skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have a PhD in Economics and was a Finance professor for a few years before realizing that life in the academe wouldn't suit my skills. I now work in Data Science and couldn't be happier.

The question of, "is it worth it?" is complex and only can be answered for yourself.

Most people will say that if you don't plan on working in academia that the PhD will lead to a suboptimal career income. You could spend that 4+ years building your skills working for a company and end up earning considerably more. The other side effect is that there is a definite bias against PhDs for most jobs in industry.

For me, it was all about the journey and I wouldn't change any of it for the world. Any decent PhD program will expand your horizons more than nearly anything else. There is no way I would be in the same position now without my previous experiences. I do have to say though that my "detour" through grad school and being a professor means that I didn't start earning real money until my mid 30s and puts me financially behind some friends of mine who started earlier. Seriously though, the experience was amazing as it expanded so much about how I think about the world.

If you do a PhD, you should be doing it for yourself and your own learning. If you do it for the title/paycheck, there are far better ways to get there.
A New Largest Island on an Island on an Island
how easy to fuck up a max function?

Now look at the standard library and appreciate the fact that it comes with every crypto algorithm that are useful, heck it even comes with a crypto random function and a TLS implementation! Wait, it actually comes with a http(s) library. And with a json serializer/deserializer as well. Who does that?
We should start a google sheet of startup ideas where ppl from this and all pools can say “I have talent that would work for that” and others can say “I’d fund that”

Actually, we just need this in general...
describing tradeoffs that would seem reasonable to most people

Sounds like "Mission Accomplished" to me!

https://xkcd.com/810/

(Transcript...)

Cueball: Spammers are breaking traditional Captchas with AI, so I've built a new system. It asks users to rate a slate of comments as "Constructive" or "Not constructive."

Cueball: Then it has them reply with comments of their own, which are later rated by other users.

Megan: But what will you do when spammers train their bots to make automated constructive and helpful comments?

Cueball: Mission. Fucking. Accomplished.

(from https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/810:_Constructive)
Russian PR firm helps Co's plant stories in news outlets for cash
Its been interesting reading the various takes on WeWork. I have my own casual rating -- I walk past a very fancy WeWork space in Levi Plaza and I rarely see people in it. I often wonder how they manage to survive given the high rent.
How does the fact that they're acting in rational self-interest make it "hard to find fault"? "Rational self-interest" isn't a defense for bad behavior.
Because what's driving climate change is industrial production and agricultural output via population growth.
I think it's being construed as an endorsement because they seem to be using it as an endorsement. Almost every platform has a very opaque process for how one gets verified, and it seems you need to have 100,000+ followers or be deemed to be important in the society to get your humanity verified.

I researched this for the 2018 Reverse Hackathon run by HackMentalHealth and found that in 2015, approximately 0.05% of Twitter accounts were verified (source: https://medium.com/@Haje/who-are-twitter-s-verified-users-af...). The source above has an even deeper breakdown on the verified users' backgrounds.

If they don't want it to be construed as an endorsement, they could let any user not only apply for verification, but actually verify their identity behind their accounts. Not force, but allow it. This could shift the percentage of verified accounts up to the point where they're not part of an exclusive 0.05% club.

If they keep at it 0.05% of the accounts that they deem to be worthy of being verified, then it sure seems like an intentional endorsement.

(my article: https://medium.com/hackmentalhealth/why-twitter-should-verif...)
It's certainly not hard to imagine Peloton is something of a fad. There is no shortage of those in the fitness space--in addition to the, as you say, general omnipresence of New Year's resolutions vs. ongoing use.
Currently doing a CS PhD at Stanford. If you have no interest in becoming a professor/researcher and don't like to do research, there is very little reason to do a PhD. The PhD is actually a training program for doing research much moreso than another degree to learn more specialized knowledge. You don't need a PhD to keep learning. So i'd suggest trying to go into industry, but positioning yourself to be able to keep learning cutting edge stuff.
>This is a classic "bottoms-up" model that is quite viable (eg Dropbox, Slack, Zoom, Elastic, MongoDB).
None of which are profitable.

