skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"he wears his on his sleeve" - his biases you mean. You've downright stated he's openly biased. So we agree.

But that does not mean he's automatically wrong, nor that he's worthy of dismissal overall. Just that I'd take more care to filter what he says than I would with, say, the beeb . Not that the beeb are beyond criticism BTW.

And I'm not disagreeing with him that this PC guy is odd and worthy of investigation.

It's just that overall fact that he indeed is openly very opinionated. That's fine, so am I, just caveat emptor.
Python Tutorial – Builtin Functions
The flu colloquially known as swine flu from 2009 did start in Mexico.
Nice use of quotation marks there, considering that is not what I said.
Too true. As an Amazon user for 22 years now, I was amazed by the greater than decade run some of their pages had with the UX appearing nearly unchanged (e.g. login flow).
Well, we live in tines where a role model of success might be the CEO who increased profit margins on t-shirts by 1%... (by accepting that some child laborers might die in an avoidable factory fire somewhere on the other side of the planet)

Or how about the savvy investor who looks the other way when it is being revealed that one of their portfolio companies polluted the environment on a massive scale.

These people might actually be applauded for their behavior in our society, despite them behaving like sociopaths.

Our role models and our definition of success are really weird.
The Cuckoo’s Egg, Cliff Stoll

Dreaming in code, Scott Rosenberg

The Information: A history, a theory, a flood, James Gleick

Turing’s Cathedral, Dyson

The longitude prize, Joan Dash (for kids)

Soul of a new machine, Tracy Kidder
Suppression of Covid-19 outbreak in the municipality of Vo, Italy
The 'blob': zoo showcases slime mold with 720 sexes that can heal itself (2019)
Well, I use a static site generator for my blog (https://mcherm.com). It gives me confidence it can scale well and for a blog site static content (with simple dynamic content being rendered in the browser) is just fine.
> we’ve been doing education research that’s never reached practical deployment for 50 years since; why not build a lot more great K-12 schools using everything we now know?

Because in 2020, education is credentialism.
Every one of my friends who approached or was approached by a VC was asked: did you go to a good school? Do people up the chain like you? Show us references from professors and supervisors!
This is not some big player hiring a manager-executive, I'm talking about investors whose job is to identify left-field potential and take risks.

You can't create Harvard 2.0 if your measure of success is having attended Harvard 1.0, and Harvard 1.0 is under no pressure to change or adapt.

Even the best VCs won't invest in socially inept dropouts anymore.
The next Steve Jobs isn't building something in his parents' garage, because nobody believes in his ability to sell computers. He doesn't have an MBA from Wharton; he isn't a Stanford PhD.
Thiel's "just don't fuck it up" just can't happen in 2020, except maybe by Thiel himself (or Weinstein, who is slowly waking up to this truth).

If anything, crises might force VCs to take risks again. Let the flood of easy M&As run dry and the dam dismantled!
I dunno, I have a filter in my brain - I can usually pretty accurately detect marketing content in a first second looking at it and stop paying attention to it.

Just remember all that "fluff" is what pays the bills.
Isn't he ridiculously strong at all time controls?
I work JavaScript/TypeScript day to day, but I like Python syntax and easiness but also like Go's concurrency. Having learned Haskell and Rust in the past, these days I appreciate simpler language.

In what way does Scala have Python's convenience and Go's concurrency? Based on talking to a few people that used Scala in the past they said they wouldn't use it again and they said I probably wouldn't like it.
Since the NZ government gave Peter Thiel citizenship after spending just 12 days there - instead of the three years residence it takes mere mortals, I am pretty sure a large cheque will open the airport.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/29/new-zealand-ga...
Scuttlebutt is what you use until GnuNet goes stable.
Just like Hurd.
> you can stil prevent them from excersing that power by not setting an example that it's okay to do so.

And then they'll do it anyway a few years later, when you're not looking. Just look at Google's introduction and continuous tightening of SafetyNet requirements.

