skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm pretty damn disappointed with the discourse here. What RMS wrote in the MIT mailing list was so reprehensible, that I'm pretty sure the people here defending him must have not read it. So here is the comments he wrote to a major MIT mailing list where he victim-blames child sex trafficking victims in the wake of MIT media lab accepting money from credibly accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein:

> The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky:

> “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])”

> The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault”is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.

> The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef...) Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).

> The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.

> We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

> I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.

> Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.

You can (and we must) acknowledge Stallman's contributions to the field while not condoning his pattern of bad behavior. because if we let a leading figure in the industry act this way publicly, it reflects bad on all of us. We cannot claim to be an industry that accepts and welcomes diverse viewpoints and experiences while still holding up a man who has such a long laundry list of reprehensible behavior as a leader and respected figure in the industry.
A 10cm3 cube of neutron star would weigh about a billion tonnes, comparable to a cubic km of water ice.
I wonder how all that mass would behave if left to expand with all the exotic physics involved - if it would just sort of... vaporize the planet.
It probably is. Stallman is a pedant in the worst possible way: he rejects reality in favor of textbook perfection.
> The only reason i bother to write this long comment is because it is posted by RMS. I guess thats the motive of the op, may be op can talk about it. RMS speaking against the evils of hinduism will give more weight to clarify the misconception about the hindusim being peaceful religion.

I don't understand this. How is RMS's view on something he is uneducated about 'giving more wieght' ? Would you say that the opinion of a world renowned Sadhu or Yogi on Free Software principles would automatically become worthy of being considered seriously ? I don't get this hero worship. Yes, RMS's view on software have birthed the FOSS movement but lets not fool ourselves into thinking that every opinion of his is worthy of attention.
Having an uncompromising autist with unbendable principles at the job was the right man at the right job.

There is a high chance that FSF will be taken over by some people-pleaser that compromises FSF into oblivion.

There aren't that many people out there who would take as strong and opinionated stances.
> proposed the idea of a “lunar space elevator,” which is exactly what it sounds like—a very long elevator connecting the moon and our planet.

No that's absolutely not what a space elevator is
Who do you think ruled Britain until 410AD and give the English their mile, which is simply the word for "1000" in Latin?

And I think that the press release is in error here. There was no radius measurement proposed in the Nature Astronomy paper. However, the radius in the press release is far to large. See:

https://i.imgur.com/Y34OspJ.png (From https://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.02698.pdf)

Something on the order of 6-10 miles for a 2.14 M neutron star is much more appropriate.

Notice that this measurement may rule out some of our models (mostly the gray lines on the left of the chart) that don't predict neutron stars this massive.
Randall Munroe (author of xkcd) addresses this question in his excellent book "What If?", covering what would actually happen (basically a nuclear explosion), what would happen if it was somehow kept magically at the same density without exploding (it will end up oscillating around then settling at the Earth's core), and finally and most interestingly what it would be like if you could keep it near the surface and attempted to approach it.
National parks are generally massive.

I sometimes wonder if this is why America has such trouble with environmental issues. When your landscape is so vast it is hard to imagine human activity having an impact on it.

The trouble with the "respectful traveller" is that they are a minority, as we can see from the article linked at the top of this discussion.
When I started on HN ten years ago, it was only about tech & professional growth. Only in the last few years have the politics and outrage taken over this forum and it “deeply disgusts me.”
Kevin Hart apologized for some offensive jokes, he apologized as advised by the academy, and still got cancelled. Apologizing only serves to augment the conviction of a mob intent on finding fault.
Chronic Pain Among Suicide Decedents [pdf]
You should realize wealth is a continuum. Destitute, Poor, Lower Class, Lower Middle Class ...
Or The PJs
The key point:

the Columbia study differs from previous proposal in an important way: instead of building the elevator from the Earth’s surface (which is impossible with today’s technology), it would be anchored on the moon and stretch some 200,000 miles toward Earth until hitting the geostationary orbit height (about 22,236 miles above sea level), at which objects move around Earth in lockstep with the planet’s own rotation.

Dangling the space elevator at this height would eliminate the need to place a large counterweight near Earth’s orbit to balance out the planet’s massive gravitational pull if the elevator were to be built from ground up. This method would also prevent any relative motion between Earth’s surface and space below the geostationary orbit area from bending or twisting the elevator
He is the founder of the FSF. He advocated free software so that it is accessible to anyone.

But sure, he is probably a dick so let us remove them...

