skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Impostor syndrome or a real impostor in my career? How to fix?
Today I noticed my checking account went overdraft by over $20 and I just have a couple of bucks in my wallet. I am also 36 years old, living with mom. Living like a broke college student has become the norm for me.

I am also an experienced software engineer. And I am aware of how unusual my situation is if you take the first paragraph into consideration.

Originally I graduated with a non-STEM degree but my interests pivoted into software development late in college so I started just hitting up Craigslist to apply to jobs seeking SWE's. That is how I got my start in doing this as a job. I later took a contract-to-hire job soon after graduating. After the contract period was over, though, they wanted me to keep working for them, but just as a contractor. I was taken for a ride. Now it feels like I got stuck on a bad vibe and to this day I continue riding it out.

Fast forward about a decade. Almost as if by accident, without thinking about it, my "career" has been just working for cheaper clients on low-ball contracts and spending half of my time unemployed and looking for work. So I never had a "normal" salaried CS job.

There must be something that is filtering me out of getting offers for the "normal" jobs and I need others' help in figuring out why I can't interview well enough to get past that filter.

So naturally, I feel like a fraud. I have probably never been on the same playing field as programmers that do maintain job security with full-time jobs.

Clients keep telling me I do great work. But they don't want to re-engage for future work nor do they refer more work to me. Something feels off.

After what feels like I've just been noodling around not really feeling like I've carried myself as an average adult most of these years, what do you think I should be doing? Aside from doing-over my professional life with a the right college education, what else would you suggest?
Rail requires significant investment to overcome the last mile problem, meaning the problem that often you need to walk the last mile from the station to your destination. Some may scoff at this but it is a major deterrent. Combine this with ride sharing apps and rail transit use has actually declined in the US in the past several years.
> HSR is a viable alternative to flights. Similar travel times are possible.

It's a viable alternative to short-haul flights. Boston to Las Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco, or Seattle is not really competitive by rail, even if the US had any high-speed rail.
What was a common theme among all the systems that you think contributed to their pointlessness?
The Roots of American Catholic Polarization
DNA for Cash Transactions in Louisville
me too! got an offer, then the background check company flagged my claim to a high school diploma. they asked me to provide official transcripts. hr threw its hands up. this was in june. turns out the district was overwhelmed with the year end work of graduations and such, and just shut off the phones for a couple weeks. luckily i had family working for the district and got a suitable copy. absurd.
Most public infrastructure is not profitable. This isn’t something special about rail. That is what taxes are for.
For one thing, China can just take the land.

Second, China's population density is not high compared to inhabited parts of the U.S. Eg. even though most of California is uninhabitable, it has 50% higher population density.
No, but now I've read your question I'm definitely going to start and see how it works. It sounds like a great idea!
Which was exactly my experience with the international trains in Europe. It was almost discombobulating, walking in the front door of the station, to the platform, and onto the train in about five minutes.
It's still April 1st somewhere.
They have committed to doing it though, and this is a huge political change. Congestion charging used to be the kind of thing that social scientists would point out as the obviously right thing to do and that never got any traction. Then we saw a few very prominent experiments with it (including the London City area) which were quite successful, and now it's coming to Manhattan, NYC. Amazing.
I wouldn't call this change an unqualified success either. There are probably ways to improve from this new status quo. Maybe a 13 percent decline in calc enrollment is a sign of overcorrection.

I would call it an improvement, though. That's all I'm on about. Basically what you said about "calc in high school not being quite as essential as (some) people think", together with a dash of "everyone thinks their kid is a genius who's being held back by this change but most of them are wrong" and a heavy dash of "stats is obv better than calc anyway".

calc enrollment goes down by 13%; alg re-dos go down by 30%; seems like most people are winning or breaking even right?
Why do people seem to give SUSE the cold shoulder? I haven't tried it (see?) but I've never really heard anything bad about it. A quick poke suggests the software packaging situation for it is excellent as well.
Congestion pricing isn't (supposed to be) punishment for driving a car when transit is available, it's designed to internalize the actual costs that driving a car imposes on others (i.e., takes up room on the road, among other things). So what you're suggesting is that cars should be subsidized in cities where transit is bad. But this doesn't make sense. If you are worried about a negative shock to the poor-ish, you should just give them cash.
I’ve known a few people who lived in New York. I don’t think any of them ever owned a car there. It’s outrageously expensive and impractical in Manhattan. I don’t see it affecting the residents negatively.
,,OKRs present a heavy-weight answer to the problem. OKRs tend to require hours and maybe even days to determine what are the right goals and metrics. ''

If a team leader doesn't have a few days to decide on the strategy for the team for the next quarter, I have no idea what more important thing she is doing.

