skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not only is this classic whataboutism, but it ignores the reality of the US prison system being an absolute horrific nightmare for many people. We still use solitary confinement here in the US which is absolutely considered torture in many circumstances.

It's far from hyperbole and far from voluntary, especially when you start considering the needs of the mentally ill with regards to prisons and how they're supposed to behave.
The Hot New Channel for Reaching Real People: Email
Twitter is the crystal meth of newsrooms
Wow that is bad advice.
I don't agree. If anything, this seems to be a sampling bias- people who don't move on from situations they can't actively change will be sampled as relatively unsuccessful compared to those who will.

In other words: If author had moved to an unsuccessful team, he likely would have moved again until he found a team he could be successful with. Looking back and comparing with his friend who didn't move on will often result in a favorable comparison.
Thank you. Not sure why I missed that.
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Backend_flowchart#optimizer...

Genetic query optimizer optimizer/path evaluates all possible ways to join the requested tables. When the number of tables becomes great, the number of tests made becomes great too. The Genetic Query Optimizer considers each table separately, then figures the most optimal order to perform the join. For a few tables, this method takes longer, but for a large number of tables, it is faster. There is an option to control when this feature is used.
"incentivized FBI Geek Squad informant deal"

wat?
Anyone who’s read Ed Catmull’s experience looking after Toy Story 2 knows this adage: it’s not about the situation, it’s what you bring to it.

You’ll bring whatever you’re capable of bringing whether you stay in chaos or move on. It’s less about the environment and more about your attitude...even more than you may realize at the time.

In my experience, the greatest success in my career has happened when I stopped trying to figure out how to get ahead and just went about the business of doing and growing.
Beyond DRY – Why Redundancy Makes Your Code More Robust and Less Fragile
> There is no expectation that they are inverse or commutative

Please. I am not a Ruby coder but I fully expect any language that a + b - b is just a and also a + b - a is just b.
> How is that justifiable in any way?

Simply: Corporate greed.

Or, executives trying to save any penny they can, so if the company is ever gobbled up by a large conglomerate, such as NBC or Combast, or merged with another media company, people like Jonah Peretti, Lenke Taylor and Ben Smith can laugh their way to the bank.
Presumably https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13841504
organic waste vs garbage with hundreds of years staying power
B&H is great, agreed. They are an extremely honest company, so taking a few days longer is worth it in my opinion - you are going to get exactly what you ordered in my experience. On Amazon, that's only guaranteed if Amazon is the seller (not to be confused with "fulfilled by Amazon", of course). B&H is also closed on all Jewish holidays.
You mind elaborating on this? Are you saying the mentality is to just show up, do the job within the allotted day then head home, knowing the company doesn't owe you thing, no matter how many extra hours you put in?
To pre-empt any wrong interpretations or conclusions: The Rust version heavily relies on optimization annotations and using direct calls to SSE functions. The Fortran version uses no special code and relies purely on the compiler optimizing code and algorithms. The Rust version relies on hand tuned pieces and is several times longer. Just a matter of work for someone to write an equivalent version in Fortran or C that will be equally fast or faster.

If you want to get a real-world impression look at the other Rust implementations that roughly correspond to the Fortran code. They are almost 2 times as slow. This gives you some real-world insight on how much performance you can achieve using Fortran instead of Rust and spending the same time writing code.
No, you're not.

A lack of commercial success != failure.
> You can't reliably identify what will grow fast, but you can identify what won't

This is a great insight that certainly rings true to me.
This. Look at the historical average combat load of a soldier vs average height and weight of the same soldier. You’ll find the combat load is always just a little more than you think should be possible for extended periods of time.

Source: was in the infantry and spent some time reading up on it a decade ago
The number of pedestrians killed by cars keeps going up
While the psychology field is rife with poorly done studies, unreplicated studies etc., they have a decent idea regarding addiction and the mind.

It would be tremendous good will if Netlifx took insight from psychology and applied it to their customer's mental health _rather_ than for the opposite, in the form or binge watching and engagement. Otherwise their motive is not distinguishable from that of opioid merchants.
This quote actually captures the sort of issue/gripe I have with being a developer (let's say you don't ascend high into management) for the rest of your career. No matter how good you are, you still have to write individual lines of code out, one-by-one. You'd be a glorified factory worker, albeit a very efficient one (years of experience would make your solution more efficient and architecturally sound from the get go).

Not to mention some very keen, obsessed younger developer could easily replicate what you're doing.
Yep.

We should be taxing the ultra rich more, and then the public instead of the ultra rich would be the one being able to decide what to do with this money.
They prey on the young. Look at BuzzFeed's staff demographic. A lot of them are younger than 35. Five years ago, BuzzFeed, at least in the journalism community, seemed like the place to be: the company was growing, their news team was just getting off the ground and the resources seemed endless. One would think the traffic brought in by Disney princess quizzes would pay the bills. Sadly, that is not the case.

