skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Of course, and this is to be expected considering the intelligence and human nature of the general public. But the behavior/beliefs on this specific topic (at least) of people on relatively much smarter forums like HN is identical to that of the general public.

Here we have a situation where people of above-average intelligence, especially technically, passionately believe something of a technical nature, and will not question it. That's the part I find absolutely fascinating within the context of the whole "fake news" discussion.
> It's hard for studios to connect to competent writers without wading through a tidal wave of utter dross

Looks like there’s an opportunity for the Writer’s Guild, with the help of a few technologists, to create an internal peer-review system. (Ideally, where reviewers are blind to the writer’s identity.)
Was interested until the dark patterns in the data use popup started kicking in :(
> So there are no holes in a straw - it's a tunnel.

Well, it's more like a tunnel than a hole, but it's not quite a tunnel either. I can touch the outside of a straw. It's not clear that I can touch the outside of a (proper) tunnel.

But yes, topological holes are a lot more like tunnels (in the ground) than they are like holes (in the ground). But on the other hand, topological holes are like holes in your socks. Socks are a really good example because no one refers to the inside of a sock as a "hole". If a sock is in good repair it has no holes despite the fact that it superficially resembles a floppy cup.

> It's not a problem, it's an opportunity.

In this case I would call it a missed opportunity. And that's a problem (IMHO).

The missed opportunity is to really talk about the subtlety and malleability of natural language and how mathematics can make things precise, and why this is desirable. Instead it comes across as a geek being smug about knowing the "right answer" to brain teaser because topology.
please remove this. it's behind a paywall
Sure, but at these long wavelengths the dust is effectively transparent.
> Say you're a studio making a movie and you want to hire, say, 5 writers, 25 actors, 10 special effects editors, 3 stuntmen, etc. You'd prefer to get them as a package because it's easier for you and you have a better chance of them working well together.

This is called a production company and it has existed as a concept for a long time. Amblin is Spielberg's production company, Bad Robot is JJ Abrams', Syncopy is Chris Nolan's, etc.

It's just another layer of abstraction... ok now the production company has given the studio a nice package of talent to sign a contract with, but how did the production company create that package? By signing talent, which means there's still a role for talent agency. They're just negotiating with the production company instead of a studio.

What big talent agencies tried to do was collapse those two layers--production company and talent agency--into one. They wanted to do this because production is lucrative, especially when you don't have to negotiate with talent! Because you supposedly "represent" them.

> The interchangeable cogs that don't really need an agent end up with an agency that's more like a staffing firm.

I mean, I'm sure this maps to how the big companies think about staffing, but I doubt you'd find many people in the film industry who think of themselves as "interchangeable cogs". This fundamental disagreement about value is why contract negotiations happen in the first place.
Similar story here in Finland. Officially the country is 100 years old, but of course people have been living here for much longer than that. Sadly there is little evidence of them though, because they built their houses from wood.

By contrast the city I grew up in, York, had stone walls that are ~2000 years old. The next city I lived, Edinburgh, has some proper-old buildings too. e.g. The Royal mile contains buildings from the 12th century, and I regularly used to drink in pubs that were 600-800 years old.

In short "old" is relative.
Makes sense, thank you. I will think more about the problem.
>Sorry, it's the law.

I’d imagine this same argument sees regular use in China.
The article describes a case where an innocent man had to spend a week in jail. Eventually, he was released and the presumed actual perpetrator was caught. The lead seemed to come from the location data, so it wasn’t useless at least.

But the so called justice system says that it got it right here. The innocent man lost his job when he couldn’t work for a week. Depending on his situation he could miss rent and be evicted too.

Why do we have a system that says justice was served? It’s cruel and unfair.

This dragnet police tactic will scoop up more bystanders and probably convict more than a few innocents as well. I like the timeline feature- it has been genuinely helpful for remembering when I did things months ago. The tie in with photos is also a fun way to remember trips. It’s sad that the cost of these features is to roll the dice on getting arrested because a crime was committed nearby.
Most companies patent stuff they never make just to bump up their portfolio size.
I didn’t make that connection. That’s a very good book.
So what, if the tires don't have enough tread should the car refuse to move until it's towed to an authorized Tesla service center? Bad tires can be as dangerous as self-driving bugs, this sounds far too safety-critical to allow owners to muck about with.

This mindset is honestly frightening, I like to actually own the products that I have purchased.
This kind of horrible is limited to online culture, though. People don't troll when talking face to face. If they did, everybody would see they were assholes, and they would suddenly find that nobody wanted to hang out with them anymore.
Honestly, even as a transport datatype it's always bothered me that JSON lacks a well defined number. I mean, if your going to allow infinitely large numbers shouldn't you explicitly support them with Big types?

