skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I see a lot of anti-union talk on HN

That's because most people on HN are from the U.S. where a century of propaganda has convinced most people not only that poor people are lazy, but by extension that unions are evil, corrupt and lazy organizations infiltrated by organized crime. While this propaganda has a minority basis in reality in some cases, as all propaganda will have because propaganda can't be 100% fantasy and make-believe, it's an ignorant basis to take when discussing broad and general questions like unions as a concept.

If you ask someone from Spain or Germany about unions and attempt to explain why they're "evil" from the US perspective, I can guarantee you will be met with complete disbelief. Most people in Europe may not actively be a part of a union, but they normally recognize them as beneficial entities in the labor market, and as something that will help balance the scales against employers of normally vastly larger influence, both politically and economically.
Ask HN: Privacy Focused iOS Ad Networks?
Are there any iOS ad networks that try to respect user's privacy?

I'm working on an app that would benefit from free & paid versions. On the free version it would be nice to earn some money from banner ads. But I don't really want to install a 50k LOC SDK that gives the ad network free reign over the device.

Ideally the ad network would load banner images from a server, display them, track clicks and not much else.

Are any networks available like this?

Thanks
How does a rich couple digging themselves an underground pool qualify as progress?
Personally I think social media is being misblamed as an easy scapegoat. It does have its problems with privacy, mob mentalities, and impulse control but it didn't start the fire or even accelerate it much - it is a preexisting condition worsening over time period.

Before the misinformation there were chain letters and plenty of stupid moral panics. Division has always been with us - it just makes it more obvious.
Think about the demand for tax preparers each year. Higher demand Jan-Apr. Lower demand the rest of the year. Should companies be forced to hire tax preparers full time year round or should they be free to contract for only when they are needed?
I made Flash games part time in college that made enough money for me to [barely] live off. I took it for granted and now wish I had committed to it full time. It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had.
That's the problem. In theory every bridge is the same. Yet you need to plan each one of them.

Similarly every run of the mill business-as-usual boring-as-fuck CRUD corporate internal "app" is the same, yet they still need a lot of work, and they are still hard to "estimate".
If the people you hire refuse to build what you hired them to build, and you insist on paying them anyway, you've got a lost cause.
> For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand

This is basically the reason for low wages in quite a few 'passion' driven industries. If a job is something enough people want to do, then talent is cheap and plentiful and companies can provide low wages and poor conditions that for every person who quits, ten more are lining up for the 'opportunity'.

You can see this in all manner of arts or entertainment based fields, since there are far more people wanting to become artists/musicians/writers/whatever than there is demand for their services. You can see it in journalism, where in many cases organisations will try and get work done for free, and will pay so little that living off said wages is virtually impossible in a major city if you don't have a trust fund (though admittedly the huge increase in competition from the internet puts pressure there). And I even recall people saying it's one reason teaching wages aren't too high either.

Unionisation may help, but the only practical solution is for people to stop taking on terrible jobs because of some sense of 'passion', and to go where their skills are appreciated/where they're treated better/fairly compensated.
For the interested Italian speakers out there, we have a recurrent podcast happening at www.gameloop.it and we had an episode right after the Blizzard layoffs to which both a Technical Director at Activision (Canada) and a researcher in the field of Industrial Relations (who worked on an EU report of unionization in the creative industry) participated, the discussion that sparked was very interesting in my opinion, here is the episoda page: https://gameloop.it/2019/02/26/gameloop-podcast-gl22a-activi... (Italian only :( )
Because they have more options to deal with the issue than poor people would.
I was fired from a shop that made a game backend and asked workers to continually crunch, work long hours on salary with no overtime. There were some big bonuses, but it didn't make up for the bad planning and management.

I refused to work over 45 hours a week. I worked one 13 hour Sunday and said no to the 2nd one and was fired. Another dev/ops person left two weeks later.

The others: almost all of the team is still there, working over a year later, with the same crazy hours (80+ for 6~8 weeks at a time) and same constant crunch. I really really really wish I had at least used the word "union" in a meeting or e-mail while there, so I could claim I was fired based on trying to organize. I've even considered taking a day or two off, standing in front of the building and handing out unionization pamphlets, just to see if I could help make a change for the people left there.

