skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
how far did Tammany Hall have to scale?

How big is Estonia?

Do you think every election ever held that can be worth money and power is the size of the U.S National Election?

As far as the political will to come down on people for vote buying or intimidation etc. I'm sure that making things illegal when there is a profit to be made at doing it has always succeeded in driving that illegal thing out of existence without any untoward effect on society whatsoever.

I mean definitely making it not worthwhile to buy votes because you will not be able to tell if you got what you paid for seems a more foolproof strategy than make it possible for people to determine what they paid for but threaten to throw them in prison if they do.

on edit: corrected second use of word money to power.
How can you go about life without making internal decisions on what you believe other people's motive are? Or is it only bad when certain actions/views are assigned certain motivations?
> California wisely keeps its snow in one place: Tahoe

Just wanted to say I love this line. I've always said that in California winter is opt-in, but that's even better :)
>But surely....everyone already does this in real life anyways?

No.

>I mean, I don't know how else do you expect this to work? That all companies and individuals should be obliged to give us the lowest price they will ever accept, just because?

Yes. Preferably with huge penalties whenever they do differently, the kind that shut down a company as opposed to slaps on the wrist.

It's called transparent pricing, and not treating your customers like shit for price differentiation reasons.
I gave up here:

> I must admit that I’ve also never worked with a contract and that I don’t have any other form of terms and conditions for clients to sign.

I'm not a freelancer, but this sounds pretty unprofessional to me.
That would be a great start as well.
Uber etc is not so much software engineers breaking laws as enterpreneurs and managers doing that.

Also, people are too quick to see autism where mere arrogance would be sufficent to explain the same behavior.

Yet also, Zuckerberg did not worked as engineer for long. These are all primary managers with some engineering background rather then engineers earning money from being engineers.
Leaf removal, whether performed with a gas-powered leaf blower or a rake, will contribute to soil nutrient depletion in the long term.

https://druidgarden.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/dont-bag-your-l...
You can make software anywhere, but can you hire twenty people to make software anywhere?
Thank you! Fixed!
It seems simple for theoretical malware to show you the vote you believe you cast, so you'd have to log in and check your vote on a second device?
It's nice in theory, less so in practice based on the various reviews of the various DIY filament solutions I've seen. There are problems both with the consistency of the diameter of the extruded filament and the fact that each time you melt plastic it degrades significantly so that even on the second melt you have to mix in a significant fraction of new material.[1] We might get there eventually but in the meantime, people have had more success melting down waste plastics into bars/rods for use in subtractive (i.e. lathe/mill) applications.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_degradation_of_polymer...
What about those of Norwegian descent? Since they've only been there half as long as the ones of Spanish descent, do you get to 'kick' those out too?

Also, have you read The Terrorism Act 2006, lately?
Yeah, I know that, but the screeners will often ask for a sysdiagnose in cases where it's clearly not useful (for example, visual bugs that exist on an out-of-box installation). So it's pretty clear they're either not reading the bug, or going through some sort of checklist that one of the engineers gave them (don't bother me with a bug without a sysdiagnose!)
Maybe so, but please don't post shallow dismissals to Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

If you know more, it would be better share some of what you know, so we can learn something. Alternatively, it's always fine to post nothing. When you do post, though, please make it civil and substantive.
I have been following https://twitter.com/mortimer_1 for a bit. He paints a pretty crazy picture with data of what is happening in the Vancouver housing market. People asking millions over assessed value, people selling at massive losses, and mansions renting for pretty cheap.

An example: Bought 2013 $2,275,000 now asking $6,888,000, Bought 2016 $5,200,000 now asking $4,888,888, Bought 2016 $3,590,000 and sold for $3,250,000, etc.
This makes a lot of sense for a use-case.

Their proposed use-case of e.g. phones and tablets (see: already touch-enabled devices) makes me wonder... why use an inferior touchpad on a keyboard when you could just reach up and touch the screen to begin with? Especially with the things they're demoing: moving your cursor to click on something (just tap it) or scrolling (just... scroll normally?). I use a laptop with a "real" touchpad and still prefer just reaching out and touching the screen for most of these tasks already; if I'm not going to use a real touchpad for these kinds of things, why would I use a worse version built into a keyboard (which also probably prevents the keyboard from being as good of a keyboard)?

Using this for a non-touch device or from longer distances (like from your couch) makes so much more sense... especially when you consider how awful mice (and separate touchpads) are on e.g. couches.
I believe the point is that we don't _know_ that it's very small (_if_ it's a design flaw, it could be significantly higher), and there are (generally) viable alternatives, so it's needless extra risk
Be a gatherer & not a hunter. In other words, find clients you can put on a monthly retainer instead of big projects that pay you once and force you to look for work for 5 months when done.
It doesn't require root control for a falsely trusted program to delete most of ~/ but still, why?
Thanks for your work Laurent!