You know what? He actually probably isn't the easiest person to be around. Just saw him once and he certainly isn't the guy to move crowds.

But let us be certain that we have very distinct definitions of what constitutes "being a dick".
I will hunt down this comment and reply to you in your profile once it’s out!
You are responsible for your own actions. In this case your own negligence led to you committing a crime. Just as if your actions negligently lead you to kill someone that is a crime.

If you have sex with someone that hasn’t or can’t give consent then yes you should be at the very least charged with a crime. If someone else coerced that result then they should be charged with a crime as well. That someone else is also responsible does not absolve you of the crime.

The bottom line is that you don’t have to have sex with someone.
See this recent interview with him, he addresses this topic and shows he changed his mind.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/17/richard_stallman_in...

> The guy has a long history endorsing pedophillia.

This is a big accusation, do you have source to back this up?
I think that's fine though. Extremists exist to help the rest of us work out which shade of grey looks right to us.
Stallman sounds shady, but what's our basis for concluding that it wasn't for sleeping and was instead a creepy sex invitation? The word of a blogger who put words in Stallman's mouth and got him fired for them? I would appreciate a corroborating source, preferably one who didn't have as big of an ax to grind.
I agree with both of you, and I think stallman also had the misfortune here to be so beloved that people are willing to give him a pass on a lot of the things he's said.

It's absolutely true that neuro-atypical people can learn from others, even if they can't pick up on social cues the way neurotypical people can. I'm guessing stallman just goes unchallenged on much of this stuff because of the lingering effects of the rockstar syndrome in tech, where "great men," geniuses, whatever, get cut a lot of slack because of their position in the industry.

It's only recently that I've seen a shift away from prizing our jerk 10x rockstars ("hey, he's so smart he can keep the whole codebase in his head!") to valuing better-behaved people. stallman seems like he'd be even more isolated than the typical one of those, with less chance to have the rough edges smoothed off in the rock tumbler of social interaction.

Again, not an excuse, but I'm more interested in, "how did we get here?" (where "here" is a decades-long public figure questioning the wrongness of pedophilia and making jokes like the "emacs virgin" thing well into the 2000s).
I think what often gets overlooked is risk profile of a given activity. E.g. I enjoy doing dishes because I am pretty certain that if I clean them they will be clean I don't need to manage risks/uncertainty while I am cleaning dishes. Many work activities involve dealing with uncertainty and risks outside of one's control which comes with much higher stress level.
Very true. We went last year, happened to be on the day the Memphis Belle exhibit opened. We have videos of the WWII era planes flying overhead. Then they landed and we took a bus out to the end of the runway/taxiway and could get inside the planes. It was awesome.

In an amazing stroke of luck, one of the VC-25s was doing training that day too. So we have videos of the WWII planes flying by, then pan over to a VC-25 in the same shot. Just an amazing combination to see in the air at the same time.
Indeed. Its not like he has decided to keep these opinions to himself. He has emailed a work mailing-list to spout this rubbish.

If I had posted this to my work mailing-list: https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... then I'd have been bollocked. If I had a history of posting politics defending something that is pretty indefensible (especially in a role where I would be in loco parentis for minors)

I would have limited sympathy if this was expressed privately[1], but its not, its broadcast to all and sundry.

[1] but his position is frankly wrong. Its a big ask to justify sexual slavery.
Well he didn't _need_ to voice his opinion on copyright and proprietary software either.

But I am glad he did.

Look I agree what he did was dumb, but he is free to voice an opinion on anything he likes. We don't have to agree with it but we don't have to turn it into a witch hunt either..
'Diversified Sampling': mining large datasets for special cases
Neither. It's tall.
Housework in many parts of Africa is hard, grueling work, and the women perform it from sunrise to sunset every day. Washing clothes without a washing machine, scrubbing dusty floors, cooking on charcoal stoves. None of these tasks use ergonomic materials and much of the work occurs very close to the floor, which creates a lot of up and down movement that strains back and knees. Coupled with hauling water around from sources up to 300 yards away and lack of electricity, I would not want that to be my only option in life.
Blimey. So I'd probably not even notice someone had teleported it here in the first place as I blinked out of existence :)

Ok, on that note... what would it expand as? I mean, would it be a physical substance, like particles of something like a gas or a plasma?

I assume it'd be quite hot (putting it mildly!)
My understanding is that these are logistically different things. Public housing projects are state owned, whereas Section 8 refers to privately owned housing where rent is paid at least partly by government vouchers.
I guess you are right
Just in response to both of you. I feel you!