>In fact, I would be wary of software companies without a base of free users, as that means the company needs to keep spending a lot of its revenue on sales and marketing.
I am much more wary of companies that keep or burning cash for years and years with the only excuse that "Amazon did that as well".
There's a lot of unstated meaning wrapped up in "arbitrarily" there. You can obviously treat customers differently based on whether they pay or not, and you can obviously have terms that say what you can and can't post on the platform (and apply moderation accordingly). Otherwise you couldn't maintain any kind of forum or communication platform.

Saying you can't post links to other services may be distasteful, but shouldn't be illegal in any reasonable legal jurisdiction.
CCP propaganda, perhaps?
> Surprisingly enough multicore support was not great

Considering that it’s state of the art, you must have been doing it terribly wrong.

> adding `true -> ok` to every if statement

That confirms it.
What a terrible passage. I though catch 22 was supposed to be good.
I’m a little confused, which part of my comment would require persistence? I was suggesting a lulzy payload that would prevent the user from _actually_ restarting their device by changing the behavior of the power button. As a means of bypassing the “just restart your phone every time you use it” countermeasure.
It doesn't work for deterrence either, but it's pretty clear by now that the function of most penal systems is vengeance.
If you're into documentaries, "The Century of the Self" covers this subject excellently: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=century+of+self
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
PhD's doesn't contribute new knowledge, they contribute knowledge that can't be proven to be old.

It might sound similar, but it is not. Let me explain the difference:

A person performs a study creating lots of data. If he wanted to contribute to human knowledge he would publish the data with no comments, as he is probably not the best person in the world to analyze this data. If on the other hand he was a PhD he would not publish the data, instead he would publish some pet theories related to the data so that he can build his brand, and most of all he will absolutely not publish the data since it could possibly be used to prove that his pet theories are not relevant or maybe even wrong which would be disastrous for his brand.

Now there are of course PhD's who do the right thing but it doesn't benefit their career at all.
"SoftBank's playbook is ripped from Buffett"

How so?
Yeah, the computer stuff in it is pretty hand-wavey but it does an awesome job of creating memorable visuals out of totally abstract AI and network stuff. And definitely notable as the seemingly uncredited inspiration for the Matrix.
There is a huge difference between having something applied to you, and having to determine the correct course of action (independently) to apply with someone else and then deal with the consequences/fallout.

In my experience, you have to pick something - and nothing is perfect or works all the time. It is usually worse not picking something (inaction) or being inconsistent in what you pick (wildly varying expectations/results).

How this applies to the current thread is up to the reader.
All else being equal, they will still choose the more “stealthy” plane, yes, but all else rarely is equal.

If the stealthier choice adds cost, weight, or maintenance costs, decreases top speed, maneuverability, or MTBF, the better choice may be the less stealthy plane, and if being stealthy gets harder, the choice may be more often that of extra speed, extra weaponry, or more airplanes.
This article doesn't contain the word "insurance" once. As mortgages require home insurance, why do the banks suddenly feel uncomfortable lending to coastal areas? The article does not address this.
> while those earning more than $150,000 donated only 2.7 percent (despite tax benefits the rich can get from charitable giving that are unavailable to someone making much less

Its interesting that the taxes these people pay are never factored in. I’d be happy to give more if we could get an audit of the efficacy of the $350M/yr spent in SF on poverty and what that extra would accomplish.

Engineers just want to solve a problem, and the throwing taxes and donations at the social engineers does not seem to be working. Is it mean to have some expectations?

