skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I have encountered people that aggressively espouse liberal positions every now and then, but in my experience, this makes most other people around them (including me) uncomfortable, and the conversation usually stops quickly. While it is maybe more rare for a conservative to do this, I find it to be met with the same response.

I had the same experiences in Western Washington, but I get the feeling that much fewer people feel empowered to step in and stop the situation where people espouse controversial viewpoints in a manner denigrating to those that believe differently. So people who do aggressively espouse controversial viewpoints think this behavior is acceptable. This does have tangible impact beyond slack and email lists. Our company has made several decisions that many would regard unethical or at least unsavory, and I think there's a strong probability that if there was less of a mono culture someone would have pointed out that these things went beyond the realm of mainstream morals.

Granted, I'm totally complicit in this bystander effect. I don't want to risk any damage to career or network opportunities. The concerning takeaway, though, is that fact that this is an environment that engenders fear in people who try to
Free people couldn't be governed by numbers unless they wanted to be. They are only because they have no say in how they're governed (or rather, handled).

Thanks to technological improvements the State is increasing its grip on citizens. The NSA in the US, Communist Party in China, bureaucrats in the EU. The list goes on.

Small government has no resources to spy and terrorize its citizens. Large does. The Economist on the whole favors technocrats and "effective" government, and are part the problem.
Maybe the erosion of the safety net and the great disconnect between productivity increases and increases in wages?

People who were not independently wealthy are not able to afford to do anything with their time that doesn't earn them money. People are less able to take risks, more apt to settle for less so long as less is stable and safer.

There is also a chilling effect on communities as everyone scrambles to "get theirs" when these support systems have their legs kicked out from under them.

IMO of course.
Both. I experienced too many people clinging to past unbill and using it as a excuse to not go forward. As I said, finding out about it, can be helpful, but not if it is focused too much. The OP reminded me of it, so I saw a pattern and replied to it.
Thanks, you were faster than me. Source is here : https://github.com/jlengrand/closeme

Don't expect too much. I did this in 3 hours out of frustration :).
About a decade ago, I would have agreed with this 100%, and I still am fascinated and, quite frankly, awed by Racket and LOP (and looking forward to Racket Fest 2019 here in Berlin[1]).

But.

(You knew there was a "but").

While I don't quite agree with the assertion that with the right tooling (so: this tooling), creating a language is as easy as creating a library, I don't think it would solve our problems even if it were true.

Language design is much harder than library design, even if the tooling is perfect and transparent. In the extreme we're going to end up with what Alan Kay calls inverse vandalism[2] aka the Mount Everest Effect: making things because we can, not because we should or they're good.

In essence, designing a (domain specific) language should be your last resort, not your first resort. At least one that requires a parser or macro system to implement. After all, when we create a library, we are in fact creating a domain specific language, or at least a domain specific vocabulary. A framework goes a little further towards the idea of language. In fact, the first version of Simula was a simulation DSL. It was the second version that made the language into an OO language and the simulation "DSL" into a framework. The advantage being that you can use the same language with different frameworks for other domains.

If we look at natural language, it is very much the same: we use the same language to talk about any number of domains, the most we tend to add is some domain-specific vocabulary. Imagine the tower of babel we would suffer under if every domain had a completely new and different language!

That effect was very much encountered and later described by the LRG at PARC when they started using Smalltalk 72, which allowed every object to defined its own language[3]. It was chaos! Turns out we are not very good language designers in the heat of the programming battle. So they very consciously made the language more restrictive later. However, the Smalltalk message syntax is specifically designed to give you something akin to DSL, but without most of the problems[4].

A similar effect was documented by Bonnie Nardi for end users. Here as well, the expectation was that users would prefer domain-specific tools that were tailored exactly to their needs. This, surprisingly, turned out not to be the case. End users apparently vastly prefer general tools, even if the effort to adapt them to specific tasks is greater (see also: people writing documents in Excel...)