And what the hell can you do? Switch to buying Apple, who set the gold standard for this crap years ago? Switch to Purism, which BankID (practically mandatory for life in Sweden, sadly) still hasn't been ported to?
Very interesting, thanks for taking the time.

"Trying to not be evil just doesn't scale so easily": your remark reminded me of this quote from Leopold Kohr:

"There seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. Oversimplified as this may seem, we shall find the idea more easily acceptable if we consider that bigness, or oversize, is really much more than just a social problem. It appears to be the one and only problem permeating all creation. Whenever something is wrong, something is too big. … And if the body of a people becomes diseased with the fever of aggression, brutality, collectivism, or massive idiocy, it is not because it has fallen victim to bad leadership or mental derangement. It is because human beings, so charming as individuals or in small aggregations, have been welded into overconcentrated social units."

(The Breakdown of Nations, 1957)
I'm the same, yet one has to be careful about extrapolating from personal experience. Lots of people here recommend exercising before work, yet for me it leaves me tired and in a bad mood, and kills my productivity.

I know people who have quite irregular "natural" sleeping periods, and furthermore when they sleep 10-12hrs, they feel ill the whole day. They use the alarm clock to ensure a more regular period, and feel better for it.
What would you say that the number of infected people in NYC may be?

If 20% of them are infected, the infection fatality rate observed is already in the 0.5%-1% range.
The solution would be easy: Put the flashy stuff in a div with ID "advert", and the ad-blocker will hide it from view. All non-techies gets the intro-movie.

Anyway: Here is the list of things I gathered from the comments (iiuc):

* Uses a fork of x.org with support for legacy Windows version removed.

* Costs 10$ if you find it on sale, 50$ otherwise.

* Can be installed on 10 PCs.

* Can be installed/updated via the AppStore.

* Has a windowed mode.

* Well-integrated into Windows 10 and WSL.

* Takes advantage of HyperV virtio vsock for small latency enhancement.

* If VcXsv or XMing are unstable for you, file a bugreport, and try if X410 is more stable.

* Cannot make use of hardware assisted rendering, because of underlying WSL limitation w.r.t GVT-g in some HW configurations
>The other thing is that economic collapse does cause deaths also

you've completely missed my point: is there any other western nation claiming that what's at stake here is economic collapse (and consequent deaths) or the deaths of the vulnerable to the virus? i think the answer is no (but i don't read german/norwegian/italian newspapers so i might be wrong). only in the united states are we forced to choose one or the other. you should stop to consider why that's the case.
Ask HN: The Q
Dear HN,

Is it really possible there is a "shadow war" going on inside governments worldwide between, in the red corner, a "deep state" backed by a "cabal" of powerful criminal syndicates that deeply infiltrated state intelligence and security apparatuses, military, and the biggest corporate and financial entities, who deal in blackmail and children, and are trying to control world affairs via "total media control", "overpopulation control", and "one world government", all while being ardent Satanists and flaunting it through symbolism in pop culture, versus, in the blue corner, a somewhat ragtag faction of cabal-dissenting operatives labelled "the alliance", also powerfully placed in corporate, government and military sectors, spoken for by the pseudonymous "Q", and who are now in the final stages of a takeover to restore "justice" and "rid the global system" of the aforementioned "corrupt cabal"?

I mean, could this sort of thing be actually going on and people, on the whole, are simply unaware of it, or not believing of it? Who and what is Q, is Q to be believed, or, (if there really is a "cabal") could Q simply be the "cabal faking its own death"? Or some other epic soap opera psyop for the public distraction?

It seems unlikely something like "Q" could simply emerge out of the cesspool of the internet in an adhocratic way, without some sort of coordinated and centralized action to create and sustain the narrative. If Q is a sham, who could possibly be behind such a persistent information campaign?

Is it more likely it's an operation of mass distraction, and if so for what purpose, or more likely that it is telling a truth about the world?

