skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Honestly, I really don't understand the motivations for some of these parents. Take Lori Loughlin. $500,000? For USC? For two daughters, one of whom clearly isn't that interested, isn't particularly academic and isn't particularly athletic? Like... why?

I can understand if someone bribes their kid into, say, Harvard or Yale Law School. There's a career where going to a good school matters. But this? It just makes no sense to me.

Felicity Huffman may end up being sentenced to 10 months in jail (and, let's face it, might serve only 5) but, still, that's a big deal for someone who probably never expected to go to jail. It's also on the lighter end because of her guilty plea and cooperation with the prosecution. What are these parents who have plead not guilty going to get when they're found guilty?

Add to this the children have to live with the stigma of these actions. I don't have a huge amount of sympathy here because at least some of them were complicit. Posing for photos faking crew, that sort of thing. But still... why would you want to risk your children having to live with that... to go to USC?
how did the managers doing the alleged retaliating get hired at google in the first place? I thought the crazy I interview process existed to get the right people?
The actual problem here is not the bribery. The problem is that those bribes are being captured by random 3rd parties, rather than by the school itself. The correct way to implement college admissions is this: Charge a sliding scale fee based on application quality, and then use the excess revenue generated to subsidize poor kids tuition. Your kid has a 2.5 GPA and wants to go to Harvard? Great, that'll be a million dollars a year. You'll be funding the tuition of 20-30 kids of lesser means and everybody wins.
I don’t want the USA to turn into India or China, where your academic fate is decided by some cruddy standardized test given in 5th grade.
Location: Montreal

Remote: Probably not

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I think that's different. <a ping> has been in Safari for years now, that article was only written because WebKit recently removed the ability to disable it.
Ask HN: Any Leftist/Socialist/* Techies Here?
In honor of the day (yesterday in some time zones), May 1st, International worker's day, I want to ask if there are any of the above mentioned on HN?! :) I'm "kind of" a Socialist, but I disagree with many traditional Socialist views. Always hard to put a "label" on your opinions. Those views are one of the reasons (in addition to love for programming) that I like free software. Always hoped that fs would make the world more egalitarian. But it has not happened. In fact, perhaps free tech is making the world more unequal? If there are any other Leftist/Socialist/* techies I wonder what your perspectives are? Not only on fs but also in general.

* - The star is because there are so many different labels so you can't enumerate them all. Choose which one you like.
You are bribing the institution when you buy a building. It could be useful or wasted, just like giving money to a person.
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Who gets to decide who is a scientist and who is not a scientist? Scientists?
The US faces many of the logistic and economic challenges the British faced when they ruled the world's oceans.
Yes, but to be more precise, what's scarce is property near jobs. Jobs are ultimately what determine who moves where. That's critical for understanding the problem.

CA voters thought they could prevent people from coming here by reducing housing and boy were they ever wrong. It's too bad this lesson took 50 years to play out and awareness is only now slowly starting to arise.
You can't change that paradigm. Everything ultimately cashes out in force, unless you want to invent a new universe with new physics or something.
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Remote:Yes

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Technologies:python backender, postgresql, zmq, rabbit, celery, network protocols etc.

Résumé/CV: can find my GitHub through my site, https://theelous3.net

Email: embedded on site
"Charges ranged from cheating on college entrance exams to paying bribe money to university officials, "
More renters become owners, reducing the number of renters in the market.
Why not, it benefits the whole student body and is above board, everyone knows. These people were bribing people who were not in school governance, people in athletics for example, to get their kid in, denying another deserving kid. Neither the school or other students benefitted, only the people partaking in the bribery scheme.
Well Europe has figured out how to redirect all that energy into football so other paradigms are possible. Before that discovery they spent most of history killing each other every 3 months or so.
The population is getting older. Right now those homes are being rented out, inevitably raising prices since some portion of the rent is profit. This is likely not a long term situation, making investing in houses seem very risky indeed. It's probably priced in though.
Hmm. I have a Dell laptop, but replaced Windows 10 with Ubuntu. I doubt I'm vulnerable to that... but my security stance is probably not as strong as it could be.
I wonder if the low-volatility anomaly is connected with this one:

In theory people should get paid for accepting risk in their personal careers. Gig economy jobs should pay more for the benefits you don't get. Government employees used to get paid less for more security. By that measure adjuncts should get paid more than tenured faculty members.

