skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Our ability to understand threats to free expression, security and democracy are all hindered by the opaqueness of technologies designed for advertising purposes to keep a user’s attention for as long as possible, which essentially distort the level playing field of free speech by amplifying or driving a user to certain messaging or enabling the micro-targeting of content."

Transparency would help but how do we answer the "right" of tech giants to run proprietary (non-transparent) systems in pursuit of profits? Regulation by politician/law-makers who clearly don't understand tech (and often have their own self-dealing agendas) doesn't seem to be a wise solution. Courts favor the free speech rights of everyone, which unfortunately includes "disinformation" speech.

My own approach has been to completely boycott companies that choose profits at the expense of rational, civilized society. Financial punishment is typically the only thing that markets pay real attention to. Am curious how others here view the problem.
I'm probably way out of my element here (I don't own bitcoin or play video games). Are you telling me that the power consumption of the bitcoin network is constant and based solely on the most popular bitcoin mining hardware?
Calculating Sexy Primes, Prime Triplets and Sexy Prime Triplets in PostgreSQL
I felt that the "hitting the guardrails" example was a bit mixed. Adjusting in reaction to a sensed environment is pretty much what control means. On further reflection, it signals that the rest of the article intends to set up a false dichotomy that relies on a definition to serve in place of a proof.

The central puzzle is the idea that one can have "intellectual control" -- what seems to be a kind of metaphysical confidence in the software -- without, you know, using it. Yes, there is a nod to formal methods. Sure, there are types. But the author appears to simply handwave away the step at which the Mighty Controller Of Intellect runs the software. At which point he or she is -- gasp! -- testing the software. Comparing the theory to the reality and updating each as seems prudent.

It seems as though the author instinctively feels that there must a hatchway out of the universe into the Platonic realm. But then faces the old problems of dualism: how, pray tell, does this mysterious crystalline form actually interact with boring statistical matter?

Edit: I updated this comment several times, so you'll see scar tissue where I stitched it.
I may have missed the essence of your post - you have a plan to make low cost housing with waste plastic, but the buildings can be put up by low skilled labour?

(I may have missed quite a bit ...)

On the other hand I visited London Zoo yesterday with my kids and we sat on picnic tables that were moulded (I presume similarly to your method) from waste plastic water bottles (that otherwise would be chocking penguins, the point the zoo was making)
I think this is a good point. As someone who also fumbles a bit if you put me at a whiteboard and start asking esoteric algorithm questions.

So when I am hiring someone for my team, I ask them about projects they are familiar with, and drill down into those. Puts them at ease and you pretty quickly get to know if they are talking out of their ass or not. Then after we get through that, if things are going well, I'll bring up the kinds of problems we're working on and see if it piques their interest.
This is a really thoughtful and indeed unorthodox list of questions. It gets at some of the under-appreciated aspects of what makes a startup a good environment to work in: humility, alignment, customer focus.
For this v1, mobile is read-only :/

But on desktop you could make an account, create events, and then read events on your phone!
I can see this sentence being an interesting Rorschach test. Either you think it’s quite sensible or utterly absurd. My own brain was even flip-flopping around for a bit before coming down on the utterly absurd side.

I think the maybe reasonable counter-argument against your sentence would be that while you personally do not have to value something like raising kids above your work, others very well might and do and there is nothing absurd or weird about that. Your framing betrays a certain kind of worldview where “work” is real and everything else is a mere hobby, a worldview that might be valid for certain people but is certainly not universal.
>Normal economic theory says protectionism makes the pie smaller for everyone

Then again normal economic theory is peddled by people whose careers are tied to the establishment. They can't afford to speak in favor of protectionism if they still want their careers and grants and policy advisor positions.
In what way?

* Mining has become highly centralized, the opposite of its original intent.

* Transaction fees are too high to justify its use in every day transactions and small transfers.

* Very few merchants accept it for every day transactions, and the number has decreased over time.
I started to use ditaa (http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/) to render inline ascii art diagrams into something "pretty".

asciidoctor supports that (and lots of other specialized diagram tools) with little effort (https://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoctor-diagram/)
But the question wasn't about making friends even - it was just knowing acquaintances.

I guess my uni experience must have been different to other people's then if we can't relate to each other's experiences.

We were in four-person tutor groups in the first year, then each year we did a four-person project with a different set of people, I knew tens of people from working in the lab, and when you add up all these people's internships that's a lot of companies you know can ask for a direct contact to ask about hiring instead of sending your resume into the anonymous website process.
I agree with you that it's early days for RL. I think some companies are using it in their advertising platforms, but it's not really my field.

