skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Also, markets price in these sorts of things.

Markets price in the expected value of them, but since if divestment works, the impact is driven by the funds-available-for-investment weighted aggregate of public opinion, markets can only price it in if they have advance knowledge of both the content and wealth-distribution of future public opinion. Which they obviously don't.

(Even if they did, all this would be saying is "if divestment works, then it not only works but works retrocausally to reduce the stock price even before the decision to divest occurs." Which, whatever it is, isn't an argument against divestment.)
If divestment was a real threat, that would already be factored into the price.
The title is indeed misleading. 3 years of pod desktop app is not that bad, I’ve seen way worse transitions to a subscription but still not great.

Will hope Marco moves Overcast to Mac, he has been open about the model.
To my understanding, although the behaviors of filterM, etc. differ depending on the monad instance, as long as the monad instances follow the laws, those functions like filterM have predictable behavior. It's a consequence of "theorems for free" / parametricity.
Thanks for this comment. I will probably download for that reason alone. That said, my goto vector editor is InkPad on an iPad Pro. It's everything I need and nothing I don't.
Nice !

A better title would be free basic tiers + subscription for advanced features.

I strongly believe that this is a good business model for such apps that are constantly in development and have a server side (so recurring costs for the dev).

I have been using pocketcasts for a while and it is one of my favorite Android apps. So now I just have to put my money where my mouth is and subscribe.
> shoot first, ask questions later

Oh my God, no. Stallman has been a problem for years. Shooting first and asking questions later is the exact opposite of the problem.
> the board’s legal obligation is to pursue shareholder value

No, its not.

> not do what the majority owners of company want them to do.

Actually, the purpose laid out in most corporate charters is, within the law, to do exactly that.

> I’m torn on that, but minority’s shareholders have a legitimate expectation their rights should be protected.

They have a legitimate expectation that their rights should be protected, but the right you are basing this argument on does not exist.
The outrage machine is controlled and monitored by your peers at Facebook and Co.
Blockchain solutions in real world work because of people's ability to form legally binding consortium made up of real business entities that have decided to cooperate with each other.

Crypto backed distributed trust that blockchain brings into such consortiums has no value other than superficial optics and hype novelty as of today. It doesn't solve any real problems that isn't already solved by legal mechanisms. To prove this, if you take away the legal mechanisms upon which the consortium is built, the consortium will fail and blockchain won't be able to hold it together.

For example, Bitcoin has value because masses trust they can convert it back to fiat currency via a coin exchange. Coin exchanges are real business legal entities that are subject to laws and regulations as they deal with fiat currency. For the masses, these laws and regulations are what confer that trust on those exchanges, not crypto.

It is best to think of bitcoin as a technical protocol but with very interesting properties, technical properties, and that has certain implications in real world – specifically w.r.t tampering and double spending or theft fraud. But this by itself has no real world value without the legal system backing its conversion to fiat currency. Without this relation to fiat currency, the technical properties are worthless on their own.

Similarly, handshake blockchain has no real world value unless a legally recognized consortium emerges to add value to it in real world.

Using bitcoin metaphor, instead of real world fiat currency it is real world names, trademarks that gets "converted" to digital names on this handshake blockchain that gives this blockchain any value. Once you have a trademark/realname "converted" on this blockchain, your ownership cannot be "stolen or double-spent" etc. That's the intrinsic crypto property of the blockchain which has some real-world value.

But this name "conversion" has to be done by "exchanges" which are real-world business entities to which laws can be applied.

Without this being baked into the system, this is dead on arrival.
> There's a somewhat subtle and pervasive assumption that all owners will seek only to maximize returns (or similar) but that notion really needs to go.

I think a slight modification holds, though:

"all owners will seek only to maximize returns across all of their holdings, to themselves"

Chevron causing environmental damage costing me $100 personally outweighs the extra $50 those shortcuts added to my fraction of the company, etc.

And if you include moral/social costs on top of that, then IMO there really isn't anything that the expanded "maximize returns" statement doesn't cover.
I should learn to read Haskell one of these days. Not today though.
We've been using this for months. Didn't realize that Slack hadn't officially released this till now.
This is a good idea, unfortunately when it comes to investment it is not enough for a company to be in the right track. It also needs to dominate the market, which is more difficult. For example, lots of companies were created in the Internet bubble, but only a few survived and came to dominate the market.
This resonates very well with my experiences throughout my career.

