skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you don't have RSS I won't see what you post unless it gets absurdly popular. I'm not coming to your website. Sorry.
How much oversight of government use of facial recognition software is too much?
Not for long haul jet flights anyway.
I wasn't dismissing law as zero sum. Salary negotiation is zero-sum too; that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. But you shouldn't organize your career around it.
Who is the author of that book?
Social Anxiety Tips from a Navy Seal [video]
There is now hardly any reason for time series databases, anymore. With SSDs, multiple writes at random places are as fast as sequential writes. So, you stage data to an SSD, and then archive it, already organized (via equally fast random reads) to bulk rotating storage, with an ordinary database. Postgres works.
The series is full of inaccuracies and based on a judicial process that was more political than legal. Even the director of the series regrets it now after it served as propaganda to elect a president who has yet to do something good for the benefit of the Brazilian population.

Want to watch a good movie that probably portrays well the current president and his sons’s connections to the militia in Rio try “Elite Squad: The Enemy Within”.
Fair enough.

But wouldn't doing investigation on the error provide data point to help debug the issue. They are trying to fix a customer issue and time is also of importance here.

> just applying fixes blindly plucked from the Internet.

I wasn't recommending that.
when was the last time Google had a successful consumer-facing product? looks like they just keep shutting down products in the past few years.
Technology itself is always amoral. Even splitting the atom can be used to achieve wonderful and horrific outcomes.

So of course “facial recognition” per say is not the problem. But in this particular example, we see how facial recognition combined with a couple hundred million surveillance cameras funneled into a massive government data processing pipeline can be extremely effectively used for persistent tracking and nearly instant geolocation of “suspects”.

I’m pretty sure we’ve seen how this movie ends. There’s a reason we don’t implant GPS trackers into babies at birth just because they might get lost one day.

Maybe China will use this technology to build a veritable Eden free from crime and lost puppies. Or maybe they are closing the grip on a dystopian nightmare. I think you have to be pretty naive to think it’s not looking startlingly like the latter.
What is legal today may not be tomorrow.
Social networks did not decide to capture users. Users have decided that social networks are what they prefer and then the site publishers optimised for where most people are.
Does it really matter what Google wants?

I use laptops for coding and ML (one of my laptops has a 1070 GPU). I use Firefox with containers, one for each major site (Twitter, Google properties, HN, etc.). I only delete all cookies in Firefox about once a month - probably not nearly often enough, even using containers.

I do most of my web browsing on an iPad Pro and I delete all cookies on Safari very frequently.

I pay Google for Play Music, buy books and movies, and use GCP - that is enough revenue for them, so I feel like they still make money from me. Twitter makes money by showing me ads. Anyway, I feel just fine about frequently nuking cookies.
Hey boss I have this great way to publish content to our users that works without Facebook getting in the way of showing half our stuff. We can provide a snippet of our article and people will never miss when we have something new for them.
I agree but I think it's a false dichotomy.

At least with a startup you can count on them to, well, try.
Bad laws will always be made or be available for exploitation. That can't be fixed.

The facial recognition, in this case, is the right place to intervene.

The argument can be made it's a good thing for more people to be arrested for BSfaster to get laws off the books, however, I fear authority will exploit select enforcement to it's fullest extent to ensure they can put a sufficient number of problematic individuals away without stirring up unrest.
Ask HN: Should interviews be a two street?
I was invited to interview with a company that posted on "Who is hiring" thread. The interview was nine rounds, two phone interviews (one was an online coding) and seven onsite interviews on the same day.

In one of the technical interviews the developer asked me to write a program to find Big O complexity of a given program. I asked about the input constraints to check if this was for recursive functions only and got a reply "all code in the universe, including the code for the program itself".

I explained to him about Halting problem and why a solution was not possible and also explained I could write a program that uses master theorem to solve a recurrence relation for those that fit the theorem.