That said, I strongly disagree about what constitutes the proper utilization of research funds. IMO, society should invest in basic research without the expectation of solutions to significant real-world problems.

Still, I'd be really surprised if I don't see advances from the field of reinforcement learning used in a ton of applications during my lifetime.
At first, I disagreed, but then I completely agree after thinking about that problem more. The proper mindset comes from the Top. If managers can't guide/lead their devs then they just can't expect business-oriented development. I guess most often what they want is less coding more features anyway. But if developers are supposed to help with business then they should understand the business and not be viewed as programmers but as the developers - for instance, programmers would probably code new feature from 0 but developers could use external SaaS to verify the need for that feature in the first place. I agree that developers need free room and a lot of help from management to make business development a reality.

On the other hand, I do think that not every developer is meant for that kind of work, there are lots of developers that think only about coding...
That's a good point, the demographics of my coworkers are nothing like the demographics of my friends. Most people are probably more likely to refer people who are both friends and coworkers though.

But a monetary incentive based on performance might be able to change that.
Asimov used this idea in his excellent short story "Spell My Name with an S" from 1958.

Dr. Kristow said stolidly, "Executed!" "He might have been. Ordinarily, I would even assume so, though the Russians are not more foolish than we are and don't kill any nuclear physicist they can avoid killing. The thing is there's another reason why a nuclear physicist, of all people, might suddenly disappear. I don't have to tell you." "Crash research; top secret. I take it that's what you mean. Do you believe that's it?"

[...]

"Has it been decided that we're to go on shield research, too?" "Yes." Kristow's hand went back over his short, bristly hair, making a dry, whispery sound. "We're going to give it everything we've got. Knowing the papers written by the men who disappeared, we can get right on their heels. We may even beat them to it. —Of course, they'll find out we're working on it." "Let them," said Brand. "Let them. It will keep them from attacking. I don't see any percentage in selling ten of our cities just to get ten of theirs— if we're both protected and they're too dumb to know that." "But not too soon. We don't want them finding out too soon.
As a Nikon user, I have no direct experience with Magic Lantern (always a bit bummed about that) but I was also wondering the same.

I don't know if these are presets or something done in post-processing, but it almost looks like the video equivalent of filter plugins in some cases.

I'm by no means an expert but color grading video is often a detailed process with a lot of room for finding your own creative "vision". Think of the split toned, green/orange aesthetic that was popular in movies for a while. Doing the color grading can have a major effect (good, bad, or just different) on the mood of a video.

In these examples, I was definitely impressed with some aspects of how curves were adjusted to bring up shadows and make details more visible. But at the extreme end, it reminded me almost of the overkill seen in early HDR photography.

Some tweaking can make things look more realistic and bring out detail but it is very easy to go too far and end up with something that looks like an Instagram filter.

That's mainly why I was wondering if the video examples were in-cam presets when running Magic Lantern, or if it was something the videographer did in post with the extra data captured with the higher bit depth enabled.
I'm definitely not qualified to answer this question as I didn't go to an HBCU and I'm not black. Sorry.

On a related note, black enrollment at my alma mater is plummeting in recent years (in favor of HBCUs), so going to an HBCU is a decision increasingly being made by black college-goers. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/higher-...
This is the line the concerned me:

> In other words, after you connect a light fixture to Alexa, Amazon wants to know every time the light is turned on or off, regardless of whether you asked Alexa to toggle the switch. Televisions must report the channel they’re set to. Smart locks must keep the company apprised whether or not the front door bolt is engaged.
Looks like you've dismissed my question on technicality.

I have to admit this is not exactly the answer I was looking for.
You can get basically the same thing from rebass in JS:

<Box
p={5}
fontSize={4}
width={[ 1, 1, 1/2 ]}
color='white'
bg='magenta'
>
Box
</Box>

It uses a CSS-in-JS library under the hood to translate that into a CSS class for each unique combination of styling props.
I think subtle racism is a big problem. It can be felt without being verbally communicated to you, the actions from the perpetrators are frustrating and you feel helpless. The perpetrators would not be corrected because they said nothing wrong. Worst of all is that you don’t get a fair shake, and you might be dismissed at the slightest hint of incoherence and sometimes you feel like the perpetrators are waiting for you to fail.
> Imagine if Apple and Google made full frame cameras.

I did – briefly – and am still recoiling from the horror.

> Currently we have great hardware with terrible software and vice-versa.

The software on even older DSLRs isn't terrible. It does the job it was intended to do quite well. It is learn-able, and it doesn't change its behaviour with an OTA-update you can't easily prevent.

More thought has gone into the UI design of even the earliest, rushed-to-market DSLR firmwares than some of the UI changes that Apple and Google have inflicted on their victims.
What prejudices did avip claim were confirmed by tokenism?
>What's "normal economic theory"?

