skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Looks like the two good comments were taken (Feynman, Kahnemann). I'll just leave a couple quotes I thought of when I read a few paragraphs further about the hierarchy for ability in math and how it can be quite upsetting to discover how far up it goes beyond you, when you thought you were pretty high up.

>> [Pascal Costanza] Why is it that programmers always seem to think that the rest of the world is stupid?

> Because they are autodidacts. The main purpose of higher education
and making all the smartest kids from one school come together with
all the smartest kids from other schools, recursively, is to show every
smart kid everywhere that they are not the smartest kid around, that
no matter how smart they are, they are not equally smart at everything
even though they were just that to begin with, and there will therefore
always be smarter kids, if nothing else, than at something other than
they are smart at. If you take a smart kid out of this system, reward
him with lots of money that he could never make otherwise, reward him
with control over machines that journalists are morbidly afraid of and
make the entire population fear second-hand, and prevent him from ever
meeting smarter people than himself, he will have no recourse but to
believe that he /is/ smarter than everybody else. Educate him properly
and force him to reach the point of intellectual exhaustion and failure
where there is no other route to success than to ask for help, and he
will gain a profound respect for other people. Many programmers act
like they are morbidly afraid of being discovered to be less smart than
they think they are, and many of them respond with extreme hostility on
Usenet precisely because they get a glimpse of their own limitations.
To people whose entire life has been about being in control, loss of
control is actually a very good reason to panic.

–– Erik Naggum, 2004 https://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3284144796180060KL2065E...

> Fermi and von Neumann overlapped. They collaborated on problems of Taylor instabilities and they wrote a report. When Fermi went back to Chicago after that work he called in his very close collaborator, namely Herbert Anderson, a young Ph.D. student at Columbia, a collaboration that began from Fermi's very first days at Columbia and lasted up until the very last moment. Herb was an experimental physicist. (If you want to know about Fermi in great detail, you would do well to interview Herbert Anderson.) But, at any rate, when Fermi got back he called in Herb Anderson to his office and he said, "You know, Herb, how much faster I am in thinking than you are. That is how much faster von Neumann is compared to me."

-- Relayed by Nick Metropolis

I got the second one from https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2012/03/differences-are-enormo... which also quotes this submission at the point a bit further, no wonder it was so familiar and these quotes came to mind.
Sexist -> awkward -> long hair is quite a series of leaps, and I'm mighty curious as to the underlying mental model. You appear to be implying that women might not want to go into IT because the men are unattractive. But unattractive is not the same as hostile. If you enjoy something, ugly people won't keep you away.

Of note is that the percentage of open source programmers who are women is half that of the broader industry, despite open source programming generally involving less face-to-face interaction. Surely, if women were scared away by ugly creepy nerds, the safety from behind a screen and absence of compelled personal interaction would tend to bring them out? It would seem to be suggestive that far fewer women enjoy doing that sort of thing for fun.

Incidentally, we have a nursing shortage. The incidence of male nurses is similarly low to female programmers. I find it amusing that no one hand wrings about this, or would dare make comments like "maybe men don't want to be nurses because nurses are ugly".
1. What's your evidence? Where are these "documented" cases?
2. What incident are you referring to? His comments that led to his removal were about language and preciseness. Did you read his comment? Are you sure you know what the background/context is here?
And, somewhat ironically, he is being criticized in non specific terms which allow moral vagueness (which is the only reason this specific witch hunt is still going on).
Gas flaring really needs to be brought under control. As does direct methane leakage. Both of those are tremendous contributors to greenhouse cases from pure waste.

I'm starting to think that the solution might be a "drilling/price moratorium" rather than a direct carbon price. Like OPEC but global.
No. The author says that there are no "means" to speak of, there is perhaps a communication issue Stallman has. The author argues that such issues should be tolerated to a reasonable degree, otherwise the society as a whole may end up poorer. I make no claim about the truthfulness of that, but that's what the author says.
You're brushing aside the whole social pressure thing.

That's something that can make normal people kill themseleves at the worst, or throw them into a pretty bad emotional turmoil with some very real effects on their life.

Intelligence has nothing to do with this.
It's fun to think about: you have a structure which allows you to iterate all elements in order in O(n) time. Isn't this in many ways equivalent to the structure being "sorted", even if it doesn't have all the properties of a sorted array (like being able to get the nth element in O(1))?

