skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I worked at a PE fund whose name you'd know. VC has a plausible claim to value creation. Buyout is a shell game. They are arsonists that we have allowed to torch our industrial economy to the ground.

There are massive financial incentives to lever to the hilt. Back in the day social pressures restrained it. In the 1980s that all went out the window.

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers...
I don't understand you.

Being from Romania, in all the companies I worked on, we had the need to communicate online by voice and video (mostly with Americans and among ourselves), plus I tended to work in companies with a remote culture. The last time somebody needed to dial into a call I was in was ... 10 years ago. Given we have nearly unlimited 4G data plans for cheap and smartphones, being on the go isn't a problem either.

Since when is this ability to dial-in such a hard requirement?

> "For >99.9% of people this is fine."

99.9% of people don't understand what end-to-end encryption is and why it is needed, because they think their calls are secure, when in fact they aren't. It is actually our responsibility to make end-to-end encryption mainstream and to educate people.
Maybe OneNote would be a place to look.
In many cities Comcast and other ISPs are offering free or reduced internet plans - might be worth looking into. And with the libraries closed your point is valid, you do need some outlets.
"I've argued before that we should allow the client to specify which types it wants as binary, unless explicitly specified. IMO that's the only way to solve this incrementally from where we currently are."

I don't understand the idea, can you clarify?
> A protocol running on top of TCP

Probably just a typo, but according to the article it actually runs on top of UDP, as an alternative to TCP.
Recaptcha and tracking.
Oh! That's the Haskell motto: https://www.google.com/search?q=haskell+%22avoid+success+at+.... I'd never troll so hard as to make something like that up, only just enough to quote it. I love it as a perfectly-cut gem of self-deprecating humor.

It has had different interpretations over the years. Simon Peyton Jones described its origins here: https://books.google.com/books?id=2kMIqdfyT8kC&pg=PA283&lpg=.... But that interview was already several years after the fact. See also https://web.archive.org/web/20150419060144/http://www.comput...:

When you become too well known, or too widely used and too successful [...] suddenly you can’t change anything anymore.

The fact that Haskell has up to now been used for just university types has been ideal [...] Now, however, they're starting to complain if their libraries don’t work, which means that we’re beginning to get caught in the trap of being too successful.

What I’m really trying to say is that the fact Haskell hasn’t become a real mainstream programming language, used by millions of developers, has allowed us to become much more nimble, and from a research point of view, that’s great. We have lots of users so we get lots of experience from them. What you want is to have a lot of users but not too many from a research point of view – hence the avoid success at all costs.

Does anyone have the original slide where he used this line? It would be interesting to see what contextual clues were there at the time.

Later it turned out to be a syntactic pun: https://twitter.com/simonmar/status/246335257677271040. The official interpretation seems to be "Don't make success your top priority, because success may compromise things you care about more", whereas the hilarious version would be "Whatever you do, make sure you don't succeed."

Haskell connoisseurs can add info. That is literally all I know about it, or more, since I just Googled half of it. I do recall reading those interviews at the time, no doubt via HN.
Not really surprising when you consider that the web was invented there (CERN).
I dial in to calls all the time. Frequently when driving / on public transport. Phone system is much more reliable.
Being forced to run a remote team of 10 has really opened me up to hiring people remotely in the future, hopefully others will come around as well.
It's really hard to say but it could be as late as the fall.
What do you mean by 'work for Google for free?' I don't see that being required anywhere on the site.
Does anybody have more details on what these underground nuclear test sites are like? It seems like the whole thing would just collapse after the first explosion, and be completely unobservable. And if it was observable, that seems like it would create problems too.
> I understand your frustration, but, remember how news talk about computers and how much simplification is needed to get the overall public to understand the concepts.

> Do not judge experts from the two liners that you read in the news. Stimulus packages, social distancing, new ways of producing needed equipment... everything is part of solving the problem.

The article I'm commenting on, which I also read prior to commenting, is not what you are describing.

From the article:

> Those resources do not current exist, said Konyndyk, who also noted that hospital capacity across the country needs to be expanded and protective equipment for health workers restocked. There are currently global shortages.

> “If we want to be able to — as I think we need to — turn our economy back on in a safe way, we need to be able to do that sort of thing at scale,” Konyndyk said. “And we do not have anywhere close to the public health infrastructure that’s needed to pull that off.”

His statement suggests that he thinks the economy operates as a switch that is simply turned off and on at a whim, while also saying there do not exist enough resources to perform the needed tasks. Where does he presume these resources to come from? Printed money?

Also from the article:

> “We let things get out of hand,” said Mina, who is also associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “So now the place that we’re left in is we have to absolutely beat this down with a hammer and get to near zero cases.

