skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Better automation tools would almost certainly increase the chance of large-scale job loss in the event of a minimum wage hike. From a business perspective, it's a cost-benefit calculation - when the cost of automating a job is lower than the cost of paying a human to do it, automation will eventually win. If automation cost goes down and human labor cost goes up, the threshold shifts in favor of fewer human workers (although the profits get redistributed to the remaining workers/owners, so you get a continuation of today's inequality push).
So, to be clear, you’re saying that because you can’t choose to receive cash instead of insurance that means it’s not “compensation to the person” (to quote the OP)? That’s not an argument that makes sense to me.
The question with that though is, is creating a unique DSL for every problem you solve actually a sustainable way to program? Once you do that, every single person who works on the code needs to understand all the implicit behavior of the DSL before they can use it. And any misunderstanding they have about it comes out as bugs. Yes, maybe OO had to be specifically added to Python, Java etc., but it's one OO that everyone uses, so when I encounter it in the wild I know exactly how it works.
^^ sorry about the grammar
4 times more RAM than the Atari 2600 has.
Less messy computer designs. Computers with RS-232. The old IBM PC Model F keyboard (even with unlimited rollover). The .DVI (device independent) file format for printing. GOTO and GOSUB commands in programming languages. Unencrypted analog television. The PC BIOS (UEFI is terrible). BASIC and/or Forth in ROM.
Ask HN: Why are so many brilliant managers&engineers stuck at middle/low income?
Have you ever wondered what stops tech pros advancing in their career? Why are so many brilliant managers, executives and engineers stuck in the middle income prison?
I am obsessed with this question these days. Hence, I am conducting a research to find out (no sales). Only 3 minutes, and I'll share the results and the analysis with you:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf3BER6zWtM3x0L2j0gr0gjuRlySjoTXIJTkPDkjPkQ1cd5Kg/viewform
Don't hesitate to also answer this thread with your opinions.
Because "good" just as "clear" is not universal. But we can actually estimate how good abstractions can be in specific circumstances for specific users if we think of them in terms of familiarity, simplicity, consistency, flexibility and universality.
There are quite a few human jobs that deal with "neat rows, uniform textures, little noise, no external interference, physical feedback, low risk." Think: gift wrapping, cookie cutting, sewing, etc. As it currently stands, people still work these jobs in large quantities even though we have the technology to automate all of them out.

It is certainly comparatively easy to self driving cars. But that's the point: while we haven't solved level 5 autonomy yet, we do seem to be solving these lower level problems at or above the same skill level as trained professionals, and the amount of problems we solve with machine learning technology appears to be increasing at an exponential rate. It's logical to extrapolate from here that AI will be able to solve even harder problems in the future, including those our best researchers still haven't figured out.

A job at its core is applied problem solving. When AI services and physical robots can solve every problem in a better way than humans against every metric possible, there won't really be a need for humans in the workforce.
> even if you did manage to catch up, any useful innovations would be copied by incumbents.

If your optimization is sufficiently novel, can't you use intellectual property to protect yourself?

If that isn't an option, how do you provide yourself enough runway to scale fast enough to escape the incumbents?
What do you expect on a Linux distro to learn Web Development?
If you were a newcomer and you wish to learn, train and practice web development for example: django. Let's suppose you know little about Linux and python, how a Linux distro could you help you? What tools, wizards, configurations, would you expect?
> If software cannot be maintained, then it will be rewritten; and that could be the last time your company invests in Go.

Maybe on to something there, golang code bases I've seen are a complete mess because of how "simple" the language is. Hopefully more people start realizing this and moving on to better languages.
Even if that was true, the « mind » of most robots consist of mamy algorithms, some of which are not based on machine learning i.e. SLAM and path planning.
Best way to use asteroid resources: crash them into Mars now, while there is no hazard to humans. Then when people go there they'll have lots or useful raw material near the surface. ;-)
I'm no weight lifter, but I do know lifting weights is highly skilled unless you're into permanent injury.
I see, you're addressing whether cleverness is a limited resource.

Perhaps you're right, that practicing cleverness will make you cleverer.

But it still takes time and effort - perhaps those are the resources that are limited?
If this is indeed the case could the parent comment explain why they prefer Git via HTTPS instead of SSH?
It's many, many, many orders of magnitude difference.

I haven't done the math but my hunch is you could fit the entire ham allocation from VHF down in a single 10mbit pipe. VHF is usually 1200bps per channel and gets slower as you get lower in bandwidth.
Free alternative freefilesync.org
It's analagous to optimizations for resource-starved systems. If you have trouble processing 16 of something, you don't really benefit from improving the O(n) at the cost of higher overhead, you benefit from the same algorithm processing each item twice as fast. Linear micro-optimizations rule the world.

