skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It absolutely is easy for the US to fix. In fact I would go so far as to say the only way for this to occur is a concerted effort of bullshit over decades. Firstly, shutdowns didn't used to occur, it used to be that agencies would just operate as usual on the assumption that if nothing new were passed then the previous budget should stay in place. Then the AG under Carter decided to imaginatively re-interpret the existing laws (read: Couldn't actually get legislation passed to implement this) to say that anything not specifically funded by congress is defunded (except for whatever the president happens to consider expedient at the time like the police force and the army, except not all of the army, like the coast guard because reasons).

THEN rather than Congress passing legislation to say "If nothing else just always stay at past funding levels" Congress instead decided this was a great political tool to whack each other of the head with to negotiate new budgets.

At any point the government could just re-open. The reason shut downs happen is because both the Republicans and Democrats think it's in their favour politically for a shutdown to exist. In this case: Trump thinks he can make the case that we need funding for a border wall (despite controlling all branches of government for part of this shutdown) and that democrats will fold because they don't like dysfunction. Democrats think both that: they can't fold on the border wall because it legitimizes the Republicans using the shutdown to leverage whatever they want, and the border wall is unpopular so a longer shutdown just damages trump more and more.

The only way this resolves is for one group to become so unpopular they fold, or for Trump to shred the constitution and spend the money despite not having the authority (the so called 'State of Emergency' powers)
> Facebook does (in a very limited way) this by upranking posts it thinks will boost engagement.

Facebook (and Twitter, and Patreon, and countless other firms) will block you from posting if you post something that they regard as violating their policy. And "what is against policy" is a fuzzy enough line that "don't use Winnie the Poo pictures to make fun of the effin' President of the country" is a lot clearer than that. You may agree with the policy or not, you may think it's misguided, but WeChat is a private firm, and private firms aren't restricted by anything like the First Amendment. They provide services to you at their pleasure.
Even Bloomberg does wealth/GDP comparisons now? How the mighty have fallen.
Fotoğraflarınızın Arka Planını Tek Tıkla Silin, PNG'ye Çevirin
I think it used to be that a government losing a vote on a budget would mean a general election but since the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 I believe there has to be an explicit vote of no confidence in the government (or a two thirds vote by MPs) to trigger an election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Parliaments_Act_201...

Of course, somewhat inevitably, since that Act was introduced I don't think any government has actually had a full fixed term...
That sounds like quite an improvement over our system in the U.S. This budget standoff with a month long shutdown is a disaster.
Is there any way to donate or lend money to ATC/TSA workers who are struggling to make ends meet? (Ideally lend, but with as generous terms as possible...)
the whole debate is beside the point anyway. If federal workers all magically had 5 months savings then the shutdown would just go on for 6 months. Or until it caused unbearable hardship for other groups like food stamp recipients. It's a game of chicken, the whole point is to cause a ramp up of pain and suffering until one side caves.
Wouldn't be a problem if security was put in the hands of the airlines, where it belongs.
Same with Truecaller, I had been rallying against the use of Truecaller for a long time. At least now, they have provided an option to get yourself delisted, if my memory is correct. :)
Being weird is essential for doing AI research
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/425858-house-rejects-gop-...
Last year there were reports that the Tesla/Panasonic batteries in the Tesla Model 3 contained much less cobalt and that this was a significant competitive advantage for Tesla. Does anyone know if the enabling technology is Tesla's (or exclusive to Tesla through their agreement with Panasonic)? If not, will this be available to Toyota for use in their cars?
The same concept applies - "national security requires you, a member of the armed forces, to serve, whether you like it or not".

I think it's a travesty that the Coast Guard isn't being paid right now, but it appears clear that the courts don't consider such a thing to be slavery in this particular case.
Damn. I literally landed in NYC yesterday.

This shutdown is crazy.
>Banks don't loan people money for free.

A number of federal credit unions are offering interest-free loans.

>Besides it is pretty absurd that banks have to solve government mess that they have no part in.

Agreed. It's an absurd mess.
With Soros himself being the exception to the definition of a "mortal threat"?
The law says the opposite: agencies are legally prohibited from carrying out any nonessential work without explicit continuing funding. Look up the Anti-Deficiency Act for more info.

As for why it continues to be this way, it’s because politicians have found the threat of a shutdown to be a useful bargaining chip. It’s a little bit like nuclear weapons: they’re pretty bad, but at the same time people stand up and listen to you when you threaten to use them.

The problem is that we now have an idiot in the Presidency and too many cowards in Congress who don’t want to bypass him.
Not sure why I am being downvoted - I run a consulting business myself and I wake up every day knowing that I may be asked not to return to work the following day - for any reason.
> If the government were in charge, the Internet would probably still look BBS's from the early 80s.