If they truly have nothing but the best intentions for keeping society healthy, they would understand that economics are more complex and more powerful than anyone can command or comprehend. If they keep the economy shut down all the way until there are "zero cases", there will be a lack of basic health care as resources rapidly dwindle.

I also think they are terrible at grasping stats. I have yet to see published average random sampling of the population. Undergrad stats for nearly every major teaches you don't have to sample very many people to estimate a population. And there doesn't seem to be any attempt to analyze overall mortality rates, which should at least on a monthly basis be up over past years.
I work at a PE firm. There are multiple strategies employed, but the name of the game is not to lose money. Disagree with the term "value creation" - fine - but my point is there is zero incentive to lose money. Otherwise, they would be out of business in the long term.

I am arguing for worker protection. Not protection of equity value. You inherently take on risk by deploying it, and should accept the realities of that risk.
Stress is an engineering term that refers to internal force. It would not apply to this description.
Thank you for this comment. It prompted me to look into Nicholas Zakas and his story. I've decided to make my way to a Lyme disease specialist based what his information lead me to think about co-infection.
Belief vs. Reality
It's our digital Swiss army knife! Need somewhere to run homebridge or pihole and don't want a pile of raspberry pis sitting around? Get the docker containers for these. Ditto for Plex and Roon servers. I even found a container that works as a replacement for the deprecated software that my ancient multifunction printer needs for its "one button" scan functionality.
I work for a big company in the news. We are still waiting on hearing about furlough details next week. Not a clue what will happen. There is no "what happens in a pandemic" page in the employee handbook. I have a feeling every top level exec everywhere has no idea what to do in such a situation. At least we are unlikely to lose our jobs in the long run, but who knows how long the short run will be.
> "In fact, is there something we can do to PREVENT these colossal leverage figures?"

yes, at least these 3 things:

* remove the tax advantage of debt over equity (currently debt payments reduce tax burdens).

* remove the tax advantage of capital gains over ordinary income.

* on any bailout, massively cram down the equity holding of the PE firm(s) and all executives by issuing new shares to every other stakeholder besides them, including other shareholders (if there are any, typically not), employees, suppliers, and debtholders, mitigating the too-big-to-fail moral hazard.
How do you find HN compares to Slashdot?
> If Apple had done nothing, then that same user's phone would randomly start switching off at non-0 battery levels (the un-throttled behavior) when brownouts occurred. Wouldn't the same user still come to the same conclusion, that their phone has some problem and needs to be replaced?

No I actually think then the average person would assume it's a battery issue, or at least be able to google it. I'm not saying that this is actually better behavior (I would also choose slow mode over random shutoff mode), but it doesn't obfuscate the fact that the phone has a faulty battery.

The reason I suspect that Apple did this maliciously is that "service battery" notifications are pretty standard behavior (including on their own laptops). It just seems like an intentional omission.
there's definitely sub-groups in the computer world who argue for stability. i've first encountered that in common lisp, but i think a recent interest in Ada is also driven by similar concerns. don knuth with TeX and literate programming also comes to mind. for example i wrote my billing code almost 15 years ago, and it's common lisp code that spits out plain TeX file. i've added features to it, but if i were to attempt to run the first version, it'll work without any changes. honestly i personally think it's aesthetically pleasing to work with old code, with changelog spanning a decade, because of the richness of thought that went into it. like picking up a woodworking tool at a yard sale, and noticing all the different hints of care that went into it.

arguing for stability in the face of other tradeoffs is an unpopular position. there are people who do it, but simply linking them from here will probably result in downvotes. i think arguments against systemd or in support of X11 come from people that want to escape the constant marginal benefit refactoring cycle.
HBO is offering free streaming of some shows on hbonow.com
No signups or credit card entry. Just click and watch.
We used to refer to them as "RIM jobs" at the University of Waterloo, where they had a significant presence given their next-door proximity to campus.
Ask HN: How small are your pull requests?
For example, I am currently fixing bugs with some forward/back buttons across two different parts of the system.

Would you group everything together?
A PR for each part of the system?
A PR for each button?
Legal action has had to been taken already to prevent gatherings at churches.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/louisiana-pastor-who-defied-coron...
Boeings most recent mission was supposed to be a demonstration that they were ready to fly crew to the station. Both hardware and software was supposed to be effectively finalized. This is compared to Starship where no one even really knows what the final hardware or software will look like yet and they are trying out manufacturing techniques in a field. The tests being performed are experiments, to see what does and doesn't work. Comparing the two failures is completely ridiculous.

Not only was Boeing software supposed to be effectively finalized, but Boeing hardware also appears to have failed on that test. The thrusters experienced issues, and the antenna that were contractually required to provide end to end connectivity failed to do so. Moreover on the second most recent demonstration (pad abort) Boeing suffered a parachute failure.
My wife prefers the SE as well, and I got a couple spares by offering whatever the trade-in value was plus $10 or $20 for great condition phones.

