skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I love the US but we're rich enough to have all the amazing things they have in Europe and more (infrastructure, transportation, free healthcare, better schools). But we choose a bloated $1T defense budget, endless wars, and billionaire tax relief.
I believe the media have been briefed on the the contents of the report but it isn't yet publicly available. It's annoying because I don't trust the media to get the details correct on this type of thing.
> One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry.

This does not dispute the central point of the quoted piece, which is that the quality of life of most Americans is very poor contrast to that of the average person in some subset of European countries. I would wager that most coffee shop employees are more concerned with labor protections, healthcare, social welfare, the ability to afford housing and take vacations than whether their country’s economy is producing “innovative companies” (read: tech startups?). This was certainly true of myself when I worked in food service.

Even so, this point does not stand well on its own. It may be that Europeans are deincentivized from creating enormously overvalued startups because their quality of life is much better (although I question whether this is worth bragging about, from a US standpoint). Nevertheless, I’d consider things like lack of a single market, fragmented languages and cultures, completely different VC environment, and so on to be much more impactful in that regard.
If you look at communities where large portions of the population have their basic medical care, food, and housing all provided or paid for by the government, you don't see hotbeds of creative and entrepreneurial activity. You see cesspools of drugs and crime.
> One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry.

> No, not everyone in Europe gets to live white-collar worker dream of writing poetry at the coffee shop and coming in late

Um,so which is it?
Well, the funny thing is that ‘America’ is the standard in lots of countries, even in places where many things are superior to the US.
I’ve been to the US a few times, and the experience was abysmal. I didn’t expect 1Gbps public Wifis in public transportation (well, we have them), but... I mean, super dirty subways and buses that don’t go much (moving only with public transportation and foot was a painful experience), super-slow LTE/WLAN speeds (I mean... weren’t they supposed to be called ‘LTE’?), basically non-existent medical system - (going to the doctor takes a whole day?? We go to the doctor in lunchtime..., and super high prices even with medical insurance), and my list goes on and on.

However in South Korea everybody’s saying.. ‘Hey let’s do it the American way!’

The world is totally insane.
Note that the knife crime problem is in England and Wales not the entire UK and is pretty much due to a conscious decision by the then home secretary (now PM) to drastically reduce police numbers and change how they police.
Millions of Facebook Records Exposed
It's worse than I suspected.

Rails 6.0, when generating a new app:

- installs 102 ruby gems (without being asked)

- installs yarn & 602 yarn dependencies (without being asked)

The modern programming industry is a joke. We call ourselves "engineers" without any certification or oaths of responsibility, and basically ignore security beyond user credentials at best.

Someone please tell me `yarn list | wc` showing 2,800 transient packages is incorrect.

[0]: https://gist.github.com/azah/c219844f95243cdfdb3b352ad3dee2f...
When my company sent me to South America to work, it was pretty revealing how American company culture is toxic.

People from the home office in NY were literally complaining about South Americans getting too many vacation days, 1 hour lunches, and a lot of other perks that are guaranteed by law. All of this despite the south american employees making 30% of the NY salary. The head of HR complained about guaranteed 1 hour lunches for the employees because "she ate lunch at her desk working everyday". They were jealous because it was only a 10 minute walk to a gorgeous beach from the SA office.

I was involved in a lot of discussions with HQ about the office and it became abundantly clear, that all the HR and execs wanted to keep the salaries of South American's low or else they would have "too good of a life" and "live like kings" if they paid them the NY salary, despite things like computers and cars costing like 2x the cost of USA. and while rent was cheaper, the difference in rent was only like 24k a year (1k for an apartment vs 3k). I was still living on my NY salary, and would get constant criticism from the home office that I was living too well, despite all the benefits (access to the beach, nice weather, etc) were free.

It seemed like the entire office thought everything in south america was pennies on the dollar. In reality to lead an equivalent life as the USA (modern apartment, nice neighborhood, eat at nice restaurants, have a nice car), its not really that much cheaper, like 20-30% cheaper. Not 66% cheaper.

Anyways, what really opened my eyes was that was south america. I think we think of South America as being underdeveloped, but my life was very nice there, and it was very very difficult to justify going back to the USA.

And it really opened my eyes, how blatantly envious American HR employees can get when they see the more relaxed lifestyles of other countries and instead of improving themselves, they seek to tear others down.
I agree with your first, and second sentences. I reply "OK" to your third sentence. I don't understand your four sentence at all.

As for the last sentence (and question), everything. People take pictures of everything. Do you really need to ask HN that?
Quite possibly! I never anticipated getting to the front page with anything so I don't know what to expect. Let me know if it eventually came through.
Yes, approval voting leaves the door open for some tactical voting.