Everyone else let themselves and continue to let themselves be exploited. I honestly don't understand why many of them haven't gotten new jobs yet. Do they not realize that type of work isn't normal? I've worked at a lot of places and maybe I can just see bad management when others can't?
MLK's birthday is a federal holiday---government offices and banks are closed. Most commercial enterprises don't take it off, though.
I think it depends on how they go about their lifestyle. Shouldn't we be free to choose whether we want to settle down in one location or wander around, as long as we're not hurting anybody? It seems unlawfully (un-American at least) restrictive to dictate how a person must live when it comes to their choice of residence
Almost everywhere I’ve worked ends up turning off Selinux rather than learn how to actually configure/use it properly, which of course is ridiculous when it’s not actually that hard to learn or configure at all generally, but such is the reality of many places it seems.
I feel like the video gaming industry is kind of like working for SpaceX. You dream as a kid of working on rockets, so you will take an incredibly difficult job for less money and perks than google. But it’s worth it if you love rockets.
> That being the case, I'm not sure that statement is correct at all. On the contrary, it seems like if FB were required to offer an easily exportable data format, that other services would pop up overnight to try and lure people away from FB onto their (hopefully) more privacy conscious platforms. It would also lower the bar for people to make the switch to something else, as they know their friends can switch just as easily without losing their data.

The problem with this is that it presupposes a certain data-format, that doesn't allow for innovation. How exactly would you export facebooks data to twitter or vice versa? For a start, facebook doesn't have a character limit, twitter does. Twitter threads can be nested infinitely, facebook's can't, etc.
A big part of the root cause of sucky gamedev working conditions (and I'm speaking mainly about developers here, as that is what I have first hand experience with) is the fact that a lot of people just really want to work on games and choose to put up with it. This is especially true for developers; there are plenty of developer jobs out there that are nothing like your typical game studio, and the skills that game developers have are not so unique to that industry that they couldn't find work elsewhere if they wanted to.

So yes, unions are one way to try to solve that problem. But if you choose to advocate for that, just be aware that attempting to solve these problems via a union would result in trading one set of problems for another: you'd probably end up with better working conditions, at a cost of new, artificial barriers to entry for all those people who want to work in that industry. Maybe it would be worth it, I don't know, but given the root causes, it definitely seems like this tradeoff would exist.
If the world was just, the Sackler family would be buried under the jail cell in which Ross Ulbricht will rightfully spend the rest of his days.

But alas, Big Pharma can slang dope on every block worldwide with nary a peep.
The market discounts the coolness factor of being in the game industry, so you effectively pay for being a game developer by crappy work conditions.

Regarding the unionizing unions, I don't think I can express this better than RMS: "All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people’s rights with one
hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option
to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together
impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us. That’s what
democracy was invented for!"

He was talking about human rights but this argument applies as well to work conditions.
I wonder if there should be a way to permanently disable the camera via hardware switch.

Similarly, there should be a way to disable any kind of autonomous driving via hardware switch. in other words, it should be technically impossible to control the car via software once the switch is engaged.

I know, CAN bus devices are all controlled by the software, but these two subsystems must be isolated with something like an RS-232 link and a very conservative protocol between them.
Humans are social animals. It's fun to connect with people about positive things.

There was always some discussion about a "dislike" button on Facebook. That always confused me. I have NO INTEREST in what people don't like. I want to hear about what they're doing that is positive.
That’s not my experience. When asked for an estimate you usually already know the politically correct number. I have never got away with giving the number I think will be realistic.
Love it... Good job.
Forming a union is not growing a spine. It's combining the wish of a spine with 100 others until you collectively have a spine.

I'm not against unions, but his suggestion is about the individual.
Excellent.

I have a general concern that some working with ML don't appreciate the experience and technology that statisticians have developed to deal with bias, which I think is the biggest problem in the field. I tweeted "ML is v impressive, but has no automated way to ensure no bias. Statistical modelling can't match ML for parameter dimensions, but it can make explicit what is going on with the parameters you have and the assumptions you have. But advantages of theft over honest toil..." - some of the responses in the thread are interesting.

My original tweet: https://twitter.com/txtpf/status/1102437933301272577

Bob Watkins' tweet: https://twitter.com/bobwatkins/status/1102568735485972480
Really glad to see this... this has often seemed to me to be a nice sort of capstone project for an undergraduate degree program. (Covers real implementation of everything from networking, datastructures, language parsing, etc.)
This seems all too often the case with development work in general. I see the same type of unreasonable expectations in devops.

Maybe it's compounded by the software industry liking to hire young people with less experience but more free time. They may not yet have the soft skills to navigate unreasonable demands and give hard answers, and logistically a single person can more easily pull extra hours.

I've found that as I get older it has become easier to push back on unpaid overtime type work (or simply not do it). Because it would be damaging to my family and relationships if I didn't, and that's a powerful motivator for me.

