skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not mentioned in that Wikipedia article, but the explanation for "why is there no ancient plastic around" is that the civilization could have pre-dated oil. Not enough time may have passed for significant amounts of the stuff to accumulate in the planet, so the civilization would have never developed a use for it. It would have been a rarity to them, not a foundational cornerstone of civilization.

It's a cool thought experiment, but also very cool to think about how much we lucked out not just to be on Earth, but to be on Earth at this point in time. Emerge a bit earlier and suddenly industrialization becomes exponentially harder.
I'll never cease to be amused by the synthetic love for "Moxie Marlinspike" - that is, Matthew Rosenfeld. Funny what a little publicity and millions of dollars of government money can do.
Regular server racks have not, though. 1U has been 1U for a very long time... Didn't matter if it was an IBM server, Dell, HP, or custom built. This is why we have standards.

These poor saps bet BIG on a non-standard, and seem to have discovered why we like standards after all.
4 parts rent to one part food to one part everything else (transit, utilities, laundry, etc), for recurring monthly expenses and small luxuries (a beer, a coffee, a movie ticket, etc).

One rent equivalent each to clothing and health care (includes dental and eye care) annually.

One rent equivalent per year to gifts; 3 to charitable donations; 1-2 for vacations; 2 for misc expenses and larger luxuries.

For every dollar spent, roughly a dollar goes to savings and a dollar to taxes (high tax locale by US standards, low by broader developed country standards).
The break one does not make a lot of sense to me. Shouldn't they use another rhombus and a solid line instead? Same for continue and early return. Similar thing holds for goto.
Google has been pretty good at social. With the community around gReader. Which they killed to make space forfor Google+. How did it fare, already?
The point was that the sexual behaviour of bonobos does not match "full human range".
> In the first world, if you hire 100 people for a 5-man project, people end up to invent and justify 100-man's job. Everyone's role would become their identity, everyone is busy and hardworking. The output is high, they would also have fancy analytics and reports.

This is such utter nonsense that it's hard to believe you've worked in any human organization.

People in the first and third world are not different species. A lot of white-collar first-world workers provide no value to their company at all.
It does have many top schools, relative safety, and an achievement oriented culture. Which comes with problems, but upsides as well.
I still use Usenet (although I would like to find more newsgroups that I may be interested in), and actually only started using it in late 2019 (and read another article posted to Usenet by someone who also did). Usenet is still in use (although maybe not so much compared to before). (Note: I don't use binary newsgroups, and the service I use doesn't include them anyways. That is OK, because it is the text newsgroups that I am interested in.)

The flaws they list I think are often not as bad as the alternatives. Additionally, there are mitigations for them, such as kill files, alternative interfaces, etc.

I also think that you should continue to use NNTP, both Usenet and otherwise (when making your own newsgroups which are not part of Usenet, I suggest Unusenet to avoid namespace collision; it uses reverse domain names as name spaces, like Java and some other stuff does; and like Usenet it can be federated, but usually isn't). This is a better alternative to mailing lists and web forums, although it is possible to have multiple interfaces to the same messages (you could have web forum, mailing list, and NNTP, all interoperable with each other).

I would like to find more Usenet (and/or Unusenet and/or others; I think there is also something called "Rock solid network", apparently?) newsgroups for some stuff I am interested to have, and would like to promote use of NNTP.

(I also think that those who make available Usenet archives should implement proper From-munging. The only one I downloaded so far, does not do this.)
Excellent read, thanks!
That made me laugh, "unmarked vehicles tailed him, switching positions to avoid detection". Knowing Toronto drivers, I wouldn't be suspicious at all if someone tailgated me all the way to work.
It's also hardware as a service... and, crucially, customer service. Google is awful at that.
Mr. Falk looked at Mr. O’Brien and said, Dennis, look, I don’t even know you, but you have to eat something, even if it’s one grape, before I’ll talk to you. That at least got people laughing, and pretty soon everyone acceded to the bread and cheese and grapes.

The negotiation scene is great stuff. It's gold.

Another very important line:

People have to realize that homelessness is connected to housing prices.

I have been told repeatedly on the internet that the cost of housing has nothing whatsoever to do with homelessness. Homeless people are viewed by many as "junkies and crazies" who just have a personal problem and are not negatively impacted by the housing situation in the US. I've seen people deny that there even is a housing crisis in the US.
Enrico Moretti's research is great. In my opinion it makes a strong argument that the federal government should step in and tear down California's economic wall
Good question. Not yet. When I carried out the tests (3+ years ago) I didn't have PETG filament around. Then TPU worked well for me and I have been sticking with it. I have a couple of PETG spools now so I will certainly try it next time!
It's worse than that, those "algorithmic" interviews are testing IQ, more-so than knowledge. The hard knowledge that is tested is pretty much only the syntax of the programming language candidate decides to solve the interview question with.