I went through similar things. I do alright now but my brother stayed on the same line and things aren't so good there.

If there is one difference I can point at, it was my friends and girlfriends (and now wife) that are the causative factor in my direction. They pushed me to be more than the sum of my past and circumstances. My brother's friends just held him in place. I was lucky.
WeWork is a huge success

Indeed. For all the platitudes otherwise, the vast majority of startup founders do this primarily because they want to become rich. Judging a startup by any other metric is at the end of the day at least somewhat disingenuous.

If all you know about two startups is that in startup 1 the founder exited the company with $10 million in his bank account and in startup 2 the founder exited with $750 million in his bank account, which would judge the bigger success?
You learn by first listening, and asking questions. No one expects everyone to be perfect out of the gate, but you at least have to make an effort.
That is not the relevant point, the point is whether women are figuratively imprisoned by housework.

There is nothing wrong with one person in a couple doing all the housework, but there are problems if one is (by a variety of factors) partly coerced into it.

Frankly I believe that as a society we are quite hypocritical of how we treat this and what I would like is that people who find satisfaction in housework are free to focus on that and people who find satisfaction in career can focus on that with some intermingling of the two worlds.
Living in Atlanta, that usually depended on who you were talking to. I've heard both, but "section 8" usually came from middle class+ white people
Why back?
DataRobot Announces $206M Series E Funding Round
Just curious, why? For example, if one wants to enjoy Picasso's paintings without getting bothered about how he treated people in his life, it is their choice, isn't it? If someone wants to concentrate only on the tech and ignore the rest, that is also their choice, isn't it?

Not saying one view is better or worse than the other. Simply pointing out people choose to get involved at different levels...
> Gender inequality cuts across every single country on Earth.

> Boys’ worlds expand [...] and enroll in high school or college or get a job.

> girls’ worlds contract. They transition, sometimes at a very young age, from being subservient to their parents to being subservient to their husbands.

Emphasis mine.
These days you might as well become a hermit or kill yourself because there is no penance great enough to be accepted by some people.
Your view on the matter is the exact reason why we need more RMS around.

Are you suggesting that underage sex is not ok?

Because many people I know were having sex before coming to age.

He never suggested though that an old man having sex with a 14 years old girl was an ok thing.

People who wanted to read it, read it from his words, but he never said it.

So we have a bigger problem here: one cannot be pedantically correct or people will act as an angry mob on them and get away with it.
And actually that can be a good topic to write about
I find it hilariously patronizing how they explain things in this article, did they seriously need to mine all this data and do all this research to come to these so obvious conclusions? Poverty, Lack of healthcare and education, clean water, the sins of generations and the cycle that proceeds it, its the basis of every ghetto in the world. Really dont understand what The Gates Foundation is trying to get across with this piece. He has the power, the means, the influence to single handedly change the situation in Chad with zero help from anybody, all they have to do is choose to do it. Yet here we are with all this data and metrics, was this seriously an "ah-ha!" moment for them?! If so, they seriously are detached as the 1%.
I still don't understand where this fact is coming from. Are you monitoring households and producing statistics on who is doing the housework ?
The linked article starts with

"We were born in a wealthy country to white, well-off parents who lived in thriving communities and were able to send us to excellent schools. These factors, among many others, put us in a great position to be successful."

It would be more intellectually honest if Bill Gates had mentioned his very high IQ as a factor in his success.

This article estimates an average IQ of 82 rather than below 70 for sub-Saharan Africans.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
Intelligence
Volume 38, Issue 1, January–February 2010, Pages 1-20
A systematic literature review of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans
M.Wicherts, Conor V.Dolan, Han L.J. van der Maas

A response by Lynn and Meisenberg in the same journal, defending the below-70 estimate, is at
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... .
I would like to rewrite it into something less abrasive, but this was not intended to highlight the gender split. In some circumstances a group of men can be more empathetic towards a woman than a group of women would be.

I believe the default state is to be moved by what you can perceive as a more immediate danger. This doesn't stem from some underhanded camaraderie, one's mind is just more attuned to what can directly affect it.

Here, the gender split already makes HN more likely, when all comments are summed into a chaotic generalized opinion, to defend RMS by default. He's a man, he's a hacker, he's at the root of many things we take for granted.