Did you read my second paragraph/line? The government built the internet as it exists now (minus the corporate junk).
Largely the US worked this way (there were funding lapses before, but people still worked & were paid), but Jimmy Carter in his infinite wisdom had his attorney general issue guidance that in times of funding lapses, no salaries could be paid. He was tired of some prior shutdowns during his administration and wanted to bring some pain into the picture to force republicans & democrats to sign funding bills & make compromises.

Mark Warner & Tim Kaine are pushing an act that would institute that continuing resolution behavior, appropriately called the Stop STUPIDITY Act https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-mark-warner-intr...

One reason that this happens is that it's effectively designed to happen at this point. In times of split government its effectively impossible to pass legislation, so this is the easiest hostage to take in order to try to extract something from the other side.
Good thing there’s the Internet...
Many Lisps already support this; Common Lisp, Racket, Clojure, etc.
It's not a fabricated straw man, it's my actual opinion. (Typically a straw man would be a caricature of your opponent's opinion). I used to roll my eyes when people added new skin colors to emoji options, but now that someone left off people that look like me, I understand that it's a nice gesture to be included.
No, these are not "just" engineering problems.

When you're trying to individually blink 30 stalkers at the perfect time they have almost 1 hp - latency is everything.

Camera has latency. Depending on various factors it takes even milliseconds of exposure for camera to gather enough light that it registers as a clear image frame. Human eye works on a different basis, but also isn't instant. You cannot cut that in software, human player cannot train to lower this. But AI doesn't need to do it - it has image provided as a memory buffer.

Image recognition has latency (both in the brain and in computer). Even as simple stuff as recognizing where the computer screen is as opposed to the background. It takes time. AI doesn't need to do it.

Muscles (engines in robot hands) have latency.

Mouses and hands have inertia and can't be moved instantly - have to be accelerated and stopped and even if you have optimal algorithm to be 100% accurate - it takes time.

It's not only hard to implement, it's also physically IMPOSSIBLE to do without introducing significant delays.

AI that is controlling the ui directly doesn't have to deal with most of these tasks, so it has a huge advantage in a game like starcraft. It's not that AI is so much better, it's that AI is high-frequency trading and human player is sending requests to buy/sell by telefax. By the time your request is processed the other guy had opportunity to do 10 different things.

If you want to focus on the part of the job that is doable now - sure, go ahead. But then don't abuse the unfair advantages you have and announce you "won". It's very low threshold to win in starcraft when your opponent has effectively 100 times the lag you do.

I'm sure someday we will have AI that can beat human player in starcraft without abusing this advantage, And I'm pretty sure the fastest way to this isn't to put a real robot in front of a screen, but it's to limit the intraface bandwidth of the AI to be on the similar level as that of human players.

> Sorry to insist on that analogy, but it looks to me as if my car should be able to fit my shoes and walk before I admit that it goes to another city quicker than me walking.

Let's remove the roads that we made specifically for cars and speak about this again :) Will your car move you through an untamed wilderness quicker than your legs? Possibly. Or not at all.

If I walk into a bullet train, slowly walk inside it, and walk out of it at the end of the route I will be even faster than the fastest car. Is it fair to say I'm faster than a car? After all it's not my fault the car doesn't fit inside that bullet train :)

We need to compare apples to apples, and comparing AI that doesn't need to deal with half the sources of latency with a human player that does, in a game where latency is very important - just isn't fair.
Federal employees on strike right now sounds like it would be wonderful.
Ask HN: Remote Working from rural Alaska?
Just wondering if anyone on here works full time remote from Alaska (specifically outside of anchorage). I've been researching a possible relocation and the biggest issue for me seems to be internet.

I rely on video chat throughout the day, and I'm worried I'll lose that if I move to a small town in AK. Anyone out there doing this successfully?

Thanks all
Just another fine and they will look away again. The legal way of greasing some palms.
Whoa, really? Do you know whether/which other airports are like this?
I agree with you, it is creepy. And I did not downvote you.

Maybe people feel you are cherrypicking the article — drawing attention to the one creepy bit.
Because Congress would have to pass that law. Then they could use a shutdown as political leverage.

This could end today and Congress could override any presidential veto, but that is not politically convenient.
I'm using Papers 3 right now, and it is fairly buggy. I'm not a fan of switching to a subscription model (especially as I'm not an academic, which makes it too expensive), so I was looking for something else.

I like Zotero, but the lack of an ipad client is annoying. The file plugin requires more forethought than I really like. Bookends having a mobile client was one of the attractive features.

What is the work that it takes to get set up?
> Prepending would be O(1) because it's creating a new array instead of prepending in place.

No, you still need to copy the old array to the new array.