I put "algorithmic" in question marks, because those aren't even that hard as problems in programming contests or questions from uni comp sci coursework. For a phone screen with an online doc, it can be even something concrete, maybe implement a simple feature of a text editor (does not have to be as complex as the online doc the interview is in - it's important that the subject matter is easy to understand).

For an onsite interview, it would be something not likely to have been practiced in advance (questions leaked to websites get banned). Still, it would be something that reasonably fits in RAM, so there's no need to use a database or any networking technology (we can discuss those, too, just not necessarily request to use it in code - similarly, it may be taken for granted that the input data will be valid and there's no need to code defensively, the interview duration time is kinda fixed).

But as a policy we don't tell the candidates what their mistakes were, so those who failed may never know what they were up to. Goes without saying, we get to interview software engineers from different backgrounds - physics PhD s, or high-school IMO medalists, too.
Like considering Versign's place on the web I would hope they have strong financials. However, 7% a year that's a bit much.
Since when the last two are "soft skills" ??
There are lots of edge cases that human can adapt to easily but would confuse machines. The risk is that when that edge case comes up if the car go full bat sht crazy and kills someone, that will bring down the hammer.
My take is this:

C is necessary in some paradigms/domains. But that list has been shrinking as other languages are born and mature.

Learning C, like learning most things, will still certainly lend itself to lots of things you do, even if you're not using C.

Why learn C? Because you want to do stuff on that list or because you feel like it. Why not learn something else instead? It may very well be that there's more worthwhile things to learn depending on your goals.
Tokenizations alignment library for Rust and Python, written in Rust
So true. I'd almost consider it a kind of premature optimization.

Trying to nail down DRY abstractions not too early but not too late is often tricky but concern over it probably puts you in good company.
Just look at parking lots and self summoning. Tesla is still in step 2 of 10
Context: https://libgen.is/scimag/10.1162%2F0011526042365645
Steam Mac Games Collection All Our Mac Games Download Thousands
Strictly speaking that’s what palliate means, but palliative care almost always refers to symptomatic care for people with life threatening conditions (see the WHO definition[0]). If you look at the way the phrase is most often used in medical literature, you can see it’s qualitatively different from general symptomatic treatment, as the potential side effects are assessed differently. You’d be much less concerned about a patient developing an opioid dependence if they’re terminally ill. For instance the standard[1] from BC describing guidelines for opiate prescriptions states:

> This standard does not apply to active cancer care, palliative care, and management of substance use disorders. Physicians are expected to follow relevant clinical guidelines and established best practices in managing patients with these conditions. Nothing in this standard interferes with a physician’s obligation to provide aggressive symptom management to patients with active cancer, or nearing the end of their lives.

[0] https://www.who.int/cancer/palliative/definition/en/

[1] https://www.cpsbc.ca/files/pdf/PSG-Safe-Prescribing.pdf
It's good to see people complaining about interview processes from Google&co as it's a good idea to always try to improve the current situation. However, I feel there needs to be some context here. While the interviews at FAANG seem not ideal, they are HUGELY better than most other tech interviews I've had experience with. In most other interviews you get to have a chat with some HR person that has no idea what the word "variable" means. You answer a set of standard questions and they barely know how to map your answers to the expected list of answers they have. Then they score you based on that.

Let's not lose that perspective in discussions like these.
That sounds terrible, can you elaborate?
Have you ever asked the average user how they feel about:

>seeing stranger's pictures and info just because they have a number my friend used to have, that's downright creepy and makes me wonder how many people who've saved my number can watch me on whatsapp and see when I'm online or check my profile out.

>Even people I do know, I don't necessarily want to see on there, employers, numbers i've saved for looking at places to rent, my ex landlord, clients i've had for work i've done. I don't need or want to have all these people automatically added to every chat program I install they also happen to have.

I have, it inspired them to clean up their contact list.
Unless their skillset just isn't needed at that location anymore and they can't move to a different city for example because they have children in school.

I guess it helps keeping the workforce young and flexible.
The best part is after the police got done playing James Bond the couple was released under their own recognizance.
Wire works without a phone mostly because you don't have to use a phone number as login. I have an e-mail based account for instance, but I think you have to add contacts manually, pretty much like skype.
>we are collectively living in an illusion of whacked up expectations... it's super hard to hire good people, but most of the time it's because "good enough" isn't good enough anymore

So much this. When hiring in this field, people seem to expect candidates to know anything and everything software wise, yet reality is software is more complicated than it ever has been.