The gender split is just some context (and not even the most important piece of context — if I had time to discuss this at length, I would posit that if HN or tech in general were evenly split, it would have the same lack of empathy, just manifested differently.) for the next paragraph, which is the real problem: pretending feelings, emotions and perceptions can be discarded. Which is what makes me resent HN sometimes, as the parent says:

> I'm not really sure why you're expressing derision towards people that don't want sexual assault trivialized. I dunno, I feel like reading these types of posts, which are prevalent in this thread, that I have less and less in common with people on Hacker News

Once emotions are discarded, you can justify even genocide as long as you can convene an outcome that is favorable to a majority.
I get that you're being sarcastic, but... yes? It's fine to talk about topics where you're not an expert, but if you want to talk authoritatively about something, yes, I'd expect something at least approaching expert level.
It's also more common for the man to do work that is more dangerous, exposed to the elements, requires more travel, and other hazards to earn the extra money the risk brings.
It wasn't a rotary one though. The one that caused bleeding was a Braun Series 1-195s, while the good one is a Braun Series 1-190s.

The blades on the 195s are parallel with the foil though, while the 190s are perpendicular, so I'm sure it's the same problem.
"Section 8" is a different thing, that refers to vouchers that are used to pay rent to private landlords.

"The projects" on the other hand are owned and operated by government.
While I agree that a lot of this has got a bit blown out of proportion, there is one line by him that I find a bit disconcerting:

> I think it is morally absurd to define rape in a way that depends on minor details such as what country it was in or whether the victim is 17 or 18 years old.

[from https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420... and I hope people will agree that this isn't misleading without context]

Whatever your position on statutory rape ethically, it is nonetheless a crime in most countries with (as many laws have) an arbitrary cut off point. Which side of the road you drive on is an arbitrary choice, but I don't think most of us would defend someone who got into an accident because they forgot they were in the UK and drove on the left.
> Black holes have the same gravitational effects as any other equal mass in their place. They will draw objects nearby towards them, just as any other planetary body does, except at very close distances to the black hole. If, for example, the Sun were replaced by a black hole of equal mass, the orbits of the planets would be essentially unaffected. A black hole can act like a "cosmic vacuum cleaner" and pull a substantial inflow of matter, but only if the star from which it formed was already having a similar effect on surrounding matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#...
IQ IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT.
HTC Appoints Orange's Yves Maitre as CEO, Effective Immediately
I think Phoenix LiveView is offering a very compelling value here. You are basically writing a regular server side app that will perform on par with SPA for most use cases.
Asimov's story takes this to its (extreme) logical conclusion:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story)
As cynical as it may sound, we are unequal once we are conceived in our mother's womb. An educated, healthy, grown-up mother has anticipated that moment with great sentimentality and does her best to ensure the best for the baby during the whole course of the pregnancy. Neglected, underweight, malnourished children from less responsible mothers are easy to spot even during their infant period. This is your real start which determines much of your mental and physical health for your while life.

Healthy, mentally-stable parents are most likely to have healthy and mentally-stable kids which is the number one prerequisite for enjoying and succeeding in life.
I'm far from certain RMS's only offense was difficulty communicating, but the "evolution" of his statements as they traveled through the media was terrifying to witness.

Stallman:

> the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.

Selam G.

> [Stallman] says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.

VICE:

> Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being trafficked.

New York Post:

> MIT scientist says Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was ‘entirely willing’
>> "Normally, when someone engages in behavior seen as offensive, the procedure is to pressure the person to apologize and mend his ways, and only get rid of him if he refuses to do so."

How many years and incidents is enough to move to removal?
Say there are three people living together in a share house/unit, all sharing the one internet connection. There'd have to be a way to deal with cases like this.
Because to them, everything IS political.
The irony of this view (that housework is a bad thing) is that it is almost totally a function of current views about gender.

Before the widespread automation of many household tasks (in the rich world) starting in the 1950/60s, housework was more gruelling than most paid jobs. And if you go back further, to the proto-industry of the 18th century, then housework was just work (i.e. merchants putting out work to women and children).

I think this has led to a misunderstanding of why gender inequality exists today and existed in the past. Which is unfortunate because it mainly leads to poor recommendations (particularly when people who live in one context start telling people in another context they should be more like them).
Nice derailing. How much does the CIA pay you?
> The "correct" conversion to (modern) miles would be 20

In nautical miles it would be closer to 15 ;-)
> The guy has a long history endorsing pedophillia

Among the many things one can say about RMS, this is not one of them.

This is just slander.
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