Sincerely,

~Qonfused
You forgot to mention they are also taking the risk of several other people dying or becoming seriously ill. But I understand you may not have thought of that.
Before we do all this, couldn't Facebook just turn over the data that its users have already consented to sharing? I feel like that would get us a significant part of the way there.
Recruiting and Coordinating User Interviews with “User Interviews”
A lot of these "elective" "nonessential" services are really preventative.

This was plainly brought into view for me with a dental procedure I had to cancel/reschedule. It's deemed non-essential, but is necessary to prevent me from losing an entire tooth or two. If it's not done reasonably soon it's only a matter of time before it turns into an emergency dental procedure.
>> The right must fight hard against crony capitalism, regulatory capture, ossified oligopolies, risk-inducing offshoring, and investor-friendly buybacks

Wow I never thought I'd see this on a blog of Andreessen Horowitz. I was starting to think that nobody cared about value creation anymore.
When Princess Anne was nearly kidnapped her bodyguards Walther PPK jammed at an unfortunate moment.

After that it was withdrawn from service, in the bond novels that followed they pulled it an replaced it with something else (FN1903 iirc).
Here's what they used to do at my school( state school, Lithuania,90s): the more gifted ones had a few options: they could skip a year(i.e. from 8th to 10th grade), not follow the curriculum the rest of the class did and simply do something more advanced during that time. I'm not gifted but was probably smart enough to find school easy,but couldn't be asked to do too much,so teachers usually used to leave me alone.
The “hush puppy” pistol had a lock to stop the slide moving at all.
This wonderful story of compassion and kindness stand in stark contrast to what happens in Hart Island.
Congratulations! Keep it up!
Cannabis Detox – Programming Podcast – Programming Languages
You make it sound simple, and simple is certainly compelling. It is however just a theory, and as it happens it's the same theory (to the extent that logic and theories has anything to do with such) that has lead to 2 devastating world wars. It's time to reconsider, and try a different theory, before the 3rd one wreaks havoc on us all. I have great faith in the prospect of brilliant minds finding solutions in the face of adversities like this race towards mutual destruction.

Unfortunately, many if not all of our brilliant minds are either tied up in how to convince people to buy stuff, or how to enable first-strike capability (enabling 'winning' in your theory). It doesn't bode well.
> That's precisely the narcissist and egotistical attitude that's being criticised.

> They feel that as the disease does not affect them personally then they should just not be inconvenienced in any way. But that misses the whole point, doesn't it? The point is not about you. The point is that your wreckless behavior puts everyone around you at risk, including those who covid19 threatens their lives.

Wow.

Everyone is on the verge of getting the sack right now. That means families and children going hungry. If it's a choice between certain misery or uncertain life, I would choose the latter every time. Now I do realise that decision wouldn't affect me because I'm young, which is why I'm self isolating like everybody else. But do realise that is a privilege and not something everybody can do.

Please stop pretending like these people are egotistical and narcissistic when they simply don't have any other choice.
How does the coronavirus kill?
Mistakes I made with my first Podcast
I have never heard anyone claiming that deaths from covid-19 are over-counted.

It is clear that, if anything, they are indeed under-counted.

Edit: this is getting ridiculous being downvoted for reasonable comments. Is this HN?
No serious source claims that deaths are over-counted. Ignore fake news from conspirationists. The US seem to be sinking if that what is happening on your side of the pond.
> This appears to be some kind of speed chess, not chess.

Where do you see the word standard?
It's not that it's evil to make money. It's that the most effective ways to make lots of money tend to be unethical, so a company whose sole mandate is to make as much money as possible will tend towards evil acts.
> “It very suddenly reverses the gains of underprivileged groups, kills and creates drug addicts, beats and terrorizes women and children in violent now-jobless households, and more. It bleeds deep anguish and suicide.”

This sounds the ravings of someone who acted like they saw the hidden gears moving the economy. Now they’re frighteningly uncertain, and want to exert their influence to regain their sense of comfortable uncertainty. And in the trade-offs, he's revealing his biases, which is careful to limit to good luck:

> "Vaccines are not coming anytime soon, so natural immunity is the only way out for now."