But at the same time it's hard to compete with the output of people who somehow can grind all day every day, and through the weekend. I don't know if there's a way to level the playing field as long as employers are allowing and even encouraging this kind of unpaid self sacrifice.
I think you should show up at my home to justify yourself for this comment in person, otherwise I don't think you deserve a hearing either.
I've only worked at two places that were like this and they were both shit shops. I think people who stay at these places don't understand it isn't by any means normal.
I'm sure there was a moment when "fake news" meant stories coming from superficially reputable looking websites, that in reality were fugaciously created to give a veneer of respectability to made up stories. This meaning of "fake news", which I think is actually meaningful and useful, seems to have completely vanished, or maybe I just imagined it?
This is awesome! Great work. How does this work on older browsers? It would have a leg up on current web assembly if it's backwards compatible.
The term "LAMP stack" is at least 15 years old and even RMS commented on it a long time ago. That's as mainstream as it gets.
However, they managed to master animal husbandry, agriculture, and slavery before homo-sapiens.

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/slave-ants-and...

https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-farmers-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/science/ant-fungus-farmer...
The funny thing about NYC residents complaining about this kind of thing is if they lived anywhere else for a while and came back then the normal background noise level of the city without construction would seem so loud as to seem unbearable.

It's all just an example of the crazy weird microcosm that NYC is.. everyone living in a bubble of insanity and unable to tell.
Stickers in Intersection Can Cause Tesla Autopilot to Swerve into Wrong Lane
Dev Factory Startup
Hi guys, my business partner and I have been in IT for 30+ years, we have already started to make custom software (cloud / mobile apps) for a few clients. Now thinking of expanding to other regions, UK and more so in the US. We are interested to hear from people that can contact potential clients and let us work on the development side. Maybe there are some agencies that already do this? Any info is appreciated, thanks!
What is the best way to leave?

I look at the experience required on the 'Who is Hiring' threads and sigh -- how am I supposed to get two years' professional experience using a technology that has nothing to do with games, or, how do I pick which tech to invest my time in, given that everything seems to be changing so quickly?
It’s a combination of multiple reasons.

First, culturally, US Americans are much more individualist than most Europeans. (Obviously I am painting with broad strokes here, but it’s true in a general sense, on average). US Americans are somewhat less likely to feel solidarity or a sense of common cause with coworkers, and more likely to value the freedom to negotiate their contract on their own.

They are also much more likely to distrust large organizations and bureaucracy, sometimes to an extreme extent that would be puzzling to Western and Northern Europeans. Rather than being on their side, many would perceive the union as just one more large bureaucracy trying to screw them.

Third, there are many current examples of unions in the US that have made industries meaningfully less efficient. And highly-paid US Americans are less likely to see themselves as oppressed by their employers and more likely to see themselves as making common cause: after all, they have a common goal of making a lot of money. If my company, say, found it harder to fire low performers (an almost certain consequence of a union), it would be less efficient, make less profit, and be less able to pay me my current high salary.

I hope I’ve genuinely answered your question and given you some insight into the mindset without implying either side is right or wrong. Just different viewpoints...
This is really a Java desktop app compiled to the browser. Oracle/Sun probably made a mistake by not thinking of the browser as just another target platform (in full-screen mode). The separate Applet concept probably added an unnecessary layer of complication.
People say that, but what's the glamour? Do you have friends in AAA gamedev? Do you think that's cool? Do their parents? Their little brothers?

You know who is cool? the 2-3 people who designed and built Pac-Mac, or Legend of Zelda, or Braid, or Papers Please. Not the people making guns for Call of War 7 that's a clone of a dozen other AAA games.
A BSoD screen could display a QR code that encodes a URL at microsoft.com that unpacks all the data after the '?' in the URL, and provides an option to change culture and locale, including links to support pages known to be associated with that error, and a button to Bing-search for more information on the error. They could then copy-paste the URL for that page using their phone into a text or email to their favorite technical adept.
NEC Is Looking to Contribute SX-Aurora VE Accelerator Support to LLVM
I shudder thinking about the moisture issues you'd have to constantly battle. Basements are bad enough by themselves, but with a pool down there too?!
Why Digital Identity will play an increasingly role in combating cyber-crime
Xiaomi în vizorul cercetătorilor de securitate
“ I come from the position that you can only beat a dog so long before it bites back. ”

If done right you can beat the dog for a very long time and if the dog actually bites back you get rid of it and get another one.
What would happen if he removed the second 8GB but forgot to remove the GRUB ACPI table patch?
>In this specific example, the individual in question could've gotten out ahead of the press cycle and explained herself. That she didn't means the beliefs she holds as reported probably are her beliefs,

I call this the "I can't understand why X behaves like this, so the reason must be..." In other words, from complete uncertainty arises certainty.

