skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I’m an aeronautical engineer with a PhD in fluid mechanics, there’s not too much else to say on the transition to academia TBH.

Regarding teaching, my exhaustion with an over dependence on PowerPoint for every aspect of communication in industry has me rebuilding an introductory fluid mechanics course in Jupyter with high quality visuals (images and videos) illustrating important concepts along side simple but useful code examples.
Human microbiome churns out thousands of tiny novel proteins
Well, that's why I put a warning in the readme. However, I've been using this for 7+ months or so?
> you need a permission from the local police in order to organize a protest on a specific location at a specific time.

Correction #1: from a town administration, not a police.

Correction #2: the actual legal state of a non-permitted demonstration is fuzzy because while the right for it is given by the Constitution, organizers and any violations of "peace and unarmed" way could be penalized due to federal laws which are stated applicable by the same Constitution.
What game do you want to play with your life? Do you want to play the lifestyle business game? The startup game? The consulting game? The climb-the-corporate-ladder game? The just-collect-a-paycheck-and-get-your-fulfillment-elsewhere game?

You should decide this before you enter the startup scene, and ideally as you're beginning your career. Because if you think you're playing one sort of game but are playing it according to the rules of another sort of game, you're basically guaranteed to lose.

The assumption when you play the startup game is that you're playing for a big, low-probability payoff. There are a couple variations for just how big a payoff (are you looking to play the outsource-R&D-and-get-acquired game? show-I'm-a-good-programmer-and-get-aqhired game? build-a-billion-dollar-company game?), but in general, when people talk about startups, they mean hyper-growth. If you don't find hyper growth, you've lost at the startup game, and should call it and invest your time into either playing again or playing a different game.

If you want a lifestyle business, you should play that game from the outset, because it means playing several choices differently. Notably, you should seek a small niche with real customers first, you can afford to pick an area off the cutting edge, you should seek profitability over growth, and you shouldn't take (equity) investment.
This is absolutely correct. Humans are physical creatures living in a physical world and our brains have evolved to interact with that world in a physical way. Touch-screen interfaces, even good ones, necessitate a level of mental abstraction, which is going to make operating in a fatigued state even more difficult.
I also still prefer a slide out keyboard on my phone... and I don't care if it's twice as thick
Juergen Schmidhuber: Godel Machines, Meta-Learning, and LSTMs
But Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are part of the upper class. There's the whole "millionaires paid by billionares" type stuff.
Because as a founder the startup is your life. It exhausts you mentally, physically, emotionally, financially. If your startup isn't accelerating, it feels like you are wasting your life away at an accelerating pace.
My spitball opinion on that: we had diversity in America during the beginning of the industrial age that we heavily relied on for it's host of benefits, innovation primarily as well, but it didn't create the conflict (conflict theory terms) we see today because you were expected to integrate (conform) to be "American", which was a shared set of values and beliefs. America is still today one of the few geopolitical distinctions today that is solely demarcated as such by subscribing to a fundamental set of beliefs, rather than by blood as you have in most other countries in the world, especially in Europe. America is chiefly an idea, and by believing in that ideal, you gain the entire inheritance.

This is something that is continually being eroded unfortunately, especially as we continually descend into more and more hyphenated subgroups of Americans, rather than just focusing on what makes us simply Americans, but something we should still strive for.

(And I know you will get downvoted for posting about Robert Putnam research here because it appears to come off as a knock against diversity, even though Putnam himself said his research actually affirms the benefits of diversity)
> Google clearly has an interest in circumventing U.S. cultural norms (for financial and ideological profit)

This is absolutely not clear at all.
This is so emphatically untrue in New Orleans I have to wonder if the writer has ever visited.
Sure, but then they'd die out because they can't pay rent anymore.
Re 1:

How much more scale can Uber realistically hope to achieve? They're in virtually every US city, and they already have over 50% of the on-demand ride business in a lot of places. They've passed the inflection point on the S-curve: If the unit economics don't work out today, it's unlikely that they ever will

Also, it is my understanding that the $22 million loss you cited is exclusive of marketing expenses. That's troublesome because certain driver subsidies are paid out of the marketing line-item (under the dubious justification that the bonuses are attractive to new drivers). To be sustainable, the core business needs to generate enough cashflow to cover those bonuses, too.

Re 2 and 3:

I'm sympathetic to the idea that useful metrics for valuing established companies are not necessarily useful metrics for growing companies, _but_: The fundamental problem is that I don't see a path to profitability (to make the share price worth more than the "scrap" value of whatever assets, including IP, Uber owns).

Contrast this with Tesla (another rapidly-growing company): They have double-digit positive unit gross margins and less than 1% market share. Maybe the stock is over-valued, maybe they won't execute, but it's clear that the company can be profitable (and they've had profitable quarters).