So if candidate #1 would win a simple majority (50.01% of voters), but is absolutely hated by everyone else, but #2 is "acceptable" or second best to 100% of the voters, should #1 win?

We are used to the binary "simple majority takes all" in elections, but maybe the compromise "everybody is pretty OK with this one" _should_ win.

If it were a group of friends going to a restaurant, or playing a game, #2 sounds like a much better option.
It seems to me that on a budget of 600-700 billion, it would not be too difficult to spend a few billion on bullets. Also not every bullet has to be the same (ignoring logistics and interoperability for the moment), but if there are already different sizes of bullets then they could be made out of different materials.

At least that should slightly decrease the concentration of any single material when large quantities of bullets pile up.
> A similar effect has happened in former battle grounds, leaving the locals exposed to all of the known consequences of early life lead exposure including (ironically) an increased propensity for violence.

Has there been a study showing this correlation? As far as I know, countries that were shattered in World War 2, like Japan and Germany, are less violent on average, than the US. And note: the mainland continental US has been relatively at peace, and has not had any major domestic hostilities since 1865.

Also, have bullets always (historically) had lead? Or is this something that only newer ammo (since WWII) have?
Yeah, we convince people if they kill themselves for corporate, they'll get a minuscule slice of money from the top. American dream and all that.

At least people in Europe have hobbies.
Odd that he includes Paris in that list of superior places. My two weeks in Paris last summmer left me shocked at how filthy it is, how crowded the public transit is, and how unremarkable (compared to expectations). the food is. And I say that as a San Franciscan.
Money is not the deciding factor in American elections. Hillary Clinton spent twice as much as Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign.
Not to mention that many emoji are emoji sequences. So again, not a 1:1.
Homebrewing Solutions
https://www.kempstoncontrols.co.uk/151746-000/THERMOCOAX-ISOPAD/sku/766370
As an American who has lived in Europe for 5+ years: the single biggest issue with the States is that everything is filtered through a money-first mentality.

Reading a book? It better be nonfiction, because fiction “isn’t real” and won’t help you get ahead. Writing a book? It’s only a success if it’s a best-seller. Studying a new language? Only worth it if you can monetize it somehow. Hate your job? Not a problem if your salary is high enough.

This baseline mentality underlies everything and injects a market in to places where it doesn’t belong. Europe certainly has its own issues, but at the very least it allows for the possibility that life isn’t primarily a series of financial decisions.
Was someone accusing david Simon of being a bad writer?
It's more because European capital is more risk averse and the labor laws here are very strong when compared to the US. That increases the risks involved in new ventures.

The other thing is that Europe may have 500 million people, most of them speak a different language/culture. The US is one massive market who broadly share the same mother tongue. In the US you can have one company market to all states (and the 51st over the pond!). In Europe you need at least a dozen to get similar reach.
America must be doing something right.

It is indeed. And a lot wrong too.

This that you said; "It would be easy to have great life expectancy by raising the cost of living to be so high the poor are all forced to leave." I don't understand. Is that how France did it?
I'm a heavy shell user, both interactively and in scripting. I'm a big believer in it and it can take you a long way, if you use it properly and realise its limitations. I haven't seen a few of these and they do look pretty useful, but only interactively. For scripts I swear by POSIX shell, of course that won't save you if you are using GNU-isms on BSD or macOS. What really annoys me is seeing a .sh file with a #!/bin/sh shebang and it still uses bash. Please don't.
Hugh Masekela Google Doodle
This is fair. However, note the "as a whole" above.
I don't think the author understands how extraordinary his life is. His complaint is essentially that there's nothing satisfying on his trello board? That's a great problem to have.
It's a good thing he has clean water, an education, an aptitude and the opportunity to participate in the upper echelons of a technological revolution. He isn't living under war, famine or a communist dystopia where his options would be far more limited. He's in relatively good health and perhaps he hasn't yet suffered the extraordinary personal losses we'll all face as our loved ones grow old, sick and die. It's a good time for him.
It's a fallacy to extrapolate one's mental state to the entire nation.
We are living under the greatest conditions in all of human history. If you can't be satisfied here then by all means go on a soul searching adventure and figure yourself out. It's your journey, it's your time on Earth and it's literally never been better.
Infrastructure as a Motorcycle (2018)
In Ireland KFC does that.
They are doing this, but using private investments. From solar to wave they're investing in energy, but also in lots of other investments.
My bad. It was me drawing the conclusion.

And granted: That was mainly from the headlines, which were also picked up by other publications.

I would remove my comment, but that kills the flow of the thread so I let it stand and apologise for my making the unfounded comment.

I was under the impression (probably not unreasonable if you look at Boeing's reaction in the last few weeks) that the company was actively smearing the pilots and using their press connections to actively do that.