The best design experiences from an at-the-time and with hindsight typically result in a collaborative document with a clear narrative structure explaining most importantly what and why as well as how (and as the article mentions, the trade offs involved) such that even junior engineers and potentially even non-technical contributors can understand what we're doing and why.
You tell them you were testing security. You tell them you were testing the alarm system. You DO NOT tell them that you are measuring their response time.
So, you're saying anybody should be able to avoid being fired simply by whipping up a social media storm against themselves? I can see a lot of possible abuses here.
Alternate title: Pocket Cast will now have charge you a subscription fee if you want to continue using features that you already paid for
Aside from versioning being clear about how big the change is, Windows Installer has this [0-255].[0-255].[0-65535] limit that I hope people do not learn about in the hard ways.

It's not so fun to work around because Windows Installer tries to be smart about things, as opposed to the others that take a more robust approach.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/productve...
Are we sure this is even correct? I didn't see any link to any actual data.

> Millennials experiencing burnout worked an average of 41 hours per week, which is more than baby boomers.

Considering that "millennials" are turning 40 now, I'm not surprised that they are working more hours than the retiring age range.

https://xkcd.com/2165/
It would be nice and time saving to have a book documenting thoughtfully these issues.
I think you underestimate the challenge in programming TensorFlow to use Tensor-cores, currently. It is a hell of a lot of fp16 and fp32 casts, and, frankly, most Python programmers / Data Scientists do not have the skills to do it. There is some work in getting TensorFlow to automatically do it for you, but i haven't seen the evidence in benchmarks, yet.

From this thread, it looks like (for Resnet-50), the Radeon VII is closing in on the nvidia 2080Ti - with more memory (16 vs 11 GB), can be used in a data-center EULA, and 2/3 of the price.

https://github.com/ROCmSoftwarePlatform/tensorflow-upstream/...

In any case, Google are not going the tensorcores route with TPUs. Fast general purpose matmuls. Same as AMD. I don't think tensorcores is a clear winner, yet.
Does HN use any similar algorithm? In the posts with enough comments to run onto a second page, I have never clicked through.
It's not just any private equity company, but one that is known for purchasing companies with a big subscriber base and then getting as much money out of them with the least effort.
Whether the cops are actually overworked or not doesn't matter. If the responding officers think themselves overworked, they will react negatively to being tested. What matters isn't reality but how they think of themselves.
> Jaywalking is wrong.

There’s discussion about whether this was criminalized by the auto lobby, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> Should you get 15 months or even 20 years for it?

In any case, it’s a minor crime and the punishment, if any, is usually quite light.

> I doubt that either the guy who made the call or the guy who hired him wanted to kill someone.

In any case, I think we can agree that the people who were involved in making the call knew they were doing something wrong. At the very least, they were wasting police time and harassing an innocent person, which is a medium-level crime even if nobody got hurt. In this case we have a tragedy: I think it’s reasonable that the caller knew that this was a possible outcome and the results would make the case one for “accomplice to murder” or something similar. If we accept that the caller did not have an intention or expect for armed police to show up and start shooting (which is somewhat unlikely considering what he called for) this could be a manslaughter charge. (FWIW, I am not providing an opinion on what the sentencing for something like this should be, or whether the police officer should be charged with murder, as those are separate issues.)
Proof of Work solves that by preventing Sybil attacks - it's costly to mine (which is equivalent to signing off on, because it wouldn't make sense to sign an invalid block, you would get rewarded). It's the only signature scheme known to be dynamic and allow for an arbitrary participant size. The point is that you can trust the chain with the most proof of work. As long as you maintain a diverse set of peers and validate blocks, you can know the state of the network.
Supporting them because features I used is exactly why I've bought 3 of the 4 versions they've released (never had any iOS devices).
As a headline, "Postgres Makes Transactions Atomic" would be read by many as being a new feature. Adding "How" removes that reading.
I swear by AntennaPod. Been using it for years and years and the only thing I'm missing is an EQ.
That would make sense if this app had always been a subscription. But they acquired the customers who hate subscriptions and then flipped.
Not great.
Author accepts PRs via GitHub :)
https://github.com/brandur/sorg/blob/master/content/articles...
They could halt expansion and raise prices instead to improve the unit economics. They could also fire the senior management. I doubt they'll do either of these things.

(It wouldn't cause it to be a tech IPO, but at least a sustainable business IPO).
That really is what we're talking about now, try as people might to ignore it. This was the last of a long string of statements and actions that Stallman had been repeatedly warned about.
It is not an illusion. Companies state the buyback amounts and outstanding shares. The market for the most part is quite savvy and knows how to price in these mechanical changes. Nobody is being fooled at scale.
That's the exact opposite of programmer-relevant.
Incorrect unless you're one of the people who purchased the desktop or web app. If you're a mobile device user, you'll pay a subscription for features that have never existed before.
The majority of my tutorial actually uses OCaml, though. :P

I like OCaml because it strikes a balance between imperative and functional programming. Maybe learning OCaml would be easier than learning Haskell?

