skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Informed investors

Investors are generally not informed, act on FOMO, and not the right people to determine the value provided by a company.

NVDA stock crashing when Uber's self-driving car crash, for example. Or TSLA stocking crashing when an accident occurs and driver exits safely and unharmed, when they would have died in a normal car.

Or some company's stock hurtling up because they release some hoo-la-la PR about some new piece of software, but as a software engineer I know its faults.

Scientists and engineers are informed. Customers are also informed. Investors, on the other hand, are generally people with lots of money but who have lost their basic skills and science knowledge in the process.

Of course there are a few knowledgeable people in the lot, but they aren't the majority -- at least that's the case with the public stock market.

The public stock market itself is a bunch of uninformed people hedging bets based on information provided by uninformed, unskilled PR people -- it's more or less a joke, and that's the name of the game, whether or not you choose to accept it. (I know I'll get downvoted for this -- probably by the people who have millions in the stock market!) The way to win in the stock market is to properly model that joke.

The idea that the stock market is a bunch of rational, informed experts setting valuations on things will get you nowhere, and it doesn't function that way, and doesn't behave according to that model.

Unfortunately, the SEC is meddling in proper modelling of jokes right now, which sucks. It's easier to model it when it's either fully a joke or fully rational, and it's much more on the joke side overall.
I think you're confounding a lot of variables here... the way that Japan and South Korea have dealt with the virus are in many ways different than the way that it was handled in Italy and the US. Masks aren't necessarily as important as some of those other factors, including general cultural tendencies, such as listening to government advice or willingness to adhere to limits on movement.

It's also misleading to include the Surgeon General's tweet on this subject. This is in very specific context to having a limited supply of masks and trying to reserve them for the most at risk populations.
>The only obvious explanation I can see

I think the opinion restaurant owners have of yelp ranges from dislike to outright loathing. Yelp has the reputation of being a bully and essentially extorting restaurants for money. Most of the negativity is probably because of that. If it were someone like Google doing it then there'd probably be a lot less outrage.
I also used FluentD for this. Basically we alredy had fluentd, and fluentd can output to anything, not just S3.
End of line inference algorithms are incredibly fragile, both by the compiler and by the human reader, having a semi-colon can make things clearer in the absence of another secondary signal (like indentation). There are so many type errors in scala or typescript that can be solved by adding a semicolon somewhere to eliminate some idiotic ambiguity.
And performance, see my other comments nearby (jQuery now gone).
Yet test-test-test mantra is beloved even if it's far from 100% either.

I've a feeling that West may prefer to externalise work vs Far East taking personal responsibility. Someone has to do tests, but god forbid I wear mask.
Entangling three qubits without ever touching
This is something "everybody knows", that it is "heavily subsidized" but I'm not aware of what rules and regulations are written to favor and apply only to the industry. Maybe you could summarize a bit?
Why Do I Trust This?
A few points:

- There's an ongoing effort to promote civilian use of masks, see: https://www.facebook.com/groups/640968383371577 and their document 'Hong Kong Protocol" https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mvc6evI2qzU3M8MkrLSqKJBT...

- The Surgeon General may be saying not to wear masks because they have to be done correctly, you don't want to try and buy an N95 mask (at time of this writing in USA) because:

- First responders in the US need N95 respirators right now! I donated mine and plan to make a cloth mask.

- You might be wearing it wrong! See NIOSH's guide on facial hairstyle and respirators: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/FacialHairWmask11282017-508.pdf

- You need to dispose or disinfect after use.

- Most importantly, if you're wearing an N95 with a valve, you may just be spreading the virus out if you're an asymptomatic carrier.

- People are currently looking into the best mask to wear, see https://twitter.com/lucasgonzalez/status/1242468271825313792 & https://twitter.com/magghu/status/1241361090954571781

I'm onboard with your overall message, but think it needs to be crafted a bit better.
3 Problems with that:

1. UV light capable of sterilization destroys or degrades most materials very quickly, worse than leaving it out in the sun.

2. UV lights tend to be very energy-expensive, and there is not much advancement in green tech to mitigate that, unlike visible LEDs and such.

3. Damage to peoples eyes and skin, means you must have interlock systems to make sure nobody is around.

4. UV light will not sanitize something it does not directly shine on. Any shadow is a gap. An indoor space would have to be engineered in a certain way, not even postmodern architects would like it.