He farted and said that's how much my answer stinks. It was pretty rank, enough to peel the wallpapers in the room. I said thanks for the feedback, got up and left the building. On my way out, I emailed the recruiter and politely stated that I do not wish to interview with them any longer.

Two days later I got an email from them stating they're not going to proceed with my application as the developers expected me to be more knowledgable about complexity analysis and data structures.

This got me thinking, why are technical interviews one-way? For a nine round interview process, why don't we kick it off by having their best engineer fight me in a 1 v 1 code battle?
Subsidies certainly are complicated and abuseable, and the value of them can greatly exceed the value of a tax deduction, depending on the industry.
Fracking is the primary reason a bunch of *nuclear power plants in the USA are shutting down early. The over-supply of gas from fracking, plus the inherent simplicity and efficiency of gas turbines makes them crazy hard to compete with. The carbon-free nuclear plants weren't overly expensive to operate, but when the electricity revenue dropped (especially in deregulated markets), they started struggling mightily.

Nukes produce 60% of the carbon-free energy in the USA. As they shut down, they're often replaced with natural gas, which locks in carbon emissions and indirect emissions from pipelines and the wellheads.

It's on the nuclear people to figure out how to get operating costs safely down. But boy howdy it'd be nice if their carbon-free nature could be valued higher, or if fracking could be made more expensive.

This is also a big part of why coal is struggling, but this doesn't bother me because coal is high carbon and high in killer air pollution (especially outside the US. Air pollution kills 4 million people/year globally [1]).

[1] https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/
Bad laws will always exist. The temptation to introduce more bad laws will always exist amongst law makers.

It's important that enforcing the law be difficult, expensive, and imperfect.
The current planes fly enormous distances - 15000 km - without refueling. (And there is not a lot od evidence that even this is fuel mass limited.) There are a lot of 2000 km routes to be replaced, like most countries' domestic flights.

But yep, it's not a solution for keeping our current flying habits. We will have to cut down on flying, a lot.
Another big problem is landing weight limits which are lower than takeoff limits.
I still have the old picasa executable so I can use it on new or reinstalled computers. It's great for browsing all the images and videos on your computer.
As someone who grew up in Santa Cruz with parents and friends working in tech, I feel the need to point out that the "SCO" involved in the lawsuit wasn't the same people as the "SCO" that developed the tech - the rights to the name and the software were purchased by Caldera after (it seems, although I'm less confident about this part) all that was left was at Caldera were the lawyers and MBAs.
Absolutely agree, RSS feeds help save so much time for end-users, and makes contextual skimming much easier in one place.

* Shameless plug *: Our little service, Feedity - https://feedity.com, helps create RSS feeds for any public webpage, even JS/XHR/SPAs, and social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), via a visual feed builder and REST API.
Will this effect low end CPU prices?
In Andrew Luck’s Retirement, Football’s Consequences Weigh Heavily
I experience the opposite. Meeting social needs is a motivating factor. If I'm lonely I'm less productive at my leisure.
I wish antitrust authorities were given the budget that is provided by taxi authorities worldwide... That would achieve much more.
Ah yes, but at this point I'm quite sure it will be used in service of "bad laws" and little else.

Its true that thanks to profit motive, someone will build it.

Its just not going to be me.
>So money won't do anything for that.

You can't force a Madagascan to stop dancing with corpses, but you can persuade them that it's uncouth and old-fashioned using perfectly ordinary marketing techniques. The norms of a society can be changed with remarkable speed if you write a big cheque to people who change social norms for a living.
I usually prefer that as well, but if the choice is no RSS and headline+excerpt RSS, I’m absolutely fine with the latter. Without RSS I won’t read any regular content.
What Andrew Luck Means
Harvard Student Says He Was Barred From U.S. Over Friends’ Social Media Posts
As people in Hong Kong have shown, it's as easy to tear all this shit down as it is to put it up.
Fair use is not infringement.
At this point, I have started seeing Google as a miniature of contemporary SV (with all its good and bad stuff). Lots of random products thrown out to the user only to be cancelled in a few years? Check! Occasional massively successful (and actually useful) products? Check! Lip service and virtue signaling for fads du jour (eg. diversity)? Check! Actual behavior hinting towards prioritizing profits over all else (eg. lots of low-wage contractors in lieu of full time employees)? Check!