But we've heard enough from other people stupid enough to say it out loud--we're going to lose some % people, but the damage to the economy will be worse--to know what he's alluding to.

Frighteningly uncertain, because if the absolute worst thing happens and everything goes MadMax, it's the wealthiest who will have targets on their backs--October Revolution.

See. I can sound like an A$$, too.
You haven't counted length of stay before death or transfer to a different ward (covid-19 patients stay in ICU longer before they die or recover), nor iatrogenic harm caused by non-intensivist doctors and nurses suddenly being pulled into ICU work.
My personal path tracer (wip)
>Point being, why not write simpler laws and regulations and leave it to the courts to interpret what adheres to the spirit of it?

This will _never_ happen. The vast majority of people are too intellectually challenged to see the benefit of simplicity. The earlier someone understand this fundamental fact about the vast majority of people, the earlier they can probably channelize efforts in the right direction ( what ever that might be), rather than hopelessly toil to make laws simpler. Democracy=tyranny of the masses.
What about the company that would need to labour for 5 years before they get the MVP out the door?

Magic Leap.
That sounds like exactly the type of escapism that I need right now. Are the novels meant to be read in order? If not, do you have one or two that would be good to start with?
Thanks, I wasn't aware of this and it seems very useful!
Good to know a tighter bound than Chabyshev's inequality (assuming unimodality).
The meeting circle mentioned in the article: https://goo.gl/maps/UPbD5geT63HdBV7m6

Institutions that manage to persist for that long are fascinating.
FWIW this is why I've adopted Curling after playing hockey for a decade. It is an incredibly skillful and physical game and yet you see 80 year olds at the rink playing it. You can get good at it and be good for a long long time. You don't get too old.
The blog design is painful to read!
Ending Change to Start Transition
If you like simpler languages, you'll probably hate Scala. It's one of the most complex out there.
Ask HN: How to get back to web programming after a 8-years break?
I was a full-stack dev in a Californian startup in 2012. I knew ES6 and CSS's specs by heart. Except for the "ensure IE6 compatibility", life was simple and vanillaJS was still a thing. AngularJS was the default choice, and Laravel was the cool framework to do backend stuff.

I became CEO of a SaaS startup and stopped programming for the past 8 years. I now want to get back to developing my own projects on the side, but the world has become way more complicated.

My goal is to develop simple SaaS products, mainly for my own needs. Think of vertical todo-lists, connect a few APIs, etc. Mobile accessibility (PWA or native) and having a nice design are a must for my future projects. Back in the time, my strengths were in JS, PHP and Python.

I've tested no-code platforms (Bubble.io, Glide, etc.) but I was quickly limited by the lack of flexibility. Is the world in 2020 easier to integrate designs? Do we really have to learn npm/jenkins/docker/etc. for small projects?

Any advice on where to start? :)
Why do we learn so slowly in software development? One possible factor
I'm not sure if you lack comprehension, or if you are just really paranoid and can only see things in absolutes, or if I'm writing poorly. But yet again you've taken what I've written and somehow twisted it into something ridiculous.

> It might surprise you to learn that some people in the military, congress, the DoD, and even important individuals in significant companies play video games.

Anyone in this scenario who is using the same computer to run any untrusted software (like all games) as they are using for their national security work is already compromising themselves.

> "Some vulnerabilities exist, therefore any new vulnerabilities should be ignored or not discussed."

This would be a more productive conversation if you addressed my points at face value, and made your own without twisting my words into whatever convenient position you want to argue against. That's the part I find tedious.

Everything is degrees.. you seem to only be willing to consider extremes.

Of course if you work in a sensitive position or are a likely target of foreign spying, you should take many more precautions. But that's not most people, in fact that's almost no one, statistically speaking. So if we're going to discuss likely compromise scenarios, the risk-reward on using a high-profile video game company as a vehicle for APT state-level actions starts to fall into "movie plot" territory, in my opinion.

And I never said that new vulnerabilities should be ignored or not discussed . Again, possible <> plausible.