The only profitable UV sanitizers I ever see are in the medical/dental field anyway, used for autoclaving things. They do have UV rooms for things like hazmat suits, but they tend to be the domain of industrial accident response, EPA or FEMA types. Again, the power they require, and the grade of radiation they give off, they are too hazardous to allow ordinary people to be near them when operating.
I totally agree that this is nothing more than correlation at this point. I'm all for a double-blind study and would love to better quantify mask-wearing. I am saying: wearing masks seems like an easy thing to do that could potentially limit the COVID-19 infection rate.
Yeah there is a lot of breadth in what YC puts out as we found out ourselves. Categorization for specific domains is hard since we don't have labelled data. It's a mix of unsupervised token extraction, clustering to detect significant concepts along with a human layer to tune false positives and also curate few topics manually since the process will never get everything right on its own.

We are in the process if scaling it further so we can help create many more resources for users and their own data.
If you assume humans are not unique in the universe, you're immediately confronted with the Fermi paradox. If the universe is filled with sapient life, wouldn't some of that sapient life be hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us--a tiny amount of time on the astronomical timescale, but more than enough for them to be observable in some way? Ultimately we're left with the unsatisfying task of speculating without evidence, at least for now.
Yelp has a very poor reputation with small businesses. They endlessly harass you with sales calls and if you decline their services people have reported their reviews being negatively affected.

Most of all, don't claim to represent a business unless you actually represent them.
"We had a router failure in Atlanta".

WHAT? You kidding us?

Urs Hölzle, technical infrastructure at Google Cloud senior vice president, said, "We're very sorry about that! We had a router failure in Atlanta, which affected traffic routed through that region. Things should be back to normal now. Just to make sure: This wasn't related to traffic levels or any kind of overload, our network is not stressed by COVID-19."
They admit they don't have any evidence: "We need hard data that show a direct effect of a strong mask-wearing culture to lower COVID-19 virality. We only have antidotal research at this point."

But nevertheless "The West needs to adopt mask culture"
If your answer to a privacy concern is "use a Google product" you may not quite understand Google's business model.

Zoom is as good as video can be in 2020. Google may be on parity, but tools like WebX are laughably inferior.
> ... in the PWN

I think we all got PWNed this time.
Is there an article about that?
Give it a few million years and they'll have hydrocarbons the exact same way we got them.
ayy, that's awesome if they pay candidates for significant work samples. i think there's some discussion to be had about what's significant. anything more than 1.5-2hours in my opinion. an hour or two is how long an interview might take in any profession. asking me to work unpaid for 4 or 8 hours (one project: 3 days!) is excessive. maybe call it the "half-day" test. is it a half-day of work? if so pay. if not, then you can do that once during an entire interview process.
This is a great tool! I really like it. Do you have an option for a different color scheme though? Even just a white / black? Don't know why but this color is pretty difficult for me to look at for some reason.
I'm sorry, but the proof made on this site in support of the efficacy of wearing a face mask appears to be simply looking at a small sample of countries and finding a correlation between two variables. Completely putting the should we shouldn't we debate to one side, I'm not sure this site really contributes to this discussion in a scientific/novel way...
> How do you know that this is the current state?

Look at the number of cases and their regional distribution, realize that those are tested cases and thus, with a) asymptomatic carriers and b) really bad testing in the US, the number of active cases is at least 10x that. Then realize you're dealing with an exponential process. United States are thoroughly infected already.

> "meaningful supply of equipment" means this option is not possible in the US?

Not now, but if and when the US implements proper suppression measures, and the number of cases goes down to manageable levels (while at the same time the supply chain of PPE catches up to demand), then the supply of equipment will be meaningful.
Hello Sankalp, good questions, here's my responses:

What criteria do you use to determine 'health' in online communities?

Depends on the context, for example, commercial/business health may vary from the actual health of the members interactions that make up a given community. Personally, I would assess the health of HN community based on raw engagement numbers as well as a qualitative assessment of the interaction value, like:

Are the topics relevant to human growth & evolution of the mind? Diverse? Intelligent? Controversial at times?
Is the content I am exposed to and consuming making me a better _________ ?
Do community participants interact in a way that fosters understanding and knowledge transfer/gain? Are members willing to admit what they don't know, when they are wrong, and respectfully disagree in the mean time?
Are there a lot of blatant trolls/negative or useless quips/spam?

What is your working definition of "success" and "health" is what I would wonder given that you and your institution are apparently investing resources here?

How do these differ from those criteria you use to determine ‘health’ in offline communities you are in?

For me, they don't differ much - same criteria, expectations and standards sought elsewhere online.

How does HN exemplify or not exemplify 'healthy' behaviors?

Not sure how moderated the forum behind the scenes, but I rarely am subjected to irrelevant, toxic, rude commentary, so props to whomever/however they pull that off because it keeps many people actively returning and engaging in best practices aka healthy behavior.

Also, love how dead simple and basic the interface is, don't ever change HN!

One thing I do wish would be clearer communicated / understood is how the algorithm works as in 'why am I seeing what i am seeing?' I might be missing this already shared, but it would make for a healthier community by being as transparent as possible about this because it builds trust in the platform.