Practically it is the other way around. One take could be that pay and security both correlate to power. Another one is that security is good for your health, career development, networking, etc. Another one is that the idea that "risk and reward are correlated" aren't true, and that risk is really like what most people (not hedgies) think risk is... A bad thing.
I think a key difference here is that the McMarksFace building is given to the university, while the bribery scandal involves giving money to individuals. An analogy would be "buying" a car by giving $5k to the salesperson to get the keys rather than $50k to the dealership to actually buy it.
got it, thanks for the link!

So, they seem to be saying if we don’t support the ping element, adtech folks will use more malicious techniques?

I like that they are encouraging first-party analytics, and they are making small tweaks to respecting CSP, but something feels weird about this.
Opt-IN, No Ads, and No Tracking Solve a Lot of Problems in Society
Don't you need the funding of the super rich guy with the dumb kid who takes up a single student slot in order to offer free school to the dozen kids who "deserve" it academically?

Without the first (in aggregate, over generations), the others don't even have the option.
The engineers involved were not part of YouTube at the time of acquisition. YouTube also wasn't really acquihire. The site had a huge user base Google wanted.
these people are nuts
The cost vs the Manhattan project as a drain on German resources is one of the major thesis points in "The Rocket and the Reich."
This is a very common take from people who have never used Bluetooth headphones before. I've had several sets of Bluetooth headphones and earbuds in the past, and they've been the same type of "just works" experience for me. Except better sound quality, and frequently water resistant.

If you like the AirPods then that's great for you, but stop pretending they're some fantastic innovation over what came before, or that they've kept up with what's come out since.
So, this point bugs me. I am dead set against the decision to allow corporations to participate in our political system but nobody has ever said "So, mom, dad... this is Purdue Pharma - you can call him Fred for short - we're uh, we're getting married!". Corporations aren't people, they aren't human beings and they aren't homo-sapiens what they are is, quite accurately, legal "persons" when it comes to how a lot of US laws are worded.

There are things that you do and a corporation do that a river can't do, and to describe this set of things laws use the term "person" this makes sense but the name is terrible. In the US, for instance, you can't sue a mountain if you fall and hurt yourself - you can sue a mining company that left equipment there, or maybe the national parks service for having unsafe trails or maybe even your friend Fred (i.e. Purdue Pharma) for pushing you off the edge of the cliff (maybe, more accurately, for failing to inform you of a dizziness side effect in a medication they sold you that caused you to fall) but you can't sue the mountain itself and, likewise, there is no way a mountain could be punished that we can comprehend - again, maybe if this mountain is owned by someone then, as a result of this suit, you are awarded partial mining rights or ownership of the mountain - but that is a compensation granted at the loss of some other entity, maybe a mining company, or the property owner or even the US government.

Either way, corporations and human beings have some legal commonalities that aren't shared with mountains.

elliekelly as you're actually a lawyer, can you express this better or clarify it?
That wouldn't have the same issue since the space at the beginning would fail that regex.
One one hand, donating to improve the chances of one's kid getting admitted is kind of scummy. On the other hand, the immense amount of money that gets donated is why elite schools are able to give very generous financial aid. Stanford doesn't even charge tuition if parents make less than $125,000 per year. On principle I'm adverse to wealthy people buying opportunities, but if buying opportunities creates more of them for other people then I think that may be a net good.
Having bigoted values and using them for social control is a familiar scene in America for its entire history. The natural progression of pro-business is to use regulatory capture to create an artificial monopoly—competition brings down profits. All we really need to add to this is a one party system to form a true fascist state: something republicans could conceivably achieve given their control of the senate.

The democratic party, on the other hand, is showing a clear schism between pro-corporate and an pro-labor wings. It is trivial to imagine a split into two parties. The republicans have no future without the social control our president demonstrated in his run and term.

If anything, putting a bigoted republican on the AI ethics committee is leaning into a future where Alphabet would benefit from a fascist state.
>I feel like the solution here is to not bribe your children's way into school.

Or maybe the solution should be to stop accepting bribes. I really am surprised that almost all of the public outrage is being directed at the parents and more of it isn't being directed at the people who actually received the cash. I think lots of parents are willing to stretch their morals in order to give their kid every possible advantage in life. That isn't exactly noble behavior, but it is more forgivable to me than the old-fashioned financially motivated corruption of the people who accepted the bribes. And even the school agreeing to the "buying a building" style bribe has some type of altruistic motive to improve the welfare of the school. The people accepting these bribes were just trying to get rich.
Yes but in this case it didn't trigger.
I was hoping to see support for U2F. I prefer to use Safari but really enjoy Chrome's support for Yubikey.
There's a massive amount of daylight between wanting admissions to be completely oligarchic and recognizing that at some point a seat should have a price. For example, suppose it was worth it to Bezos to fund the entire Harvard class of '23, and the price is that his child ought to be a member of that class. It would be absurd for Harvard to turn this down. There is no victim of this trade, except perhaps Bezos' heirs -- Harvard can use a small fraction of the money to create an extra seat for the would be freshman.

