skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Based on historical trends, Gen X should be dominating congressional positions right now,

No, it shouldn't; based on historical trends, the baby bust of Gen X should never be politically dominant, and dominance should pass directly from the Boomers to Millenials.

I meant based on historical age group dominance without consideration to population, yes, Gen X should be dominant now, but it's a bust sandwiched between a big boom and a little boom.

> As the article implies, there's an open question here - is Gen X less ambitious? Are they given fewer opportunities due to boomers? Are they just less talked about because their views depart less from the status quo? It's interesting and frustrating to try and get to the bottom of it.

It's much simpler: they are less numerous and will never be the numerically largest group unless something selectively kills off Millenials. Everyone cares about the current and emergent dominant group, not the once and future number 3 that might make it to number 2 for a while as the Boomers die off.

See, e.g., https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/millennials...
I have thought long and hard about upgrading my iPhone 8 to one of the new X models, but I don't like the lack of a home button. I guess I am officially old now, but I dont want to look at my phone to unlock it. I like that I can reach in my pocket, and unlock it with my thumb as I retrieve it. It may be user error, but I see several co-workers have to really train the phone on their face to unlock with Face ID. That would drive me nuts. the swipe up gesture just seems annoying, and on my iPhone 8 is unreliable to bring up the control panel. they need to do what they did before and copy the other vendors that put the fingerprint reader on the back of the phone so that the nice bezel free design can be implemented.
I bet the only complete specification of the algorithm was the program running on that one machina, and that it was written in some ancient VAX assembly.

Also, $1M is a lot of money to risk subtle changes to the logic of a 40-year old program. Main reason why big financial orgs are still running software from the 50's on mainframes, that.
The fact that you're being down-voted for offering a fact-laden response to a glib and fact-free swipe at the U.S. is ... disconcerting.
I totally agree with what you said, but I'm having problems to put it into practice.

I spent years learning Forth (wrote some toy programs, collaborated with some projects, even wrote my own interpreter) and for the last couple of years I have been very interested in APL and derived languages (I like k's simplicity and Dyalog APL's feature completeness, but I'm starting to like J more and more). However, there is no way I can justify using any of this at work.

I cannot convince my colleagues that learning J or colorForth will help them in their careers more than learning C++, Fortran or Python, because it won't (I work in research, writing scientific software), and I cannot convince my bosses that it will be more productive to forget about all those juicy libraries in C++ and Python to rewrite everything in some esoteric language, because in fact it will take me longer.

So, I guess it is also my fault, but I have no idea how to change it.
I believe that Apple’s next big thing will come in the form of AR consumer hardware and a detached Watch. Recent expansions of their chip design org and acquisition of Intel’s modem business reinforce my confidence in their execution, iPhones are still big business and services are rising. There is little reason to doubt that Apple has more than enough resources to take it through until the next breakthrough.
> Apple software quality is not what it should be, and hasn't been for quite some time.

Quality is a moving target: I know something about the quality of Safari, and the quality has been getting better over the years (that said, I admit the recent Mobile Safari Betas have been really shit, hopefully the release will be good).

Maybe it is comparitive: for example Safari's quality it is nowhere near as good as the Chrome team's quality (which is unbelievably good: regular updates across thousands of different Android device types, across thousands of versions of Android, with immensely complex software).

Also social media now means that we hear about quality issues - we raise the bar on what we think is acceptable.

Do you think Apple's software quality has not improved over the years?
Thanks for the connection!
I'm also part of the nobody group, never buy the latest because I am frugal with my earnings. But I've noticed lots and lots of people with AirPods, latest Iphones, etc. I think you're underestimating the status value that Apple has managed to create for themselves. A large number of people view Apple as a status symbol.
4) Requirements are conveyed verbally, not through written documents. Stories are short "reminders to hold a conversation," not fully-fleshed out.

There's still something written down, just not massive amounts.

Personally i try break stories down smaller to avoid the need for large tasks which helps. I also try minimise the time between story creation and story development.

Otherwise I just communicate a lot.

Things get differently from what I invisioned, sometimes they're worse sometimes they're better.
The answer is no of course - they have the thought terminating cliche of "national security" to protect against accountability.

Really the fact intelligence and law enforcement agencies are lobbying is actually utterly fucked up. Their purpose is to serve us not the other way around.

If people with actual sense were in charge the fuckers pushing for it would be fired and out the door so fast it breaks the sound barrier - actively undermining that which the nation benefits from the most economically and making them weaker to attackers - all while not making adversaries weaker? That is inexcusable incompetence.
In the American West at least, trees go up in flames every few years. Turning hemp into products people don't burn might be a better way to sequester carbon.
The company with the bug is leaving their customers open to harm.

And Project Zero has notified that company of their problem.