(Plus, OCaml has neat features like polymorphic variants and a powerful module system!)
WeWork is probably legitimately in the $15B range

No. Scale to the same PE ratio as IWG/Regus and knock off a fudge factor for poor governance. You’re lucky if it’s worth $1B. Or anything if you accept that the only legitimate reason to own it was to flip it to a sucker, and everyone knows about it now.
As Doug Crockford once said "In addition to it begin useful, it is also cursed and the curse of the monad is that once you get the epiphany, once you understand - "oh that's what it is" - you lose the ability to explain it to anybody." [1]

I think someone who is a beginner or just want to use Functor / Applicative / Monad without mastering underlying Category Theory, boxed model seems good enough. However, if you are creating own monads, then of-course we need to understand monadic laws. Every programming language has monad of some sort e.g. Optional in Java. To use optional chaining, I may not need to know all details but only how `flatMap` works. Maybe I am wrong too :).

[1] https://www.i-programmer.info/news/167-javascript/5207-crock...
I, in the past, made a purchase in the application which enabled the use of the web-player (maybe 4? Years ago). Today, I received this email from them:

> We wanted to do the right thing by you though and since you've paid for the Web Player in the past, we're giving you 3 years worth of Pocket Casts Plus at no extra charge. You don't need to do anything to claim this, it's already been applied to your account. This means you can continue doing all the things you currently do, and take advantage of our brand new Plus features.

I think this is definitely the right way to handle prior paid customers. Unlike Airmail (oof) they’ve offered a subsidized service for the older users.
The first results of Total Solar Eclipse 2019 Shadow-tracking expedition
> so I have to assume that people did

Yes, and that's basically why there is a "CSAIL minus RMS" mailing list.
From the URL:

>>I paid for this app in the past, will I still have access to all the features I paid for?

>>Most certainly! We aren't locking any existing features behind a paywall.

This is a blatant lie. They're locking the webapp behind the subscription. I paid $9 for the webapp, and (after the 3 year grace period) will be locked out.
I don't want any of the plus features in the Android app. But I like being able to use my computer.

>>Before you freak out, we want to let you know that we want to do the right thing by everyone who has ever paid for the web and desktop apps. It doesn't matter if you paid 5 years ago, or just last month, we're going to gift each and every one of you with three years of Pocket Casts Plus.

As I was reading this I genuinely thought they were going to grandfather customers in. That would have been 'do the right thing'.
How to think like a programmer – lessons in problem solving
Stack Computers: 4.4 Architecture of the Novix NC4016 (1989)
> So if someone starts firing open borders advocates or basic income activist would that be ok as well?

Depends. Had they repeatedly harassed women in work contexts over the preceding several decades?
What with FOSS Android apps looking like they're from the KitKat days?
>A company is something “we” build

It is deeply ironic that the company that elucidates this exact philosophy in its IPO is such a good example of a company built by “one.”
This article cites clear examples of psychological harm and trauma being inflicted upon Facebook moderators. That itself is sufficient data.
It's better than just becoming subscription-based, though. The paid features are now free and the subscription-only features are new.
Wow, those filings make it seem like the founder was using WeWork as his personal piggy bank. Did I understand it right that he took out a loan from WeWork then used a bonus from the company to pay it back?
I was using iGO offline maps for navigation on Windows Mobile where one could search for addresses and also POIs. Sygic was a similar app later available on the Sony P1i.

Both of these were offline apps using maps from multiple sources, at a time when Google were still gathering data and mobile online access was expensive and inconvenient. At least when using iGO the iPhone and Android didn't exist yet.
I Didn’t See a Thing–What Magicians Can Teach Us About the Science of Attention
This is an interesting observation.

Can you share a link/case study?

Kind of makes sense, but curious of how you developed your certainty. thnx
Fortunately I don't do family tech support anymore, but that's exactly the sort of thing that would result in a panicked phone call and a user having to "learn it all over again". And that's for a purely cosmetic change.
If app stores allowed paid version upgrades this trend might not have happened.

This is a takeaway that I think is really important that a lot of people miss. The problem with the "new" model is that it's created a double-whammy of much lower prices in absolute dollars than we were paying ~15 years ago for software and an expectation that once you've paid that low price, you should get upgrades for free forever. The plateau you mention is, of course, why that can't actually work: most apps don't grow their userbase at a steady rate, they get bursts of new users when new versions come out -- and usually fewer and fewer new users for each new version. If every customer represents one and only one point of revenue -- and that point is a third or a fourth what you'd have charged for the same amount of engineering work under the old model -- this is a death spiral.

Under the "old" model, PocketCasts could easily have been a $20–25 program with $12–15 upgrades when new versions came out every couple of years and it wouldn't have seemed unfairly priced at all. Under our glorious new model, the only way to match this is with subscriptions. And people hate subscriptions. Nobody works out the math to see whether the subscription model actually costs them less than the old upgrade model, they just have a visceral reaction to it.