I feel guilty, but I dont have the time to figure out solving the worlds problems myself.
I'm not going to ruin my phone experience just for that. Why should I care that my apps have telemetry for ads. It keeps them free.
RMS is a true Hero, he gives his life to fight for the basic human right for free computing.
RMS is a modern historical figure on par with Jesus.
His weird opinions on other topics and clumsy social behaviour do not matter a bit in comparision and if at all they need to be adressed with love and care, not cruxification.
> Advice: Get a job, the PhD will be waiting for you in 2 years if you decide you want it then. Plus it sounds like you are thinking about getting a PhD because looking for a job is hard.

Almost no one who takes that advice returns to get a PhD, the income is too hard to give up and often life moves on which makes it hard to take the financial hit and devote the time.

The only way it worked for me was to not need much money (tuition covered and receive a stipend) and have 80+ hours a week to geek out over things that interested me. Absolutely no way I could do that now with kids. That may be one of the reasons almost everyone in my program was in their mid 20s, and the hand full in their 50s after their kids went off to college.
Calling the '70s ice age predictions wrong is very misleading. They predicted that if we kept increasing particulate pollution such as smog, the cooling effect from that would beat out the warming effect from greenhouse gases.

We made a major effort to reduce particulates, which largely succeeded.
Atwood has not worked there since 2012 and has no say in the day-to-day operations: https://blog.codinghorror.com/what-does-stack-overflow-want-...
> the sender of the ad was clearly identified people could judge for themselves.

If they aware enough of how horrible their government is that they can ignore what it says and assume it's all a lie, sure.

If the Chinese government has done anything to make citizens trust its authority, such as censorship etc, then the ad is manipulative.

> While the ad was propaganda it wasn't manipulative or underhanded.

Perhaps not in itself, but taking the very example you give, it is manipulative.

Use news stories to paint the "official" picture and use astroturfing to provide a counterpart to the "official" picture. Both as parts in a larger underhanded play.
at one point, I assumed hard coding IP addresses and paths to /home/user/whatever/ was a just a web dev thing

spoilers: it is not just a web dev thing
> "how do you deliver on time?

With a big enough fleet you could statistically deal with delays. Eg, in the same sense that airlines slightly overbook flights. The variability/risk in the port costs would cut into the fuel savings; hard to imagine that would be a show stopper. There must be a portion of the industry that is less time sensitive and would entertain working out the details to facilitate the slower speeds for slower costs approach.
The chat program they’re referring to in the beginning was HipChat, which really was a steaming pile of crap. Uber was our largest user and they constantly brought the entire service down.

IDK if making their own was the right solution, but it was driven by necessity and not boredom I assure you.
"Not being attractive is a function of your genes"

No. Genes play a role, but attractiveness is not so much about looks as it is about confidence and self esteem (and smell, of course).

I was considered very ugly in my youth.
And yes, I compensated with computers. I did not got much experience with girls in teenage years.

Then I traveled, studied and grew in my mind and confidence.

And today, well, lets just say, sometimes I am still confused, when very attractive women flirt with me, as my old me would have considered them to be way out of league.

Now I know how to play the game, so to say, but in the beginning, I know I hurt quite some feelings and was probably considered arrogant, when I simply did not know how to respond.

So, I got out of the basement.
But:

"I don't see at all how an environment full of unattractive and not well-socialized people create an environment that is in any way hostile to women."

many nerds never did. They long for women, but never learned the game and sometimes think, they are too ugly etc. bullshit.

So when you have lots of men with unfullfiled desires and weak confidence or knowledge regarding women ... then yes, they act awkward towards women. They would like to bond, but don't knowmhow and think they never can. So not hostile, but awkward, so quite some women feel uncomfortable and rather leave.

Now to be clear, no, not every IT nerd is like this. But too many. I was one of them once.
Said it months ago and got downvoted.

WeWork shouldn't exist.

People defended its existence like they defended Enron.
To be fair, Crystal's release was the same day as Nim!