That said, current general purpose programming languages are probably not quite flexible enough. I think there is a sweet spot to be found somewhere between Smalltalk-80 and something like Racket.

[1] https://racketfest.com

[2] http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/

[3] http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BitsOfHistory/Bits...

[4] https://youtu.be/Ao9W93OxQ7U?t=627
It seems like they keep (every decade or so) coming across single specimens. So I’d guess there are more, but they’re elusive.
Physicists Get Thousands of Semiconductor Nuclei to Do Quantum Dances in Unison
I put something up to capture thoughts and record thing for myself for posterity. At least 1 of the posts started as notes to myself so I could refer to it later on.

Not much there but I did enjoy hunting down photos of Marseille to use.

https://skillscheck.co.uk
Identity by Any Other Name: The Complex Cacophony of Intertwined Systems
Interesting podcast about colors:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-secret-lives-of-c...

This author is interviewed:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/552503/the-secret-l...
4 is the last version with fully offline vault that doesn't tie you to their cloud subscription service.
Ethical AI is a serious business opportunity.

Machines are getting more and more intelligent. They find content for us, summarize things, generate speech and text.

Look at how complicated human sosiety is. Trying to directly program questionable and socially unacceptable behavior is next to impossible since border is way too thin.

There are loads of unwritten rules about minors, for example, that vary from culture to culture. About what is ok for what age.

So anyone who uses machine intelligence opens himself to liability. Filters are needed, and everyone needs same set of filters
Save a trip to Twitter. Here's the link to the story:

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252458208/Facebook-plann...
I think this one aspect of what the Chinese are trying to build with their social credit system. Not to say this is a good idea, I think there is no way to implement something like this fairly, but I know they give social score for neighborhood improvements under some narrowly defined criteria.

Given extensive enough monitoring and ML wouldn't it be possible to monitor the emotions of the citizens in a neighborhood and reward people who positively impact their neighbors?
Sorry, didn't know that.
Link to previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19230245
it may look odd, but hackernews readers are inquisitive, and will check it out. on the other hand i would guess that most will ignore more thinking it's the same as the more link at the bottom.

actually the problem with front is not on the front page but on all others where it will make people think that it goes to the front page...
Amazon Unverified Purchase Fake Reviews Abuse Spread
Following you can see we just searched from Amazon when we search keywords earbuds in Amazon.com,at least 60% sellers in the first 5 pages are fraudulent sellers:
All the fake reviews are not verified purcahse,because such fake reviews need not real purchase,the fraudulent sellers can hack some buyers account and misuse such fake reviews by software easily:

https://www.amazon.com/VOWSVOWS-Microphone-Earphones-Headphones-Compatible/dp/B07MV2JR87/ref=sr_1_95?ie=UTF8&qid=1550484943&sr=8-95&keywords=earbuds
Seller name:MOCIK
All the 1100 pieces five star reviews are fake,all of them are unverified purchase review,how can they misuse so many fake reviews? Because they hacked some reviewers accounts to manipulate fake reviews;

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MF81QMS/ref=sxbs_sxwds-stppvp_3?pf_rd_p=82218735-2b20-4c14-b8b7-9b4d6b044350&pd_rd_wg=Mc1oU&pf_rd_r=05J0D264NPGWQKWRZ897&pd_rd_i=B07MF81QMS&pd_rd_w=UazMp&pd_rd_r=eea94249-d01a-4843-a5b6-0e1f96a3e284&ie=UTF8&qid=1550911862&sr=3
Seller name:COCKSOB
He manipulated at least 1300pcs unverified purchase fake reviews,how can they misuse so many fake reviews? Because they hacked these reviewers accounts to manipulate fake reviews;

https://www.amazon.com/VOWSVOWS-Microphone-Earphones-Headphones-Compatible/dp/B07MLPYN9R/ref=sr_1_138?ie=UTF8&qid=1550912312&sr=8-138&keywords=earbuds
Seller name:Zuanman
He manipulated at least 1167pcs unverified purchase fake reviews,how can they misuse so many fake reviews? Because they hacked these reviewers accounts to manipulate fake reviews;

