skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
42. Been in an open office for about 15 years now. I think there are pros and cons but I prefer private office or a cubical with some privacy. I agree with you that OO enables communication, absolutely the case. I can see if people are here I need to talk to, walk over and talk to them in person (which I prefer). However it's a mixed bag, if you are the person being interrupted all the time to talk about something. There's an expensive context switch.
>> And yet 40 years later the AR15(M16/M4) is one of, if not the best firearm
>> platform to have ever existed.

The latest wars in Afghanistan/Iraq have had no shortage of similar stories of weapons jamming, failing to finre, and malfunctionibng because they were full of sand etc
A painless Q-Learning tutorial
Nuclear is the only answer that works based on existing technology. Build it, subsidize it, whatever.

It’s a trivial solution that doesn’t require a fundamental restructure of the economy. It’s just not popular with the left precisely because it is too compatible with our current economic structure.

Australia alone has enough coal under it to burn for a hundred years+. Any policy that doesn’t include nuclear for base load is a policy to burn that coal.
Another great exercise in confirming common sense.
Interesting that we—and I include myself, too—are immediately skeptical of anything other than Amazon finding some "immoral" way to squeeze more juice from the lemon that is the American workforce.

It is worth noting that the person with disabilities is quoted as saying he makes "above minimum wage". Likewise, later in the article:

> Likewise, Northwest Center employees and those it places with Amazon are paid at least minimum wage.

And indeed, I suspect this is the "double-bottom line" motive. Community impact is all well and good, but it has to serve the business as well. In this case, it's good PR, but it's also tapping a new talent pool to hire from. An Amazon rep is quoted saying same:

>... “a hybrid of a business need and a philanthropic opportunity.”
A better view for Google Form responses
Are you taking tolerance breaks?
It's useful but I'd like to see a bit more top-level completeness. Every feature should be listed and have at least a cursory description, even if it's not entirely nailed down.

(Maybe it already is like that, but the disclaimers say it's not.)
>> Paypal provides an effective dispute resolution process and enables customers to pay for stuff by explicitly authorizing a payment and without giving away their payment info to unknown third-parties.

> I once saw a pdf which listed all the third parties that PayPal shares its information with. It was more than 30 pages.

What kind of info do they share with those third parties?

I think the GP's point stands, since the "unknown third-part[y]" that customers are usually most concerned about is the merchant, which Paypal definitely doesn't share payment info with (like CC numbers).
Probably photoshop. But I am secretly hoping that it is not :)
I regularly try to use Rust but get lost soon. The amount of magic observed in an average Rust code base is just too much for me.
I never got the sense that markdown was even designed, per se - the original markdown.pl script, so far as I understand it, was not intended to implement a formal language at all; its attitude was pure descriptivism, simply rendering what the author thought of as "plain text" in a more typographically-pretty format.
"Better" is difficult to measure. I used to think that US elections are a lot less corrupt than Indian elections, thus are probably "better". Now I'm not so sure!

The sheer scale of an Indian election is rather remarkable though, as is the melodramatic buzz it generates throughout the country. It's an administrative marvel, especially when you consider the strangling bureaucracy that is rife in most Indian government departments.
Personally flagged this article. This is incredibly hyperbolic and ignores some very important facts. What surprised me was that the title here "Russiagate is a death-blow" may have been slightly less hyperbolic than the article's title.

If the purpose of journalism is to sort fact from fiction, and we clearly have a President that thrives on providing "fiction," seems to me journalism is doing alright here. Maybe a C+.
I own several acres of rural land. Internet is by far my biggest hurdle to making it my full-time residence. Satellite internet is high latency, low data caps, and very sensitive to any kind of weather, all for more money than I spend on cable for my apartment in civilization. It's completely and utterly unsuitable for remote work.
By 1996, price inflation for housing in Seattle was in full force, as was NIMBYism. It was unaffordable enough by '92 that I got out then. I have friends who bought around that time and were paying what I considered to be ridiculous prices. I don't blame them for wanting to preserve it. They didn't ask Amazon to start there.
Thank you, I really appreciate the feedback.
> Put another way: not all specs are equal. Some are formal, some are informal.

So is the argument that the language reference is as good as many existing language specifications, and my complaint is only one of semantics?
I think there are advantages over much of the competition. The SA80 was unreliable and ridiculously heavy. The Steyr Aug isn't modular enough - it's a big hunk of plastic and doesn't have enough space on the front to add accessories. The G36 is also a bit heavy, but has been canned due to persistent heat problems affecting firing accuracy. The polymer construction just isn't up to it. Also both bullpups suffer from horrible triggers, it's a problem with mechanically transferring the trigger action to the back of the gun.