In fact, you are basically contradicting yourself at this point because I first brought up way more plausible vulnerability scenarios (your underlying operating system being compromised) and you dismissed that in favour of some narrow and much more implausible scenario (a US-based video game company as a deep-state plant for a foreign government).

Keep moving those goal posts..
Scalas echosystem is overloaded with overly complex libraries that take months to learn. Li Haoyi has been trying to change that for years with his to the point open source projects. In my opinion, now is a pretty good time to get into scala with projects from Haoyi, ZIO, quill, akka, and many others that are built on strength of scala itself matured way pass being carbon copies of java or Haskell's equivalents.
I am not sure I understood your post. Are you saying that other western nations do not expect a long lockdown to cause an economic collapse? Or that everyone agrees that an economic collapse is preferable to covid19 deaths?
> US foreign policy is almost inexplicable when it comes to war. The death, destruction and raising a generation Middle Easterners with excellent motivation to hate America seems like a foolish long term strategy. It also doesn't look profitable.

Not for the U.S., not for its citizens, but for a certain set of people the constant war is very profitable. And I think you'll find that those that profit from war have considerable influence over the foreign policy that keeps us in constant war.
Is it really scapegoating though? Tech companies have radically restructured how business is done globally, ensuring that first and foremost, they profit at every step along the way. Other concerns, important concerns to society, have taken a back seat.

I mean, these are the two companies nearly every other company on the planet is in business with, and the negotiating terms are pretty one-sided.

I am not sure any other industry in human history has ever held so much power, and it's largely wielded by incompetent kids with little understanding of how what they do translates to the global stage.
Books are like programing langues, they are "pragmatic" if you agree with the choices of the author and "opinionated" if you disagree.

There is an interesting old thread about recomendations (not books) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21053211 (90 points, 6 months ago, 110 comments). Including my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21053962

I'd add that there is a high chance of spontaneous abortion during the first weeks of pregnancy. Wait until the 8 weeks ecography to tell everyone (or better, wait until the 12 week ecography). I don't have the numbers but it's something like 25% but it is never discused, so it can be a sad surprise.

I agree with the comment of DanBC, breast feeding is best but some people overestimate it and increase the pressure innecesarily (assuming you have easy access to clean water).
You completely miss the point. Of course it will roll out giving users the control to opt out.

The problem arises because once it is widespread flipping it to mandatory for all phones is trivial. Check YES to agree to our new Privacy Policy ;)
And then the fisherman dies from blood infection at 42, leaving his kids working at the age of 10. The kids like reading about sciences but can’t find time to do so. This story repeats for centuries.
If I remember correctly, Deming was a key inspiration for Charles Koch's (of Koch industry fame/notoriety) managerial strategy.

See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Success
The best thing you can do is your own research. Come to your own conclusion. Do not let someone dictate the narrative.

To be clear, nothing is what it seems on the surface. For example, the FBI promoted and pushed a narrative on 8chan [1] and either directly participated or incited great violence. However, instead of sanctioning itself, it claimed the site was full of terrorists and produced only the FBI’s own posts as evidence. It even then sent a memo stating users of 8chan, Voat, etc. we’re terrorists. Anyone who states truth appears to be deplatformed [2].

That said, the world is absolutely as gross as these new “reports” are indicating.

[1] https://ceinquiry.wordpress.com/2019/06/17/fbi-8chan/

[2] https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/break-up-th...
underrated (timeless) documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
> are there suppressors for revolvers?

There is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OTs-38_Stechkin_silent_revolve...
> resistance to the smartphone (or even the computer) become required to live as anything but a homeless vagrant

Yeah. Because they can run out of power, they are easily damaged, and, generally, bug and exploit ridden.

A bank card is near indestructible.
I have no insider information here.

But if we're talking about plausibility, then it's much more likely that your underlying operating system, regardless of vendor - Microsoft and Apple are the major players - has been compromised in some manner, or contains the hooks for on-demand compromise if compelled by a state actor.