John Doerr wrote the great book about OKRs to explain how important they were in setting the strategy for Intel when it went out of the memory business and focused just on processors: achieving that in 1 quarter is only possible with very clear communication.

If it's not rare enough (quaterly or yearly) or not short enough (few items), it doesn't work, it's just a wish list. I have seen them working and not working (when the whole team knew that doing all the strech goals were impossible).
I believe the mice used in a lot of research studies need to be genetically identical, so they need to be certain generation crosses
So, when I was worried about Facebook censoring speech, I was told "well, this is a private company, you don't like these policies, you can make your speech somewhere else". Now what Zuckerberg is proposing is: "Internet companies should be accountable for enforcing standards on harmful content.". This means no company can host anything government decided is "hate speech". And if you think he just aims for voluntary compliance - no, "Regulation could set baselines for what’s prohibited and require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a bare minimum." Regulation means government setting what "harmful content" is, and forcing platforms to remove it. And yes, "hate speech" is very much included. Moreover, the providers should be mandated to report to the government how efficient they are in suppressing speech: "Facebook already publishes transparency reports on how effectively we’re removing harmful content. I believe every major Internet service should do this quarterly, because it’s just as important as financial reporting."

Anybody wants to tell me I am still too paranoid when I think Zuckerberg and likes want to destroy free speech on the internet and turn it into a platform controlled and policed by major providers, where speech not approved by them and the government would be suppressed? That article certainly confirms every suspicion I had.

It's no longer "you don't like FB censorship, find yourself another platform". It's "now that we built censorship in FB, look how nice it is - why not have the government use it as a model to impose it on the rest of the internet?"
Sounds good, but it's hard to see into the details. In the US,cars & light trucks constitute about 18% of energy use. But what percentage of that use is for travel that could move over to rail? (I'd wager that driving around town is the biggest chunk.)

Further: should all US cars go renewable electric, that seems preferable to diesel-electric rail emissions. The railroads got hit hard back when autos came along a century ago, something similar might happen here.

The article pointed at this 'Transportation Energy Data Book' (PDF) available), which is largely petroleum-oriented.
https://cta.ornl.gov/data/download37.shtml. Throws a lot of data out, but no big picture in there. It DID note that US rail freight uses about 1.1% of petroleum, which might be impressive?
The constant need to do a task cheaper and faster.
Nethack is 204k lines? That is amazingly bloated for what it is.

With dwarf fortress coming in at 381,764 I feel like it delivers a much higher amount of value/line.
Essentially, yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescetarianism
One issue I see... People dont actually read their email

https://blog.prepp.io/news-stories/youre-not-imagining-it-yo...
Does the Amazon number include people working in logistics, delivery, and all that? I suspect that is huge portion of that number. Their engineering force is larger than Google's but not by much, I think (60-70k at best).
>Right now it's perfect for bribery, where you only need to bribe a select few and you can destroy a whole country.

There are plenty of fraud reporting (not small scale stuff, we're talking commissions, etc.) that describe how municipalities are functionally captured. It is done today, but on a scale far smaller than what your plan allows. Also, since the stakes are smaller, the oversight is smaller, which means there's more, but less impactful fraud at that level. With your plan, we'd have more, but now potentially even more impactful fraud.

You seem to believe you need to bribe ALL municipal-level politicians to get what you want. That's not the case. One jurisdiction is enough for most ends. As for price, you've just created competition for corruption among every county. That drives prices down, not up.

Now that the attack surface is huge and the prices have plummeted, what do you think happens next?

This is one counterargument, but there's a ton more. In short, every co-ordination problem now has no venue to be solved unless it falls under your umbrella of 'big, unchanging things', and sadly a lot of co-ordination problems just plain aren't that simple.

As a bit of a double whammy, co-ordination problems underlie a large portion (if not the overwhelming majority) of our issues in social systems. Removing the government's ability to act on them is fatal to the government's ability to govern.
Assuming the most benign meaning of "population control", the best way to decrease the birth rate is to increase quality of life. Birth rates go down as quality of life, financial/food security, and female workforce participation go up.

That's why most developed nations have the opposite problem: they'll eventually not have enough babies to maintain growth and pay for the care of the elderly.
Sure. I'm slowly travelling into the future right now.
If only cars were used sporadically and not to commute to work daily by many.

That would require good public transportation which, at least in London, is a reality.
That's certainly a risk worth evaluating.

I wonder if Jamal Khashoggi and Omar Abdulaziz would evaluate (or "have evaluated", in the case of Jamal) the risk of "TLA's who have the power to coerce Apple" vs "Saudi Security and Royal Family"?

You are right, in that this is adding an extra organisation you need to trust (although if you're carrying an iPhone you've already surrendered a significant amount of trust to Apple and their ability to resist TLAs).