The reason could be simpler. It could be that she doesn't believe she has to justify every aspect of her existence for a role where it likely doesn't matter. I sure as hell wouldn't discuss my views on classes of people or climate change for a position that requires a stretch of the imagination to be tied to these topics.
Sad that working free overtime is seen as a virtue
If I remember correctly, an MS-DOS formatted 1.44mb 3.5" floppy usually has 1,457,664 free bytes for user files?
Flip out of the metaphor and into literal pasta dishes and I like where you're going with this
Exactly.

How about the impoverished little kids of NYC who have to deal with the noise of domestic abuse, gunshots, police sirens, etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578988
I recently called the IRS and by the end of the call I felt really bad for them. The agent that picks up immediately tells you there ID# even before their name or any formal greetings. I know it's tax season and they are harried. But speaking with him he just felt worn down, and it was only 10AM! And having to use your ID# for every call dehumanizes you. It's the same way we treat prisoners, only referring to them by their DoC number.
I wonder what the answer is to these two questions:

- Once we've driven out the competition, what prevents some other VC-backed firm from playing the same trick? If customers go for the cheapest thing -and let's face it, taxi and food delivery are not differentiable- won't there always be another disruptor?

- If there's a monopoly that lets us make huge profits, wouldn't the government come and do something about that?
So, I guess you have to either take on the extra work of debugging multiple UI implementations, or take on the extra work of making your own toolkit accessible. Personally, I would have chosen the former.
Why 99 Percent of All Meetings Are a Complete Waste of Money
That's only one half of the solution, the other half is taking into consideration that there's less demand for video games critics than there's people wanting to do it, and possibly choose another less crowded career.
Looks that way.

That said, it's better than a lot of legacy apps that either don't upscale (and are too small), or half-upscale and end up unusable.
Now if they only could add more housing to the market ! And remove more housing regulations! Build build ! I don’t want LA to end up like SF!
I recently discovered that de Waal is a rather controversial figure in primatology circles. I’m probably getting this wrong since IANA(P|Z|B)[0] but I believe the gist was that he’d studied Bonobos in captivity and made all kinds of sweeping generalizations and questionable extrapolations based on his observations, and it turned out that the same animals studied in the wild behaved quite differently and a lot of people think his conclusions are not only wrong but dangerous, in that a lot of lay people use his work to give scientific legitimacy to popular but distinctly unscientific ideas.

FWIW I too dislike human exceptionalism, I just happen to have run across the “de Waal controversy” recently and thought I’d mention it.

[0]: Primatologist? Zoologist? Biologist? But at least I’m a primate!
Hey thanks a lot for making an education program for a simpleton like myself.
I'm surprised DO is killing it as hard as they are when OVH has dedicated servers for comparable prices and 2x the performance.

Are you able to run pgbench against their new Postgres hosted instances?
I was born in 1961 and first saw ftp [0] in 1982. I like to think I will always an ability to spot internet scams (as well as I can spot a doorstep scammer), but I can sense my own cognitive decline beginning even now in terms of quickly navigating to specific menu items, etc.

Chatting to an (intelligent) 20 year old the other day, I realised that they didn't appreciate the difference between a search bar and and address bar (and the pros and cons of using either). So I don't make the assumption that young people always have a better handle on the underlying tech (as soon as I explained, they got it)

But they still could operate an interface they were familiar with much faster than I could, now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol
Hi Alok,

Thanks for taking interest in my question and responding :)

Your paper sounds very exciting and promising, and I am going to finish reading it over the coming weekend.
I assume last pass will be hacked someday. And when it is that person will have my Reddit, Hacker news, amazon etc.. But not my email or financials. I store super important items to human memory only. For many accounts like my github they will have to defeat two factor authentication. I hope people keep polling password managers for exploits to make it more secure. I know it's not perfect. I understand the risk-reward.
For an excellent book on your points, see "The Righteous Mind" https://righteousmind.com/
If you earn $120k/year, you're in the ~80th percentile in NYC and are making a bit over 2x the median income.

https://statisticalatlas.com/place/New-York/New-York/Househo...
Construction noise is part of large city life. I live in NYC and you just deal with it. It sucks, but it's limited to business hours so it doesn't affect your evenings or sleep or weekends.

I'm not clear what makes this one construction site newsworthy over the 100's of others?

Is it that bedrock excavation is unusual and should be outlawed? Is it that there are quieter excavation methods that should be legally enforced? Is it that some board gave approval when they shouldn't have and there was corruption or incompetence? The article doesn't say, so I don't get what this is actually about.
Skia is not so terrible, you just have to use their slightly obscure build tool. And it produces >8GB build artefacts with ~50 or more dependencies... Come to think of it is a bit of a nightmare.
You Receive Sextortion and Other Email Scams