https://www.amazon.com/Earphones-Earbuds-Headphones-Compatible-Hands-Free/dp/B07N4JV792/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1550910816&sr=8-6&keywords=earbuds
Seller name: Grand SKY
All the 507 pieces five star reviews are fake,all of them are unverified purchase review,how can they misuse so many fake reviews? Because they hacked some reviewers accounts to manipulate fake reviews;
Shouldn't storeID be treated as a categorical variable?
or daily top / top daily
well, i do use /front to spend less time on hn, so that would actually work for me :-)
It's also possible that people that would move somewhere they'd probably not want to live otherwise just to work for Amazon would be more motivated and less likely to leave in 2 years for a raise
Clerk Duct Tapped and Set on Fire During Robbery
I just pretend that’s not a feature and use the circle with a single color for everything.
Our psychographics were

- ineffective (no change in effectiveness if you randomise which "personality" sees which ad)

- never based on Facebook data during my time of employment there -- early 2016 onwards

- not used in the USA presidential election of 2016
I love how he just sprinkles in the Iridium satellite phone and the Comic Sans MS and makes no mention.
With the way corporate control of the internet is further consolidated every single day, I fully expect (and hope for) a parallel mesh internet to be established, completely open source based, no corporate or business interests involved.

As the DRM and content filtering noose tightens, it becomes more and more annoying to be a freely moving and freely acting person online. Encrypted channels on the current internet are only a stopgap measure, far too many people have their traffic sniffed by proxy servers and the like, if not outright spyware on their devices or in their routers.

I envision a global mesh network, built on open standards, fully encrypted, resilient against DDOSing and similar attacks, with no central control, no central points of failure, an uninhibited flow of information, for the people, by the people. Warts and all.
Looks like it's broken. I get this error in the log:

TypeError: null is not an object (evaluating 'i.getInternalformatParameter(i.RENDERBUFFER,i.DEPTH_COMPONENT24,i.SAMPLES).length')
> I don't know how we measure and reward someone like her, how we measure someone who's little daily actions cause positive ripple effects, but fuck I really wish we knew how.

We do know how. It's called civic engagement. We try to teach it to our children in organizations like the Boy / Girl Scouts, which gamify personal development and social contribution in the form of badges. As adults, civic engagement is driven by communal recognition and appreciation, in the form of honorary plaques presented at fund-raising banquets in front of friends and neighbors. But this has been in decline, for two underlying reasons.

The first and biggest reason is the breakdown of community and communal institutions. In rural areas, communal institutions have been squeezed by population decline, as people have left for cities in search of economic opportunity. People working multiple jobs to make ends meet don't have the time or energy to volunteer in their communities. In cities, the failure of municipal planners to put enough housing on the market for people to buy affordable apartments has driven people into the rental market, which prevents people from putting down roots and committing to their communities. If you look at the Bay Area, most 20-somethings look around and know in the back of their minds that they are going to need to move away to start a family. Why would you put your heart and soul into an urban garden if you're not going to be around to enjoy the fruits of your labors?

The second reason is a fearful overreaction. Civic engagement is a spectrum, and on the extreme end you find nativism and xenophobia. The social stability required to promote civic engagement means that such civically-minded organizations tend to be led by socially conservative people, and if left unchecked, these organizations can be unwelcoming. But there's no reason why civic volunteering needs to be socially conservative, and indeed, civic volunteering is made better when it's more welcoming and inclusive. Unfortunately, many people have knee-jerk reactions and throw out the baby with the bathwater, and reject these kinds of organizations on principle, but many such people would be put at ease by strong community leadership that fostered an inclusive environment for them.

Ultimately, it takes strong community leaders to give civic expression room to take root, grow, and stay inclusive over time. So the real question isn't how can we promote civic engagement - it's why don't we have strong local leadership?
What matters are the specs, not the generation/age of the card.
If you create whole new languages, i.e. external languages, not really embedded DSLs, with their own syntax, how is Racket better than other languages at implementing those?