Re 4:

[My cynical take] Right, that's why they've started the Uber Eats product. It gives Uber cover to remain unprofitable for a few more years, until Uber Eats has the same reach as ride share and it's clear that Uber eats isn't a sustainable business, either.
The top 3 richest people (Gates, Buffet, Bezos) own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country.
Most locals have a single race living in them and almost all have single income group living there.

Just about the only diversity pertinent to local pubs is gender diversity - it is more appropriate for girls to be in too.
Ask HN: How to get employer to release IP rights?
A friend and I are starting a company. The company is related to her current job and she signed a strict/standard employee IP agreement when starting. However, her boss has agreed to release those rights.

So I'm wondering, has anyone done this before? Should it be structured between her and the employer, or newco and employer? She'll talk to a lawyer for real guidance, but curious to hear how others have navigated this situation.
> a simple static jpeg of the night sky would suffice

Could you imagine our ancestors worshiping compression artifacts in the sky?
Yeah, George Robbins stopped working on the C900 and went on to design the A500, A600 and A1200, sticking references to songs by the B52's on their motherboards. A lot of people don't realize that Commodore had about 200 engineers at peak.
With ECS, I use ECS optimized Amazon Linux Images. The kernel, system, tools suite, in short the instance in which containers will be run is provided by Amazon.

What considerations should I have regarding the article's theme when using pre provisioned hosts?
Slightly tangential, but I want to point out that there's a way forward without pesticides and without economic disaster: We can switch to a "horticultural" mode of civilization. The idea is that we use applied ecology to create curated ecosystems that have a high proportion of plants that are agriculturally productive. (Not to be mysterious, I'm talking about Permaculture et. al. but that term seems to upset a few people so I just say "applied ecology" now.) "Food forest" is a search term to try..

Here's a talk "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture" by Toby Hemenway (RIP) where he talks about how we got into this mess and how we might get out.

http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-with...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6b7zJ-hx_c
That is very far from the truth, and the truth was nowhere as simple as that either.

Commodore was a very serious and successful supplier of small business computers with the 8xxx and 82xx series.

The main problem was that in this segment Commodore came out of a typewriter/calculator mindset, so there were absolutely nobody who ever thought "lets connect computers together", and that set a hard upper ceiling how how large companies they could sell to.

Once a business grew, the CBM computers were replaced, not because they were unhappy with them, but because they were not big enough.

Heck, even at Commodore we used IBM S/34 internally.
> only made consistent via heavy filters (desaturating everything and applying a lot of bloom).

Perhaps that's what I'm seeing, yes
Speaking to yourself in the third person makes you wiser
> treasonously adhere to Russia’s demands

Treasonous towards whom? Is it treasonous if Google complies with a EU law like GDPR?
Just because it's not on your test doesn't mean you shouldn't know how to operate your car properly. There's a lot not covered in each test that is still a requirement to operate a vehicle. In California, it is a requirement and all the roads are connected. Blaming a change in weather is unsafe. This is why we have so many accidents when it rains.

Do you freak out when it gets dark because there are 4 touchscreen buttons to press to turn your lights on? So why when it rains? If you wanna make excuses for "I got myself into a dangerous situation because I wasn't prepared" go ahead but when it endangers other drivers I have to be critical.
That is true, but those are all interest based activities, things you do at 7pm on a Tuesday night, between getting off work and passing out while watching netflix. They aren't places where one can go to simply 'be', or to mingle with strangers. In Ireland for example, people would do those things and then go to the pub afterwards.

Think of the Prancing Pony in the Lord of the Rings...a place where locals and travellers can mix and mingle and converse as much or as little as they please.
Did Putnam specify the benefits?
I posted this downthread:

How is your access to a gender neutral restroom or shower facility? Do you have a quiet place to pray multiple times per day? If you need a place to breastfeed (not a restroom), is that something available? What about dilating post gender reassignment surgery? Does your workplace offer the same benefits to same sex partners? Do you have to take a badge photo, if so, what name gets used? Can you wear head coverings in your badge photo? Have you ever heard expressions like, "Let's see what's under the kimono" in a business meeting? How is wheelchair access to your site? Can I operate all the machines you use if I am blind (can I navigate to facilities? Use all the machines in the breakroom? etc.)?
This was all entirely predictable, of course, but that didn't stop our entire press and most of our politicians from handing this talking point to Russia on a silver platter.
There is also Alephobjects creators the Lulzbot 3D printers. I'm not sure about the start-up thing but they are making open hardware and they are very open about their modus operandi and finance. Does this work?
They discourage custom clients and also they discourage browser extensions that modify the discord interface (like Better Discord)

https://twitter.com/discordapp/status/846597021431713792

https://twitter.com/discordapp/status/972529263269371904?lan...

https://twitter.com/discordapp/status/908000828690182145?lan...

