exactly should taxes be "fair"?

I think that whole line of argument is what gets us into the world that Intuit and H&R Block love, where we say, taxing charitable donations is "unfair," but who counts as charitable, but what about donations to your own foundation; taxing medical expenses is "unfair," but only in certain ways; taxing married couples is "unfair," but what about couples whose marriage isn't federally recognized but is state recognized, taxing the value of a research grant paying for a grad student's tuition is "unfair" if they're not even making as much money as the tax, but taxing in-kind donations generally is fair, etc. etc. etc. (It also carries with it the assumption that whatever wage you make in the first place is "fair" - that if you make $10/hour making food or $1000/hour laying people off, some process has already called that "fair" and you trust its results. There are, of course, arguments that this is right, but personally I think that's a little questionable.)

The purpose of tax policy IMO is to engineer the society we want to see. We want to see a society where government is funded decently. Not too little, presumably not too much either. We also want to see a society where people who do productive things do not say "Forget this, I'm out" and move elsewhere, so (for instance) a 100% wealth tax on assets over $1M is out. This clause starts to resemble a fair tax, because the most effective emotional argument is "You can't tax me like that, it's unfair." But that's not actually the practical argument. The practical argument is "If you tax me like that, I would prefer to uproot my life and move to another country" or "If you tax me like that, I will instead choose not to be productive in ways I would have otherwise been productive, and the cost to society is a net negative."

Once you think about it like that, it turns out you can tax the person who makes $1M/year significantly more than 15% before they threaten to move out, and certainly before they threaten to be less productive in meaningful ways (underemploying themselves, hiring fewer people, etc. - they're still going to have an inherent drive to do well for a while). So you have relatively little downside up to some percentage, and you have steadily increasing revenue for society. (Plus, as a bonus, you mess with the income inequality curve.) So you may as well increase that tax rate.

And there's an argument that this is, indeed, the most "fair" - otherwise you are letting money go underused, because the person making $1M/year doesn't strongly care, and an effective government program is underfunded.
What is the reason for them from releasing a stable for years? Feels like it's dead without uncovering GitHub activities.
What about the cost of living in these places?
Federal Court Rules That Patent Troll Can’t Hide Its Machinations
Spoiler: They're both bad without moderation. How many of these pieces possibly need to be written.
> From a realpolitik perspective encouraging the vast overproduction of food is probably one of the smartest things our government has done

Not if you're in for the long haul. Dumping excess ag products and clothing on Africa has trashed the local economies beyond repair, made the countries depend on "foreign aid" and now China comes in and binds the countries to them by rebuilding all the infrastructure... with the dollars they gained from exporting to the US.
This is what's known as a compound question, and it's almost like a way of straw-manning someone. GP didn't say he wants to regulate "novelty" DNA tests. That's the spin you're putting on his position, and you've asked your question in a way that he can't answer it without tacitly approving of your spin. It's like the classic "When did you stop beating your wife?"

Are these tests just novelty tests? Are they intended to be? Is it clearly communicated to consumers that they are just novelty tests?

If they are just novelty tests, but they're not being upfront about that when they take consumers' money, is that acceptable public behavior? If that's not acceptable behavior, what is the right social response? That's the point in the discussion where GP appears to be.

If these are novelty tests, and are being marketed as such, would you mind linking to a page on, say, 23andMe's website that describes them as such?

If not - if, in your own words, these are "novelty" tests but the companies involved aren't being forthright about that - do you think a government response is so inappropriate as to dismiss it out of hand?
So people are complaining that whiteboarding is the wrong way to interview. That we don't discover if they can write and maintain complex software system, instead focusing on 'trivia'. I don't disagree (I think that the trivia being tested can be important - a team with no one that has deep knowledge of data structures of algorithms is lost), but I also don't know a good way to interview that finds out what we need to know.

How do you find out if someone can make good long term decisions in a short amount of time? It seems inherently contradictory. Some people say by giving homework problems. They're not wrong, that might give valuable insight, but I know that I would hate that, so others might too.

Can there be a good answer?
Truth, and also especially so for a company like FB or Google where they probably have an abundance of qualified applicants, for a variety of reasons. For most companies, copying what FB or Google (or Microsoft or whoever) is doing, is probably a bad idea, in tech interviewing or many other things.
Technically technically, it turns out that no it's not. I recently realized that `a<b>(x)`, `a<b,c>(x)` and variations mean something completely different in TS than they do in JS.
Not sure why you're downvoted. There is a guy by the name of Peter Attia who has spent a lot of time studying centenarians and his conclusion has basically been, these people won the genetic lottery for longevity. He of course thinks those of us who aren't so lucky with genes can achieve similar results through diet and exercise. Very interesting stuff.
great work! I used Illustrator for so long that the transition has been a little rough for me (I don't do graphic work too often). But with the ridiculous CC prices, I am so thankful for a solid, free alternative to Illustrator. Thanks again!
> As an interviewer, I can definitely say that GitHub has become a bigger part of helping to evaluate people.