The AR 15 platform has benefited hugely from a lot of refinement and investment over a very long time. That's certainly true, but Stoner's concept for it is just really, really good and the fact that the design issues were all tractable and the further refinements have been largely successful is testament to that fundamental soundness.
The nice thing about philosophical views is that they don't really matter. Whatever gets the ball rolling in beating the SotA we'll accept it.

In science we shouldn't have to abide by philosophical views. They only hurt. Theorems, proofs and the empirical evidence should fix it. Can you believe there was a time when the world was against Yann LeCun because everyone speculated neural networks don't work for complex scenarios?

Both points of views Sutton's, Brookes' are utter speculations as we cannot generalize or learn anything meaningful from them. Both of them are saying: "Since I don't know for sure how we're going to improve the AI in the long run therefor he's what I suspect the right approach is". They are even looking at the same history of AI is seeing different things. Go figure now.

In mathematics old tricks only get you so far. The hard problems in a particular moment in time can only be overcome by deploying new tricks. Why wouldn't that be the case in the AI space?

Hard coded rules, got us started. Then more computation made the next step. Then we mixed the two. Then we created more purposefully handcrafted architectures such as CNN. Then we manually annotated millions of data points. Then GANs came along to fix some stability issues.

What's the next trick now?
Don't worry, since no one knows both authors are just speculating.
That has a lot to do with politics and how well HK plays the contract game.
Not a Star behind it, but another galaxy!
I really enjoy Okular, it's fast, looks good and has smooth-scrolling (looking at you Foxit). However, I have been forced to use Foxit when dealing with annotations, because a lot of times Okular simply cannot display them if they were created in other programs.
is this it?
http://stevelosh.com/blog/2013/04/git-koans/
(2009) is missing in the title
By what metric are they the best democracy?

I visited Hyderabad and Chennai for work in 2018 for about three weeks. It’s certainly not a place I would want my family with me. The food in Hyderabad was amazing though, I’ll give them that.
Agree, but when you buy headphone, make sure you buy a non-leaky model. Most headphones are awfully leaky at high volumes.
Chomsky: Just think about it for a minute: almost everybody spends most of their life living in a totalitarian system. It's called having a job. When you have a job, you're under total control of the masters of the enterprise. They determine what you wear, when you go to the bathroom, what you do – the very idea of a wage contract is selling yourself into servitude. These are private governments. They're more totalitarian than governments are.

Interviewer: but they can't legally murder you or... [imprison you]

Chomsky: They can't legally murder you but they can control everything that you do.

Interviewer: Well, again, the right-wing libertarian argument will be "well, you're free to leave at any time".

Chomsky: Yes, you're free to starve, that's exactly right. You have a choice between starving or selling yourself into tyranny. Very libertarian. The right-wing libertarians, whatever they believe, are actually deep authoritarians. They're calling for the subordination to private tyrannies, the worst kind of tyrannies.
Manuscript MS408 (Voynich) has been deciphered
This was in an email to the Society of American Archivists today (I can't find a publicly linkable version):

Some of you may be interested to know that Manuscript MS408 (Voynich) has been deciphered. A peer-reviewed article will be formally published in 2019. In the meantime, three pre-print papers are available to freely download from the linguistics website LingBuzz:

The first paper explains the writing system and language: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003737

The second paper translates a pictorial map from the manuscript: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003808

The thirds paper focuses on volcanic details from the map: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004381

Please disseminate this information to other scholars who may find it interesting and useful.
Regards,
Dr. Gerard Cheshire.
University of Bristol.
Building a Real-Time Earnings Tracker into Uber’s New Driver App
Pope Francis could shape the future of robotics
Atoms can’t shrink because they’re already (ish) in their quantum mechanically minimal state. I think that minimum state depends on the value of the Plank constant. Humour me for the sake of the thought experiment: what would we observe if it wasn’t constant, and changed in a way which allowed atoms to shrink very slowly?

(I’m really tired right now, forgive me if this is a dumb question)
Almost nothing is _always_ bad. But I guess the question, as with everything, is if you believe it is interfering with your ability to do accomplish what is important to you in your life.

And of course, there are always at least two possible paths there -- you can try to change it, or you can decide that you're actually okay with your life-under-procrastination after all.

But sometimes some people are going to find their severe procrasnation is interfering with their ability to do what is important to them, and they want to do something about it. This decision alone does not make it _easy_ though. My observation and experience have matched the articles, that self-blame doesn't help, but that recognizing the relation it has to your anxiety and finding other ways to relate to your anxiety can.
The "sunk cost" fallacy :-)
What does Chomsky propose, (economically/socially) in the coming age of automation, is he into UBI?

I believe most people will be subjected as a "non-capital, "non-equity" class, consumers at the base. How will they consume? purchasing power of consumption?