You might be able to still find some and at this point they'll only cost you $50 or less.
You can make money robbing little old ladies on their way to the grocery store. Doesn't make it a socially useful activity or one that should be permitted in a civilized society.
Could receiving coronavirus aid make peoples lives harder if they try to apply for a green card in the future? Like it seems it is if one makes use of medicaid or other public benefits.
No, that's not a clarification.

What the TFA is saying is that the decryption key is generated by their servers and even passed through China, even if none of the people in the conversation are in China.

That's NOT end-to-end encryption, Zoom never does end-to-end encryption because they have the decryption keys.

And with that clarification they keep deceiving their users.
Ask HN: Pandemic – What's gonna happen next?
I'm curious on what's your outlook for the coronavirus pandemic.

From the information I've been following recently a vaccine is likely coming out only next year, until then it seems to me that there are only two ways for controlling the spreading of the virus:

1) Social isolation / quarantine, like many (most?) of us are going through right now

2) Mass infection followed by mass recovery / immunization of a relevant part of the population

As much as the first approach saves more lives, it's hard for me to see how it'd bring us back to business as usual any time sooner than when the covid-19 vaccine comes out.

The second approach would only be viable, without putting too much pressure to the healthcare system, if it were possible to expose only low risk groups first, in a controlled manner, maintaining a degree of social isolation with high risk groups until the vaccine is available.

I guess my question becomes: How are people expecting things to start looking normal by mid-year while the vaccine is still so far ahead? Do you believe the reduction of infected cases in conjunction with relaxed social isolation and hygiene measures are sustainable for "re-opening the economy"?
This seems to be a difference in philosophy. I see your comment and, if I read you right, see a desire to support people by encouraging them to participate in capitalism by paying companies to hire them.

My view is different: public money should go to public good. I don't think that good is served by interfering with markets. If they need $10/hour to justify hiring someone, what is that person going to do for those hours? I think public good is served by training and paying people to deal with collective action problems: failing/at-risk infrastructure, poverty, health care in places with little or no access to it under the private health care and insurance systems, and things like that.

Private companies can be part of that, but the initiative has to be led by the public and the people they elect to lead them, not private interests.
Jitsi is the primarily recommended alternative video conferencing tool here, which hasn't had anywhere near the security scrutiny that Zoom has had. I'd prefer to use the tool that we understand is moderately secure, though flawed, rather than the tool that is a security unknown.

It seems a little much to recommend Jitsi as 'better', when nobody is really sure of that.
There's a whole zoo of 3D styles. From the semi-realistic look complete with SSS-shaders for skin that more resembles videogame cutscenes than your average anime (kingsglaive movie[0]) over the plasticy half-way look that has realistic lighting on flat-colored materials and outlines (e.g. altered carbon or the blame movie[1]) to productions that more closely emulate the common manga/anime style, sometimes even mixing 2D and 3D the same scene[2]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UblcNFVVHT8
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwy806RC2-Q
[2] https://youtu.be/N-VNG8vW5RA?t=116
I accept Clojure as a lisp. Didn't mean to start a holy war. I just don't personally want to deal with it and its ecosystem, which includes Java. I need your average web developer to be able to clone the repo, run yarn, and go.
So going back to your earlier comment:

>>UBI isn't a savior. UBI still requires that people, you know, pay taxes. If 30-40% of people have no income and are completely dependent upon the government, then you have slavery 2.0 (3.0?) and you will end up creating a worse, classed society than you had before: the ones receiving vs. those who pay for what everyone else gets.

>Regarding your first paragraph: At least in a lot of european countries, income tax isn't even the most lucrative tax for the government.

I don't see how shifting your taxes from an income tax to a consumption tax changes anything. Rather than getting taxed to hell on your income, you're getting taxed to hell whenever you try to spend it.
No, the whole point is that it does not: the arcades would be connected to the buildings, providing a roof which people could under lengthwise.

This is important, because that meant, as the article says, that the building facades had to be rebuilt all the way through.

And this was a major reason for a no-go for the project.

Seattle Monorail runs on a track that is supported by wide pillars, not an arcade. You can't walk length-wise under it, the pillars are in the way. But the pillars mean that it does not need to touch the buildings it runs next to. It can (and does) go in the middle of the street.

In short, it's not an arcade.
Show HN: 2D Tilemap on Top of Jitsi Meet
Largely depends on business and culture (also Romania has abnormally good internet).