Mea culpa!
It can be both. The wealthy and the capable people waste their time in coffee shops instead of working out how to do something useful; poor people and the capability-disadvantaged work in horrible jobs making ends meet.
I am European, but I understand why America is the way it is. America is a country of strangers trying to coexist. They cannot agree on what way of life is the best so they cannot have strong convictions, and thus they cannot have government programs as intrusive as countries in Europe.
All the good things in our European countries come at the cost of choice.
Yes, we have universal healthcare, but it is mandatory and you have no say in the matter. This is fine if everyone is convinced that it is the best solution, but what if they are not?
In practice it's more like "It's not who you know, it's who knows you."
> Otherwise, how do you expect a Jew, an Atheist and a Hindi to operate under the same legal system? No joke; clearly someone in that crowd is badly, badly wrong about some of the most important assumptions in their life.

a) Theological beliefs are a fundamentally accepted divergence point in society's beliefs, when we decided to ratify secularism into most modern constitutions, or at least freedom of religious belief in most countries. One or some or (most likely) all of them can be wrong, but society does not need to have the same standard of acceptance for beliefs in all categories. Just because we allow Christianity and Hinduism and Judaism to coexist does not mean we should accept a flat-earther be placed in a position demanding critical analysis and long-term decision making for the good of society. It's one thing if they are merely seeking a faith for the unknowns of life (primary purpose and appeal of religious beliefs), it's entirely another if they are concocting or representing "alternate facts" for verifiable truths or accepted scientific standards, even if it's an "irrelevant belief".

b) it's "Hindu", Hindi is a language, this might be an honest typo on your part, but I've seen/heard it as otherwise too often.
The argument for "Ballot Simplicity" is misleading too

They seem to have tried to intentionally tried to create a much more complicated ballot paper for IRV

Here's a sample of an Australian IRV voting form:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/20...
Don’t conflate “effective feature size” (the 5nm used in this article) with “real” feature size (or, more importantly, pitch), with transistor size. Transistors are still huge compared to atoms—think hundreds of thousands, or millions. The issues at this scale are all electrical. (Bullshit terms like “quantum tunneling” are bandied about; the scientific use isn’t wrong, but any journalist using the term probably is.)

There’s alot of room down there, below the extended Moore’s law, just not always so CMOS-ey.
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/20/america-is-a-violent-cou... ?
I think it caught the spirit of the conflict, which is inherently political and cultural, rather well. It also appears well researched. The conversation with Tony Banks and his references to Peter Freeman give a lot of historical perspective and how society and the role of the state/establishment is changing, albeit slowly. So there are plenty of facts, just not simplistic ones.

A review of the situation in 2019 would be interesting to see. What did the saboteurs achieve, was it long term and what lessons could be applied to stop the continuing cruelty being meted out to wildlife on a daily basis which is still legal - the poisoning and shooting of protected birds of prey to satisfy the demand for driven grouse shooting being a good example.
> In some other countries, your ethnicity/background/religion would get in the way far more than in the US.

I completely disagree. I'm from Europe and applied to a few American-based companies and they all had these ridiculous forms related to anti-discrimination and the like. Is it that big of a problem in the US? That's whay I'm asking myself when I have to fill in those forms. Why do you have to know my ethnicity? Why do people in the US _constantly_, and I mean CONSTANTLY, talk about their origins? Literally no one cares in Europe, but it's always said in the US. "Native-american btw", "african-american btw", etc. I personally think this is an issue in the US, but it isn't that big of an issue in Europe.

> This is not to say we don't have room for improvement, we do. Just that we're more meritocratic than certain other first world countries.

I personally think that this is an illusion. Europe is in my opinion a lot more meritocratic than the US from my visits. I think the US is very hypocritical when it talks about immigrants as the whole of the US is made of immigrants, just all from different generations. Europe doesn't currently have a problem with building a wall to keep the Mexicans out or anything.
Easy mode doesnt ruin a game. Lack of options does. E.g. GTA is easy mode and you can't even change it. And e.g. Max payne 3 has difficulty settings but even on hard it's still easy.
One, the sentence you’re responding to doesn’t say anything explicit about TV being better there, and two, I haven’t lived lived in Europe for over 15 years now, but yes when I did, the television was incredibly different and yes of course that ends up having a cultural impact. Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine[1] does a brief analysis of this between the US and Canada.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_for_Columbine
UK homicide rate: 1.20 per 100,000

German homicide rate: 1.18 per 100,000

US homicide rate: 5.35 per 100,000

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
Spot on. We saw this with BBSs vs Compuserve and then with AOL, MySpace, Friendster etc.
> Put another way, why tolerate the intolerant?