If the company fixes their problem in a reasonable amount of time, then it's a Win-Win-Win. The users, the company, and Project Zero all win.

If you blame anyone but the companies with bugs that can't fix them in a reasonable amount of time, then your priorities are dead wrong.
There is also the fourth possibility that the physical space is not similar to euclidean space at short distances, and locality in euclidean space is not physical. In this case the entangled particles are actually linked with one another, and can transmit the information about the filter they are interacting with, but because particles prefer to be linked to closeby particles, the long range links easily break not allowing to pass much information.
We have some cleaners come in and they always constantly rearrange the keyboard, desk monitors etc. Which normally causes a few groans in the morning as everything has been moved. One guy was having a moan about it and I said "You know the women that clean this probably have never used a computer other than maybe their phone?".
Sounds like Joel on Software.
I'm bullish on AAPL because of their planned services. Anything they roll out has a gigantic audience and will have immediate revenue impact. They have a tremendous bully-pulpit inside their users devices, incomparable email lists, and a habit of making TV commercials people like to watch. The fact that they are adding 4 lines of business (banking, ad-free gaming, news, and streaming) is going to sustain double-digit, high-margin growth for the foreseeable future.

If I had money play with I would buy after this earnings report dropped; but it looks like the stock price isn't getting beat up.
Services, AR Glasses and the Apple Car.

Apple Arcade looks surprisingly interesting given they will support PS4/XBox controllers and the trend moves towards streaming gaming. AppleTV+ will do well if they can intelligently bundle it with Apple Music and you never know could have a breakout hit.

AR Glasses and the Apple Car are clearly being worked on given acquisitions but both are many years out.
It's worth checking one in with your luggage, because it requires a real, non-TSA lock.

TSA isn't allowed to open it.

And if they can't open it, your expensive property can't "accidentally fall out".
Agreed. It's short sighted. In Ireland apparently they PINE ALL THINGS!

( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20380793 )
It's fine. At least on the new Galaxy phones, the haptic feedback works almost like its a real button (and I'm assuming it's similar on the iphone).
AirPods sound like a PITA to me. Oops,time to charge them again- no wait, I just dropped one and it bounced into the gutter/ drain. I should I charge the one I can still find, or throw it away, too?

No thanks.

Regular corded earbuds are a tolerable pocket size alternative to a set of studio cans, but that’s as far as I would go. I miss the old Walkman style headsets that had decent size drivers, but still fit into a backpack or jacket pocket.
Geoffrey Hinton: The Foundations of Deep Learning (2018) [video]
You can't use an EVF at foot or waist level either. That's not what I am on about. I have no issue with using the large back display, articulating or not, as a live display when needed. But when I want to use a viewfinder I want it to be optics, not a tiny screen in a tube simulating that view. And like @throwanem said having tactile buttons/dials available as no look controls is a thing a lot of people like to use over touch screens. I understand it's a personal preference and an increasingly minority opinion.
I tend to think of math as having two parts: a way of thinking along with all the things people thought up by thinking that way. To learn the first, you have to study the second.

Examples of the second are calculus, group theory, algebra, etc. Examples of the first are being able to define useful words with useful logical consequences, knowing when you can infer things beyond what can be directly tested, detecting patterns that might profitably be abstracted, etc. It's a bunch of force multipliers for your logical mind.

Specific subjects were developed with the goal of solving particular kinds of problems, so if you are faced with such a problem, it can be very useful to know what people have already figured out! However, if you're not, then it might not be so useful remembering these details.
He's not saying mathematics doesn't have rigorous foundations.

Betrand Russell's Principia Mathematica is computation. But math textbooks/papers are not like this. They share insights, opinions, and metaphors, and frequently explain things in non-rigorous terms, although these are not substitutes for proofs even though proofs for something given a non-rigorous explanation may not appear.

In less heavily proof-read contexts, such as in discussions or a class room, it's not uncommon for mathematicians to be pretty free-wheeling with their notation, and leave it up to context and intuition to figure out what an individual symbol means at a given time. And it wouldn't be a faux pas, or sign of a lesser mathematician or anything like that.

These things can be valuable and in some sense are a part of mathematics.

Although the end results of mathematics can be distilled into formal computations, it's far too reductive to say that's all mathematics is.
Just the loss of Chinese production would be an enormous hit to the economy, no need for nuclear weapons even.
I thought this headline sounded overly pessimistic when seeing it after actually reading the report...
Internals of quartz wristwatch – and some overclocking
I don't believe that's the fault of the company, nor their responsibility. There are many people that feel forced to stay at toxic jobs, in the Bay Area as locals, because their lifestyle relies on having zero unemployment windows - e.g., they'll default on credit card and house payments.