Being able to use lots of tools and hybridize your engineering to get relatively bigger savings is a result of having the headroom for algorithmic complexity to start ruling, which for video might be a relatively recent phenomenon(I don't actually know the domain).
> Windows is somehow worse than it used to be.

I have to agree. I use Windows probably 90% of the time, but I have to say it peaked with Windows 7 and started going downhill with 8. Now it's a game of "guess which config system has the option you need" + Microsoft forcing all kinds of things power users really should be able to disable.
Generic advice, but can you make a project that is interesting for which you can share code with hiring managers?

This would seem to cut through the challenges that you described:

It demonstrates your ability to code, solve technical challenges, and work from the perspective of the “users/business” (in the context of your project). It also gives you something to talk about. Building rapport helps to bridge gaps in culture.
Unencrypted communication to a website with identity would require some radical restructuring and very smart clients to generate and check the MAC codes. Pretty sure everyone everywhere would hate that.
> AMD Catalyst drop support for my 1 year old cheap Laptop

My advice is: Unless you're running a qualified application on a workstation GPU, do not use Catalyst (or whatever they're calling it this year). It is almost always more finnicky. Mesa has the best performance, and the most meaningful features for OpenGL, Vulkan, and D3D9 for any any GCN 1 or later (and probably r600 or later, but I don't have personal experience with that) GPU. AMD staffs people to maintain Mesa, including for GPUs they do not support their proprietary driver on; and if you're running a fresh/rolling-release distro, you'll tend to have a great out-of-the-box experience with Mesa.
Just that writing clever code, however defined, doesn't expend much of a cleverness resource - if anything, it strengthens it.

Walking strengthens the legs and increases endurance. However, no Roman Legionnaire would command his men, as if more marching would only increase capability, and they could therefore march forever and as much as they want. Instead, it's best to reserve the fast marches for when a goal is attainable which gives a tactical or strategic advantage.

There's only 24 hours a day to be clever, and there's only a limited number of hours per day a given person can muster the concentration to be clever.

That is, looking at each piece of clever code in isolation.

Which only applies to an isolated problem, as in a coding interview. In a programming project or a startup, it's more like a military campaign, where there will be many, many interrelated problems over many years.
I feel like this is turning out to be "The Storm" the QAnon conspiracy theorists have been going on about.

But I don't think it's going to be as partisan a reveal as they hope.

I think we're about to see a LOT of high profile people get outed as child molesters.

And it's not some grand reveal by "Q". It's going to be the authorities tearing apart everything Epstein and his cohorts have ever done.

And Trump himself will undoubtedly end up implicated.
Study the Maxwell equations and thou shalt be enlightened.
I wonder if one might use an svg tween to get a continuous wiggle 3D?
This is a summary of the mentality of the golang authors:

> The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt.

Of course "good" software is subjective, as I've seen golang encourages otherwise.
Does this support backing up many TB many million file data sets to multiple smaller target disks? I've been looking for a utility which can handle filling a disk with as many complete files as possible, then allowing a new disk to be inserted to continue.

This used to work great with tape utilities, but every hdd based copy/backup utility I've tried assumes your backups will always fit on a single target disk. Most also fail miserably after a few hundred thousand files, so it's nice to see this one supports millions sanely.
How does it feel to use? It's unfortunate but tin + lead solder is just better than the other options on the market.
Obviously rock doesn't conduct electricity but water+impurities does. When people talk about "ground" they are talking about the water in the ground.
All Mississippi Beaches Close Due to Toxic Algae Bloom
its an itty bitty coin :-)
There are two different mental models I find really useful when thinking about electricity. The second one will answer your question more directly, but the first one helps set the stage better.

Mental Model #1 (useful for most work with electricity):

Think of electricity moving through circuits as water going through pipes.

Electricity = water
Voltage = water pressure
Battery/Voltage Source = water pump
Wires = Water pipes
High/Low resistance = Wide/narrow water pipes

Voltage is like water pressure. You have a pump creating high water pressure is like a power source with a high voltage. The pump is always on and creating water pressure, but there's a cap placed on it that blocks the water from escaping. Similarly, in an open circuit the air acts as this cap and blocks the electricity from proceeding.

The wires in a circuit act as pipes channeling the water to different areas. Resistance in a circuit is analogous to the thickness of the pipes (low resistance == wide pipes, high resistance == thin pipes).

The above analogy sets part of the mental model. The twist is that in reality electrons want to actually travel from a place of low voltage to a place of high voltage (classical electrical diagrams show this process in reverse). Which leads us to...

Mental Model #2

Voltage sources are powerful electron vacuum cleaners trying to to suck up electrons.