That does not mean admissions would be oligarchic in its entirety. It would not have to affect the "meritocracy" by which the remaining seats are won. Being willing to accept profoundly large donations in exchange for a seat is not the same as turning the whole admissions process into an auction. There are not enough people willing to give such donations for a seat.

Or, maybe a slightly more cynical take? Look at the parental wealth distribution of private colleges, and you'll notice that it already is "oligarchic." I mean in the sense that children of relatively wealthy parents are by far more likely to make the cut to get in in the first place.
Yeah I have no idea how anyone thinks that would be a good thing. You only have to watch the hyper-nationalism and blowing up satellites in LEO in the lead up to this election, as the country. Of all the places on Earth where nuclear weapons would be ever used again it's a top contender.
Or we could just allow people to rent?

Renting is awesome!
the basic premise is that the bottom line for control is deadly force

Yes. That's actually enshrined in international law. Sovereignty is pretty much defined as whomever has enough force in that place to get their way.

the international operating mode is that serious conflicts are resolved with machines designed to destroy property and lives

CGP Grey puts it this way: Sovereignty == Bigger Army Diplomacy.

Actually that's not quite right. Sovereignty == Better Armed Forces with Sustainable Logistics Diplomacy.
While the total compensation may be less then your total income now, I can tell you its 100% possible to live in the DC area on that salary, without a significant drop in quality of life. That includes if you have a family. The Metro lines go out into the Virginia and Maryland suburbs and you can find nice places to live with some of the nations top school districts.

Additionally while you will take a temporary hit to income, you will be working on projects that have real impact on the lives of every american in the country. You will be empowered to make changes and do what is right at the highest level of the government. You will be heartbroken at the amount of need, and the amount of pain that is caused by things you can fix. You will be exposed to all the failures of the government, and you will be right at the center of some of its greatest successes. At the end of your tour of duty you will be sad that there wasn't more you could do, but you will be forever grateful for the opportunity to have served and to have made the country better. You will probably leave not even looking for the most money at your next job, but just trying to figure out how you can continue to have purpose anywhere near the same level you just experienced.

If you are on the fence do it.
I don’t see how it isn’t legitimately open source. There may not be a “LICENSE.MD” file in the repo, but the “package.json” file does list the license as “MIT”. That’s good enough for me.
The streaming wars have also effectively ushered in a golden age of TV, as they all compete for the best exclusive content. While annoying, you can switch between them each month instead of paying for all simultaneously.
USC is definitely a status symbol on the West Coast (especially in Southern California). It's obviously not on the same academic level as UCLA/Berkeley/Stanford/Caltech, but it's still very much an exclusive brand. You don't get it because you don't live here and aren't surrounded by wealthy 16-year olds that yearn to go to USC (often times over UCLA/Berkeley/Stanford).

(Disclaimer: I'm a UCLA alum.)
Smarter Real Estate Investing
Many of these "elite" colleges are one of the best avenues to eliminate inequality. Many of them have significant (at least double digit) percentages of the student population that are first generation college students. Elite universities often have the greatest degree of racial diversity.
this is the most self evident truth if politics perhaps ever
It's bizarre to talk with someone who views a house as a good "investment" and who doesn't see the danger of 4:1 leverage that a "standard" mortgage involves.

These are the kinds of people who get wiped out in real estate declines.
And you still need a down payment. Are you suggesting that everyone should either own a home or be homeless? What about college students? Should they also buy houses just for the amount of times they are in college?

If I move for a job, should I immediately buy a house? On the other hand what if I know I don’t plan to be in an area for long? Should I buy a house for a year or two? What happens when I am ready to move and can’t find a seller?
The README says:

> License

This code is released without license. I hope that you'll read the source to answer any questions you have and take that knowledge to your own projects, rather than forking and augmenting Tinkersynth itself.

(Of course you're more than welcome to try modifying the code for your own curiosity! Just please don't publish it, or try to monetize it).
I bought a Galago Pro (since discontinued) in 2015. It's still my daily driver and it's held up very well. I even once dropped it from a second-floor balcony.
I don't understand why folks subject themselves to this for $1000 when other options are available.

You don’t have to keep supporting Samsung by buying their phones. Get a pixel instead.
I think this is a really good opportunity to see just how white-collar fraud falls in line with rational choice theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory_(crimin...).