Especially to those on a visa, the only one forcing you to remain in the USA / Bay Area / x company is yourself. To put it bluntly, no one is entitled to a job, and this applies to every person. In this scenario, it's not like strangers are being pulled off the streets by Pivotal to pair program.
That's an option, but it's a risky one, because you could end up with a balkanized language with many different C++ dialects depending on compiler version and platform. The amount of existing code in the world is huge, and not every organization has the resources, knowledge, or desire to move to the new hotness every time an improvement to the language was made.

The Python 2->3 transition is an example of what can happen when you make backwards-incompatible changes to existing language features. We're more than a decade in, and there are still huge volumes of code at major organizations that haven't made the switch. This happened despite the fact that the people proposing the change also controlled the change and release process for the major implementation of Python, a case which is not true for C++.

It's also difficult because many proposed backwards-incompatible changes or deprecations would break ABI compatibility, which would prevent a library and binary (or 2 libraries) that were compiled using different compiler versions from inter-operating. This breaks a core workflow for many C++ users.

To get a better understanding of the committee's priorities, I would recommend looking at "The C++ Programmer's Bill of Rights": https://isocpp.org/blog/2017/07/what-should-the-iso-cpp-stan...

It's not a formal commitment from the committee, but it will give you a sense of what their priorities are.
Wearables, Home and Accessories category had quarterly sales of $5.5B.

That's a lot of nobodies.

(compared to Mac $5.8B, iPad $5.0B)
I know lots of historically loyal Canon shooters who have recently switched to Sony A or Nikon Z; I know others who are seriously considering a Panasonic DC-S1 or a Fuji GFX 100. I don't know anyone who has gone the other way. That's really not a good place to be.

It's obvious from the heavy price cutting that EOS M is struggling. EOS R isn't a disaster, but it's a big disappointment. Canon are still lagging well behind Sony in sensor quality and Panasonic in video functionality; their mirrorless offerings aren't capitalising on Canon's historical advantage in terms of ergonomics.

Canon still make good cameras and good lenses, but there's no obvious reason to buy into the Canon ecosystem unless you're an existing Canon customer, nor is there any sign of Canon turning things around.
I did a dual major in math and computer science, I recommend it if you are aiming for a research career like me. It helped me considerably in AI and mobile robotics, and I think in some ways it put me ahead of people who "only" did CS. I guess one of the reason for that is the gaping absence of math in the CS curriculum at my uni.

Of course the issue is that nobody knows prior to choosing their major if they want a research career! There's no point in studying topology and measure theory like I did if you end up being a front-end dev, apart from personal development.
And why not.

Getting plastic surgery is also used to make people look good and it has become a practical necessity for any aging female performer. Filter is cheaper.
How Jason Cohen started WP Engine
is there any legal restriction of how long you can keep internal systems logs? if it's done right they don't contain PIIs but they _can_ be used to track people if you have enough logs.
The question Ive been wondering is not whether the Ford is a total dud, but were its changes even reasonable? or were they just tacked on as some misplaced future-chasing value-add.

For example, the electromagnetic launcher. Why have a launcher at all? the USSR's Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier solved the aircraft launching problem ages ago and for far cheaper. just slope the deck.

and Magnetic elevators? why? was there a specific concern or reason behind using magnets instead of tried-and-true cables? why were we redesigning doors and hatches when the old ones ostensibly performed fine?
5-7 million units sold per quarter and 36% market share in the smartwatch category[1] isn't enough for you?

[1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/05/02/apple-watch-1q19-market...
David Foster Wallace predicted not only that, but its rise and fall. http://declineofscarcity.com/?page_id=2527
I'll stop thinking of money when my survival stops depending on it.
This. That entire period should be examined as a lapse in judgement, not a time when things were better.

Because of our state-of-the-art security, we're now able to do more things online in less secure environments. A secure, distributed internet is normal. One that is insecure by design is not.
Apple beat out EPS and Revenue estimates and the stock is trading up in after-hours. This is a headline for the cap-wearing anti-Tech Company crowd, as has been typical of the New York Times over the last year or two.
Instead of building islands they bought, leased, and bullied their way to airbases and islands across the world post WW2. Geography meant building was not necessary.

Hacking? Not sure, there was certainly significant US commercial spying in the early post-war years. They licensed many military techs and broke the terms of licensing, often providing nothing whatsoever in return. Just one example: The Miles M54 and Power Jet's engines, which after very little time and development became the Bell X-1. None at all of the promised data and tech was provided in return. There are others, sometimes by even more dubious means.
DocSearch now provides documentation search to 1600 developer projects
It isn’t marketing and it isn’t brutal. It’s closer to charity.
IMHO it can work quite well, but everyone needs to know what they're getting into. A company that not clearly advertises that this is how they work beforehand is a recipe for failure.
>the watch is just a way for your phone to distract you more frequently

I use a smartwatch and as a result my phone stays in my pocket a lot more.
One place this works, when your clients are able and willing to use the latest browsers to use your software.