Video is still king over there. I'd be curious to know how many videographers and video editors lost their jobs compared to reporters.
Was it actually better for Best Buy to lose a sale than to sell a laptop without an extended warranty, or was that just a case of bad incentives making the rank-and-file do things that hurt the company?
Ask HN: Is Google's new image CAPTCHA completely broken?
From time to time I see that I am not a robot captcha which shows a bunch of images - but rarely I seem to able to pass it.

It just keeps showing me more and more images and even after verifying 50 cars, buses and crosswalks I still won't let me pass.

What's the point of this thing? It's making the web very unusable :/
Tesla reaches out to Nevada high school grads with job opportunities
I was reminded of that too. Honestly, that video is a heartbreaking story of a man with mountains of ambition but very little self-awareness.
My current career started with clients burned by outsourcing their projects.
There are a couple downsides here. When sizing a climate control system of any sort, it’s nice to size it such that, at full output, it will be just barely sufficient for the worst case usage. If you use it for demand response and time-of-use optimization, you either need to size for a worst-case day such that it’s still powerful enough when it’s switched off at expensive times or you need to store heat or cold for multiple days. Second, while a simple-ish hydronic system is great for heat, it’s less ideal for cooling. You need to make sure that a cooling system can remove sufficient water vapor to keep a comfortable humidity or you need a separate dehumidifier. (Ideally every new building in a humid climate would have independent dehumidification anyway, so this is not a show stopper.). It’s also important to avoid condensation in bad places — if you cool your floor or ceiling much below the dew point, you have a problem.
Ask HN: What are some great technical presentations?
I have been pretty bad at presentations and public speaking, in general, all my life. Back in middle school and high school, the only occasions I spoke to a gathering was when my family or teachers forced me to do so. College was the same story.

After having worked in the industry for a while, I feel that _decent_ presentation skills (let alone stellar) are a necessity once you move beyond junior roles. So, here I am looking for examples of great _technical_ presentations.

I am specifically looking for presentations targeted at programmers (Computer Scientists, Software Engineers, etc), on a topic that is sufficiently complex (say, the construction of some particular compiler or an OS subsystem). I know that creating a presentation that is more accessible to non-programmers is going to be much harder than one targeted at a specific audience, so I am not looking for those at the moment.

I am also aware of groups like Toastmasters as well as the fact that there are several books, even full courses on effective technical presentation (I did actually take a required class on writing and presentation back in college, but ironically it wasn't really effective). But I'll leave those for another day and another post.

All that said, if you think there is a presentation that must be on every programmer's bucket list, please feel free to list it!
Yes I think it's interesting, here's me trying to understand it better:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/9y4eh...

At first I was a little critical but I get it a little more now. Of course the real test is trying it, but I'm not working in that area at the moment, though I've used TF before.

What I find interesting is the recurring theme of two languages -- in Swift's case they say you can use a "static subset". I think that means all the imperative control flow, and then static dispatch (as in templates), but NOT dynamic dispatch (as in OOP).

So in this example you have Python/LLVM, then there's Lua/Terra, Python/RPython, Python/TensorFlow, or Swift/static Swift, etc. Except in the latter case I guess it's all mixed together and you don't explicitly have a graph building stage.
How a vermont social network became a model for online communities
It's not as fancy as image reconstruction but I realised years ago that I tend to look at the floor any time I'm approaching a blind corner in an office environment. It took a little longer to figure out I was subliminally looking for diffuse shadows that would indicate someone about to come round the corner.
Wrong spin. Marc persevered and now the game is thriving:

https://youtu.be/FcGeFo5lz-A

Honestly brings tears to my eyes to see him triumph over naysayers.
There really needs to be more national level laws around PTO. Like my current employer has a policy to pay it out, but recently they've decided to cut our maximum rollovers from 6+ weeks (150% of accrual) to 1 week maximum from year to year. First world problems but this year I'm going to be taking a ton of days off.

I mean sure they can do that, but why can't we just have a set rule and stick with it?
That didn't seem like failure to me.
That’s a valid way to look at it, too.
solitary confinement is quite common in Asia. And no, we don't consider that as torture.
What's really missing from javascript?

1. The ability to run my code without transpiling and reinstall dependencies for 10 minutes.

2. The ability to know which of the last 5 version of javascript to use.

3. Stability in my dependencies.

4. Consolidation and standardizing on established frameworks.

Basically undoing all the mess the ecosystem has done over the last 8 years.
> at a minimum it's possibl to know what will destroy growth.

can you name a few of the things we definitely know will destroy growth?

i'm asking because i hear "this will destroy growth" as an argument against policies i like (e.g.: a 70% marginal tax rate, controls on pollution) and i often think this is FUD.
The C version was ported to be the Rust one, it seems, and uses those intrinsics too. And, eventually this code will get to be a bit higher level while having the same output; those libraries are still a bit experimental though.