What behaviors of your own would you acknowledge may or may not contribute to the overall ‘health’ of HN?

I'm just here to listen learn from smart people, (in fact I was a lurker for almost 10 years before more recently creating an account to facilitate my goal of writing more). My hope would be that individually my impact or value this community is a net positive :)

How did you get into HN? Who introduced you? What makes you stay?

I don't remember, I think everyone in the entrepreneur/hacker community just knows about it.

I will conclude by saying one aspect of this community that is unique and you may want to look into as you conduct your "health" and "success" research is: the role 'identity politics' has on the quality of conversations among members in a given community. I am unaware of another robust online community that places such a high emphasis on the caliber of content/conversations and low emphasis of who it's coming from as far as I can tell?
Oh I know. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt considering this is a crisis and even some monsters are looking humanitarian lately.
Last year I saw one at night in San Diego walking down the boulevard. It trotted right past me like 5ft away!
Yeah, I consider it a pretty serious security issue.
Trash collecting tends to pay pretty well too.
Yep. There are certain circumstances when if it's not completely effective, don't bother might be a valid heuristic, like taking completely unnecessary risks simply because you have a mask to reduce them. But reluctance to wearing masks in the West isn't coupled with a commonsense avoidance of risks altogether..
What is process mining? The GH repo assumes that you already have the context (I appreciate them including a worked example, but it still doesn't tell me what they're trying to do), https://pm4py.fit.fraunhofer.de/ has docs but all of them start with "this lets you do process mining", and examples don't quite make enough sense to try and infer it. About page has the same issue.
Was it like... a hardware failure? If you serve more than 100 people you probably should have redundant routers. Was it a configuration issue that replicated over to multiple devices at least, I hope?
If you spend your life creating a business to build a reputation why would you be mad that a company as shady and dishonest as Yelp to put up an ad begging for charity when you may or may not need it, or want it? Yelp is a horribly unethical business, for them to step in and potentially ruin my business without my consent to do so is huge.
Microsoft sells stake in Israeli facial recognition company
Last summer my wife and I took pictures of one in a parking lot in the 3400 block of Avenue of the Cities, Moline, IL... middle of downtown, a mile south of the Mississippi.

Did not expect that.
CzechoSlovakia is at this point where everyone is using masks

But I guess we are still east so it does not count ;-)
my_df %>% plot(col1,col2,col3)

see 18.2.1 and 18.2.4 in
https://r4ds.had.co.nz/pipes.html

much sugar
Don't just blindly run a formatter.

I've developed a habit of refactoring long lines early (e.g. breaking large expressions and assigning to intermediary variables) to prevent the formatter from adding hard-to-read mid-expression line breaks
Several top-level commenters are questioning why the restaurant owners would be upset about this. Some reasons are listed in the Verge article:

1. It's causing unneeded additional stress to the business owners

2. It causes harm to their reputation

3. It was done without their consent

4. It's being done on a mass basis for [Yelp/GoFundMe's] benefit

5. The process to opt-out is arduous

It doesn't seem like a ridiculous request that you get the owner's consent before you involve them in some kind of business arrangement.
Hacker News is good because it's a middle ground. It's not toxic like metafilter where users know each other well enough to form factions. It's not as big as reddit so that you lose any sense of community.
Self-Assembly of Unique Structures from Evaporated Drops of American Whiskeys
Lots of reasons:

There is a difference between "seems obviously correct" and "proven well enough to avoid a lawsuit".

China exerts control over American media companies. Ones that don't play ball get banned in China. Remember that these companies are usually involved in many businesses, including the sale of movies to China's large population. Everybody is afraid to upset China.

Even the publisher of Nature has ditched about 1000 articles that were upsetting to the Chinese government.

Much of the US media is strongly in opposition to the US president. (They even stopped airing his virus updates, despite good ratings, because it was making him look good.) There is no desire to spread any news that could support his opposition to China.
Asus RT-AX89X consumer router comes with 10G Base-T and 10G SFP+ interfaces
I took the opportunity to visit Glen Canyon Park last time I was in San Francisco, after a local recommended to me, and it was a wonderful interlude in my visit; they had signs up noting that there would be coyotes about at twilight; alas I was there mid-day and didn't get to see them.

I did, however, get to see hummingbirds for the first (and so far only) time in my life.
> And of course, China, which is "medium", breaks this model heavily. Masks didn't help. Lockdowns helped.

This seems an odd way to summarize your point. SK and Japan didn't do lockdowns, and yet fared better than any country that did.
You should never partake in financial activities of a business you are not involved with or have a relationship with. Its horribly unethical.
And it could also give people a false sense of security. Masks may be helpful, but only in concert with other practices. Distancing is going to have a much larger impact on limiting the viral spread. If you have a bunch of people wearing masks that are only partially effective start gathering in large groups, you run the risk of negating all of the good generated from distancing.
> I definitely share your objection in principle. If this situation continues long into the future (a terrifying thought), then perhaps I'll revisit my choice of software. But in the short term, to be honest, I don't much care.