A possible workaround might be to make the bar of "accredited journalists" super low (perhaps "anyone who's ever had a published byline in anything accepted as an original source by Wikipedia", and push it super publicly, so pretty much every journalist from cutting edge human rights activist/journalists down to the cub reporter on University newspapers is swapping their phone for refurbs every 3 months...
If there's less congestion, doesn't that a) help with clearing the streets so that buses run faster, b) broaden ridership so it's not just "those people" on transit, and c) help get a larger body of the population lobbying for no-brainer improvements like dedicated lanes, shorter headways, etc?
It's an entirely discrete social science field, so if you want to know more I suppose you can start with the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_relations_theory

There's plenty in there that isn't about culture, but it's hard to parse TFA without at least skimming over the definitions of Realism, Liberalism and Constructivism.

My personal view, from someone who studied International Relations in undergrad: at the end of the day, these are all just conjectures with few real-world implications. Basically a bunch of academics trying to one up each other with the most creative, elegant and innovative model of how States operate and what drives foreign policy, despite the fact that virtually none of them have ever been in a room where the real meaningful foreign policy decisions are made, and with a very myopic view on the role that Economics / Business / Psychology shape international relations.
The congestion price depends on the number of passengers? Ugh. That makes no sense.
I disagree. There are too much undocumented potholes.
Don't forget Cincinnatus who easily could have, but didn't.
Palo Alto district is a basic aid district. This means that they get no money from the state...they have parcel tax to fund their schools. Palo Alto is a wealthy enclave in CA. They don’t have to deal with the restrictions of other counties and school districts.

[..]Some districts, known as “basic aid” or “excess tax” districts, fund their revenue limit entirely through property taxes and receive no general purpose state aid. They also retain any excess property taxes within their district. ... Basic aid districts are generally more advantaged than other districts.[..]
Love the details for completeness, like modes, and your discussion of adjustments you found necessary along the way. Great job on the project and great explainer video too.

Slight tangent--I've often wondered if the principles behind audio keyloggers, where you record typing sounds and try to reconstruct what was typed, could be used to make a wireless computer keyboard that never needs batteries. Seems like you're attacking an inverted version of that problem.

Interesting stuff, thanks!
They were almost entirely unconnected with the work I was actually doing, and nobody cared them until 3 days before they were due.
>Rail is publically funded pretty much everywhere (i.e. it doesn't make a direct profit if you factor in infrastruture costs).

You could argue that there are positive externalities to building high speed rail that make the public funding worth it. For commuter trains it's reduced congestion and cheaper housing (allowing people to move to the suburbs). Thus a train service can operate at a loss while still making money at a societal level.

What purpose does high speed rail serve that isn't mostly covered by planes?
Well, nothing being implemented. The details haven't been worked out. The only thing that's changed is the Governor has signed on (previous attempts were derailed as requiring state government approval). That's good but we're not there yet.

This is what I want to see:

- Similar to London, charge people for owning a car in areas served by public transport. This would include anywhere in Manhattan below 125th street (maybe higher).

- Stop giving free long term parking on the street. Have a parking limit. If necessary give resident parking permits. These should be expensive. Comparative to parking in a garage. You get the idea?

I'm not a big fan of what NYC has done to ride-sharing services. Ride-sharing (IMHO) should be encouraged. These cars are in constant use, not collecting dust in free street parking. What used to be a $9-10 Uber ride is now $19-20. What I can walk in 10 minutes now costs $11. That's... ridiculous.

My guess is congestion pricing will further drive up ride-sharing and taxi services for no good reason. It already costs $70 to go to the airport (JFK).

Let's target private vehicle owners in Manhattan. Those people basically have no excuse for this level of subsidy.
It is not. The federal government has simply chosen not to challenge the states on this issue... so far.
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Parent commenter said, "maglev", so I stayed on that train of thought.
Sweeping generalization fail. One rumor from one distro does not a trend make. Plus, there are many more conservative distros which won't succumb to pointless fashionablism churn. And it's relatively trivial, while labor-intensive, to roll your own distro or fork a FLOSS one. Have a look at LFS. Seems like a tempest in a teapot article to invent outrage clickbait.
I could imagine The Intercept (and many other news organisations) sending the cub reporter to the local Apple Store with a box of 50 factory-wiped iPhones once a month.
The ‘builders’ are better described as ‘profiteers’.

The panopticon is being requested and purchased by municipalities, which are predominantly governed by those from the baby boomer generation. Start-up 101. Build what the Users want.
Congestion is a tax on the working class too. Most things are. Helping the poor and accounting for externalities are two separate activities.
As a vegetarian with an allergy to all legumes, including soy, life is rough sometimes.
The glut of domestic oil all comes with higher extraction costs. While it's unlikely an OPEC embargo could affect the United States in the same way it did in the 70s, Saudi Arabia specifically can sell oil at a price that is mildly profitable for them but a loss for US producers. OPEC no longer operates as a perfect cartel; members cheat on the quotas that are set and not all OPEC members can hold the line as well as KSA can.