So it won't be a surprise if there are internal pitching sessions where Product Managers would be pitching their ideas to VPs just like YC demo days. Then get started with 2-3 engineers, put out the product, take it to some decent success level (eg. US-only, English-only, Android/iOS-only launch), pocket your promo, move on, rinse and repeat!!

The real question for me is is this all by design? Could it be that they want exactly this kind of setup? I won't be surprised if Google leadership is thinking this way...
You need to see this in the proper social context. Yes, it's technology and seems like a new phenomenon ("dystopia"!), but that already existed and not much has changed. What if I told you that the local security bureau there always had all the information about people's whereabouts? If you were burglarized, you called one of them up and the thieves were caught. China never worked the way that most people understand.
The University of Tokyo could afford to do that because another nation had taken over responsibility for their defense. Who's going to be that protector for the US?
This is one of the most frightening things I’ve ever read.
Eh, politics was devoid of nuance long before Twitter.
Hah. The last traffic fine I paid was for a highway speed-limit sign (65 to 30mph) more than a mile from, and around a curve from, a Midwest whistle-stop that a few hundred called home. A lot of these flat-plain potholes probably survived only because their leaders had the connections to get the highway routed through them.

( Akroid's 1991 film 'Nothing But Trouble' sums up my feelings.)
I think the percentage of the cost of the final product sunk into labor acts more like a VAT. Sure, the manufacturer making carbon fiber canoes may spend more on carbon fiber than the operator. But what percentage of the carbon fiber supplier's cost to manufacture is labor? And what about the the labor costs in the tools the supplier uses? Etc. It's a cumulative percentage, not just at the last mile. Similar to how VAT is calculated (at least in my admittedly limited understanding of VAT).

I think this is in contrast to highly automated industries (tentatively). I think the train of thought is that lower labor costs results in a higher concentration of wealth as less wealth is distributed since there are lower labor costs.

However, I would posit that the more direct measure is profit percentages. Hypothetically, if labor costs go down, and profit margins stay the same (ie if the savings are passed on to consumers), then I would imagine there would be an increase in consumption.

Where the money gets back to workers may change (as increased consumption would mean increased demand for the materials McDonalds uses, which likely have higher labor costs). High profit percentages, however, typically benefit those that own some of the company.

This is entirely conjecture, I am not well versed in economics. If there is some flaw in this (and I'm sure there are several), I would love to be corrected for my own education!
Press away if you feel like it.

The things you are talking about here seem to be details of very short term decision making. There are a lot of complications in the small picture, and unless one of us works in an actual power plant we are probably going to get them wrong.

But the big picture has some basic balance laws that have to hold: a company cannot consistently give away product for free and stay in business. Even if it is theoretically possible, it just happens to be a well known fact that that isn't how electricity markets work for any of the participants. The electricity isn't a by-product or anything strange; this is electricity produced to be be sold for money. We know that the average price has to be positive.

Therefore it is misleading to point out "renewables have been causing power prices to occasionally fall to $0" as though that were any sort of positive. The falls to $0 are balanced by rises to some larger positive number so that over the full year the total price is positive. These falls do represent an opportunity, but they represent an opportunity that nobody is taking advantage of yet. Those prices signal strongly that there is energy being produced that isn't useful to anybody (or they would, y'know, be willing to pay for it). When somebody finds a use for this power that is presently being basically dumped then prices will rise to some low-but-positive value and that will probably be a very good sign.

Some people have pointed out that maybe there are subsides for renewables; in which case governments are paying renewables to produce something nobody is using which is also not a positive for renewables.