Do the students not care?
I'm gonna take a look at Wadler's paper—but does anyone want to take a shot at a high-level description of how an algebra would be applicable to the problem of pretty printing?

Any more general comments on applying algebras to solving programming problems would also be appreciated.

My rough understanding of the benefits/rationale atm:

1) the algebra is a nice/minimal factoring of the problem

2) being able to formally classify it means we know a bunch of its properties, which tells us certain approaches are definitely (im)possible (and these properties are drawn from a fairly small set: e.g. associativity, distributivity, existence of inverses)

3) If the algebra is explicitly represented in code (maybe in a library), we can use that general structure to verify (and generate?) certain aspects of our particular problem solution.

Edit: The paper mentions "Over the years, Richard Bird and others have developed the algebra of programming to a fine art" —and I found Bird's book "Algebra of Programming". Seems like what I'm looking for maybe, but would be grateful to hear of any alternative resources as well.
- ENIAC - The triumphs and tragedies of the world's first computer

- Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age

- From airline reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog - a history of the software industry

- History of programming languages Volumes 1 to 3
https://twitter.com/uhoelzle/status/1243217659690278912
Country-sized groups of people are not small samples. There may be other biases but that's not one of them.
It also just works on Linux - video, screen sharing, window sharing, remote control, whiteboard. Moreover: recording, simple way to mute anyone as host, host less rooms. 1-100 peers? no problem. No need to create account for guests to participatie.
I think that this is a very strong argument. The opacity of the system is in itself sufficient grounds to label it as unethical. It's not ethical to coerce someone into accepting the value of something that they are not capable of understanding and which constantly changes in ways that they also cannot understand.

If, without telling you, I took a gold coin from you and replaced it with a gold-painted led coin and then I gave your gold coin to someone else, this is stealing. The fact that you don't realize that there is a difference does not matter. How is this different from what the Fed is doing?

It's not right to assume that this economic system treats us all equally on the basis that everyone is equally incapable of understanding it.

People game the system by observing what works and reacting to familiar situations in ways to maximize their personal benefit. If the rules of the system don't change for a long time, the system becomes ossified and we end up with an inherently unjust system.

Goodhart's law states that "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" - The measuring tools which the government has been using to operate our economy are already well understood and have being exploited for a long time.
- The Dream Machine

- The Innovators
dang has commented on this. The gist is that you can have your flag powers taken away if you abuse them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173836
Watch Tokyo closely over the next few days and weeks. History isn’t written yet.
"The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood" starts with "1 | Drums That Talk" re: African drum messaging; a complex coding scheme:

> Here was a messaging system that outpaced the best couriers, the fastest horses on good roads with way stations and relays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Information:_A_History,_a_...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8701960-the-information

From "Polynesian People Used Binary Numbers 600 Years Ago" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/polynesian-people... :

> Binary arithmetic, the basis of all virtually digital computation today, is usually said to have been invented at the start of the eighteenth century by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. But a study now shows that a kind of binary system was already in use 300 years earlier among the people of the tiny Pacific island of Mangareva in French Polynesia.
You should never partake in financial activities of a business you are not involved with or have a relationship with. Its horribly unethical.

Especially when you spend so much time to build an image, a brand, a relationship with your customers, it automatically be associated with a company with such an unethical past, poor brand, etc.... They are ruining years of hard work by the owners without asking them for any sort of consent? I would never want to be associated with Yelp, way more damage to my brand than help.
I feel like being on Hacker News sometimes warps the context of a personal blog post.

If I put out a tweet that said "Huh, my app got about the same number of downloads on iOS and Mac, I think the market's about the same for certain types of apps" would you say my tweet is full of vagaries and incorrect assumptions?
People freeze to death every winter because they can't afford fuel. I have no idea what your analogy is supposed to mean.
yes, just to be clear, the linked article[0] calls out french billionaires for reneging, but the article is from last june, so who knows what's happned regarding funding since then. they say small french donors and the government is providing funding though. it's interesting that one foundation president estimates that 90% of rebuild funding is from american donors (big and small, presumably).

[0] https://apnews.com/d69824caa68b4d24b13e91fed77dd953
Ha ha! Fixed ;-)
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/27/us-coronavirus-cases-top-100...
Whales. Not Wales.

Mass, not area.

Far more plausible and chosen for the oceanic theme.
> If China did in fact ship emergency medical supplies to Italy, that's a gesture worth recognizing and praising.

Fully agreed on that particular point, that is commendable