The problem isn't alone to this field however, it's fundamental to all fields and the progress of civilization. Discover or invent something new and suddenly everyone else is illiterate about it and must learn it. The build up of knowledge is so immense that we don't expect any one person to know all that there is to know in society, hence why people specialize in what they do. It's why doctors have areas of expertise (feet/skin/teeth/neurology etc), why engineers have areas of expertise (mechanical/electrical/nuclear), why doctors aren't expected to know what engineers know. Why physicists aren't expected to know everything that chemists know, etc...

The software field is just a rapid microcosm of this progressive knowledge problem as software is invented at rapid pace. Yet some reason people seem to expect potential candidates to know everything...

Additionally, IDK how many times I've found people using different lingo to describe the same thing in this field. It's like a bigger version of this: https://hbr.org/2018/07/what-to-do-when-each-department-uses...
The priority of a big company is to get a "good enough" person as quickly as possible. They have tons of applications, and interviewer time is expensive. Naturally, the process is geared towards minimizing false negatives, and getting a reasonably good hire in the minimum time. The current process works well for that. People who clear these interviews are usually not terrible, and are good enough. There is no incentive for a large company to do anything differently, unless they are looking for a very specific skillset, which is rare.
If you see my comment, it proposes using large infosys style teams. You don't need graduates per se, just people who have an intuition for logic and math, of which there are plenty. Plus you can prove isolated pieces e.g. TCP/IP stacks instead of end-to-end. It would not be as beneficial as full formal verification but it is still a large step in securing the most vulnerable targets such as IoT, industrial control systems, financial services etc.
I've read from blog posts and even from conversations that companies require acquihires, particularly non-founder employees, to go through an interview process. It may be shortened, but they still often have to do the typical algorithmic interviews.

I'll see if I can find one of the blog posts I've read about the process.

Note: to be clear, I'm describing the process for acquihires, not founders just wanting to sell their company and walk away with some cash (which actually seems to be somewhat unusual).

Edit: this was discussed in a similar thread on HN just last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18943500
Operation Deep Freeze
Last year I did the initial phone screen for a management level role at large search company and the next step was the infamous code test. Such a hard pass. Maybe it's different at a FAANG but my day job is communication and coordination, being technical enough to unblock and optimise work across multiple teams. The process just felt like it was optimising for the wrong thing. Not to mention that it's 20 years since my degree and I have better things to do.
Exactly my point as well - science shouldn't shy away from stuff we wouldn't like. That's why I also respect Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud so much - they dared to tell us things we didn't like, but they didn't care much; they only cared about the scientific truth.
And an Earth with ... a lot of handy animals and such!
Efficient Sparse Voxel Octrees
Work from Home: Top Companies for Remote Jobs in 2020
Heh, imagine "vigilante" network justice. Oh, hey, you messed with our cars one too many times. We'll arrange for some cars to line up in front of you and drive 25.
I worked there in the early 2000s. It was fun. Then it wasn't any more. I was much earlier in my career and when I left, having it on my resume meant a lot. Now I've done more and more interesting things. I told the FAANGs, in no unclear terms, I'm not interested. They seem to have gotten the message eventually. I like small companies. You work harder and have a lot more impact. The compensation is good too.

Leave. The grass is greener.
Read my response to wordball. Google differentiates itself with its tech.

Note what I said about Amazon: it didn’t look to me like a tech company when it started, but actually it was (for its time). And since then has continued to aggressively differentiate itself through investment in tech development.
> I don't agree with this sentiment. People learn different ways. I personally learn through trial and error, and explanations of things that I haven't been able to "touch" yet don't help me at all.

Learning through trial and error can be okay for custom problems that don't have well defined solutions. For simple problems, it's highly inefficient. Extreme example: if I want to print something to the console in C, I can use trial and error for a half-hour to try to understand the nuances of how to use printf(), or I can read for a few minutes a few pages in a book or an (good) online tutorial. Not only will I learn faster, I will also learn best practices.

My experience has been that people who are really against learning through books/tutorials tend to have short attention spans. Which is okay—books don't work for you. But for people who do have the ability to sit and read, it can be much more efficient than struggling through trial-and-error.

Somebody has already solved your problems, and they can tell you in a few pages how you can solve them too.
If you want to be further meta-disturbed, the literal meaning of "Schutzstaffel" (protection squad/unit/whatnot) describes the best-known part of the Secret Service's job better than it describes that of the Nazi SS.
That's like saying humans have evolved radically different behavior compared to 200 years ago because back then they couldn't travel to another celestial body.

I would argue jerking off to Internet porn and jerking off to a fantasy are both exhibiting the same behavior, just like a polar explorer from the 19th century and a lunar explorer from the 20th century are exhibiting the same behavior.
> [...] the original “Don’t repeat yourself” was nothing to do with code, it was to do with knowledge

> The trouble with DRY is it has no reference to the knowledge bit, which is arguably the most important part!

Okay. Now what does this mean? Is this article effectively a tantalizing recommendation to read The Pragmatic Programmer?
It’s the inequity of property tax that really burns me.