For example, a sorted linked list behaves almost exactly like this spaghetti column.
Alexa-Style Chatbot Could Let People ‘Talk’ to Dead Relatives
Why do we even need to invoke Stallman's achievements as an excuse here? What did the man say - he expressed his opinion that accusations of sexual assault are probably inflated and inaccurate. For fuck's sake!
well, that's a possibility but only works in the simplest case of C-like structs. What if I have this API instead :

struct MyWidget {
void setFoos(const std::vector<int>& foos) { m_foos = foos; updateUI(); }
};

or this :

struct MyWidget {
void addFooInstance(int);
};

Also, ugh. macros. what happens if you talk to 5 different network protocols all with more-or-less-JSON-like semantics - do you now have ARRAY_ITEM_JSON, ARRAY_ITEM_BSON, ARRAY_ITEM_CBOR, ARRAY_ITEM_YAML ? What when the format changes so that `ARRAY_ITEM("foo", foo, INT, 3)` now wants floats ? woohoo, magic truncation instead of a compile error.

As they say : thanks but no thanks, I'll stay with `for (auto& [key, value] : o.items())` which ensures that everyone including the fresh-out-of-school student can understand what happens without needing to read obtuse macro definitions
Oncology+Preclinical+Models+Market+to+Record+an+Exponential+CAGR+by+2027
Would you be willing to provide a few links to those stories over the years? I never knew enough about his personal behavior to judge that and have no idea how to search for it.
Name them please? The "creep" incidents, that is.
I hope people thinking like above, or sad finger-pointers like the ones writing the articles, are removed from the tech industry...
> It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.

Every episode I read about fell into the category of "socially awkward adult male". If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity.

By all means, point me to a real abuse scenario by Stallman. I like being proven wrong.
Indeed, I should have expanded a bit, it was a bit disingenuous from me. But I don't think that academia's ethos is the primary motivation. It wasn't for me. The primary motivation for my phd was to get the doctor title and money afterward. It was a transaction between academia and me where they get a qualified engineer for a low price, and I get educated about research. No one ever talked to me about academia ethos. The closest thing about educating and sharing others my supervisor told me was "We might have a job opening for teaching and research after your phd if you are interested to further expand in Academia, but don't count on it. Such openings are rare".

So basically your conclusion doesn't go well with my experience. I only saw a contract with low salary and a lot of work on my end. It was worth it for me (I think?), so I accepted.
> Which means that if your element's width is 100vw and the page height is larger than the viewport height so that it shows a vertical scrollbar, then suddenly you get a horizontal scrollbar as well.

Oh wow that's insane.

edit: apparently the "useful" behaviour used to be opted-in using overflow: scroll, but only firefox implemented that, they asked if it was really useful (when nobody else cared) and… it was dropped from the spec.
Thank you so much for this post.
> We don't get the free software movement we have without Stallman, but what's that actually saying? How popular would gnu be if it had someone who was better at communication involved?

Not many people thinking about it in this way, kudos.
Which they would probably not have done if they had expected a (conventional) war any time soon.
While I am also saddened by the dishonest nature of the reporting on the Minsky accident and the cowardly lack of push back against it, one should not go to the other extreme and simply dismiss all the complaints about Stallman's behavior as him merely being "a clueless aspie". A good example is his emacs virgin joke, which he as as I read specifically made about individual female members of the audience. Due to our hysterical politicized environment we are not able to deal with incidents like this : acknowledge that behavior like this is unprofessional but does not make Stallman a horrible monster, especially since he indeed stopped making that joke after some criticism.
> I suspect part of the 'witch hunt' was in part fueled by this eccentricity.

It seems to me that the exact opposite is happening here. He is "hunted" because of his uncompromising stance on freedom for software users. The eccentricity is just an excuse, useful to gather a horde of angry people, but inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
> He held his positions at MIT, GNU, and the FSF for over thirty years, and in that time nobody accused him of coercion, unwanted touching, or verbal harassment.

The author missed the point of the Me Too movement. Lot of other powerful people were not publicly accused for decades because they were powerful and could easily silence their accusers.
> There are two possibilities here. Either the author of the Medium post was not capable of correctly parsing the sentence, or she didn’t care about truth and was leveling as many accusations as possible in the hope that one would stick.

Either I am vastly overestimating the quality of american top university education, or the first option is highly unlikely. So, who benefits from Stallman getting removed from the picture? Or, given that the original author was also from MIT, maybe it was just some sort of personal grievance?
> The stuff literally disintegrates if you have it in the drier to often. Sadly enough this is also true for the men’s wear.

H&M stuff for me never tears or gets holes. Mine just stretches in places where it shouldn't stretch (eg. T-shirt sleeves - how the hell do those stretch?! I don't have steroid-monster arms. I have a <1 year old t-shirt where I can put my whole head through the sleeve (usually by accident), and there's still some space left, and i remember it was fitted well when new... So yeah, it's my 'yard work' shirt. ).
Distance is not typically the limiting factor. Earth is close enough to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way to be able to see it. The problem is it’s obscured by other stuff, mainly dust.
When we lived without oil we didn’t had a planet with a population of 8 billion people to support.