Neither the sntax object, nor hygiene are of concern when you build external DSLs, which the author's examples seem to be.

I have not yet seen a compelling argument for Racket there vs. for instance a parser generator framework.

I might just be missing the point. Either way the author's convincing seemed to have failed
for me.
Do they pay their office janitors that much? Doubt it.
A major benefit of herd immunity is to help with the edge cases - people who cannot, or should not, be vaccinated, but would be in danger from these infections should they be exposed.
Cool, I hear you regarding choice of tech stack, cost constraints, etc -- I manage systems with saltstack, Ubuntu, supervisord -- a very much 12 Factor app architecture, but the new way of doing things is k8s and docker. A huge amount of complexity imho.

I think you need to hire programmers and groom them more into devops. They will think the product is the automation software while the artifact is the systems. Traditional sysadmins think the systems are the product and the automation software is the artifact, so they tweak the systems to fix things rather than fixing the software and then letting that fix the systems.

So, it boils down to philosophy and what one group thinks is the source of truth vs what the other one values.

And maybe you can reach into one of these communities - puppet, ansible, saltstack - find a nerd in that space who shares your sensibilities who you'll have an easier time working with.
The F-Droid store on Android does that.

If nothing is mentioned, the application does not track.

For applications with tracking, a tracking anti-feature label is shown under the section "This app has features you may not like".

Other labels exist, like "has non-free addons", or "the app contains non-free parts upstream".

For an example of such a label: https://f-droid.org/fr/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/

It makes me think that a catalog like OpenFoodFacts but for software with such anti-features listed could be an idea.
Not a perfect circle. It consists of multiple arc segments and the detectors which are straight. See also https://home.cern/science/accelerators/large-hadron-collider
Do you think Amazon wants these people? High turnover isn't fun, and creates a horrible work environment.
If you’re hoping that there’s a service which for a low monthly fee gets you market beating returns, I have a bridge in London Id like to sell you :)
Ah I see, you're pedantry to avoid the meat of the discussion.

"Car" in this case is shorthand for

> "generally useful tool that can be used in the commission of violence (eg. cars)"

A humvee is just that. However it's also specifically designed to be one component of various weapon systems; e.g. humvees with TOW anti-tank guided missiles mounted on top. When configured in that way, a humvee is no less a weapon than a tank. So a humvee is also "a gun" (shorthand for "something that kills".) That's not hypothetical either, such humvees were used in the killings of Uday and Qusay Hussein.

So let me reiterate. Just about anything the military uses is used to facilitate killing in one way or the other. The degree to which any particular widget contributes to the lethality of the military is a smooth gradient. This was my point with the humvee, it exists somewhere in the middle. Since we're dealing with a gradient, where you decide to draw your line in the sand arbitrary.
So long as it is a car that CAN self-drive not one that CAN ONLY self drive then that sounds great.

Retired doesn't mean crippled!

My mother in law is 84 and is a perfectly competent driver. I suspect that she would find a self driving car more difficult to manage than the Land Rover she currently drives simply because the UI will be unfamiliar. I'm 63, and retired, and while I enjoy the additional features that my Tesla S has I don't want them instead of being able to drive the car myself.
If you can't have conversations and even discussions about meaningful or controversial subjects with your friends, I would say they were never actually your friends.

I am friends with some people whom I wildly disagree with on a number of subjects, especially politics. But we have common ground in shared interests (music and whisky), and we use that as a basis for civilized discussion. We might disagree wildly and be political "enemies", but we are still more alike than we are different.
How to Hire: 9 Strategies for Diversifying Your Engineering Candidate Pool
There have been some small patches. It is being (going to be) included and maintained as part of the Eclipse Cyclone DDS project https://projects.eclipse.org/proposals/eclipse-cyclone-dds because it is needed for the C99 implementation of the IDL compiler.
I think this must be a US thing, never heard of it in Europe.
The twitter thread has a few of the source documents, and a few things not mentioned in the story, this particular e-mail seems... interesting: https://twitter.com/ashk4n/status/1099146500725063680

Also, that twitter user is a former senior leader at the FTC, and claims something here to be "textbook @ftc deception": https://twitter.com/ashk4n/status/1099164648379580416
Been more remote friendly as well, there are good programmers everywhere often who can't move for reasons beyond their control.