The primary benefit is that I don't have to rely on hacks.

This is how I build the backend to my CMS and my clients are happy to keep their browsers updated. (nearly trivial to do these days).

This also means that as soon as I see a new JS/CSS feature that will eventually become mainstream, I can use it in my admin as soon as both major browsers (Firefox/Chrome) support it. And even sooner if it's not a critical feature. (eg, I can skip adding a feature like "lazy loading" because browsers will have it built in eventually, etc...)

On the public facing front end, that is a different story though. It's motivation to keep things simple.
Artists Installed Seesaws at the Border
Now that my kids are old enough to control Netflix, it's awful all around. Needs much better parental controls. I suppose they don't do that because any useful ones would make their preferred metrics drop. Gonna feel good to cancel soon, for that and other reasons.
Dunno, I spent (wasted) 3 years of my life studying theoretical computer science at PhD level including very advanced parts of (discrete) math and many of those parts are just unnecessarily obfuscated to enable academic careers and an academic version of "demonstrating one's worthiness". There are not many cases of a worse feeling than when you realize after a year and half of difficult studies that the problem was either simple and obfuscated, or that the set of instances satisfying some theory is empty.
Iphones 7 and 8 already have a 'virtual' home button using haptic feedback--I assume this is what you mean. X-factor iphones use a gesture-based system instead of any kind of button.
If he can't use his 25% native part as an argument for wealth partially accruing to original inhabitants of the continent, you can't use his other 75% as an argument for wealth accruing to European settlers (assuming his other 75% is European).
Sure but just because it's there doesn't mean you have to use it. It's there for nostalgia reasons, mostly.
Maybe your "people" are cool with LE reading their salty messages to significant others, or hot take political commentary, but all the "people" I know expect privacy as good responsible citizens should.
Anything except first two is not that impressive...

And iPhone is built on top of years of speculation and foundational change in material and wireless infrastructure.

But the point is that apple now no longer needs to grow like jobs era. And for all good will, I see no chance for jobs to pull out new things equally big as iPhone anyway. But some can believe that regardless.
I'm not sure how "no disk drive" disrupted the industry more than Airpods and Apple Watch.
I would pay lots of money for an Apple Bluetooth Mechanical keyboard. Like $300+ easily if it's good.
It keeps happening b/c so many people have the same attitude as GP: find scapegoats and fire them! That will fix the systemic problems...right?!

No, it won't.
> UNIX-based OS goes mainstream

What are you crediting Jobs with? What does this mean? It seems like your list fell apart after the first 3 concrete things you listed, the rest are just random things you like about Apple.
Services.

In Job's era that revenue was almost 0%. Now it's 21%.
> They didn't say they were appalled at people disagreeing with them. They said they were appalled at the lambasting

Whether you think something is legitimate criticism or not is subjective and I don't see an argument why it is. Anyone is certainly free to argue, or not argue, with those comment and they have.

> Huh. Can you expand on this, in the context of this thread?

I was calling out the line "I thought Hacker News would have a community which understands the critical importance of security research". People argue against important things here all the time.

> Very few of the legitimate criticism I have seen here has been about P0's practices [...]

Again, subjective. Here is the first comment hidden by downvotes:

'Why should end-users "have nothing but gratitude" when vulnerabilities are disclosed and they are immediately placed at risk until they get a chance to update, even when the vendor has promptly provided a correct patch? I know I certainly don't appreciate that and can't reasonably expect any normal person to appreciate it either.'

Seems like a legitimate opinion to me. (The same users had almost all their comments downvoted as well, most of which seem perfectly fine). There are a number of others saying that Google has a conflict of interest, which also seems legitimate.

What I see is people doing everything they can to not address those arguments. It is one thing to call out people when they are the majority, another when mostly normal comments are being suppressed. That is not legitimate if anything. I can't see how the people creating that environment expect to get anything out of it, but I guess that isn't the point. Very few smart people you meet in real life spend any time on hacker news.
I was skeptical as well coming from my iPhone 6+ to the Xs... but it turns out that it just works and works fine. I wasn't missing my home button after about a day or two. Switching between iPad and iPhone is slightly awkward now, as I am sometimes waiting for my iPad to unlock on facial recognition and it never happens.
The US Navy is under-equipped for the possibility that a hostile power might mine key harbors or waterways.

The existing, decades-old, minesweeping force is in the process of being decommissioned.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/america-getting-rid-their-...

The replacements - involving the problematic LCS-class ships - are in even worse shape than the Ford and are currently scheduled to be operational in 2022.
https://news.usni.org/2019/01/25/lcs-mission-package-office-...