Overall, good points!
I always felt people who were against GMOs believed in the right thing for the wrong reason. The problem is not directly from consuming a genetically modified piece of corn, that seems fine. The problem instead is all of the baggage associated with growing 1000s of corn plants that are genetically identical. Pesticide overuse, soil degradation, etc.
Show HN: Mintable – Roll-your-own Mint clone for managing personal finances
There are no integers in Lambda calculus, only natural numbers Church numerals built out of functions. That doesn't make numeric support a "lie" in Lambda Calculus.
It makes sense: gcc's -O3 is closer to LLVM/clang's -O2 in terms of big picture optimizations they enable such as vectorization and loop unrolling.
Ah. I see what you were saying now, but for me it was just more work to split things manually. The end result didn't change. At least, not much.

This highlights one of the benefits to framing comments in a positive manner: they tend to be inoffensive even when misunderstood.
> Removing the ability to easily see the complete catalogue via comprehensive categories, which enhances the reliance users have on algorithmic suggestions

To me, this one seems counterproductive to both Netflix's and the consumer's shared goal of engaging in interesting, new content. I've had occasions where I've signed in to my "guest" profile and seen media that never appeared at all under my main profile, and have enjoyed watching it, where at the same time my main profile has felt a bit stale.

Netflix might have confidence in their all seeing all knowing algorithm, but with myself as a single data point, it has sometimes failed to suggest things that I've found interesting.
Not having to install the shit show of conflicting dependencies. Get a formal package manager instead of the twenty different ones. Basically take a look at python and realize the js ecosystem could actually have nice things.
Nope, I took the bus there & back.
Wait, are you actually implying the NYT has a reputation for accurate journalism?
Donald Knuth – Fun with Binary Decision Diagrams (2008) [video]
Bad incentives. Some items were low margin, but almost nothing was so low that it was actually worth losing the sale.

One of the things you were ranked on was PSP (extended warranty, but they beat it into your head never to call it that) attachment percentage. When a measure becomes a target...

Occasionally there was a loss leader sale item, and in those cases if someone wanted to by it without any attachments, it might have made short term financial sense to pretend we didn't have it, but I don't think the company could get away with that on a large scale.

Source: I also worked there during college. First in customer service, then as a Geek Squad supervisor at a new store, and I was sent to training at HQ up in Minnesota.
This got me really curious about what quality Netflix actually streams its audio, but the only thing I came across were tech support threads regarding low quality streams. Does anyone know of a good comparison of Netflix vs physical disc quality, and/or any hard numbers?

FWIW, I have an extremely good system and I've always thought that streamed audio sounds great. I honestly wonder if I've been missing out on the next tier!
To me this is a code smell, the function would be better off being a named function like getStatusString(n)

function getStatusString(n) {
if(isPrime(n)) {
return 'prime';
}
if(isOdd(n)) {
return 'odd';
}
return 'even';
}

Much easier to read, understand and maintain than an inline monster. No need to add complicated new language constructs for simple situations.....
Yes, the profit on the laptop was minimal, but the extended warranty considerably boosted profits, as well as provided bonuses for management.

They had a folding table setup at the front of the store w/ a PC running Excel, and every 15 minutes over the PA, each departments percentage of sales with extended warranties were read aloud.
http://svtsim.com/moonjs/agc.html // AGC ASM.JS Port

https://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=8091 // TODO: Port NASSP to Celestia (http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/)
Huh? What do all those abbreviations mean
I'll admit the battery story has a way to go yet - I'm not relying totally on batteries yet. But battery farms are already playing a role around here.
Salon.com really? On the front page?
Last I looked up, the city of LA makes somewhere around 200 million a year on parking fines alone. There's tons of places in LA where it appears safe to park, but then you come back to find a ticket on your windshield because there's a sign way off in the distance and obscured by a tree. Parking enforcement "officers" are specifically told to never make exceptions, and their little ticket machines are designed so that, once your license plate is entered, the action can't be undone and they are forced to complete the ticket in order to continue doing their job.
QUIC is likely to be implemented first by large internet service providers (Google (who made it), Amazon, Cloudflare, etc.) and there slowly come to all the various open source projects and various software installed on every computer.

Just having the major internet services and browsers implementing it already makes a sizable difference.
A lot of hardware was sold near cost. The accessories and service plans are where the margins are.

The “team meetings” before and after every shift showed you the numbers from the previous day and your goals for the current day.

If your department didn’t hit their numbers, you’d get your hours cut or manager would get canned. Promotions went by how well you could sell, but you weren’t on commission.

They pushed for us to sell 2 black and two color ink cartridges with ink jet printers. Plus two packs of photo paper and two packs of regular paper.
That doesn't describe current US policy, which prevents people from coming that would make the country a nicer place to live, and lets many people in that wouldn't. By design, it even brings in random people.