Same with UK to an extent, salary differential between north and south is large (even when accounting for cost of living).
One thing to note. Since the time Bay Area became “expensive”, contrary to expectations it is actually crushing other geographies (exception being China) when it comes to massive fund raising for startups. Just this week Flexport raised $1bn and DoorDash raised $400mn. A few weeks back Nuro raised $1bn and Juul got $12bn. There is an excellent Crunchbase article on this https://news.crunchbase.com/news/how-northern-californias-re...

Clearly the lesson is that if you want to scale, you are better of being here
That is just not how human languages work. To take one example,phonetic spelling was the only spelling in "Old English" ( roughly pre 1066 ). Naturally it was all over the place due to variations in pronounciation e.g "daughter" and "knight" are spelled the way they are exactly because of that.
Yes. We'll try that for a while.

Like centralised computing-power and peripheral displays, centralised storage is highly dependent on the network always being up. Without the network there's no storage, so no data, no apps, no work.

Whether the networks can be dependable enough is the critical factor. I think that it won't be dependable enough.

When companies lose millions due to an unexpected network outage, they will soon come back to insisting on local storage.
NHS Told to Ditch Outdated Pagers
I think racket makes it simple to compose your language implementation modules. So e.g., hygiene could be imported (with minimal adaptions to your syntax/binders).
Erk, big question! The Reagan/US experience was different in the details, but broadly followed the same road and rationale. I'll cover the UK case as I live here. It's a huge topic, so I've probably summarised this poorly...

Thatcherism ushered in a widespread, total belief in materialistic individualism. Until the recession, anyway.

Not just the cliched Harry Enfield loadsamoney, or for US readers Gordon Gekko "greed is good" in Wall Street, and the rise of the yuppie, but the abolition of the majority of the post-war consensus. Thatcher herself seemed to have a genuine, but strange, belief that this would turn us all out like the little old lady mentioned in the GP. We'd have massive amounts of civic and social pride, whilst inhabiting a society where everything has been shaped around the individual alone, with competition for everything. Others in government were far more straightforward about the intended result.

Anything collective was bad. The welfare state, public housing, public ownership, public amenities were bad, as a matter of dogma. Even when they were good. That included tiny things like the council employing park keepers and gardeners, or big like providing enough public housing. You could buy your public housing, but the local council was not allowed to build a replacement or spend the proceeds on buying a replacement. Post-war, through the seventies, both political parties agreed, and even competed, to provide adequate public housing, public facilities, adequate regulation, an adequate safety net etc.

There was plenty wrong with the UK in the 70s, and some of the Thatcher changes were necessary. Just some. Unions were certainly overly powerful. Others, from the long term perspective have been remarkably damaging. It didn't have to be so brutal. It didn't have to go from safety net to now where we have a punitive, vindictive welfare system intended to punish and stigmatise. After 40 years of neoliberal policies to end state control and direction, local government is more centrally funded and controlled than it's ever been.

We ended up with individual insurance and pension schemes. Invest in the wrong scheme? Tough shit. The employer was divested of any responsibility to provide for their workers with a collective scheme. Not just pensions, but connections to the community, fair wages, wage differentials, job security. Billions in proceeds from oil or privatisations? Piss them away in tax cuts. Norway built a national investment scheme that's worth hundreds of thousands for each citizen. Collectivism is always bad.

As so often is the case, the right answer was somewhere between the two extremes.
Even worse: when you keep doing it yourself rather than delegating, you signal to your team that you don't trust them to do the job.

Lead by example in character.