Many people can’t work on open source, either due to a lack of time or corporate policy.
What's the point of all this technological progress if our bodies grow sick from the pollution?

Food for thought.
Lots of downvotes but no one wants to tell me why that the social network started by some angry teenager who wanted to rate women isn't ethically bad?
> After about a month of consistently practicing problems each day (maybe 2–3 hours/day, more on weekends) I moved on to doing primarily Leetcode’s “Top Interview Questions”

I'm completely fine with interviewers expecting you to solve some problems in front of them and knowing basic algorithms + data structures, but if it's becoming standard to dedicate this much time to studying and applying for jobs something is really, really wrong.

I think a day or two to refresh your knowledge you haven't used for a while and practice a few problems to get you warmed up is reasonable but when you're talking weeks of preparation then the interview is testing the wrong thing. I can't see in the article how much preparation was done but it sounds like months of work.
My college Writing teacher carried an agenda too. Completely turned me off to a very useful subject.
”just like you or I don’t own the word "word".”

No, Microsoft owns that (in the context of “Office software”)

eBay similarly could hold trademarks for the use of “barter” and/or “bay” in the context of online auctions.
I think that’s a different definition of fair than I was using. I think that logically what you are saying (perhaps sarcastically) is correct - the fairest of all taxes would be a flat amount. I don’t think that’s necessarily the goal here. So perhaps I should restate my comment as “A fairer tax is a flat tax”.

Ultimately, I think that the tax structure that AOC is proposing is punitive. If you’re successful, we will punish you for that success. I am not anywhere near a tax bracket that would be impacted by her proposal. I don’t really expect to be in my lifetime. But I don’t think it’s fair to punish someone for achieving success in life. Everyone should pay their fair share, but a flat percent-based tax already does that.

One other idea that I like (although haven’t studied enough to determine its feasibility), is to do away with the income tax altogether (or make it very low) and tax consumption. Exempt the necessities of life, like food, but everything else has a national sales tax applied to it. This has the nice benefit of rewarding people for saving rather than spending.
> Much more important is to have the experience of how code complexity accumulates, and how to mitigate that.

That's so right. But that is experience, so I think when you know most the candidates don't have it, you end up looking for other stuff to test, and then your interview process gets infected, and eventually when you are interviewing for positions that should have experience, you get a lot of the same bullshit questions.

There are plenty of stories here of novice programmers doing some passion project, and 6-12 months after learning to program they are busting out some fairly complex algorithms that to someone that took the long route of getting a CS degree can look somewhat amazing, and frankly, humbling. But I think what's going on is that's the easy stuff to get a hold of, because all it takes is some judicious googling, or more likely, asking some professionals from help, and you're pointed in the right direction for the tool that solves your need, so you use it. Getting amazing progress on a new project isn't really hard.

Getting sustained progress, or being able to fix your problem a year or two in once you realize a major architectural change is required, and not being bogged down for months and losing interest, those are amazing, and those take experience or constant mentoring to achieve usually.

Or maybe I'm just projecting what I currently value.
Your proposal is unfair because it lets poor people mooch off everybody else. What would be fair is if everybody pays exactly the same amount of tax. (If that seems impractical, cap it at 50% of income and treat the unpaid portion as debt, to be paid back later, with interest.)
> All it is is look at your siblings before your children.

...And how you are keeping track of that and other such minutiae. What data structures are you using and why? And how about if X which would invalidate your approach.

Also, it's not about "knowing" it. It's about implementing it in such a way as to please the interviewers.

It's pop quiz nonsense.
Of course he was marked as suspicious: he previously tried to get a suspicious person to sponsor him. :)
I heartily agree.

Suppose a 20% flat income tax. One fifth of everyone's working hours ostensibly goes to the public good.

Now consider progressive schemes: Why should some folks send one tenth of their time to the government while others send (incrementally) four tenths?

Time is what matters. We're all dying here.
I believe the allowJS flag is new and disabled by default. It may not have existed when you last tried. That’s what happened with our team. We tried to switch in either 0.x or low 1.x and at the time I believe we had to convert everything to TS (although, we may just not have been aware of the allowJS flag at the time).
> And their education, previous employment, etc.

Unfortunately, this seems to be poorly correlated with whether people can actually code.
Welcome to nonforum
China’s High-Stakes Robot Wars [video]
Yeah, reading books written by people whose politics you disagree with is bad!