I don't think they will send the banhammer down on you unless you use it for spamming or "self-botting" but it still seems a bit risky

Ripcord seems to have survived this long without incident for its users, for example

https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

But they might start cracking down if a certain % of people start using other clients
Hmm, that would align with some mystical movements throughout the history suggesting that mind/belief shapes the world directly; i.e. the physicists don't just observe reality, they invent it in the process and the underlying algorithms adapt.
Then sell the business for a reasonable multiple, don’t shut it down.
It is customary on HN to disclaim when you work for/on a product that you are pitching or suggesting.
Why need there be a top layer? Certainly it meshes with our evolution provided common sense but what makes it necessarily true? Some philosophy that abhors a completed infinity?
Apple's iOS Contacts app claimed to be vulnerable to SQLite hack
> Physical controls that have no physical state are the worst of both worlds.

This is so true.
I absolutely hate the AC knob in my car.
Apparantely, they thought it was good engineering to make it infinite.
Ask HN: HN for business/entrepreneurship?
Is there a site like HN but focused on startups and entrepreneurship?

Would anyone else be interested in a business/startup focused HN? The kind of place for people interested in how Bezos built Amazon, instead of political debates about regulating them?
I assume because its not very efficient at all. A 10 mile trip in LA in traffic will burn a $4 gallon of gas in everything but a brand new fuel efficient car. Most people willing to sit in traffic for hours after work to scrape a few more bucks are not in a brand new car. That’s potentially $4 a trip just from the gas alone. At that markup I’ll bike to the store and save the planet.

Even amazon outsources their last mile delivery to contractors who absorb these costs somehow (probably by abusing employees and/or making them pee in bottles to make quota).
Let's say I am a simulated being and I query WolframAlpha (WA). WA then has to do some computation to give me a result. This means that the simulation has to compute this result. It may be the the simulations algorithm is much more advanced than WA's algorithm, which means the energy it seems to take WA to do the computation is much greater than the actual energy it took. This means the simulated universe saves that energy difference (minus some overhead).

Now let's say WA improves their algorithm and it becomes identical to the algorithm used by the simulators. Now the computation that WA does is 1:1 with the computation the simulator has to do. You could argue, well, maybe they use better hardware that can do it more efficiently. Sure. But then WA can eventually do it on that same hardware. As all this improves, it necessarily goes to 1:1.

You might, instead, just store all queries in a lookup table the first time they are made. That would reduce your energy requirements. But now you've just traded infinite energy requirements for a possibly smaller, yet still infinite space requirement.

So, I think what you're saying is that you would just fake it. You just "tell" the simulated beings that they did the thing, and you skip over it. I'm not really sure how that would work in practice. If I need the result of my WA query so I can do some other math, and I'm writing all this down, how did I get all this notation on the page and how is it correct without anybody doing the calculations? Do they just force me to see 'something' and tell me what I'm seeing is correct? How do I get to an ultimate useful result?

In any case, if you're just going to go mucking about with people's minds, why bother with conscious beings in the first place?
Bingo.

"Travel-related activities of e-bikers who switched from cycling decreased by around 200 MET min/wk., while those switching from private motorized vehicle and public transport gained around 550 and 800 MET min/wk. respectively."
If you ignore the pains for too long, it will do irrepairable damage to your nerves.

My timeline was this. I've been programming since 15. I've been on the computer for hours a day, making money freelancing in highschool. I didn't have a single issue. Then, at 22, I got a professional gig. My pain started immediately. Within months, the damage was done.

My right hand still isn't 100%, but since I've switched to using my last remaining good hand, I treat it much better than I did my right hand. It's all I got.

Carpal tunnel can absolutely be prevented. It isn't genetic or anything. You just have to monitor the warning signs and address them immediately.

So, yes, switching hands isn't a solution, but the damage is done, so it has to be done. But now I have the insight needed to prevent my left arm from ever falling into the same situation.
Amen! Drinking in public should be as ordinary and mundane as it is in Germany.
I disagree I would not shut it down I would either sell it or keep it to maintain jobs. As for the investors if a long term plan i would convert to debt and try to get them to flat especially if friends and family. But yep, there are cases when you need to shut down and zombie mode sux if you can’t escape
Alas, I don't think I should make promises of free time that I'm unlikely to be able to keep: my fall term starts in just a couple weeks, and my available time is going to rapidly fall to zero.
How much oversight and input do you think citizens have in Russia? Seems like in this particular case, their government is directly opposing the citizens who, in theory, would provide that oversight.
Here's some video footage for anyone who doesn't want to play but still wants to see what it's like: https://youtu.be/oANleO-sE9s
Prices are an issue. I support cheap liquor!
It’s complicated because it’s political. You have managers, politicians, project owners, project managers, business process consultants and the actual workers all influence decisions, and often the decision becomes some sort of compromise where everyone gets something because it’s, well political.