FWIW, Ruby may already be allocating some space before and after the array to accommodate a few pre-/appendages.
No, and it wouldn't affect salaries in the mean-time.
Sort of like a natural language quine.
NT was a huge disappointment. To wit, they've never had a shell that even approximates Unix sh from years ago.
Congress is partly at fault too. They can override a veto with a 2/3 majority.
> I know Reagan presidency is often romanticised, especially by, ugh, libertarians, but he had a pair of balls.

Though, at least by the end of his presidency, he wouldn't have necessarily remembered where they were.
No Sweethearts candy this Valentine's Day after company goes out of business
Unlike sane countries if the US government doesn't pass a budget in time then federal workers can go unpaid. Many federal workers are nevertheless still forced to work (via summons) despite not being paid. This particular shutdown is due to a disagreement about providing funding for a border wall between the US and Mexico (one of Trump's campaign promises, though he said "Mexico will pay for it").

Keep in mind that the shutdown began during the previous congress, when Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and the Presidency. It has extended to the current congress where the Democrats now control the house.

To break down some additional bits and pieces for folks about how the US government works:

A bill (such as a budget) needs to be passed by both the House of Congress and by the Senate and also approved by the President.

Senate rules make it possible to infinitely delay (effectively block) any bill without support of 60% of the Senate (so even a bill that would pass the Senate may not even be voted on if more than 40% of the Senate opposes it).

If the President vetos (doesn't sign) a bill the house and senate can only override that with a 2/3 majority vote in both.
It gets even better because we have the fights over budgeting of the money. But when it comes time to actually pay for the things that were budgeted we get to have the same fight again.

This is so broken. The terrorists have taken over our government.
Any flight above 17999 ft in class A airspace requires an IFR flight plan. IFR requires controllers for the clearance, release, and approach clearance. Probably what he means....

Most Jets and planes people have experience with would be flying at those altitudes.
>a recipe for gridlock

That was the whole point of how the government of the US was designed: it's supposed to be hard to "get things done" at the federal level
What is fair game? And why? Just because you said it might be true? But then deny you're saying it is true?

I'm not following.

It seems your idea of what is 'fair game' or what happened and what Facebook's hired PR firm actually did are totally disconnected...
How Amazon of 2018 is Facebook of 2015
So if you're answer is, "I don't know", how can you say that a belief in a Creator is wrong? If you truly don't know?
I would love to know what connection the "industry leading assessors" have to any Google employees at all. Surely they are completely impartial and unrelated, when 15 to 75 thousand dollars is on the line!
Yeah, that's a nice theory. Reality in my personal experience is, religion(s) divide people like nothing else in human history. It gives tons of people who live in sort of constant denial/ignorance of reality (I'll get to that) a sense of smugness. (Practically) everybody believes their faith is the right one, and everybody else has it wrong. 'They' are outsiders, and maybe if we are kind we accept them nevertheless, and maybe we won't.

With Christianity as a religion that only 1/3 of the world say/pretend to believe in, but mostly don't act like they actually do, it just doesn't make any sense at all. So 2/3 of this world, and most of those 120 billions of humans which ever lived will burn in hell eternally? A bit unfair to those billions who were born long before some delusional crazy person created yet another sect of Judaism, or even invention of Judaism by inspiring with some other monotheistic religion (maybe Zoroastrianism).

Some people told me that faith begins when rationality ends - that might be my problem/situation. Every single thing, event, experience, anything I ever learned is rational, causal - that's how reality works. That's not how religion works. I won't stop my brain, not for you, anybody else, nor religion.

That's a problem so many with religions - they became these entrenched corporations of our minds, say like Oracle since we're on HN. They create strict hierarchy, set of rules that come out of nowhere, get highly political internally and externally.

if people would stick to the original faith only, kept it as something personal, optional and not so divisive as in current form, maybe religions wouldn't be losing so many people just in few generations.

Its perfectly fine and appropriate to ask people to be good humans. But you definitely don't need any religion for that. And in my personal opinion, no fear of almighty god and eternal punishment ever made an evil person into a good one.
They in effect voted for a dictatorship, initially for Pompey on the ground of a terrorism threat, and then later were supportive of Caesar. Pompey used the democratic tribune system which had been abolished by a previous generation of the aristocracy. The dictator argued past the traditions of the Roman Republic as exemplified by the aristocrats, and appealed directly to the people.
My understanding as an outsider is that I think the problem is with the debt ceiling. Legally the president (who proposes the budget) needs approval from Congress to borrow beyond the debt ceiling. The US government has for quite some time run a budget deficit, so the only budget that can apply would be a budget with significant cuts in government spending. As such, even keeping the existing budget ticking would exceed the debt ceiling.

To supporters of one of the parties, this is the point. They want the government to run a balanced budget and this is a way of holding it to account. This is also why the debt ceiling can not be removed or extended enough to not become an annual issue.