> The community has written and used in production lots of rules

I know. I've written them. [1] Github pauldraper

> If you hit critical limitations when writing rules, feel free to ask on the mailing-list

I have, and you've responded. [2]

And a year later it is still is unclear to me whether Starlark is going to get tree artifact actions, or dependency discovery (pruning), which C++ uses to great effect.

I proposed a solution to both problems. [3] Oscar from Stripe presented a proposal at the first Bazel Conf.

I've concluded that either (1) I'm using the wrong channels or (2) Bazel isn't that aware/interested in Starlark parity.

TBH, the number of responses that are ignorant of the dependency discovery disparity alone shows me how unaware Bazel is of the Skylark-only deficiencies.

Great project (seriously), but when your bread-and-butter compiled languages* (Java, C++, Objective C) aren't using the same system as everyone else, it's only natural.

Again, great project.

[1] https://github.com/higherkindness/rules_scala

[2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/bazel-discuss/8eAMN3Wh...

[3] https://docs.google.com/document/d/16iogGwUlISoN2WLha2TAaUdp...

* Go is in Starlark but has essentially required the complex Gazelle build tool to be layered on top of Bazel.
As I thought about this, it annoyed me a the way the information was presented, esepcially as I put my engineering/critical thinking hat on. Water systems are large ditributed systems, they require maintenance, have parts underground, are regulated and have testing.

If I click on San Mateo County, California for example, they have a water company “Ca Water Service - Bear Gulch” who reported 1 violation afecting 58,432 people for “Surface, Ground Water, and Filter Backwash rules.”

This appears to be a leak, maybe some ground water got in and mixed with city water. You don’t want ground water mixing into drinking water since it carries a higher change of bacteria, etc. (aka you don’t want a bird pooping on a roof, then dripping into a water resevoir)

But:

1. This is a transient problem, 54,000 people don’t have bad water. The company reported a leak/problem and presumably fixed it.

2. This is why we chlorinate water, it kills off bacteria that might somehow get in.

3. This problem may not have even reached consumers. Aka, this is a system working as designed to provide safe water.

The other way of looking at this is, the systems were tested, violations were found reported, and it looks like in most cases resoled without formal enforcement action. (seems about 6-10% of cases went to formal enforcement)
That a common and fine approach, but that doesnt make it cheaper, it makes it a whole lot more expensive.

From my point of view, lowering the expense is the #1 priority. Expanding coverage, and adding new layers of taxation for it will increase expenditures.

There are also many alternatives to adverse selection, my favorite is high deductible plans.
But couldn't you just take a photo of the ballot? Considering that not submitting the ballot after taking it is not allowed here.
I've seen this article over and over through the years. I moved to Palo Alto in 1984 when all the houses were under water and people told me that I'd missed the boom. California has plenty of issues, but always muddles through them.

California's economy is more diversified and resilient than that of, say, Detroit. There's much more to the state than startups. Sure, eventually it will be superseded in some way or another, but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.
Agreed, Gentoo and Nixpkgs both have really helpful people onboarding new packagers.
Feedback on public betas is probably lower priority than radars, unless a lot of people are reporting something. I'm sure the quality of the bug reports is much lower.
Right now the MAX version is at least an order of magnitude less safe than the previous generation (put some rough estimated in another comment)
I'm not sure what to make of this. On the surface, it does sounds like a great idea! But I'm not sure if the touch bits would work in a satisfactory manner. The touch surface discontinuity bothers me. Regardless, I hope they produce a great product as I can see myself using it to control my home setup.
An interview with the creator of the popular PyTorch deep learning framework
Rystad Energy: US to export more oil, liquids than Saudis by yearend
I got out of the landlord game a couple years ago because I was tired of the drama, but my biggest source of resistance to lowering rent was the constraints on raising it. Beyond that, I never had a single unit go unrented for more than a single month, and in that case it was because we had some hiccups around upgrades to the unit. That may be unique to the Vancouver market though.
There’s also more straightforward reasons to want a microwave connection from NYC to Chicago. Say you want to trade off news signals: you want to relay the headlines (from Bloomberg, DJ, etc.) to your colo sites as quickly as possible.
You can't post like this to HN, regardless of how strongly you felt when you were someplace. Name-calling rants and slurs are not allowed, regardless of which people or region you have a problem with. Please don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Much like being against "special interests", yeah all the bad ones I hate right on!
Just remove China+India from http://www.atchuup.com/countries-used-as-dumping-grounds-of-...
Oof, solid article but Bloomberg breaks the back button if you scroll past the end of the article. It will load several new articles and push them onto the nav stack, meanwhile it doesn't seem like I can click enough times to get back to HN from there.
Before the neoliberal revolution globally, and the Thatcher+Reagan dogma, there was an awful lot that was not about profit that did not require a communist state. Things were done "for the good of the nation/town", or just because it was thought good to do. The NHS was not about profit. Flowers outside the town hall were not about profit. Nor were youth clubs, libraries, parks or a free town swimming pool.