But yes, now it is Zig's time! I'm happy for all of them.
HN: Violent, informed agreement
> Basically, just ignore the law, but make sure you get enough workers and customers that love you so that they turn against politics when you break the law.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the only way that's not outright massive violence such as Hongkong or France to get politicians to do their goddamn job. Taxi services have had a really massive lobby power in the US.
Ask HN: Marketing graphic design templates or apps for solo founder?
I'm pretty hopeless at graphic design, but I can manipulate stuff OK in photoshop or sketch. I want to create basic cover photos, heros, etc for use in Twitter, blog posts, Intercom announcements, landing pages, and the like. Not reinventing the wheel, SaaS companies do this all time and usually include a title, half sentence, screenshot/image, and background gradient/color.

Any suggestions? I've tried Envato, but there's a lot of crap to sift through, and the templates are usually too busy.
Whistleblower 'Endangered' by Trump Criticism
It may be unintentional on your part but your post seems to suggest that rms argued that adults raping children was acceptable.

If that was intentional the you are lying.

If it was not intentional the it's ironic that you are so sloppy and cavalier in your wording on a topic which is all about precision in language.

Please stop.
If we are talking more about product reviews, a certain percentage of my opinion will be based on build quality and glitches, which PARTIALLY can only be determined by a large portion of users. It is helpful to compare expert reviews (like rtings) with a crowd sourced aggregate to look for manufacturing, design, or supply chain issues that might not pop up in a single review.
It may just be hyperbole, but I don't think you can rule out a dead planet.

Aside from a few extinction events in which the vast majority of life on Earth did indeed die, the climate has changed slow enough for evolution to take its course. If what "naturally" would've happened over the course of a million years instead happens over centuries or even decades years then things become much more bleak.
Given what you said especially in your last paragraph, I would advise against pursuing a PhD right now.

However, I don't think that going for an industry job now would "surrender your chances for a PhD". I also got a MSc in computer science, then I worked in the industry for 5 years before going back to academia and start a PhD. Depending on your field, this can be a more or less dauting process.

Working in the industry before going back to a PhD has a number of pros:

- you can make a better decision about what you want to do because you have actual industry experience

- you can save some money for your PhD

Cons:

- Going from an industry salary to a PhD salary is really sad

- The process of getting accepted in a PhD program after you've left academia for a number of years can be difficult (but not impossible!)

You seem to be quite sick of student life during your MSc, so be aware that during a PhD it is about the same or worse. Getting yourself an industry job now can let you breathe some air and make a better decision about what you want to do next.
Does F-35 use the same toxic coating as F-22? I believe one could be easily harmed just by touching F-22.
I don't trust reviews at all unless I know the "reviewer" in real life, that is if someone I know tells me it's good.

Good thing you have 14 day "no questions asked money back" guarantee on anything physical bought online in Europe. I've used that option quite a few times when the product is trash.
Zig looks like a really interesting language. I've been keeping my eye on it, waiting excitedly for the 1.x milestone.

Out of curiosity, what's the state of the world regarding Zig's stdlib? While the base language docs seem like they're in a pretty good state, the stdlib is still largely undocumented. Is this because it's unstable? Or is the lack of docs there due to lack of time/resources? Would love to get some clarification. Thanks!
> Your degree isn't what makes your life interesting or not, nor is your job title, nor is your job, nor is how much you get paid.

So a day laborer in India has equal chance at "interesting life" than a researcher at google ?
I'm old enough to have been around then. There may have been some popular articles about a coming ice age, but I don't remember any sort of consensus in the scientific community about that.
Show HN: KubeAdvisor 1.0 is now Available
I read Permutation City a few years ago now.
It's certainly a very interesting book that I'd highly recommend. Greg Egan is very much an "ideas" man though. I find that his narratives while intellectually stimulating sometimes don't translate well to a novel format. I find Egan's short stories to be a delight (check out Axiomatic if you haven't) but his novels can be a real slog if you are not a subject matter expert.

Neal Stephenson writes in the same "genre" but he has a much more approachable style while not sacrificing on any "hard" elements.