What the established economists are paid to peddle in countries that have already taken advantage of centuries of protectionism to build their economies and industries and now want everybody else (regardless of the stage they are in) to open to their wares.
Trusted referrals have always been a valid approach to getting candidates in the pipeline, as long as it doesn't privilege those candidates over others who came in through other channels.

However, I don't agree with waiving the technical interview.

Sometimes referrers, though well-meaning, have either an outdated or incomplete idea of the candidate. Assessing a candidate's quality is quite a complicated thing, and not everyone does it well though everyone thinks they do. I say this because I've made erroneous referrals myself.

It's a bias-variance tradeoff. If you trust 1-2 key people, and if they are right about a person, good, but if they are wrong they can be very wrong. Whereas if you collect more data points from independent sources, you mitigate the probability of huge errors in hiring, which can be expensive to fix.

Of course there are exceptions. In a world where if Larry Page wanted to bring Jeff Dean on-board a fledgling Google because he's seen his work elsewhere and decides to waive the technical interview, then it's a different story. But I'm not sure if these exceptions abound...
> An enormous amount of energy used to support a tiny minority of people participating in a highly-manipulated wealth redistribution mechanism is, objectively, a complete fucking waste.

Objectively? No, I'm pretty sure that isn't "a complete fucking waste" to the people who are benefitting from it. Which is literally the definition of "subjective."

Removing externalities of electricity pricing solves this. That's the point. If a kilowatt of electricity usage costs enough to offset its environmental impact, then who cares if a tiny minority of people are doing some wacky confusing things with their computers?
Exactly, I'm more annoyed about private institutions owning every single piece of my personal data (I'm looking at you google!) than an actual public institution

At least with government you have public representation
Hmm, I see a blank page on mobile (firefox, iOS).
Well, they forgot to say that five star online platform - https://rousseau.movimento5stelle.it - is a php handmade webapp with a lot of security problems. Not a good point for the movement.

I think the wired article is decent, maybe it misses one important notion: the five stars movement has been critical at giving a lot of millennials some new interest in politics. For sure it's not the perfect party, but from a participation pov is the best thing we've had in Italy since decades.
'Smashing a window' is unlikely to incur costs of $30,000, perhaps $300 is a better estimate.

I would also argue that insurance resources, customer hassle, police resources and judicial resources are also all roughly equal for handling stolen items from a car, versus stolen items from a car + window broken.
Figuring out a gen_TCP:recv limitation
I don't understand you are talking about theft? like what happens to banks and jewelry stores? like what was happening every day with dollars on far west? and somehow this invalidated the cryptocurrency narrative? how?
Around 0.02% according to Wikipedia. It’s not nothing.
Bitcoin is currently estimated to be responsible for ~0.21%, more than either Hong Kong or Iraq use [1]. Criticisms of Bitcoin have been around as long as the hype - cryptocurrencies were never going to save the world.

[1]: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
Nano basically just uses a block lattice, which looks like a blockchain for each individual user. Blocks are broadcasted across the network and confirmed when you receive the block, and ask the representatives to vote on if the block is legit. Representatives are chosen by users, with the reps having the highest Nano backing being chosen. This gives a network setup where once the block is broadcasted, asking the peer if it's good is the only delay. There is a small PoW on each block, which is to stop blocks from being spammed against the network (however it can be precomputed..)

Disclaimer: built some apps on top of Nano, decently pleasant experience. I keep up a bit with the development of the node software.
Mexican here... I could swear you were describing Mexico in your comment.
Herds of tourists who visit beautiful tropical islands where the nightlife cuisine, music, and dance bring a tear of admiration to the eyes … of the locals, 'cos the tourists are all packed in a McDonald's.
"Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day." (According to a report from the World Bank, 2008)
Cryption – In-Browser AES File Encryption with Data Integrity Check
Looks like a hug of death, if I had to guess.
Every time when some language generator become more popular, it's a sign, that something is wrong with the main language. It happened to Java, JavaScript, CSS.
Stop down voting this post. It’s a genuine question..
Looking at extinction and new niches created like our happy little stickle back fish sees an advantage. The stickle back fish contains the genes of past versions fresh water adapted or salt water adapted. Maybe more (alkilin vs acidic vs high o2 or low 02)? These happen within a generation or few. I wish we were longer lived to see what happens. it seems like it would be very interesting to watch. I cannot imagine the stickleback is the only invertebrate carrying this genetic baggage. Watching the niches change and genetic variations of current creatures fill them would be very interesting.