The big issue is we've seen exactly this situation play out in Germany. The game changes slightly from normal because we know that the renewable producers don't have the sort of control over when they supply powers as conventional power; periods of 0 wholesale prices leading to anomalously high retail prices at the end of the year as the intermediaries deal with the problem of uncontrolled generation. Those $0 prices are a likely a tell that things are getting expensive. They are not a good sign. Hopefully they are a neutral sign.
It's because there are other sources of pollution far worse than cars.

For example cargo ships:

https://newatlas.com/shipping-pollution/11526/
Dystopian nightmare.
Not really. At this point the HK government doesn't care to go after the people tearing "all this shit down", but it wouldn't be hard. Protestors have the fantasy that they are invincible, because they know nothing is actually going to happen.
As Tiananmen square has shown there is a difference in rebelling at the periphery and the center.
> Government works on law not on what makes sense

That is a very American sentiment, most governments doesn't consist of ~50% lawyers.

For example in Sweden the government is full of union members from the working class, they have very different view of what role the government should have with respect to company abuse. The result is that basically all laws are worded in such a way that if any ambiguity exists it will disfavor private companies.
RSS switched from life-support to being alive when Reader died. Before there were a few apps and sites. With Reader’s death we got a resurgence and many new tools.
Glenn Doman

https://www.amazon.com/Glenn-Doman/e/B000APY4CA
If you solution to a problem is “massive reduction in critically important infrastructure”, then you might not have a solution.
There is no connection between C++ and dynamic memory allocation. Most of my C++ programs allocate memory at startup, then run for weeks or months (on machines with 200+ GB of RAM) never allocating ever again. C programs routinely allocate dynamic memory, except where there is reason not to; likewise C++.

So, no, there is never a reason to confine yourself to the C subset, in a new program. "for (auto e : v)" is universally better than "for (i = 0; i != N; ++i)". Zero cost, better code.

But I would never, ever suggest using an IDE, under any circumstances, for any language.
Dear god web push is such cancer
Maybe im naive but I don't see anything positive coming from facial recognition. Its two main uses are targeted advertising and finding dissidents. It could help find a handful of criminals, but considering the high level of false positives, the inevitable abuse like every other police technology, and the fact that I live in a police state where im unknowingly breaking any number of laws at any given moment, I don't see how it helps more than it hurts. Might as well require people to carry papers at all times and submit to police checkpoints at every street corner.
You should read Andrew Hodges work "Alan Turing: The Enigma" on which "The Imitation Game" is allegedly partly based.

The contrasts are striking.
Huh? There's perhaps a foot of pavement there. I'm wider than that. My bike is wider than that. There's no room for safely passing in the lane - drivers can go into the oncoming lane to pass just like they would for any other vehicle.
I've never heard anyone refer to nuclear power plants as simply "nukes"; just a heads up that that's very confusing as most people will think of "nukes" as nuclear warheads instead.
Peloton's absurd price is the only reason it is popular. It's for people who want a song and dance with their exercise instead of focusing on working out.
An eye-opening exhibition shows how scientific breakthroughs shaped modern art
In the book Obesity Code, it says that during fasting human growth hormone levels increase. This maintains muscle mass.
Oh I definitely will. I received heavy Hire marketing spam emails in the last 3 months.

It is very unprofessional to try to get companies to change their processes to depend in a product that you are closing.

I wont touch Google products with a 10ft pole for my company any time soon. It is a liability.
> they bestowed him with $centi-million bonuses.

Point of order: ‘centi‐’ is one hundredth. Even I've had $centi-million bonuses.
The Moralist (2016)
The mentally ill gravitate to places with mental health/social services... Aka cities. It's not rocket science.
Good call.

At 33:30, John Foley and Guy Raz start talking about the Kickstarter and how it didn't achieve its goals.