Man the future looks interesting...definitely gearing up for major societal changes, this is uncharted territory with technology
AI can’t be an artist
Dave Ramsey says the same things.
They used to hand out as convention swag a little rear view mirror you attached to the corner of your monitor so you could see what's behind you.
I used to use Okular before.

Even now when ever I try to use it, it is slow, and e eating up a lot of ram, scrolling doesn't look smooth enough.
Whenever loading a new page, load time is clearly visible it used to work fine back in 2017.

My main desktop environment is KDE Plasma but I use evince for now while reading.
Nice!
I wonder if they use GANs
Okular is actually the reason I created Polar:

https://getpolarized.io/

Well, one of the reasons.

First, if you like Okular, you're stuck if you want to run on any other platform. It doesn't work on mobile, it doesn't work on the web, doesn't work on Linux, MacOS or Windows [1]

Additionally, there were pretty severe bugs when I used it and there were 1-2 long outstanding bugs regarding annotations that weren't fixed for nearly a decade.

The main issue with PDF annotations also applies. If you use PDF annotations it means mutating the PDF which has all sorts of problems.

I've had issues where you're working on Okular or Preview or Acrobat and then try to use another app and your annotations simply don't work or the PDF is corrupted in some weird way.

Having an immutable PDF solves that problem which is the avenue I went with in Polar.

Polar supports Web + Linux + Windows + MacOS. It also supports annotation without mutating the PDF and it's VERY hackable since it's just based on Typescript - which is one of the features I wanted.

We're very close from having mobile too and just need to clean up some CSS.

Anyway.. would LOVE your feedback if you play with Polar and find it doesn't perfectly nail your use case.

I'm actively developing it now and I'm pushing 1-2 releases per week.

1. My understanding is that while it DOES work on these platforms - it doesn't work WELL on them. Last time I checked there was no download for Windows or MacOS and you had to install the full KDE for these platforms.
My favorite tool for extracting data from PDFs: Tabula https://github.com/tabulapdf/tabula
Research has shown that there is absolutely a connection between sleep and procrastination, with low-quality sleep increasing the likelihood that people will procrastinate, particularly among people who are naturally prone to procrastination.

This is attributed to the fact that sleep is crucial when it comes to replenishing the mental resources that you need in order to self-regulate your behavior effectively.

This article contains a summary of research on the topic which came out recently: https://solvingprocrastination.com/study-procrastination-sle...
How to Shoot Professional Quality Videos with Your Smartphone for Under £100
I've generally felt that open office plans are just a cost cutting move that has been heavily disguised as some kind of ingenious workplace innovation.

Times are tight. Companies don't have as much money lying around as they did in the nineties -- that or they're just not willing to admit that they do.
Understanding the Python Mock Object Library – Real Python
Agreed.

Reminds me of this: https://seths.blog/2019/03/the-minimum-viable-audience-2/
GiveWell and Charity Navigator are pretty much the opposite. GiveWell has a small list of very thoroughly investigated charities, while Charity Navigator has a big list but doesn't say much of anything about their effectiveness.
> I'll use Isaac Arthur dismissal of FTL travel as to why

what credentials does he have?

> Put me firmly in the camp that believes the speed of light is a hard limit on the universe

the speed of light isn't a limit in the sense that nothing can be greater than it. it is a crossover point that can't be crossed over for things above or below it to the other side.

> I'm not sure why it matters that a black hole would be spinning.

black holes that spin are much different than non-spinning holes and have more complicated dynamics. if they are spinning, they are dragging space-time along with them. see this paper that shows some actual visuals of what a spinning black hole might look like and what it does to the light around it.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03808
I mean, they're not wrong. I'm a millennial in my early thirties who actually owns several acres of rural land. I would love to make it my full-time residence, but can't because I can't get decent internet out there. I'm a software engineer whose company lets me work remotely, but only if I can actually do my job. Until I can get good enough internet/phone service to call in to meetings and reliably access various remote servers, I'm stuck in civilization.
EU Abolishes Tan Lists and Banking Apps on Rooted Phones Ridiculousness
> PET/CT stimulation

I didn't find the definition for PET/CT in the article. It sounds like PET/CT scans.
A good way to make money is to sell a book about how to make money.
Because they sell PDF creation tools: https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat.html?promoid=C12Y324...
Apparently this phenomenon predates video games:

"For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Paul of Tarsus, circa 57 a.d.)
> In real combat targets are not standing still in the open wearing white clothes with concentric black circles?