My recommendation for anybody who's never read Egan's stuff is to start with his short-stories first.
First as Tragedy, Then as Fascism
It's very unfortunate that we still do not have any cloned people. Cloning, especially cloning famous scientists, would greatly help in understanding what part of their success is due to genes, and what is nurture/luck.
VPN from Cloudflare available free on smartphones (to 10GB/month)
It's not the end of the world but you may be in a position where you really do need to take something/anything. Which during times such as 2001 wasn't necessarily anything related to what you studied in school. A lot of underemployed engineers and others in the tech sector (and elsewhere).
why not? it's fun. I'm not sure I would actually want to live with it on a daily driver, but it'd be great on a weekend car.

I'm mainly using it as an example of a behavior that's mildly antisocial but not bad enough to trigger serious enough guilt/embarrassment to stop people from doing it if they couldn't be punished.
Sounds like a lot of good people left over there will be hunting for their next gig soon.... creates a spiraling cycle as people run to the next hot thing, B players replace A players, B players hire C players, etc.
Without studying it thoroughly I would comment: Great, finally!
Moderator abuse was the biggest problem on SO, without any oversight.
I use "what does IT think I'm asking it to do?"...
Maybe I agree if by go away you mean don't really use it for pricing derivatives for real. However it's still a very useful intellectual tool to understand how to generate a price for a very simple derivative.

As an analogy in high school physics they give you a problem like someone 2 meters tall shoots a gun and the bullet is moving so many meters per second, how far does the bullet go before it hits the ground. You use your formula for gravitational acceleration and figure it out, and Yeah! you get the right answer.

But you can't use this formula if you really want to calculate how far the bullet goes. You have to take into account air resistance and then you need differential equations and you probably need to approximate an answer with a PDE solver.

That's just the difference between a tool to explore foundational concepts and something that attempts to be actually be useful in the real world...
You might be right, but you can make that same argument about any change in any complex system.
I am half with you - but I can totally imagine a company being that stupid, they just wouldn't phrase it as simple and direct as you did, so they don't see the stupidity.

The mandatory 3 year "derisking" period sounds asinine. If you can't evaluate an engineer's ability to solve problems in 12 months for a position, I think that's a bigger issue.

Conspiracy theory - Article is written by the "overeager engineer" who is looking for clever ways to respond to his company's asinine policies.
Overall mall traffic might be declining but I’ve been to malls here in my city where the higher end malls are thriving and more popular than in previous decades.

The Forever 21’s in my area are located in malls that are dated, and ripe for a major renovation.
This is not the first time you have made this untrue allegation DanBC. It is clear now that you are acting in very bad faith. It speaks volumes about your reliability.
Came here to recommend Bobiverse
Looks like its still lacking in network support:

https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/2007

I wonder though, does it already have socket support? that could be a stopgap for me. Edit, looks like it doesnt have sockets either:

https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/1271

Edit 2, looks like it does:

https://github.com/ziglang/zig/blob/5026db1d/lib/std/net.zig...

https://github.com/ziglang/zig/blob/5026db1d/lib/std/os.zig#...
In another sense, doesn’t the existence of long-term negative interest rates suggest that some people/institutions have more money than they can productively use? If so, this would seem to be a pretty clear argument for wealth re-distribution in the name of poverty alleviation and reducing economic inefficiency.
In the US there should be separate prisons for first-time offenders versus offenders who have previous convictions.
> For example Twitter accounts controlled by the Chinese state pretending to be common citizens.

Problem is that they are real citizens. In China, they're referred to as 50 Cent Army (or 50 Cent Party), because that's how much they're believed to be paid for every pro-government post.

Their engagements are usually not. There are botnets upvoting/downvoting/liking/retweeting stuff, but each and every post is written by an actual human, and there are guidelines as to how they need to respond to different stories. It's not like there's one human in charge of posting to 100s of accounts.