With all that said, the 2015 oil price collapse did lead to significant reductions in domestic production, and it was partially driven by Saudi Arabia.
Its more like a software interrupt that prevents the bytes in memory being read or executed. That's a level of safety over what you get in C, where a buffer overflow can lead to remote code execution or data leakage.
> fail to take into account the bootstrap and maintenance cost of the infrastructure.

Is the bootstrap cost different from the startup cost? Are they just synonymous?
> Trains are a messy, loud and dangerous way of moving stuff. But so fucking dangerous and primitive in so many ways.

Compared to trucking? Oh my god it's not even close. 2017 U.S. stats:[1][2]

Large truck fatalities: 4,102

U.S. rail fatalities: 8

Not sure how it pencils out per mile but it is ridiculously inaccurate to characterize trains as more dangerous than the alternatives.

[1] https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/large-trucks/fatalityfact...

[2] https://www.bts.gov/content/train-fatalities-injuries-and-ac...
Pock: Display macOS Dock in Touch Bar
Maybe they should learn a diverse group of children. Girls and boys are ‘different’ but we don’t segregate them anymore...why should we segregate them on the basis of one year age gap?
Radix Labs (YC S18) | Software Developer (frontend, backend, compilers, distributed systems) | Cambridge, MA, USA | ONSITE | Full time | $100k-150k + equity

About Radix

Radix Labs is a Series Seed startup with 2.5M raised. Our product brings compiler-like abstractions to the process of working in a biology lab.

We are building the future of the biotechnology development process with a first-principles approach, developing a programming language, compiler, and distributed runtime to automatically turn lab protocols into robot or lab technician instructions. This means that the 60% of a PhD biologists day that is spent doing manual labor can be reduced drastically, pushing the means of biotech production down to biohackers and streamlining the inefficiencies of large pharmaceutical companies with one proven software solution.

About the Role

We're looking for Scala engineers. We are a 100% scala shop, JS, JVM, and Native. We leverage features of Scala to provide value to customers.

If any of this sounds like something you want to work on - reach out to dhash@radix.bio. If it sounds like something you want to learn, or you only cover some of the skillset, still do reach out.

- Distributed systems - Akka/Kafka/Hashicorp stack
- Frontend Development - Scalajs-react
- Notebook computing interface for biologists to write lab protocols as programs
- Version control
- We're bringing protocol + associated data versioning to users, and we'd love to work on a nice implementation for biologists.
- Compilers - Recursion-Schemes/Linear type system/functional interpreters
- Constraint-based solver integration (SMT/heuristic/MIP) based optimizer
- NP-complete problem solver CVC4(SyGuS)/Z3/CPLEX/OR-Tools/metaheuristics
- Synthetic Biology
- High-throughput screening
- DNA-based assays
- Process optimization
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I can't speak for every role, but I've worked with a lot of H1B holders in not-entry-but-not-senior positions (think $300K+ but not $500K+).

I can't think of a single case where there would be an "obvious" replacement for that person -- not just in the US, but anywhere in the world. In fact, most of those H1Bs I've worked with eventually end up switching to the O1 anyways (for reference, very few SWEs -- even at FAANGs -- would quality for the O1).
Calling American cheese ‘dairy’ is a little generous.
I really hope this decreases number of ridesharing vehicles on the road. ridesharing is a cheaper and more convenient alternative to taxis but they didn't improve traffic. they made it worse because its almost always a car with TLC plates that has doubleparked, full stop in the lane to pickup/dropoff or engaging in some other kind of outrageous behavior in traffic. I don't blame them either, those drivers put up with so much shit that after a while they become immune to honking or people calling them assholes. they just do anything to make more money because uber pays for most of their tickets
I'm surprised people are afraid this will decrease quality of life. In New York, cars are the greatest public nuisance. They create exhaust, they shore up traffic, you have to watch out for them when you cross the street. Semis drive through the middle of the city, engine braking and honking.

Manhattan can be unbearable at vehicle choke points like Canal Street. Any effort to lessen the amount of cars is going to dramatically improve the quality of life in the city.
(check the article tags)
What is happening when you open a website in the browser
I'm not sure who drives into Manhattan-below-60th, but AFAIK it's very Uber/Lyft/Taxi-heavy, so this will probably get rolled into fares. It will be interesting to see how that ends up being priced. If it prices more trips onto transit while funding transit improvements, it will be a nice quality of life improvement.