(You can apply this on top of mental model #1, just reverse the direction of the water flow)

Open circuits generally don't conduct electricity since within a nano-second the voltage source will suck up all the free electrons in the circuit. The negative/ground pole in circuits are where the free electrons get supplied from for the voltage source to "suck in" the electrons from.

The ground (by virtue of it being so large and having lots of moisture/materials which conduct electricity) happens to have a virtually limitless source of electrons available for the voltage source to suck into itself. This provides the circuit with all the electrons required to successfully operate.

Hope that helps :)
WebAssembly with macros.
After all the pi power problems I faced over the years, I was hoping for a simple 12v barrel jack.
I honestly disagree that the user experience isn't as good, and I don't think people have enough faith to try it out for a while. I've spent thousands of hours in many workflows and I still find email to be the easiest and most efficient way of doing it.

However, I don't focus on the enterprise crowd, you're right about that.
I've wondered how interstellar smelting would work. There would need to be centripetal force on the foundry station to keep metals flowing. Nearby ice could provide hydrogen and oxygen for propulsion and even heat for steam turbine electricity for the plant. Certainly there would be uranium present as well so fission would be an option, albeit more complicated.

Four/eight year military service spent policing/polluting the world could be replaced by short "tours" in asteroid belt operations.

The key to all of this would be constant launches and flow of material/labor, ideally with international cooperation. The high frequency of launches in itself is a safety feature - stranded crews would be able to expect fly-bys.

It would be expensive at first because we would essentially be ejecting many resources away from the planet. But the promise of heavy-industry eventually zoned outside of our natural atmosphere could be the [non-classical] incentive.
Link to the GitHub issue in the tweet: https://github.com/JeffreyWay/laravel-mix/issues/2153

Link to the Webpack issue: https://github.com/webpack/webpack-cli/issues/962

Apparently it's caused by a bug with OS-specific code to check the last time a message asking for donations to the project was printed, so it doesn't ask too much. And this checking only happens on mondays for some reason... There's literally a "if (now.getDay() === MONDAY)".
NSA Office of Inspector General Semi-Annual Report to Congress (Oct 18-Mar 19)
Over the years, I have encountered dozens of programmers in their 20's and 30's who seem to prioritize impressing fellow programmers over the clarity of the code base as a whole. In fact, I'd say there's something about programming education which seems to produce these attitudes.
Before discussing lawyers and how much they're going to cost... why don't you just contact the developers first to get their side of the story and their suggested resolution?

You're using really emotive language like "ripped off" and "taunt" and assigning malice to this without knowing the whole picture.

To give them the benefit of the doubt, a developer likely made a mistake in understanding or checking your license. The mention of you being the author is probably their (incorrect) attempt to follow your license and not an attempt to taunt you.

It's unlikely there was some conspiracy at the upper levels of Samsung to steal your code.
Re: "Anyhow, from my POV the "average" programmers should GTFO and stop peeing in the pool. I would fire 90% of working programmers. They're not needed and actively counter-productive."

This is the theory that the elite are so productive that they can replace say 10 non-elites. The main problem with this is that most problems to be automated (or upgraded) are not well-defined. It takes iterative interaction with analysts, users, testers etc., and this is where probably 2/3 of the effort takes place. Communication and teamwork is more of a bottleneck than raw coding, and the Sheldon Cooper types rarely do well on that.

If the requirements were clearly defined, the 10x-Elite Theory would possibly work in practice. But it's a rare day in May one gets a clearly-defined specification that doesn't shift around a lot.

If you could find a domain having clearly-defined specs, then you could implement that 10x Elite Theory and crush the competition by cranking out software for a fraction of the traditional competitions' price. For example, make an office suite fully compatible with MS-Office, and charge 1/2 of what Microsoft does. You'd be a billionaire. (Past attempts were not sufficiently compatible, which may be a tall order because one has to mirror bugs in MS's software to be so.)
I'm using Mattermost for communicating with one team and I absolutely hate it. It feels so completely unfinished, like it's some kind of proof-of-concept? I don't mean to diss on Mattermost, I'm actually very excited to see them getting funding as Slack has like their name implies: slacking. What has Slack done over these past few years? Exactly, nothing! I don't mean that good software needs to keep updating, no not at all. It's just Slack can improve so much and it's just sitting there. I am really looking forward to replacing Slack with something else.

For all of the people going to suggest Matrix or something else to me, hold your breath. The reason I haven't switched is because communities haven't switched and neither have companies.
There's no need to be dense here...

There are privacy implications _outside_ of User communications to this website. Arguing that there is no expectation of privacy on HN is a complete non sequitur.
I ran Fedora on my Dell XPS 15 f/t for about 6 months, and found battery life to be similar to that on Windows. I think I remember reading on Phoronix that Fedora's power management defaults are better for battery life than most distros.
PHP Laravel offers a Vagrant virtual machine image with instructions. One can be up and running in 15 minutes. https://laravel.com/docs/5.8/homestead
I'm always amazed at the complete double standard between unions and companies.