EDIT: and if you want fixed size numbers (for many good reasons) then what size?

JSON as a config is another story, and I completely agree with this link. I'm a personal fan of TOML[1] for many purposes.

[1]: https://github.com/toml-lang/toml
I said they were the end result of government policy. I said nothing about them being government.
> I think one can argue that women have been socialized to want aggressive men so that becomes a common fantasy vs it's a biologically based phenomenon

Or it's just a popular form of easily consumable 'taboo'. No need to theorize about women secretly wanting violent relationships when there's a much simpler explanation on the table.
There were about 30 people in dev/test/pm working on PowerShell version 1. What were their names again?
Start with hitting cloud provider APIs directly, then looking for value-add on top of that.
I read this to be convinced, and I remain unconvinced.

• Lack of comments
- Config files are usually pretty self explanatory

• Readability
- Never been an issue

• Strictness (complaints about trailing commas)
- Who cares

• Lack of programmability
- Does YAML offer this? I don't know YAML.

What are the alternatives?

Edit: After 35 minutes of comments here - looks like we have zero consensus and the article is trying to prescribe a preference.
I have to say, this makes me sad. I visit HN daily, mostly look at the headlines and rarely engage in the discussion, but seeing what are supposed to be smart, thinking people commenting in here just saddens me. Same goes for the other 1k+ comments on the previous thread.

It seems you people think it's ok to have someone end up like this guy for helping a source get us information we all benefited from. You can say trying to protect this source's identity is conspiracy to commit computer hacking, but your head needs to be buried very deep into the sand to pretend this is anything but the excuse used to get him.

The actual crime here is holding governments accountable. Trying, at least.

I understand most of you didn't love him for exposing problems inside a political party otherwise set to win the election. I really do. I understand he didn't do much to be loved by the public. I understand 10 years of propaganda could make most people change their mind about a saint. But here, too?

I listened to his most recent interview today and I really enjoyed his views. I half expect people to point out this is Russian state media, and yes, the reds are out to get you but can listen to it in the background, that way the watermark can't bother you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J98ed6oML2A

I lost one fifth of my karma yesterday defending the guy, let's see if this comment goes the same way.

Edit: funny enough my comment went to -3 in no time before slowing crawling its way back to +1. Almost like if... Nah.
Nearly all pollution is due to older vehicles and diesel vehicles. Banning all non-electric cars is a rather sledgehammer way to deal with that.
This matches my experience as well. I take the Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris once or twice a month, and a round trip ticket is around 200 euros.

I don’t think this is expensive at all. Surely the car would be much more expensive (fuel + maintenance), so I do not share the author’s point of view.

I, for one, am incredibly happy for having a viable (much better, actually) alternative to the airplane.
Bob's Red Mill
Given the blind faith demonstrated all around here that seems about right.
"Lack of programmability" is a feature. Declarative config lets tools statically analyze and transform the config. You can't even figure out what the dependencies are going to be for some Gradle projects without executing them. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51153878/conditional-dep... -- The author's programmable example is a classic Bad Idea in my experience.

Also, check out JSON schema and its integration into tools like VSCode. VSCode gives you generalized autocomplete on its own config and known config formats like package.json by pulling in json schema definitions. It works well. Easily a better experience than the executable-program-as-config I learned to hate in the JVM world, and easily better than ad-hoc config like Caddy's.

I have a more practical pitch: make your tool consume json5 as well as json.

Also, it's telling that the author wasn't even willing to stick their neck out enough to pitch a single solution. I guess in the end they realized there are always trade-offs and any alternative would have its own downsides. :) But I'm getting a bit fatigued of these you're-doing-it-wrong posts. They are effortless to write and they're like crack to HN. I can complain about literally everything.
Exactly. This is the media setting the stage for a fight among people and then reporting on that fight for more revenue. Then acting shocked that the fight is even happening.
>Any recommendations for cars whose UI doesn't suck?

Get a steering wheel with controls on it if the manufacturer doesn't offer physical buttons on the head unit. I'd be super surprised if you couldn't put a higher trim Civic's steering wheel on a lower trim Civic. Look for part outs from totaled cars (the sport and SI trims are good places to look - kids drive them irresponsibly, and they have high end tech that is usually salvageable when the body gets totaled).