To both parties, this is a useful tool to hold over an opposing president. Currently, if one party controls Congress and it is not the president, they still don't have too many options short of impeachment to reign a president in.

Additionally, a congress vote is not enough here, the president needs to sign it in, which is how Trump is able to use the mechanism to demand his wall gets funded here.

On the other hand, in most Westminster inspired systems, failure to pass a budget triggers a new election. And the executive power to not sign in a bill usually has much more strings attached. So this deadlock cannot occur.
The OP mentioned a two year old computer. Do things compile 6 times slower than on today's computer? I'd guess at most 1/6th slower, ie 5/6ths of the time...
There's multiple organizations offering 0% interest loans because the backpay is guaranteed by the US federal government. Not ideal but there really shouldn't be any government workers worried about paying their bills
But defaulting to god being possible is itself religious. There is equal proof of the existence of 2 gods as there is one. And equal proof of 100. Throw god away and start with a clean slate, ask what happened and you will come up with big bang and evolution. No modern adult would start with a god. The fact that its an option is a legacy and one that I think pollutes agnostics' thinking.
Not necessarily. There are examples of stalemates in Europe when government could not be formed in years. For example in Belgium but also other countries. In those cases what would usually happen is there would be an interim government of bureaucrats / experts (university professors etc) appointed to lead the country until new election or until political parties can form some sort of a coalition.
Probably it's a risk calculation. For some, they may make more than if they took another job, and even if they quit, there's no guarantee they'd find work before the shutdown ends. (Plus add in the typical 2-3 week period before they'd receive their first check at new job)

If they refuse to work without explicitly quitting, then they could probably be terminated with cause, which means they'd likely be ineligible for unemployment benefits.
Announcing F# 4.6 Preview
4bn-year-old 'Earth rock' found in Apollo 14 crew's moon haul
Ah, but you are overlooking the key difference: you cannot commercialize an engine without building it. With software, commercialization costs "nothing" [1].

A smaller company could come up with a unique engine design, but without patent protection, a bigger company could just drop by and take the design and build it themselves. In other words, the larger company would get R&D "for free". In the engineering world, only by "building" the design can you make money (in general).

So without patents, there would be no reason for smaller companies to exist, simply because such companies would have no counter-measure for their lack of financial resources.

[1]: Nothing here means "no physical resources". The big costs would be labor and compute (depending on the idea). But I would argue that labor is a bigger cost for a company that would like to build an engine at scale (initial design, manufacturing, testing, supply chain, and so on).
> Only long conductors like oil pipelines, telecommuncations wires, and power lines and the backbone transformers will be effected

That is a huge relief. I was worried it was going to affect things that civilization has come to rely on heavily.

(Seriously though, your insight is very welcome and I thank you for it!)
Are you retracting your original statement:

...it'd be slavery if they couldn't quit.

Coast Guardsmen are not being paid and are not allowed to quit. Therefore, according to your statement you think it is slavery.
Your comment is based on no data at all and just a handful of assumptions that are most certainly far from true.
> Yes, they could serve you a MITM key, but it would be easily discoverable

Like a lot of things it boils down to your threat model. If the broker or a state are your adversary, it wouldn't need to be a general design feature to behave this way but it could instead target you at the time of key exchange. Not an implausible scenario for reporters and their sources, e.g.

Those folks are especially vulnerable because they might be led to believe claims of "end to end encryption". Put that together with those default settings and interception and impersonation can happen right under your nose.
Tell that to the Belgians, who took 541 days to form a government.
American shutdowns were invented when someone realized that the Antideficiency Act probably prevents the government spending money if Congress failed to pass a budget. We could, if we wanted, amend that act to provide for an automatic continuance of funding, but we haven't.

Deadlocks like this are definitely a feature of our system that Westminster-style systems resolve differently, but shutdowns are an artifact of an old law more than the constitutional organization.

(ditto the "debt ceiling", which only exists because of a stupid statute)
Ah yes, all of those federal air traffic controllers that should just go and work in the lucrative private air traffic control industry.
It's not just that, but the media's Russia narrative, despite two years of investigations and coming up dry is looking worse than the far right constantly harping on Clinton's emails. Every week it seems there is a new bombshell that turns out to come up empty because there isn't any evidence.

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/20/beyond-buzzfeed-the-10-w...

If there is collusion with Russia, at least wait until there is proof of it before running with the story as if there were. I just roll my eyes now. Maybe focus on some of the other things Trump is doing, goodness knows, there is enough. All the media is doing by constantly doing this is seem like they're constantly crying wolf and supporting the narrative on Trump's side that the media is simply out to get him because of their bias.
It’s Time to Move on from Two Phase Commit
Isn't identical on every platform is good for a consistent user experience?
An introduction to regular expressions (free 34-part course)