Look at the discussion here: lots of people arguing against unions, saying they're just plain bad, or they're good in some industries but not in tech, or we just don't need them, or whatever.

And not to say that these arguments are wrong, but....

Hands up, how many of you think that it's a good idea to run a business with employees as a sole proprietorship?

I'm pretty sure there are no hands up. The first thing you do when you're going to create a business with employees is to organize. This is so ingrained that we don't even think about it. When was the last time you saw "Ask HN: do I need to incorporate?" Of course you do. There are many questions around where to do it and what type of corporation to create and what ownership structure you want to use and so forth, but there's no question about whether it's a good idea.

When employees band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "union" and we come up with many reasons why this may not be a good idea.

When employers band together to negotiate collectively, we call that a "corporation" and nobody takes even a moment to wonder whether or not this is a good thing to do.

If workers are better off without organization, maybe the same is true on the management side? Instead of big companies, we should have individual managers on their own, employing a team as a sole proprietor.
Path (through the body) and frequency also matter. See generally:

https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/JackHsu.shtml

I recall a story, late 1990's to early oughts, of a solo researcher found dead in his lab of apparent heart failure whilst working with very low voltage- and amperage currents, but at critical frequencies. I cannot find an online reference presently.
Your statement is grossly nauseating to me. Your children are absolutely an achievement a testament to what kind of person you are.
also remember that the person doing the harsh reviews is probably suffering from developer defensiveness and anxiety too. A strong attack can be cover for a weak defence.

I heard this from a therapist: "everyone is just trying to feel safe and loved". It really helps me understand and empathise with people in conflict situations ("how is this action helping this person to feel safe and loved?"). It might help with understanding the code reviews too ;)
I'm forced to optimize unnecessarily in code reviews at work. Gotta save that extra microsecond when the user pushes that button!
No, because you don't do any commercial transmissions on ham radio. If you want to do that grab some Ubitqui gear or other Part 15 device and go crazy.

Also you do transmit callsigns which anyone can look up and find out who you are + where you live. There's no expectation of privacy and never has been on the bands.
Whether we're talking electricity or gravity, potential differences are always defined _with respect to something_ -- where you put your zero is pretty arbitrary, and for some problems there's an obvious "right answer". For stuff to do with space, for example, we might want to put the zero of potential at the edge of the universe: at a glance, anything with positive energy therefore has enough to get there (and is "free" from any ground gravitating body) and anything with negative energy is "bound" to never get there (and typically bound into orbit around something else).

It's the same idea for electricity. Potential differences are what drives currents: at some level, that boils down to more electrons over here, more electrons over there.

The thing about the ground is that, usually, we're all on it. From a safety point of view, this matters, because we're slightly conductive bags of meat that rely upon electricity in certain bits to live. Bugger up the electrics, stop us living. As we always have one foot on the ground, the potential of the earth is a good reference point to chose, and it's the convention that for electrical thingywhatists, _it's_ the zero of potential, i.e. 0 V. By definition, therefore, electricity is anything that develops a potential difference with respect to this -- it will generate an electric field to move charges around, and the charges feel a force as a consequence.

Conveniently, unless you live in a desert soil is itself quite conductive, and a long (typically >4 m long) rod of metal driven directly into it. Often your power company will do this for you as the niggly details about "how big", "how many" and "how wet is the soil" turn out to be quite important, and also quite complex. Concrete doesn't easily work as it's an insulator: wet, loamy soil works brilliantly. People have written whole books and PhD theses about how to deal with granite, sand, and similarly frustrating geology.

Ordinarily, in most power distribution systems around the world, the flow of charges -- the electrical current -- doesn't actually use this ground all that much. You can think of it coming in via live and leaving via neutral, if you want. The permanent earth is a protective feature to ensure that a very large current _could_ flow to the ground if it got the opportunity to, and _not_ flow through you. This is a safety device in disguise, as it'd trip a circuit breaker and protect the wires in your house from catching fire.

Mains electricity is a bit different: because of how generators work, it turns out to be easier to generate (pun not intended) three _different_ live wires all at the same time, called L1, L2, L3 or three different phases. They are all AC voltages, developed with respect to each other, 120º out of phase. At the substation that transforms these to lower voltages, the central tap of the transformer is hammered into the ground, and your neutral wire -- which is also connected to that central tap of the transformer -- therefore is about ground too. This provides a nice, handy, readily accessible common reference that both prevents you frying and lets your electric hob continue doing so at the same time.