Because unless the intolerance are initiating or calling for violence, that's literally what being tolerant means.
Implementing GANs trained on MNIST to generate handwritten digits
Many, dare I say the majority, of Americans don't have any desire to have the European way of life, culture or institutions. We like heavily processed Walmart peanut butter on our goddamn Wonderbread made from GMO wheat with jelly sweetened with corn syrup. We like our Budweiser and $10 "Chinese" buffet. We like driving our cheaply registered, insured, and fueled cars. We'd prefer to sit in traffic than wait for a train.

Sure our healthcare could be better but we're working on it and pretty much nobody expects the current situation to persist for all that long.

I and millions of other people like out way of life. I get that the author is entitled to his opinion but my opinion is that his opinion is crap. I hate to be this guy but if he likes Europe that much he should move there, or at least move to a state that's more like it.
It's not that hard to learn to mix well with turntables, especially if you have a background in music production or instruments. It's a logarithmic curve, I think you can get there in ~2 months, putting in some time daily. Compared to learning how to play any musical instrument well, it's rather trivial.

It's probably harder to get good at handling the mixer, levels and EQ as DJ software abstracts this away with auto-gain (again if you have no solid experience in sound engineering). Learning how to choose good cue points (phrasing) will again take some time if you have no idea about musical composition, but it can be simplified (usually 16-32 bars, outro -> intro, breakdown -> buildup). On top of that, add 'harmonic mixing'.

The thing is, if you don't put in the time to learn beatmatching by ear and hands, you likely won't learn how to listen attentively. Even if you auto-match the tempos based on BPM, you'll get ugly phase mismatches on the kicks and snares/claps that will sound bad and you won't even be able to notice how a small nudge could make it all gel much better.

Another tendency is to simply mix and switch tracks too fast because you have nothing else to do, the software makes it instant. The audience always takes a longer time to get into a track than you.

But in the end, I've seen no correlation between skill and event lineups.

Source: 15+ years of experience
This guy wrote The Wire, which famously had a scene comprised entirely of two detectives saying ‘Fuck’ in different tones of voice while examining a crime scene. I’m not sure what you would expect.
I think in the future they will consider us in the past complete idiots for using lead for anything except /maybe/ radiation shielding because of the neurotoxic effects and it being well known as a danger.

It will seem as dumb as using radium paint and radioactive "tonics" except that radiotherapy is a legitimate thing unlike lead therapy.
>the Lion Air crash (they were busy smearing the airline an the pilots instead)

In a rush to put to blame on Boeing everyone seems to have forgotten that Lion Air badly screwed up:

(1) The aircraft exhibited the same failure on its previous flight. Not fixing it before the next flight is a huge maintenance screw up.

(2) That failure and the steps to correct it should have been in the log book and the next pilots should have been keenly aware of the potential issue and how to fix it

(3) The pilots counteracted MCAS some 20 times by using the electronic trim control but never switched over to manual control.

A better designed plane might not have tested the mettle of Lion Air as sternly as this issue did. However, that doesn't change that the fact that when tested the pilots and Lion Air performed terribly.

It wasn't just Boeing defending their plane. Pilots unions also came out and said that they saw no issue with the plane and that their members felt like they could handle any issue.
> If your app or website uses a Unicode character which isn't supported on a device, the user will usually see � - a replacement character. If you include Unifont, they'll see the correct character.

Neat idea. I think the transition to UTF-8 is practically done, I'm not seeing � anymore these days (used to be extremely common a while back).
SpaceX has completed the first tethered hop for the Starhopper
> America must be doing something right.

Since Europe gets to enjoy all those benefits without lifting a finger, I'd say they're doing it righter.
There's obviously a pretty tight feedback mechanism between the startup trajectory and the VC environment. (I believe the former drives the latter in the long-run, rather than the opposite.)
I wonder what he thought made Google+ "less mindless" than the other platforms.
Call for Nominees for Celery's Technical Board
<raises hand>

And political scientists! (No-one listens to us, of course).

More seriously, the case for standard First-Past-The-Post voting is really bad in terms of its decision-making properties. It's really only as dominant as it is, where it is, because of its historical position. Exactly what you might replace it with is a trickier question, with multiple plausible candidates, all better than FPTP and all different from each other. I lean towards Single Transferable Vote, and its special case AV/IRV in single member elections, but reasonable people can disagree.

Intriguingly, the British Parliament has just effectively used approval voting to try to break its Brexit deadlock. It failed in this case largely because many members voted highly tactically for their 'ideal' option only, not for what they could live with. AV/IRV would have been a better choice, I think, if a compromise winner was actually wanted.
While I love the convenience, especially while travelling, I'd add
5. Fraudulent publishers; you can't easily see how 'thick' the book is. Some 'novels' turn out to be 70 page short stories.
Popularity is a behavior. Its either marketing or some form of narcissism.
The state cannot replace God, it’s inherently corrupt. People in tech seem to always forget this.