I get the frustration with any company that charges that low one-time fee, implicitly (or even explicitly, as PocketCasts apparently did!) promises free lifetime upgrades, then goes back on that promise some years later when it proves unsustainable. At the same time, is going out of business or shutting down that product really preferable?
So excited to try out the native mac os support, I use inkscape for everything but I often have to unplug my second monitor to get it to show up thanks to XQuartz!
A programmer, engineer, creative and product developers job is to create simplicity from complexity.

The job is to tame complexity via simplicity, not make a complex beast that needs more taming.

Sometimes engineers take something simple and make it more complex which is against simplifying either due to bad abstractions or proprietary reasons or obfuscation for job security or to ego flex. Anyone can make something more complex, making something simple and standard takes lots of work and iterations.

Nature is built with simple iterative parts that look complex in whole, systems that work well mimic that. Math is built with simple parts that leads to amazingly complex and beautiful things. Art is built with simple marks to create something complex and beautiful. Humans as well, and they desire simplicity so they can do more and build on that.
See my reply to the sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21002571
Not true. The webapp was purchasable for $9. Now customers will lose access after the 3 year grace period, and it will only be usable by subscribers.
Oh, you're right! "We aren't locking any existing features behind a paywall." misled me. Hmph. Now I'm feeling tricked.
Gatekeepers of the Galaxy – Human Parts
If app stores allowed paid version upgrades this trend might not have happened.

If the people who purchased this received the source code as Free Software, that would've also solved this issue, don't you think?
Yeah, because that would solve problems. Honestly, the same people out for blood would be church types in the 18th century. And by the mail in question I sincerely question the competence of the MIT in general, because Stallman was actually correct.
What You Need to Know What iOS 13 Has to Offer as an App Owner or Dev
A paean to the Stripe status page
That's quite strange because I was under the impression that the US has a problem with teen pregnancies and the age at which sexual encounters first take place is going down.

I assume that's the whole point of the law in many US states and countries - it recognizes the biological reality that teens will have sex.

I've also seen that some EU countries allow teens to sext with each-other (boyfriend/girlfriend exception) without having them fall afoul of the otherwise clear laws against child pornography. This is unlike the US and also seems sensible.
If they repeatedly harass women in work contexts they should be fired for that. Waiting until they say something controversial implies the organisation was just fine with the harassment.
It’s important to measure harm done and react when it is significant (or hopefully before it reaches that threshold).

Fortunately there are legal thresholds for workplace harassment that are designed to protect people. They aren’t perfect by a long stretch, but it’s one way to differentiate between harm and perceived harm.

No workplace should be a hostile environment and it’s messed up if women feel unwelcome. The challenge is in differentiating from harmful behaviors and behaviors that are interpreted as harmful. I have no idea how to do that and one of the reasons why I think HR is a really hard job.

But there’s lots of scenarios where someone may feel unwelcome that doesn’t result from any ill will or poor action on the part of another. For example, I had an employee who was really hurt because a staff member didn’t prebrief her on meetings she was invited to. She was really upset and it hurt her. She though her coworker was withholding information from her and wanted her to do poorly at work. Eventually I had to confront the other and the other was surprised and had no idea. The other wasn’t withholding info but my staffer was requesting to attend as an optional on the meeting at the last minute and the other agreed but didn’t spend any time describing the meeting. The other assumed my staffer would read the agenda and material and review the participants. The resolution was my staffer understanding no ill will.

There’s many situations where I get upset about something that is me interpreting things and not a flaw in others that should be changed. Hostile work environments need to have the actual problems addressed and the individual perceived problems resolved efficiently, I think.
Etymology can be addictive. The links, theories and how the words reflect the evolution of societies always amaze me.

Nişanyan also has a blog where he goes deep in words he finds interesting. It's in Turkish and translators fail horribly, unfortunately, to keep most of the meaning. I still wanted to share if anyone speaks the language:

http://nisanyan1.blogspot.com/search/label/etimoloji

I took his class when I was an undergrad. He's a very smart and colorful person who speaks 12 languages. I remember looking forward to each class.
So let them go and be a drain on your competitors. Those are not the customers you want.
We will have to leave the glass walls and wood floors, but the other stuff should be movable and liquidated to help We's balance sheet.

"FF&E are movable furniture, fixtures, or other equipment that have no permanent connection to the structure of a building or utilities. These items depreciate substantially but definitely are important costs to consider when valuing a company, especially in liquidation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furniture,_fixtures_and_equipm...
I thought Inkscape was an alternative to Illustrator and other vector drawing programs, didn't know people were using it for photo editing.