In the quoted article, Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty to pay a college counselor $15,000 to arrange cheating on an SAT test. Hence, one data point on the market price for cheating, as agreed upon by Ms. Huffman and college counselor, is $15,000. One claim about Ms. Huffman's net worth is that she earns $275,000 per episode of "Desperate Housewives", which airs weekly. This fine is about half a day's work for her, if that. For half a day's worth of work, she can doctor her daughter's SAT scores. This is assuming that the episodes aren't recorded at once and take much less time than one week for filming, freeing up time to invest in other income streams. So cheating in this case is a very rational thing to do, given zero cost for broken morals or ethics.

The only real "hard-power" argument I can think of for children who may inherit great wealth to gain intelligence is to avoid a run-around by the family lawyers after Mom and Dad croak. But even then, that doesn't take a whole lot of intelligence (Donald Trump is smart enough to avoid that fate), and it kind of doesn't make sense for a family lawyer to do that anyways. If the kids are stupid and can't manage their money, just charge more in fees instead of rocking the boat in order to pocket a greater portion of the pie.

Crime does pay, if we don't punish it. That's why people do it. It's especially true in white-collar crime.
I disagree, since in this actual situation their actions caused google drive to jump on the bandwagon and they run an actual business with competitors that would be happy to guarantee long term support.

All that said... I had to work with ie6, it is terrible, and these people are heroes.
It makes little sense to go after the company if the penalty costs will bankrupt it. I bet that's the rationale. Had they felt they could have gotten more then they would have gone for more.

The next steps, they might have done it already, for the government is to go after the people that did the fraud and punish them. Depending on how certain the government feels about how strong the case is they will get jail time, fines and be ban from ever dealing with the government- one or all three.

I know what you mean sometimes punishment feels light versus the crime. But I know that it's a system the works better than one based the other way so we take the good with the bad.
Just in a practical global stability sense it would probably be best if China re assumed its historical role as regional hegemon.

I actually think it would be better for the us to unburden ourselves of the need to provide security for Taiwan, japan and Korea, as long as we continue to have trade agreements.

I realize that their system of government isn’t great and violates human rights on a massive scale, but in terms of foreign policy and the actual usage of their military for the past several decades, they’ve been a lot more reasonable and done far less damage than the us has.
What usually happens nowadays, is that technology greatly increases the amount of force which can be cashed out for. The start of the Nuclear age was literally applying a "new" (heretofore not yet applied to war) physics.

Applying space forces actively to war could well be applying a new part of the universe to war. (Airplanes and submarines were also this.)
No, they have other tools for enterprise, or in some IT departments buy third party tools off the shelf for this purpose.
I've worked at several of the big five, as well as a couple smaller companies, and I can't say I've had a similar experience. As long as people are willing to deprecate, delete, and consolidate continuously like your sanity depends on it, the scope of problems seems to be constantly shifting as things improve.

There will always be problems. Every time we solve one thing, we move to a place where we discover new kinds of issues. The question is whether we keep running into precisely the same kinds of issues over and over again, and in my experience, this has not been the case.
Yeah. Too bad I'm hellbanned!
I feel that your idea is already reality. It's just not official. The issue is that the people caught up in this scandal aren't wealthy enough to fund a building or even a building wing, or they would just go through the more acceptable route.
I'm trying to learn more about IPFS for long term file storage. Do you know if these services are using "IPFS Cluster" or something like it to manage pins?
This is a great question. Some laws make it harder to share data between parts of the federal government, for example. That might make spotting fraud, spam, or improper payments harder. At the same time, many folks might not want the government combining data across silos without a strong vetting process.

Or to take another example, there's a misconception that the Paperwork Reduction Act makes it illegal to talk to users: https://medium.com/@ErieMeyer/user-research-is-not-illegal-u... . In that case, the law might be reasonable, but you might have to tackle misconceptions or lore to make forward progress. A favorite hack to make forward progress is to ask "Show me where exactly in the law (or regulation or policy) it says that we can't do this?"

Going back to your question, the U.S. government is one of the largest organizations on the planet: millions of people. Veterans Affairs has about 380,000 employees alone. Meanwhile, Google just passed 100,000 employees.

Is it harder to infuse tech in government compared to a private company? Absolutely. But you also have to grade on the curve that the government is really big. And the flip side of that is that if you make a change in government, the scale means that you can affect millions or tens of millions of people with your change.
Rewriting code.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13619378

> Most software at Google gets rewritten every few years.