While many will disagree with the take that capitalism & prosperity is incompatible with counteracting climate change, she does identify some real problems with cap & trade schemes. It is inconvenient that meeting global emissions targets will require significant lifestyle change in developed countries.

The alternative to lifestyle change is massive ecological damage. Therefore, this is what will happen, as we're not about to give up pickup trucks and rapid growth just because someone will have to pay big interest on it later. So the real deficiency of the book is the idea that we will somehow have a revolution of equality.

The style is also a bit over rich. There is a failure to even mention, let alone examine, renewable energy growth.
Wouldn't that only work if there were some difficult-to-overcome mechanism (like a constitutional amendment) mandating a flat tax but letting the percentage vary easily?

If you don't have that, a flat tax is going to lessen the desire to increase the flat tax rate, but it isn't going to do a thing to the desire to re-implement a progressive tax.
You can see the SQL run through Log in SequelPro too.
What the biological rationale as to why nicotine salts deliver a higher peak?

It’s generally accepted that freebase alkaloids are most rapidly taken up by the body as they are non-polar and pass through cell membranes more quickly.
> There's the kicker, no?

Not really, for almost everyone who works there. I know a few exceptions. A rare few.

Look, I'm not arguing that we go string up all facebook engineers from the nearest tree. I'm merely saying that it is in fact quite reasonable to say that you shouldn't work for a company that is actively causing harm. And that there is "cool work" being done there does not obviate that.

And yes, good research is sometimes done in bad places. That isn't a justification for joining bad places so you can do good research. Your logic is all messed up there. It's better to instead do good research at a good place.

The simple matter is most of the people who work there, are there because of the relatively high compensation, and have plenty of other better options to do equally exciting work at more ethical organizations. But maybe not quite as well paid.

So. Let's stop sugar coating that.

Look, selling out is a thing humans do from time to time. Sometimes people are even in places where making that choice is totally justifiable. But don't tell me someone isn't doing it when they are. And you shouldn't let them tell you that either. Because if we don't let them tell us that, maybe they'll have more trouble telling themselves that, and honestly, that's what's really going to be important in the end.
> Complicated mathematics doesn't make the singularity more understandable.

What do you mean it does not? Limit theory does that in great depths. Some cases are unaccounted for, but that might actually be due to the incompleteness theorem.
Is it possible you didn't like them and project this into the use of politics in writing class, or that you disliked their politics? Or is it just that you disliked politics at all?

I imagine I'd have felt the same about religion. (Although there is a lot of good writing in religious texts, proselytizing needs style)
So melodramatic. I'm a black male and I've been pulled over multiple times by small town cops in places like Texas. Do I trust police? No. Do I fear I'll be a victim just because I got pulled over? No. Does injustice occur at times? Yes.

I got pulled over by a small town white Texas cop for speeding (which I was). I couldn't produce my insurance papers. He gave me a ticket for speeding and no insurance. Did I try to reason with him? Of course not! You do not reason with police. That is what the court is for. I took the ticket and went to the courthouse and had my insurer fax the courthouse proof of insurance. Fine removed.

Dealing with the police is a lot like fear of flying. Once you understand how police work, there's not much to fear. The OP really illustrates they don't understand the police, which leads them to believe that everything the cop does is only because they're black. A lot of media wants you to believe all black people in America are nothing but victims. I really hate that narrative. And the OP is also pushing it despite all their success in life. Is there a lot of injustice towards the black American community? Absolutely, but we don't need to live like constant victims.
Unverifiable claims are always possible, I don't see how fishing for them with a question makes them more valuable.
The question is do you want to play against the averages (smokers more likely to die sooner for example), or above them - it comes to a personal choice. What isn’t a personal choice is how little we control the environment in formative years. Kids growing up with parents that are told cheap carbs are healthy are gonna have a hard time changing later when it turns out it’s not healthy at all.
> I think they weed out a few, but completely ignore practical development skills, work ethic, soft skills, design and architecture skills, etc.

This is the whole point of the non-coding portion of the interview, and while it’s not possible to get a full picture of this in the short amount of time allotted, it is generally enough to throw out the obvious ones.

> maybe this explains why most of the big tech companies have seemed pretty stagnant for the last decade, largely failing with products and decisions that have poor execution and market fit outside of the products that made them big in the first place

I think this is unrelated to hiring and more a result of corporate policy.
Can they not just turn into subscription model for something like $10/mo or even $5/mo and get things done instead of floating with nightlies?

I'm sure people cry and scream for going paid but seeing this disappear with lack of recent MySQL version support and likely never support any other DB looks pretty sad too.
I'm a data scientist, and google asked me to sum all values of nodes at each height of a tree. I had to implement the tree, bfs, and the algo (which was easy once you have bfs) in a 25 minutes, minus any talky time.