Neither are normal US military rifle range targets; they are drab green popup targets with límites exposure time on a semi forested range.
I have a seasonal depression diagnosis and lifting weights has been by far the best treatment for me. Meditation, light therapy, and vitamins/nootropics are all good on their own, they each sort of take away some of the symptoms, but I wouldn't say the depression isn't still there. But weightlifting is incredible. I feel amazing after a heavy session - deadlifting and benching especially give me a kind of euphoria. Gym fixes my lack of appetite, lack of social energy, disorganization, lack of motivation to work on my hobbies, work focus, anxiety, everything. I can't recommend lifting enough.
Companies will always do what's best for them too. In this case, the story talks about how Amazon held them to the same standard and they did better in terms of attendance, accident rate, and productivity. Which hopefully showcases to other employers that you can use Northwest and other types of facilities too.
In the past few years I've worked from home, worked in places that had a cubicle, a room of 6 devs where everyone had their back to a wall, and now an open office floor plan.

Right now I'm sitting in a corner near a wall with the open office floor plan. I have some desks partially behind me, with a conference room that's not used much. I've gotten used to it.

I liked the six devs in a room thing, but my company outgrew that office two years ago.

I also invested in some noise cancelling headphones, and it's absolutely essential.

Right now I have two coworkers talking 5 feat from me, and I can't hear them.
Not OP, but Slack/IRC/IM of some kind is the answer to most of your questions. I've bounced around between shared office, private office, cubicle, private bullpen, and open office my whole career, and by far the least productive I ever was was in the open office. In all other situations, my team communicated mostly over instant messaging, or if it was really important, by wandering down to their office and knocking.

Since most team communication happens over IM, it's easy for anyone to read back on what they missed. Most teams also do daily stand-ups or other meetings, to catch the larger group up on anything important.
Hey, Look at Me I'm a Venture Capitalist
Andy Yao proved a lower bound on circuit complexity for multiplication of circuit width x depth = Omega(n ^ 2). Trivial carry circuits for adders are O(n).
> I used to think that US elections are a lot less corrupt than Indian elections, thus are probably "better". Now I'm not so sure!

I've read some thing about the primaries in the last US election, especially in the dems party. Wow, that was corruption to a whole new level. Also these primaries are (by design) super important to the US elections; too important to be so "unregulated" if you ask me.
Hmm, what makes you think that line of thinking takes you "back to square one and procrastination is a character flaw"? I'm not following.
Apple Special Event Livestream [video]
Ask HN: Best Practices for running an internet-accessible Raspberry Pi at home?
Hello,

I would like to use my home Raspberry Pi as a jump box / general purpose server accessible via SSH. What are the current best practices for running an internet-accessible home Linux box? I know SSH pubkeys are the way to go, but what are the gotchas with that method? I've run internet-accessible servers in the past, using SSH and fail2ban. Is that still the preferred method?

Or should I really be running a home AWS/Azure/Google/DigitalOcean instance and use that instead?

Any links to guides or current-day discussions.

Thank you very much!
> What does Chomsky propose, (economically/socially) in the coming age of automation, is he into UBI?

IIRC, he's an anarcho-syndicalist, so the tl;dr version is that he thinks existing capitalist-model businesses should be replaced with worker-owned, worker-controlled co-ops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
A tricotakaidihedron, I believe.
> When you, the student writer, understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy.

That's a bold claim. I'd argue part of the reason that no one likes advertising is that the writers, by and large, don't have empathy with my feelings, they are trying to force the issue.

Clickbait headlines, for example, attract me...and if the article behind it does not fulfill the headline (which it so often does not), I'm ticked off. I don't feel empathized with, I feel used, cheated, thwarted. I can easily rattle off other, similar examples, but the end result is the same: Empathy would be great, but empathy is not necessarily what the "student writer" learns. And if your writing is trying to get around my feelings rather than fulfilling them, you are left with an unhappy user.
> Of course it’s difficult to get internet there, so how will the millennials make it?

Difficult to get medical care and water out there, so how will the Boomers make it?
Yes, I think that is the thing that people forget- most people aren't even asking for an office with a door the cube farm is fine. Or at least even some dividers to break up the noise so that the incidental noise/people around you are only there for you. Just seeing people walk past is intensely distracting to me, headphones don't fix that. Even if there was some more logical dividers so at least the people grouped together are in a joint space rather than a totally open space it works much better. When over 60% of conversation/noise/people moving around is not useful information it doesn't really help.
> if you believe that no one cares about X, then you are less likely to begin creating X

A great read on that point: http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html
The AR-15 is stock Android, the M16 is Sense UI.
Most of the Chinese people live in about half the land area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heihe%E2%80%93Tengchong_Line

That being said, only China is willing to do things like build high speed rail lines to Urumqi and Lhasa that won't even cover the electricity costs of running the trains.
If there were no data, how can you say that the data do not support this view?