Climate change isn’t much of a risk to humans as a species just yet, it is however very much a risk to human civilization as we know it.
RIP Adam Rosen: One of the Biggest Mac Fans Ever
Iron Fertilization
Funny enough on how the industry has taken free-software and its 'open-source' derived ideas for granted and they have all originated from the FSF and its founder RMS.

But when social media archaeologists revive past 'thought crimes' from 20+ years ago to use against anyone, it is ridiculous to completely silence and exclude them from society, especially someone like Stallman who is very principled in his cause.
In Sweden I only recalled having seen internal keyholes on older installations, newer homes have a turn on the inside. Haven't lived there in years tho so only going off of vague memories.

e.g.

https://productimages.biltema.com/v1/image/product/small/200...

or

https://dam.inwido.se/files/19/6619/6619_2_820.png
He worked in MIT for over 30 years, do share any evidence at all of the pattern you are referring to.
Humanity is converging on ideological monoculture. There is one correct way to think, and if you're dumb enough to step outside of those bounds, people _will_ come after you, and destroy whatever you have. One comment here even suggested that RMS is a rapist in so many words, really?

I submit that you cannot have innovation without inconvenient characters. You must allow a plurality of ideas and ideals to exist, even those that you find dumb or repulsive.

I don't personally like RMS very much, he seems like an annoying person, but he should not have had his life ruined for what amounted to an pedantic argument on a mailing list.
We live in a world that you cant diverge a little bit. You can't have a different personality. You can't just say the truth or be technically corrent because it may also happen to be politically incorrent.

You have to go with the flow. But still people expect from you to be a superstar of what you are doing.
Our culture has made a very bright line decision that sex with minors is unacceptable. Expressing doubt about this cultural norm, or especially advocating against it, is considered unacceptable. Of course one can argue with the merits of those two facts, but they are plainly true and fairly widely accepted.

The very concept of statutory rape reinforces how clear this judgment is. The reference to "statutory" means that the mere facts of the act taking place mean that the conduct is off limits. Things like "consent" or even a misrepresentation of the person's age are generally considered irrelevant.

As a society we've decided that there aren't really exceptions to this. If sex with minors occurs it's not OK, there isn't much need to further investigate why it happened.

Stallman, and anyone else commenting here, has really no basis to claim ignorance of this phenomenally clear social norm, which if broken will result in being fired from just about any public facing institution. It's on a pretty short list of such norms, alongside things like displaying your genitals in a board meeting, ones highly principled views on nudism notwithstanding.

While I appreciate the efforts to make this into some kind of principled argument, I don't find "first they came for the people advocating for sex with minors" to be particularly compelling.

Nobody has suggested he be fined or jailed. His actions just make him unqualified to be a leader. The other people in those organization do get to have a say too you know.
I am 100% sure school matters especially for kids who get into small trouble or tend to rebel. There is massive difference between teachers who write off the kid and mistreat him and the ones who try to help the kid. There is massive difference between class that tolerates bullying and the one that deals with it. There is difference between school who just suspend the kid, call cops on six years old or write the kid with adhd as bad one and school that helps the kid.

It just so happens that parents in those situations deal with them, often by moving kids elsewhere or by having to spend a lot of extra effort and money to overcome that. When you have good teacher, the extra effort and money are just not needed.

Tutors exist for a reason and yes they make difference. Some schools produce kids that are on average good at later math, other schools produce kids that just don't (same city, same socioeconic background, different leadership). Somehow one city is strong in producing young programmers while other is not.

> Greg Clark’s work on social class persistence suggests that’s wasted effort. The heritability of social class is 0.7 in every society with records amenable to tracking lineages across generations, from Sweden, England, China, Korea and many other places.

The inequality as difference between poor and rich in USA right now is getting bigger. The middle class is lowering its numbers. The society is just not the same as it used to and is not actually reproducing the exact same classes.

I did had friends from weaker schools that struggled academically in college. They needed a lot of extra tutoring and help to overcome that. Some did overcomed it, so no they were not stupid and yes it evened out, but they had it much harder and had limited options on choice of major.

The worst off were those whose high school was too easy and were shocked by the system that required them to study hard things and study a lot. Yes, some parents will avoid those schools like a plague and cluster kids in different schools. It is not because they are all stupid.
> It's a pattern of behaviour over years combined

This is a tough rhetorical device. I’ve read quite a bit about this recently. I am not a huge RMS reader and while I’ve known of him for 25 years or so, I haven’t nearly read everything he said and everything written by people who met him.