BFS is not something I thought about much in the last 5 years, and quite frankly could care less about. I got stuck when I knew I needed 'something' to finish implementing BFS, but couldn't remember and the google interviewer offered no help. What I couldn't remember was the queue.
My experience has been different. I'm fairly confident I've moved the needle on security and privacy at other large companies and I don't think it's irrational to think I might do so again, given the right role.
i agree that memorization by internalization (concepts) is different from (and superior to) memorization by rote (text); i was agreeing with the other fellow that rote memorization is not the end goal. however, to me they're both "memorization" because they both represent work to achieve fluency in application.

however, i made my comment because i think i disagree that spaced repetition has no place in learning. i think that if you dig around in the Polar guy's earlier comments, you'll find threads where folks like michael nielsen are talking about using spaced repetition tools for much more than purely textual memorization of theorems - basically, cycles of repetition and (re)synthesis. so i don't feel it's right to completely shut him down about card decks. you may disagree, of course.
Surely you could redirect the audio once it's been unencrypted by Spotify though? It has to be presented to your systems audio drivers in an unencrypted state eventually. I guess the downside is that you'd have to rip songs at 1x speed.

I wonder if you could spoof the system time provided to Spotify too and have it "play" the music faster than real time.
This approach? Isn't this a summary of deep learning approaches?
What are your thoughts on LMDB?
Libspotify gave you PCM. It's since been deprecated but old app keys still work just fine.

Their current SDKs are only for iOS and android. They do also have a Web player but the DRM for that requires playback through a Web browser i.e. You cannot write a simple CLI app that plays Spotify music.
The Design of Dirty Bomb
I thought you can't downvote a story but just ignore it.
> Milton Friedman (who is a few steps above AOC when it comes to economic policy knowledge):

AOC has a degree from Boston University in economics. Friedman was a professional economist, of course, but as in any field there are lots of professional researchers with strong opinions in lots of directions, and we still listen to the folks with bachelor's degrees. You can find many computer scientists with many opinions on programming languages, but you wouldn't ignore people who got a bachelor's in CS simply because the professional researchers exist. (Otherwise we'd just shut down this site and read journals all day.)
You read the article or the abstract? I read the abstract. It doesn't (to me) actually rebut all and any conspiracy theories it rebuts some and says people went too far. It doesn't say there was no industry shilling or industry funded science distortion.

What do you think it says?

I'm not a believer in a single grand sugar conspiracy. I am a believer in industry lobbying distortions in science funding. It's common for any industry with downside risks to consider funding science which suits their message.

Why do you think we have an issue across science about non publication of negative results and hiding datasets?
Very cool! Would be incredible if you could access your iCloud Music Library as well.
Doesn't librespot count?
> If I buy chicken whose precise provenance is known, and which are raised in humane conditions with high-quality feed

We're talking morals and we're surely going to have some differences in opinion, but I don't see how raising animals who've been selectively bred to grow an order of magnitude faster and larger than they would naturally, kept indoors for most of their lives, and killed at less than 1% of their potential lifespan could ever be considered "humane". Especially when their consumption is wholly unnecessary.
I sympathize with this guy, but 123' is a really shallow well. If the neighboring dairies were smart (little evidence of that in TFA), they would have paid to get a 400-footer drilled (and grouted) for him 18 years ago when the problem first showed up. Better yet, why don't they just set up a local sewer and water district so they can have one professionally maintained (and deep) well that serves the community?

In one sense this guy is lucky. Multiple parties at both the local and state levels care about his situation. When we tried to get MO DNR to force a local truck stop to cease pouring undiluted trucker shit downhill into the Gasconade River, my neighbors and I struck out completely.
In a highly secure environment you don't use WiFi or Bluetooth.
With regards to the addition of the Trix editor, there were some people claiming that it should not be included in the core framework (like a few comments in the video introducing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJZ9TnKrt7Q). Personally, I think it is a great addition as it offers just the right amount of features, with a simple design. Also, the fact that it was created by developers at Basecamp makes it more comforting knowing that it will be maintained well.

As always, great work from the team. Thank you for all your hard work. Can't wait for the full release :)
Absolutely was not retaliation.
I'd love to learn more. I'm in need of a fast engine.

What proprietary engines do you know of that I can look at?

Do you have more details on your own designs? Anything you can share?
They used to interview using the kind of brainteasers found in books like the ones Mensa used to make. The algorithms approach, I suspect, is just a CS proxy for an IQ test just like their old approach was. It would also filter for youth, which they semi-openly advertise as well (see chess literature on brain age for what I mean).

Conformance too (due to the prep time)