I'm fairly happy with my Subaru Impreza - it has the head unit described in this post. The physical knobs and seek buttons make up for the dusty, stragnely-sensitive-sometimes, strangely-unsensitive-other-times screen.
Indeed. I heard of him back when he was a popular Ruby on Rails blogger, but had stopped paying attention years ago. It's crazy to see him arrested in Ecuador in association with WikiLeaks.
It's perfectly possible to know several languages in-depth. It just takes a lot of time and effort. Moreover, it gets easier with time and practice. Knowing N languages makes learning N+1 language just a bit easier. For me the turning point was around N == 10, since when learning a new language - and yes, in-depth, including idioms, stdlib, some external libraries, maybe some framework (if needed), and also some facts about the implementation and its inner workings[1] - takes a week at most, and for simpler cases a weekend is enough.

OTOH, it took around 15 years to get there. I understand that this kind of dedication may not be possible or worth it for everyone.

[1] Because there is very, very little unique features to each language. Unless you go to the fringes, you're bound to see the same concepts applied again and again and again, which gets really disheartening after a while. If you don't believe me, try naming any "new" feature which was added to your favorite (EDIT: I meant mainstream - TIOBE top 10 or 20 - lang here!) language recently - and I'll show you that same feature implemented 10 or 20 years ago in another language(s).

EDIT: more neutral wording.
Top three replies to the PS thread:

> . . . It's a miserable language, full of unexpected behaviors and badly designed features. . .

> I haven't met a single person who likes PowerShell. It's perhaps the textbook example of ugly design that looks technically consistent but utterly unfriendly and mind bogglingly verbose. . .

> PowerShell is one of the few bits of software which has actually made me throw a computer in anger. The idea has potential but the implementation is just bad. . .

No one is really looking into his IC but the thread is not positive. I have no idea who contributed what, but I’m not sure anyone would want to claim part of the credit for powershell.

——

Here’s a thread for man behind AMD’s zen architecture: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14989551

First comment:

> Zen is the work of a huge team of talented engineers. To single one out as "the man behind Zen" seems very wrong. . .

——

The man behind objective-c: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8422695

Second comment:

> The man behind Objective-C these days (and for the past decade plus) is this guy: http://www.sealiesoftware.com/blog/

——

For the other threads I saw, some were actually individual efforts, others were just ignoring “the man behind” and talking about the tech. Changing my search to “woman behind”, I saw no comments disparaging the level of contribution.

EDIT: I’m also by no means justifying the vitriol in the black hole thread or the harassment. Just doing some legwork.
This is so goddamn dumb and stupid

> generic shortcomings of config files

apply them to json as if it's a special case!

the author is bad and should feel bad
> extradition of blasphemers to Pakistan, or anti-government protesters to China

A rather poor choice of examples, I'd say.

Extradition for blasphemy from the United States runs afoul of the dual criminality requirement. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_criminality)

The US also has no extradition treaty with China. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_extradit...)
Should attempting to break into somebody else’s property not be a crime?
Yeah. I was wrong but if mime was set as "text/html;/json" full JS pwnage was possible.

https://gist.github.com/x0rz/8198e8e22b1f70fddb9c815c1232b79...
When you write something like this please include a date of publication.
"per capita food waste in Europe and North America is 95kg to 105kg a year"

That's a massive amount, and that is just waste in the household, not waste in the farm or factory.

I can understand some wastage of salad and berries etc, but they're all lighter stuff. How can the average westerner waste 2kg food a week???
>comment support was explicitly removed from JSON for good reasons.

>https://plus.google.com/+DouglasCrockfordEsq/posts/RK8qyGVaG...

The link there goes to G+ and thus a dead end. Anyone have that link?

I would have liked to see some alternatives / options that the writer likes.
Website is really wigging out on iOS.

Back on topic, first we’re not supposed to use text files. Then, no XML files. Then, don’t use YAML. Now, we’re supposed to stop using JSON.

At some point you realize the problem isn’t with the tech but with the programmer. We have this need to constantly reinvent the wheel all the time. It’s silly.
Would be nice if you could add a few suggestions of languages that you consider more suitable for this task.
Thank goodness for Intellisense style autocomplete, and hover documentation.
> Those who work with the money always seem to carve out a larger slice for themselves

Not trying to be cynical or snarky here at all but it's kind of an 'of course' moment I've had on this a long time ago.

If you're a software engineer or hacker you tend to have the best laptops, best home network, best smart phone setup, etc.

Look at how inept on tech your friends are compared to you.

They're smart at whatever they're doing. If they're a firefighter they're probably amazing but when it comes to tech they're incompetent or at least naive.

Same thing for money... if ALL you do is work with money you're going to be amazing at it....

This is why I want to work with money. Unfortunately, this is how the world is just setup.
This. Some of my Structural engineering professors have invested so much time in Excel they practically have an instance of their mind in it. Really fancy systems too that could do just about anything they needed. Always impressed me.