At the same time, the public sector doesn’t operate like the tech sector. We may have 2500 employees who spend 37 hours a week behind a screen, using various pieces of software to do their daily grind on the bureaucracy, but we have maybe 10 technicians to build/maintain/operate those 300 IT systems for the total of 7000 employees at 200 different locations on a network we also operate. With 10 people on staff, and political management looking to make it 9, no one can be specialised in UI/UX because you can build things without a great UI/UX. Even when you buy the development from a company who does have some UI/UX guy, the decision goes back to the compromise and messy decision making of all those different stakeholders.

I think we have gotten better at it over time though, but it’s probably never going to compete with the private sector where you need great UI/UX if your competitors have it.
As an e-bike rider, whole heartedly agree. Getting people out of cars and onto any form of pedal power is a net benefit, there’s no reason to be divisive.
> there is no such thing as the morals of society

Isn't it like saying "there's no image, only individual photons or pixels"?

> For example, in my morals

But if you take a few steps back you notice individual morals blending into something that could be called society morals. Society overall considers something (un)acceptable or (im)moral regardless of whether you disagree.

Look at interracial or same sex marriages. Decades ago society saw them as immoral even if some individuals disagreed. Today society sees them as moral even if some individuals disagreed
The penalties for involvement in non-permitted assemblies are legal due to article 55.3 of the same Constitution. The same article is used for Internet filtering and other !!fun!! stuff.
There is no opposite to US cultural norms. There is a wide spectrum of qualities and values of those qualities. However you want to characterize those "norms", a single act does not adequately engender or stifle a sense of Google's overall aims.
Can you explain how it works? Why does it degrade when a human ingests it, but kills the insects it targets?
What if the theory about an evil Demiurge is correct, i.e. ultimate psychopath designing our reality to maximize suffering of conscious beings, manifesting in short periods of health/prosperity to acquire taste/comparison baseline followed by long/eternal periods of suffering? Would you still like to know...?
Don’t you love how everyone on HN thinks they can do journalism too off the cuff just because tech disrupted it? Glad to see taste hasn’t been disrupted
But who is a cyclist if not somebody who uses a bicycle, thus making your statement tautological? I hadn't ridden a bike in years before I decided to use it for my commute, and now I love it.

I cycle 10km when going out to the bar, and I love the exercise. I put on headphones and listen to an audio book and it's my favorite thing to do. Granted, my city is built along a carless waterfront, so it's ideal for cycling, but I don't think cycling is too tiring. Maybe some people just don't like the effort, though.
around here there are so many invasive species that aren't native that it might be a good idea to not let those grow (mainly vines)
Third places typically cater to specific demographics. "The sports bar," "the gay bar," "the cop bar," etc.
And once you subscribe, you can't unsubscribe except by phone.
> A universe only running at the level of abstraction we can understand it. Perhaps Newtonian physics was actually complete until we forced the universe to bail out of that optimisation

Very simply explained, that's literally quantum mechanics. Our reality changes depending on how close we look at it. Some quantum/computer scientists have gone so far as to say that reality "runs" extremely sophisticated quantum error correction algorithms to stabilize something so fundamentally unstable into our observable reality. It was even discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18817410
No doubt part of the iphones appeal was that it was a Star Trek type device. One of my early apps I downloaded was a tricorder type UI showing the different sensors and so on. Even had the no doubt copyrighted noises.
On 2, it widely depends. If I set out to create a game with 'advanced' AI (say, an algorithm actually capable of some form of self-learning, theoretically), and that happened, I'd hear it out. After all, the point is to make it smart, though I'd think no one would create a game to test out that level of algorithm - too costly. Similarly, if someone published a game with that level of possibility, they'd likely make it a huge selling point.

However, if our universe is a simulation, I'd posit that whoever created it has a reasonable assumption that self-aware life could arise from the experiment. Now, whether "self-aware life" is as important an achievement, or something to be preserved, to them as our current society... No one can answer that without being completely speculative - even if we do prove we're a simulation.
The Fastest and Shortest Algorithm for All Well-Defined Problems (2002)
Same deal as it is now no? Its not like you recruit more drivers during a rainstorm in the current model. You dangle hazard pay to make your employees grab their keys and drive after hours, same as any job with full time employees and sudden after hours demand.
Signed Languages of the Deaf are more expressive describing form, motion and dynamics in the 3D-space and also subtle differences in emotion than English and German. Bernese German also seems to be more expressive expressing emotions related to the body, working and being at ease compared to High German. These are the examples I have encountered myself so I don't believe this to be really rare.

There's a thing where English really excels. It has a gigantic lexicon with many words differing in subtle aspects, so you can be very precise. This also makes it easy to create puns.