Just because I bought the same house decades later my property tax is 20x what my neighbor’s is?

Am I really using 20x the resources my neighbor does?

Get rid of Prop 13 and you could probably be revenue neutral and still drop the property tax rate by 50%.
The point of encryption is to protect content from third parties. TLS-like encryption where messages can be read by server, is not protecting the content this way, therefore, calling it encryption is misleading. When average user asks "is it encrypted?", they're not asking "Oh I totally get that the developers can access the content but is it safe from passive eavesdropping in the network backend?", they're asking "Can anyone else read the messages?", i.e. "Are they E2EE?". To which the answer is no.
Signal has had reproducible builds since March 2016.
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/master/Repr...
It will prevent the plastic layers from detaching too easily. Specially if you do the etching in a warm bath. If you do it right, the finish is far superior than using a marker, in particular edge traces that turn out very well defined. That means it's easier to do fine pitch SMD pads, for example.

Through the years I have done many PCBs using different methods: Sharpie markers, Posca pens, inkjet and laser printing, transfers of different materials, etc. Except perhaps for pro laser etching or routing, nothing beats photomasks. In my experience the quality I get with 3D filament compares to a DIY routing table, so if you have a 3D printer and don't mind chemical etching, you don't need one.
Four Ballads of USS Thresher (2013)
Russia is mostly in Europe, population-wise.
There must be people who'd want to specialize in that, though, if it's possible. It sounds like a fun job.
Tesla and the environmental impact of lithium-ion batteries
> There’s absolutely no excuse on why we aren’t flying commercially five times as fast and Flying personal electric vehicles.

Supersonic is noisy and probably has cost and safety concerns beyond conventional airliners. Physics and engineering have limited electric air travel.

There are also those boring issues like the environment and distractions like poverty, healthcare, and warfare getting in the way too.
It seems like a small story about a small bust, but if you keep reading the story keeps going. They are directly going after the scammers too.

> "Police have since worked with Indian authorities to carry out a flurry of raids against suspected illegal call centres in the country. Canadian officials said Friday they know of 39 call centres, in the New Delhi and Noida area, that have been shut down.

"Ogden said still others will face police scrutiny and that he anticipates more arrests and charges "in the next few weeks."
I block just about every number from the area code my phone number is in. I haven’t lived there in that area for a long time and 100% of the calls were spam. One day the spammers will wise up and use the area code where I live rather than where my phone is based but so far Number Shield has worked out great for blocking entire prefixes.
Sure, but you won’t learn much except how susceptible you are to the placebo effect.
iMessage is riddled with security issues: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21425897

Also, Telegram still

* Has no E2EE by default

* Has no E2EE for desktop clients

* Has no E2EE for groups.

When security is an afterthought, no convenience feature matters.
> Looking back on it I see many opportunities left to simplify.

What would you do?
I get why this is, but’s it’s really never been this way. Even on early eBay, if a transaction simply occurred without errors it was pure etiquette to rate them a full 5 with a comment along the lines of “A++++ SELLER! SHIPPED ON TIME, GOT EXACTLY WHAT WAS LISTED!”

Really, same thing goes for Amazon and Uber, etc. the etiquette is to start at a full rating by default and deduct based on what goes wrong. You can’t “earn” extra stars... if I order a box of batteries, and they arrive on time and the box is full, that’s a perfect transaction. 5/5, no problem. You can’t realistically expect extra batteries, or for the batteries to perfect above their rating. They’re batteries.
I don't know why anyone would trust either of us, when you can take the Levchin Prize referees word for it; that includes Dan Boneh, Kenny Paterson, Brian Ristenpart, and Nigel Smart.
Spotify offers a lot more value per dollar than this.
Agree, they want smart workers (well you have to be smart at some degree to do software). And they don't care if they will miss some genius, they just let other companies help the selection process, and if you turn out to be gold, they will pay a big money to get you.
Weird is definitely not the word I'm looking for.
Which is why we template, build dsls and generic support libraries, and generally automate the hell out of microservice boilerplate. (Usually after a lot of slogging).
What about delivering MAFIAA's DRMs around the world ? (after the second attempt by Netflix to get in the streaming market.)
One thing I wasn't aware as a nerdy teenager was how everything is valued IRL in its guaranteed minimum performance, not conditional maxima.

No one is interested in your peak performance, all it matters is consistency, predictability, stability, those robustness metrics. Say interview questions kinda sucks, but you show some competency still, means predictable most of what they have to throw at you will at least partially stick, minimizing factors.

You could argue that a workplace that prefers a trait like that doesn't sound like a place for artists' dream place we all desire, but more towards a "software manufacturing factory" envisioned by electric companies like Hitachi in the '80s, if you do I think maybe it is and maybe they were right to a certain extent.