Your project is a great read!
Doctors Use Electrical Implant to Aid Brain-Damaged Woman
So what is your favourite format for config files?
Exactly. The author rambles on about how bad JSON is as a choice for config files, but doesn’t mention any better alternatives. Seems like just ranting for the sake of ranting.
I get the desire since JSON isn't seen as a configuration tool by its designers. However, it's proven itself to be a suitable tool for driving screws as well as hammers (to paraphrase).

For the software folks -- why not adapt the tool or spin off a similar tool to handle these very common use patterns?
There is no stabilization of the Japanese ethnic population in sight. With these trends I wonder how the island will change culturally in 100 or 200 years. I suspect we'll see them continue to open more and more to the west.
Agreeing to attempt, and no.

It wouldn’t be in large parts of the world, so clearly many reasonable people disagree on this.
I agree with this except for the last point. "Lack of programmability" is a good thing. Mixing configuration and code is a recipe for a tangled mess.
That doesn’t account for airport taxes and boarding time. Real door-to-door durations are different, and I would take the Thalys over airplanes any day (the WiFi is great and you can get actual work done).
Or take a sphere and poke a hole in it. Topologist says there are no holes, because now it is a disk. But wow else would you describe poking a hole in a sphere?
JSON as config is the same reason XML as Config files were a bad idea. Configuration files will often be read and changed by humans and thus should be easily human readable.

Plain text equals configuration setting is still a good idea.
60% of the world's crop yield is the direct result of fossil fuel derived fertilizers. Recycling food is recycling fossil fuels, otherwise it just ends up rotting into the environment and polluting it just the same as burning the fuels except you aren't doing anything with it if it just rots in a landfill.
maybe this is old information but I thought it sent information back to Kite? This article is old but for what it's worth: https://qz.com/1043614/this-startup-learned-the-hard-way-tha...
‘Deceptively simple’ would have been a better term probably.
https://json5.org
I like Toml for my config files. Clear and simple format.
protobuffers now! protobuffers forever!
> I don’t accept you can survey 90000 developers and cannot offer any generalization from those results without quantitatively proving there is an overwhelming sample bias

I didn’t see anyone point this out here yet specifically, but what you’re missing is that these 90k devs chose to respond to the survey, and the group is made of only SO participants, they were not developers selected at random. That’s the problem here.

There is an overwhelming bias, and it has been proved. Stack Overflow admits that openly and Julia talked about it in her answer to the OP’s commentary:

“Developers from underrepresented groups in tech participate on Stack Overflow at lower rates, so we undersample those groups, compared to their participation in the software developer workforce. We have data that confirms that”
JSON is fine as a transport datatype between two bits of code you completely control (e.g., webapp front end and back end). It is a terrible choice as soon as you want to publish and document a public protocol.
I'm confused by all the comments here attacking those who viewed this entire story with skepticism, considering the skeptics were ultimately correct. See https://twitter.com/SaraIssaoun/status/1116304522660519936

> There are more of us. Katie's algorithm, despite the media's stance, was not used to produce this image. There were three algorithms used and combined to form the final image, and a team of 40 scientists part of that aspect of the project (including myself and more women).

Katie Bouman's algorithm was not even used in the construction of the final image. If that's not an indictment of modern journalism, I don't know what is. Even the New York Times has published a story corroborating all this, and as far as I can tell they were one of the few journalistic outlets that did not publish a prior story pushing the narrative of the single female scientist solving this problem: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/katie-bouman-blac...

> While she led the development of an algorithm to take a picture of a black hole, an effort that was the subject of a TED Talk she gave in 2016, her colleagues said that technique was not ultimately used to create this particular image.

Ultimately, this fiasco is a textbook example of news media and social media spinning up a manufactured, hyped-up story to push a certain narrative. Virtually every news outlet was publishing the same story emphasizing how a singular female scientist was behind this effort. Bouman herself was even quoted in some of these articles as saying it was a team effort, by the way, so none of this is her fault. But news media and ideologues on Twitter pushed a gender-centric narrative nonetheless, and in doing so, overtly politicized the story.

For example, take a look at the Washington Post's article on this story. Initially it was titled "Katie Bouman, #womeninstem star, created algorithm [...]". You can still see this title in Google search results (https://www.google.com/search?q=katie+bouman%2C+%23womeninst...). Now the story has been revised to "Katie Bouman helped the world see a black hole. Fans want ‘a rightful seat in history’ for her."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/11/katie-boum...

Given how ubiquitous this story was for those 1-2 days, I think it makes sense that people would also examine the details critically, and also question if they were the victim of media manipulation pushing some ideological narrative. And as I stated at the very beginning, they were ultimately correct.