At 35:00, they talk about the the initial pricing for the bike being breakeven ($1,200) and how that didn't work. The feedback was "at $1,200 [the bike] 'seems cheap', 'it sounds cheap.' And so, we said, well, let's increase the price...."

You can listen to more of the podcast, unpack this, and analyze what the reveals about that the demographics of the customers with whom they've connected so far. Without any intent to be critical, the HN readers who think the bike is too expensive have the opposite reaction to the people who became customers.

I suspect the average Peloton customer has more money than time.
Does not apply. Nobody is born with C skills.

Competence can be measured objectively. Failure to understand array bounds is prima facie evidence of lack.
And the US uses DICE owned ClearanceJobs.com. So?
How to Review a Novel
It was a fundamental change to the most basic unit of economy we have (money). This was the date the financial system separated from reality and became based on... nothing!
Face recognition as a technology won’t go away. What’s important is preventing governments and private groups from using face recognition in abusive ways. A legal framework for what is and is not okay must be established.
Dear site operators: enjoy obscurity
There's absolutely no reason to buy an expensive fast stationary bike. It's an oxymoron.
Can you make it read emails? Asking for a friend...
I can watch Netflix or YouTube (exercise motivation vids or general interest vids) on my tablet to keep me busy while I stationary bike.
GH is $50, not $2000
that's an assessment tool, not an applicant tracker as far as I can see. Not the same thing at all.
just like RSS should be there for latest articles, sitemaps should also be there for collection of all articles on the blog. So that we are not at the mercy of crawlers to get list of all articles of a blog.
Linus Tech tips is where I saw the ad, I didnt say pirate, i clearly said buy.
Speaking for myself, I think it’s my hope that the people on here who are being ignorant are usually at least open to being rationally explained at why they are wrong.

It’s not guaranteed but in other forums it’s less of a guarantee.

And even if the person doesn’t respond well, sometimes the more reasonable comments will get upvoted, even if they’re unpopular positions, so it’s worth making them.

It’s not true on every topic, some things like sexual violence HN seems to come from an emotional place, which brings out Dang’s “no flame ward!” hammer...

But in general this is a forum where knowing what’s actually true and explaining it well can sometimes be rewarded.

That said, there is also a ton of knee-jerk “that’s not technically true” or “I don’t immediately see the feasibility” stuff. I suspect that is just a personality thing that correlates with engineer types.
thanks a lot for your effort.

I'll read this new version too.

I think your book is very underestimated. It's a great book to beginner perhaps the best one, because It's updated and It's very practical.
If I would have to recommend someone about where to start to learn Common Lisp I'll say to start with your book.
It is known within the inner circles that he is quite a toxic character that has no taboos on privacy limits.

This piece is no exception at showing how much he wants to show off by revealing private facts about certain things.

Lawsuits brought against him in the past reveal one or two more things.
Python rounds float values by converting them to string and then back
Agree with you - I think the problem isn't the lack of widely available feeds but the harmful sentiment that RSS is somehow obsolete and unnecessary so many newer well meaning apps don't spend the effort to add it.
It's about right and climbs post op.
Does it matter what the mainlanders think? It's the communist party that controls China, not the general public.
Nice guys finish last is a saying that rings true in multiple fields.

It's also entirely within anyone's control to realize that and act accordingly.

I'm less of a nice guy these days, and my life is better for it. Though I try to ultimately be very nice to the people I care about.
On person’s gatekeeping is another persons helping to avoid a rookie mistake.
Related thread on Twitter https://twitter.com/whitequark/status/1164395585056604160
What if JFK’s dream had come to fruition?
The FBI doesn't have a conviction rate because they do not prosecute cases. The Department of Justice might have a 93% conviction rate, perhaps.
Why do you need a quality bike? You don't need it to be fast or efficient or have good shocks or tires if it's stationery.
Would this actually be practical? From what little I know about google infrastructure everything is dependent on their in house tooling and spinning projects off is a massive amount of work.
In many regions, using WhatsApp is not really a choice.