I'm not describing a policy, I'm describing an ideal. (A simple concrete policy proposal is below.)

You said:

> Here's a simpler proposal: anyone from anywhere can come here and take any job.

So that doesn't describe your policy proposal either. Plenty of people can hold down a job and make the country a worse place for others, or a subset of others, simply by competing for resources, driving down wages in the sector they work in, by being a criminal, or by voting immorally.

I want to let everybody you'd let in, except for people whose immigration would make the country a worse place. Define that ideal as you will.

As a pretty good approximation, we could limit immigrants to those that could qualify for military service.

> myself included, I'll be honest—feeling uncomfortable with that is part of why I left

That's also a reason why I left. My policy as a national policy, is to make the country a nice place for all of its citizens (except criminals and slovenly degenerates) to live in. So that includes people that might like to move from Arizona to California. They're making their own lives better, which counts for something.

> I think that this country would be a nicer place to live for myself if I can hire whomever I want for my team regardless of citizenship and without big government second-guessing my decision

If you're like most employers, that means you're happier if you get to drive down working class wages, while you get to reap greater profits from your pre-established position in the market. That's good for you, but not good for the average American.

To make my goals a little more nuanced: Economically, I want only the smartest immigrants, which do advanced stuff like start companies, work for them, or work in healthcare, which drive up the demand for working-class labor, letting average Americans negotiate a better piece of the pie, while driving down the cost of their healthcare. Culturally, I want supply limited so that immigrants assimilate, and I want all the immigrants and their children to be crime-free pro-life Republican voters. :-)
The first few issues sound to me more like poor management in a particular location, rather than a global company policy. However, it could be that company incentives led to this such management initiatives.
Yes, that is what I was referring to.
One thing I've noticed is that if you go too fast, it thinks you're a machine. Sorry, I'm too human, lol!

Wait before starting it, go slow, and pause between items. That works better for me.

And yes, it's completely broken!
In 2019 choice is no longer a problem, making a choice is.

I find myself shopping in person more and more. Shelf space in San Francisco is expensive so it’s usually full of good stuff.

Also why product reviews are a whole genre on YouTube
I actually started going back to Best Buy for the first time in 10 years probably. I was pleasantly surprised at the prices. What is even better was I was allowed to test the mouse, TV, and headphones I wanted to buy!
Yes I think that was it. Makes me rethink every abstraction I add to solve a problem.
Local Couple Conducts Relationship Performance Review
The perfect cuppa (2005)
reminds me of a patch to MacOS WindowMgr that made an explosion when you closed the window.. didnt win MacHack i n Ann Arbor MI that year but it was fun..
In "Authority and American Usage", DFW once described Pinker as having a "1950s SCIENCE: POINTING THE WAY TO A BETTER TOMORROW high-school filmstrip" vibe -- and once it was pointed out, it's impossible to ignore.
The article says Best Buy didn't have to layoff employees. But why would they ever? Retail has a high turnover rate already. All they had to do was not hire replacements when people left on their own. Or hire a part-time worker when a full-timer quits.

Is there any national retailer other than Walmart that has not been forced to reduce their labor budget as a response to Amazon? None that I've looked into.
I was lucky enough to meet Keahi at a World's Fair Nano in SF a few years ago and chat with him a bit afterwards as well. He's a really smart guy, and his boots are awesome, but I have to echo a few other commenters here: he seemed too focused on the design and engineering and didn't seem to know how to execute past that. In particular, it seemed to me that the boots themselves weren't ready for production. They worked exceptionally well, but they were hand-made, and it was clear that they weren't designed to be made in a factory setting.

Hardware is a slow business by its nature, especially when coming into it from the inventor/designer side. But at some point the lean startup is right. "Fail Fast" has one concept at its core: win or lose, you have to execute. Keahi actually went out and built his design (which is more than many hardware inventors can say). But the next step in the execution of a consumer hardware business has to be building enough of your product to sell to customers, and that's a different skill set.

If you find yourself stuck in the design phase, try to find a way to push forward. If you're short on cash, maybe a group of early, dedicated customers (or a Kickstarter) can provide the funds you need to set up small-scale manufacturing. If you can't find some initial customers and can't successfully run a Kickstarter, at least you'll know it's time to move on. Hardware's a tough industry, and I firmly believe that there are plenty of great ideas out there that would survive if they could get past this particular bump.

Anyway, I hope he manages to push past the design phase and into production - it's a cool product, and one that I'd love to be able to buy someday.
If You Want to Be Happy, Make the World Small
Yeah, overall it looks pretty bad.
I'm I the only person who hates seeing what should be a blog post or an article formatted as 27 tweets? This is just dumb.

Actual journalism and proper long-form writing seem near death.