It is the fashion, and it is a fashion, for small government that comes with neoliberalism which has made everything about profit. Most countries (as opposed to shareholders) are worse off in many ways as a result. Not every state sale provided benefit, nor every privatised industry more efficient.

I fully agree that pricing in externalities and environmental costs should be in all goods. Nothing to do with profit though. It's the only way to compare in a market economy. I also tend to sympathy with Keynes in aspiring for a middle ground somewhere between rampant market dystopia and communist dystopia.
quick google found these. Not sure exactly what it is but drinking is a tiny part of what most people use.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/495373/household-water-c...

http://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/domestic_water_use_per...
What's wrong with leaving the leaves where they land?
>Surely the author believes that visual stimuli cause measurable changes in brain state

They repeat throughout that it does

> and that people can indeed remember past visual stimuli.

They agree also

>Then how is it true that brains don’t create representations of visual stimuli and store and retrieve them?

>Perhaps the author means that the brain doesn’t do these things in the same way as digital electronic computers we’re familiar

The author is definitely in agreement with the second statement from what I understand. However, I think where people are getting lost is that they expect the author to resolve definitions for "cognitive"/information processing terms (because in our day and age, they are identical) when actually the author is rhetorically refusing them validity, and on purpose. Hence why in those places where the author is expected to supply an equivalently robust counter-definition they instead pose a far more general definition, such as, with respect to learning, "the brain changes". The name for this rhetorical strategy is "refusing the blackmail of the Enlightenment".
The article is talking about people using political correctness to bully others. A specific choice of topic and words is not important here.
Exactly the opposite of that is true. All these failing water systems are public, operated by municipal utilities and regulated by the EPA. Private water companies are extremely uncommon in the US; over 90% of Americans get their water from a public utility, while most of the rest are on private wells.
I'm in Massachusetts and when I got a grunt job at an Amazon FC a few years ago I had to sign a noncompete. I don't know if it's enforceable and doubt it'd be enforced, but technically I think I'm not supposed to take a comparable job elsewhere for a year after I quit, or something like that.
see my other comment. I'm speaking of English occupants who as a minority identify as English and want NI to remain English (e.g. a divided Ireland).

Sorry I couldn't give a rats arse about hypocrite laws that the US enforces on ther countries.

Unlike others here I've lived in conflict zones for 20+ years, and am not an armchair philosopher like most of you who think just because they have an Internet connection it makes them an authority on all sorts of subjects.
I suspect we've already passed it but it will only be obvious when in retrospect.
You're pretty much spot on, and this is exactly the type of thinking we're looking for during our puzzle hunt. There's a slight difference between our system and what you've specified, but the overall picture is the same and I think it's awesome how you've reasoned through it.
I created a UTF-7 JSON hijacking method back in 2010 that enabled full hijack of entire JSON data streams in Firefox and Safari: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b7ebd/json_sni...

Originally at https://code.eligrey.com/sec/json-hijacking (archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20100304213300/http://code.eligr...)
Do you disagree with the notion that misspelt comments or variables is technical debt, though? Personally I would consider it a light form of technical debt simply because it makes the code slightly harder to read.
Can someone explain to me the purpose of HFT? Not the economic incentive, I get that, but what does it accomplish? Is it a net benefit to the system? If we arbitrarily limited transactions to human speed would there be some kind of systemwide downside? Are there any good, human readable papers on the benefits of HFT?
AmigaLive
Note that the US is basically break-even on oil/liquid consumption.

Either way, this is pretty extra-ordinary.
> Given that all sides have committed not to re-establish a hard border even in the event of a no deal, it's difficult to see how it would threaten the peace process to the extent that is being made out.

I'm rather ignorant of the situation so I ask sincerely: Theresa May might have made a "commitment" and stated that she's "determined" not to see a hard border but how is she going to do it? I'm guessing the EU's & the UK's red lines plus Parliament rejecting her deal are a bit of a spanner in the works? If she doesn't have a credible plan, you'd forgive people for being worried about a hard border, surely?
Wow. Link of the day right here. Thanks.

My test search on all of these engines is "atari", so all I get here is atari fan pages, and blogs about retrocomputing and restoring old hardware and stuff, no atari.com, no wikipedia, no steam page for atari collection sales.
Some of those are handled more efficiently in Australia. Water tanks are required with new builds and they usually do rain collection. Those feed into toilets, lawn sprinklers, washing machine, etc. All car washes in the town also use some form of not drinkable water.