I wish we had some form of stacis we could put ourselves in to observe what happens.
Why the hell are they capturing keyboard inputs of the q, v, m, l, and p keys and updating the URI w/ navigational things? Makes CMD+L useless...

Looks like the are supposedly emulating some of the camera's functions? I don't know enough about this camera for it to make any sense to me.
You sit next to the guy the whole time? Eat lunch next to him too? Having some stranger over your shoulder is not real coding either imo.
I took the course in 2015, when it was Matlab-only and Russ was working on a C++ version; it was one of the best courses in robotics I've taken (together with Udacity's Self-driving car ND). It also had a simple version of Boston Dynamic's Atlas robot that was massively improved recently. Does anyone know if the course contains new content related to the recent advances at BD? Is the optimization code now compatible with ROS? Thanks!
You're right I should have alluded to that as well. But my point was maybe it wasn't worthy of a downvote is all.
It is sad. But it's not just google books, it's google search, google news, youtube, etc.

There was a time when all of google's properties catered to the users. Their search engine was the best. Google news was the best aggregate site. Youtube recommends used to be amazing to the point you could spend hours following their recommends.

Now google search, google news, youtube, etc are all garbage. It doesn't serve the people. It serves corporate interests. You can thank media companies and the elites who pressured them for that.
>economic interference does not equal war

Please tell me how you are able to interfere in trade without violence. Interference necessitates violence. If country A has a ban on products from country B, country B sends a ship with products to country A. To enforce the ban, men with guns from country A are going to detain the ship.

You are arguing for a paradigm where the crew on the ship should be imprison or arrested (or worse) when they have aggressed against no person nor their property.
One of my pet peeves about the developing world (and for marginalized people in the developed world) is how long it takes to do things

ATMs out of cash, gas stations out of gas, cottage industries providing disjointed subpar services to what already exists internationally

This is an ineffecient use of a nation’s potential productivity
Sure. I need to sign tags, commits and releases.
When you maintain a GNU package it's mandatory to sign releases.
When I was a student I had this same experience peer-editing prose. In reading a classmate's paper, I found endless nits to pick about syntax and minute points of diction or style, but much less to say about the actual argument. The main reason for this is just that it was easier. It doesn't take much effort to call out bits that strike one as unaesthetic, but evaluating the substance of a paper requires that I really think about what it's saying.
Wrong layer? PGP is for person to person(s) communications, TLS is for client to server. Sometimes you can use the latter as a substitution, but not always.
I mean, we're welcome to give it a second thought, but doing so is unlikely to result in a different conclusion that "the only way to go from here is out"[1].

[1]: https://youtu.be/ab_mH8R0KTM
> Design reduces by 99 percent the data users need to join the network and verify transactions.

Is this enough? I'm guessing that if bitcoin would grow to support even 1% of global payments, that 99% performance increase is not going to cut it.
Users with high stakes generally want the network to run so their stakes aren't worthless. At least, that's the theory behind PoS.
A Dark Moment for the Yellow Vest Movement
This is the second HN blog post I have read today where the author views a (former) colleague as an enemy to be defeated ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19190472 was the other one). Given that they are having a casual phone call it can be assumed they are some kind of friends. Yet the author's self worth seems to be at least partially based in winning a game of being more correct.

Even if someone is wrong about something, why take joy in their failures or in beating them at something? Wouldn't it be better to take joy in their successes? It's not the point of the article, but it is jarring to me.
That's like saying space travel is a stupid waste of energy because it costs more than driving. Some things are expensive, sometimes they get cheaper. In the meantime if you want to get to Mars you either buy the proven rocket or the cheap one.
You’ve missed a few steps in your "therefore" there.
Attempting to control such a thing would be even more frivolous than the War on Drugs, governments ability to control things is quite limited without taking extremely draconian measures. We don't need a War on Software.

Your stance against so called "dangerous knowledge" worries me - would you encourage banning books about cryptography and software development?
Ask HN: Startup or Big Company?
Hi,
I am a data scientist and software developer who has received two job offers from two wildly different companies. The first (http://www.analytics2go.com/) is an american startup located on Brazil (I live here) that aims to develop data driven solutions for small-medium sized companies and the second one is the largest retail company in my country. Both positions (at least on paper) are to do the same job, research and modelling of solutions for the companies problems (in the startup the focus are on the clients). Financially the retail offer is better by about 50%. A somewhat important detail is that the retail company is located in the biggest city here in Brazil while the startup is in the countryside in a very small city...

The question is, for someone like me that will finish his PhD in the next two years and aims to get a job in a tech company in the future (Amazon, Google, IBM...) which one is the better path ? Is retail badly seen by tech companies ? Will the experience in one be worse than the other ?

Cheers