So maybe he does have a pattern of behavior that’s negative enough to be fired. But maybe he doesn’t have a pattern but some people incorrectly perceive a pattern. It’s tough without proper data to differentiate.

What I have read is a half dozen accounts of not really clearly defined “charges” like “he asked me out once” and “someone told me that women at MIT keep plants to wars him off” and “he made jokes about virgins.”

Granted, I don’t know the method for cancellation but even if everything I read on HN is true. If every story ends up being completely accurate in the most negative way possible, thats like 20 things over 40 years. And not a pattern unless implicitly add in much more.

I think that these anecdotes are useful if I’ve already decided RMS is a misogynist and I want to back in some evidence. But I feel like if this were given to a jury of his peers he would be acquitted

It also seems weird to me how these few stories are presented as evidence as if they count for a lot. That’s scary as I’m not sure how anyone can defend themselves against faulty evidence. Or even to determine if it’s faulty.

So we run the risk of going into a weird mob event where only negative evidence can be presented. There is no defender. There is no real judge.

This is not a healthy way to treat people. And I don’t think it’s a good way to produce good software.
I assumed you need to be in "Apple Developer Program" to notarize apps.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizin...

https://developer.apple.com/support/developer-id/

https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships/

https://developer.apple.com/support/roles/
>It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.

I've met Stallman. He made everyone feel uncomfortable because of the smell. He is mentally ill and incredibly talented.

Should we drug him until he becomes acceptable to middle class women and in the process reduce him to the average drone programmer?
women at MIT going to great lengths to avoid him is well documented

Genuine question: where is this documented? I have been using GNU stuff for 25 years and until now have never heard about this. Do you have links to reputable sources?
You didn’t even read his argument. He isn’t talking about the golden years of NASA when real engineers like Werner von Braun made shit happen. It is about the time after.

Sure there are lots of brilliant engineers in the years after but these guys were not making top level decisions.

You can see that in all industries. MBA guys have kicked out engineers as leaders. I have seen the same while working in software engineering. Business thinking dominate over engineer thinking. You end up with these really short sighted decisions and there is an inflated fear of trying anything new.

Look at the SLS disaster: stuck on coupling together a whole bunch of old tech to the point that it creates its own complexity.
As an observer from the outside i have to say, that i am as an "privileged white male" will pay much attention to what i will say in the future. This is my conclusion about what happened here and happened to Linus.

The feeling that you have to be super sensitive will close more doors then before - prove me wrong.
Here's a thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/11736371384133...
Export Instagram Data to Excel in a Few Clicks
Life on Mars could be found within two years but world is ‘not prepared’
"actively made women feel unwelcome" therefore he should be internet lynch mobbed with the same fervor that's reserved for high profile criminals? Do I get my own internet lynch mob next time someone makes me feel unwelcome or acts unprofessionally?
This article is so wrong in so many ways...

" You don’t get the free software movement without a person like Richard Stallman."

Well once Stallman pass away, it will be the apocalypsis for the free software movement
Many brilliant people developed earlier unusual if not antisocial behaviour as a result of being estranged and often derided by others because of them being smarter. Or should we really dismiss all technical work by Leonardo Da Vinci because it was later revealed that he was a pedophile?

Stallman did nothing like that, he just made some comments everyone should avoid in today's new middle ages, yet he is treated like a criminal. He failed to realize there are snipers out there, possibly paid ones, waiting for the six lines that could make an argument for hanging him, and he gave them those six lines: that's his only fault.

The FOSS community will have to watch very closely who is going to benefit from his departure.
>It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.

Can you please cite your sources for this claim?
I believe the point of the article is that the personality that is resistant to change may be useful when this person believes in an idea (free software, privacy, etc). When they are confronted about the idea they will also not be willing to change. Then the ideas can develop themselves to become reality. Of course when this rigidity comes to social behavior this may be an issue.

To go a bit philosophical: I wonder if we can truly be rigid in some aspects and flexible in others. I guess this can be taught.
Free != Open

Here is a good explanation of the difference...

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/Free-vs-Ope...
All of these were built in order to immediately improve the current situation, not the one in 100 years.
This is a bad post
Jailbreak is a good way to let criminals to control your phone.
There are some who believe Jane Austen died of bovine TB.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6692503/J...
FWIW, I am more on the side of the FSF than BSD on freedom issues, as I value way, way more user freedom than developer freedom.

Developer freedom… I guess you could consider that quite elitist, if you think about it (freedom for the ‰ or ‱).

More to your point, I have seen a lot less outreach on software freedom from BSD than from rms.