I'm not sure about the water used for cleaning though. If you want your hands to be clean before eating, why would you clean them in something your can't safely drink?
That's a very uncharitable reply
> The pilots utterly knew the aircraft wasn't stalling just by feel. While the MCAS 'knew' it was based on a messed up sensor.

...except when the pilots get it wrong like they did on AF447 which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean when 'the crew failed to recognize the aircraft had stalled and consequently did not make inputs that would have made it possible to recover from the stall.' [1]. That accident was caused by a combination of equipment failure - iced up Pitot tubes - in combination with an erroneous reaction by the pilots.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
That sounds like "640KB RAM is more than anyone will ever need" to me.
Ask HN: Tips for First-Time Authors?
Hello, I just began work on my first book - a technical one - and I was wondering if I could get some tips from the HN community.
I have been a programmer since 2010 but have zero knowledge on the book-writing process. For instance, I initially thought I'll write my book in Markdown format as it'll be easy to convert it into any format I like while publishing. After looking online, it seems like I should be using MS Word or something more niche like Scrivener. But overall, this is the kind of noob I am right now on the book writing-cum-publishing process.

If it matters, I am planning to publish my book worldwide in both print and Kindle formats. And I am at content-outlining phase right now.

Please feel free to give advice on any areas you think could be helpful to a newbie like me.
The problem is that you can't disable that system: the aircraft is not certifiable without, that is to say the risk of stalling is considered too high without that system. Because that system may have caused two planes to crash doesn't mean that it didn't prevent the ~350 other 737-MAX flying from stalling.

So if the MCAS is indeed the cause of that crash, I expect fleet grounding until the system is fixed. Assuming it is fixable, which I think it is, but might require more than just a software fix.
Subsidies would help with that.
Please don't take HN threads further into political or nationalistic flamewar.
Do you want to wash yourself or the surfaces in your house with with water you wouldn’t drink?
I'd rather use an internal pki for internal-only stuff at work, but for my own homelab I do use a wildcard cert that is something like * .homelab.mydomain.com.

Sure, someone can see you have internal servers under * .homelab.mydomain.com, but they aren't going to know what specific hostnames exist there.
You're not wrong, similar to how certain organisms make a niche out of decomposing other creatures, it seems like all the garbage we produce should contain enough "economic free energy" so to speak, in order to properly recycle most of our waste.

Also I mostly agree with your point about externalities. I think a large portion of the evils of capitalism can be attributed to mispriced externalities, but certainly not all of it.
Oh but it is, if a choice of words determines if someone is being bullied or not.
Well the thing is that correlations can be used but they need a correction in the loop somewhere. The job of the human is to laugh and correct it. One example was teaching computers to draw cats based on reference images - many were lolcats of varying languages and it associated the floating fonts with cat features resulting in a blurry eerie gibberish mess.

https://mobile.twitter.com/goodfellow_ian/status/93740653074...

The two fixes are to either exclude the captioned examples from the set or to add in a filter "this is caption text - ignore it".
I haven't tried the grammarly but how else could they serve the purpose if they wouldn't get the text, fix and send it back? I think that's the core feature of the product itself.
You could select voters at random, say one in a hundred gets and email saying would you like to check your vote?
It should be impossible even with a court order, and I think most voting systems are set up like that. How else do you guard against the party in power, that can get all the court orders it wants?
Was it in a multi unit building? A guy renting out one condo has an incentive to avoid letting it sit. But a person renting 100 units in a building would rather have it sit than rent it out for $100 less and then having every future (and perhaps existing) tenant expect to pay that new rate.
It's a great analogy, and it reminds me of a model I like to use when thinking of technical debt:

Get a jar full of jelly beans, and every time you have to make a compromise (e.g. adding some hacky code or introducing some problem you'll have to fix later) take a bean out of the jar. If it's a terrible hack, then take out several. For the first few jelly beans, you won't even notice the change to the jar, and the first few compromises aren't going to be a problem for the code either.

Once the decrease in the jar contents starts to become noticeable, though, use the fraction of empty space as an enlargement factor for any estimate. So if the jar is 10% empty, consciously and vocally add a 10% additional "interest payment" on every estimate you give. If the jar is half empty, then you can double your estimates.

This is all very approximate and not rigorous at all, but it does help a team to visibly keep track of the amount of compromises they are making, and does surface the hidden cost to future development that gets ignored by a "normalization of deviance" bias.

At the very least, even if a team isn't allowed to change their estimates based on this model, you still get to eat a jelly bean or two every time you add a hack to your code, which can make the decision less stressful (unless it becomes an incentive to deliberately add hacks).