Where I work nobody calls in and everyone uses webcams for VTC (software company, skews younger), but at my girlfriend's company a lot of people call in and nobody uses webcams.
Microsoft Teams does the same thing.
Even a deck of playing cards can kill plenty of time. Pencils and paper are cheap as well.
> A 6 digit meeting key

But this is the sort of lack of foresight that bothers me about Zoom. Let's be clear -

- It isn't that they're being attacked, that happens to any service where there's a payoff.

- Is is not that they have vulnerabilities, bugs happen.

Is is that they actively tried to deceive about E2E. It is that they never anticipated having 1M simultaneous connections, or the problem that would result before that. It is that they do insecure things to people's machines.

They act like undisciplined malware authors who happen to work on what is supposed to be a business product. What will the next "bug" be?

Actively looking for something that will work for us that isn't so untrustworthy.
Possibly but the ultimate decision is your school's and you need to have some structure where you are supervised by a board member or another employee. I generally recommend that you find out from your school (in the abstract) what must be in place for you to use your STEM OPT to work for a company you (co)founded.
Wiki on this topic: https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Remote_Communication

Mailing list on this topic: https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/remotecommuni...
Any idea what kinds of software development skills they're looking for?

I guess if they're also looking for UX designers, they aren't looking for just data analysis code?
I see. Here in Europe, my monthly plan is much cheaper (about 10 euros a month), but international plans are more expensive, so it makes sense to get a cheap local sim when traveling outside Europe.
Pretty sure he still is doing the internship but I think his current gig was cancelled and he's looking for something to fill the next 3 months.
Please don't use italics, it makes it more difficult to read for dyslexics.
Zoom is still the best performing software. Alternatives fail in various ways. I wrote Emergency Remote[0], and for some companies thrown into the situation it is best to use it anyway. They can't handle more trouble during this time.

[0] https://www.emergencyremote.com/EmergencyRemote.pdf
Sorry, I meant H-1B.
FWIW, I've often called out my decision to use PostgreSQL and ZFS (on Linux) as my worst.

Memory usage was extremely inefficient. ARC had to be set to half of what it should've been because it varied so dramatically, so half the system memory was wasted. ZFS would occasionally exhaust system memory causing a block on allocations for 10+ minutes almost daily, no ssh or postgresql connections could be opened in the meantime. Sometimes a zfs kernel process would get stuck in a bad state and require restarting the server. Many days were wasted testing different raid schemes to work around dramatic space inefficiencies (2-8x IIRC) with the wrong combinations of using disk block sizes, zfs record sizes, postgresql block sizes, and zfs record compression. Because zfs records are atomic and larger than disk pages, writes have to be prefaced with reads for the other disk pages, adding lots of latency and random IOPS load. Bunch of other issues, I could go on.

I've since switched back to ext4 and hardware RAID. Median and average latency dropped an order of magnitude. 99th percentile latency dropped 2 orders of magnitude.

These databases are at high load. If they had low load, and I wasn't expecting to grow into high load, I'd consider ZFS since it does have a bunch of nice features.
This is honestly the best “Zoom is bad” summery I’ve seen so far. While I certainly believe some of the Zoom hate is blown out of proportion, this article does a good job explaining to someone who isn't a security expert what the issues are. I've been getting questions about the company from family and friends, and will be forwarding this to them. Well done.
You shouldn't be downvoted. The economy is not some abstract separate thing that can stopped and started at will. A prolonged economic depression will kill people just as surely as the virus. They will die deaths of despair from suicide, substance abuse, and chronic disease over months and years but in the end they'll be dead all the same.

Governments can mitigate the problem to a limited extent through temporary measures like giving people money and halting evictions, but that will only help at the margins.
Privacy in the Time of Covid-19
My thoughts are along these lines, too. If it's not incrementally adoptable in webpack/etc projects, it won't see significant adoption.
> You claimed there is a safety issue on "use after free" for empty types which are trivial. I am still waiting to see the proof.

I claimed that it is trivial to accidentally introduce safety issues when implementing _state_ machines in C++ like you are proposing. The "state" in "state machines" comes from the machine actually having some state. Naive state machines don't store state, and simple state machines can encode all their state in types, but real world state machines rarely do so (e.g. a regex engine).

> You also keep saying there is no way to fix in C++, you can most definitely make those into compilation errors.

Show how to do that then, e.g., for example for a simple file handle wrapper, that only allows reading a file once:

struct FileHandle {
static FileHandle open(const char*);
~FileHandle(); // closes file
struct FileRead { ~FileRead(); /* closes file */ };
static FileRead read(FileHandle);
};

such that the file is not closed twice:

auto file = FileHandle::open("foo");
auto read = FileHandle::read(file);
//~ read destructor closes file
//~ file destructor double-closes file

without doing any run-time checks, e.g., in destructors, that check whether the file is closed.

This is easy peasy in Rust.