skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How much have you read on the exploitative history of company towns[0]? There are some really good reasons why people are skeptical of a private company coming in and trying to reshape the foundation of a community, particularly when that company happens to be Google.

Sure, there's something idyllic about the vision of a community driven by technology as a first-class citizen, but let's be real here: Google doesn't exist to make the world a better place, it exists to make money. Full stop. Some of what Google does may happen to improve quality of life for some, but they're also happy to do things like permanently lock people out of their accounts for TOS violations with no recourse, causing major disruptions some of for their users.

And then when they've decided that a project is no longer worth pursuing, they just kill it. How would you resolve the scenario where Google builds this smart city and then decides to bail on it? What happens to the people living there? Does the city of Toronto pick up the tab to keep it going? Google's mentality is fundamentally inconsistent with projects that require long-term stability, because not everything makes the kind of money that search ads do.

You really want that company dictating how the community should operate? I'll pass.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town#History

edit: a word
I'm not an expert in trading, but I thought that you could only invest in the indexed/mutual funds available in your country?

I'm not sure your average Indian can, say, start putting money in any Vanguard fund available to Americans.
This appears to be the github account: https://github.com/NHSX
>I went in a Neiman Marcus [. . .] I was asking people who their target consumer is [. . .]

This strikes me as hilarious for some reason. I'm not trying to be difficult, but did you honestly think anyone working on the salesfloor of the store to know what their target consumer was? That is a corporate strategy. In the store, their target is whoever comes in the door. They don't set style, they don't buy trends or fashions, they just put it on a shelf.
Nope, also slower for me.
Clang has it although I've personally never tried it due to the horrible rigamarole of setting it up.

In GCC it's a compiler flag. In LLVM it's a convoluted process automated by either an irritating perl/python script (The python one isn't included by default for some reason despite being far more common these days) or AN ENTIRE WEB SERVER TO OUTPUT TEXT (Which thankfully isn't included by default).

I'm sure you could set it up in make but since my projects aren't large scale enough to really need it I can't be bothered, even if it's one of those things you'll probably only need to write once and can just copy and paste ad-infinitum.
Elon Musk appears on Joe Rogan Podcast (Video)
There is much, much more recent reporting on this matter. Blood and blood plasma make up something between 1.5% and 2.5% of the United States' exports. Which is weird.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/582509923?storyId=582509923?...

https://www.newsweek.com/two-percent-us-export-income-blood-...
At this point I've blocked ads so for so long that I don't think I could ever go back to not hating ads, targeted or otherwise…
You can pull the rubber TrackPoint cover off and disable the sensor in the BIOS, but the trackpads on these laptops aren't always great (at least if you're used to MacBooks). I've learned to like it, but I can see how it might be a dealbreaker for some people.
Well that's it for Keybase. I can't continue to recommend them. I was able to look past the cryptocoin distribution to be honest, but teaming up with Zoom seems like the kiss of death for any security focus.
With other human coronaviruses, it is speculated that we defeat them so easily that we don't develop long-term antibodies, explaining why we get colds with very mild symptoms so often.
Even building a bus or a bike lane is highly controversial in the U.S.
"China" isn't a race, it's a multi-ethnic state with laws that heavily restrict communication. It's relevant to bring up in a thread about building encrypted communication technology.
> /better/

5G is better. When the vision is finally realized. In the meantime you get a brand new washing machine that costs double, only works when you're next to it, and the spin cycle must be done in the old one. And by the time it's actually better you have to buy a new one anyway.

5G was rushed in a way 3/4G weren't because smartphone sales are slowing down. This is not the usual "there are some hiccups at the beginning" type of thing. As it is today it's rushed and half-baked.
Have you ever tried to convince a politician to do something?

It's disappointing. It is easier to get a contract and just do it you way.
I have not encountered any of that. And ditto on still preferring it.
Sorry, but this post gets a lot of things very wrong.

A sequencer is definitely not used for anything similar to "automating tape loops". For Kraftwerk they were used mainly in the studio to created drum sequences and melodies that were much more precise than those played by the band. The whole point of the sequencer was to replace Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flür, and maybe some bass lines or melodies played by Ralf with a robotic sound.

Programming a sequence in an analog sequencer like a Synthanorma is way harder than changing a tape. Have you ever programmed one? Back then you didn't have presets or pitch quantization, so for melodies for example you'd have to tune each step by ear. Drum loops were easier but not as easy as changing a tape.

Using them on the road was much harder than using tapes. In fact, even several years later, bands like Depeche Mode were still taking tapes to the road because sequencers were still clunky and difficult to program live. It was only after the advent of preset programming this started to change.

Before Autobahn, Kraftwerk indeed experimented with tape loops, but for very different kinds of sounds, more of the Stockhausen variety.

The things that led to this experiment with synthesizers and sequencers were the primitive rhythm machines of the time (they were already going in this direction with songs like Tanzmusik, but they wanted with custom drum sounds and custom drum rhythms, not the Samba and Cha-Cha-Cha of the Maestro) and their use of echo in "Ralf und Florian", where the echo was used to get a perfect repetition of something played (not a loop though, since it's not something that is "left alone" like a sequencer or a tape).

And by "two step sequencers" the parent poster clearly means "two units".

Also, it's called Synthanorma, not Synthorama.
Here's the IT Crowd office:

https://www.channel4.com/microsites/I/it-crowd/wallpapers/48...

https://www.channel4.com/microsites/I/it-crowd/wallpapers/20...
I think the article lacks nuance. Of course, asking devs to guess at how long something will take at the very beginning of a project is not going to be very accurate. That doesn't mean that sticking to a schedule has no value.

Basically, the project plan has to allow for some scope cutting along the way. There will always be a few false assumptions that are discovered only after the project is well underway, and the only way to manage that is minimize the surface area of any given dependency.

The responsibility of delivering a project on time belongs to the manager (which for the purposes of this comment can belong to an IC if she or he decides to think like a manager). For every milestone on the schedule, the manager should know all the risks for reaching the milestone and should have a plan for handling each eventuality.

This type of planning goes hand in hand with protecting the team from distractions, preventing scope creep at all costs, and setting the goals of the project before it has even started.

Software created with time constraints is higher quality and is more fun to make.
X1 hands down. I sold my XPS13 and never looked back.
Hawaiian Airlines offered free Mai Tais when getting close to HNL, for a long time. They used to have metal forks too. And they had great food too, included! I didn’t mind paying a premium to fly Hawaiian. Then they implemented cost cutting measures. Now I just fly whoever is cheapest.
I mean, do you really think "Gun" or "dolt" are on the same par as Dumbass?

I mean is dumbass will likely be filtered by 90% of content filters, the other two would not.
Decision Diagrams for Optimization
My understanding is that 5G is specifically designed to improve that situation, at the expense of things like range and building penetration.
Please, please, use https://keys.openpgp.org/ instead!

See https://keys.openpgp.org/about for why.
iPhone Costs Too Much
So? We're going to hold people accountable only if they're replaceable? No. Hold everybody accountable, or nobody. "Everybody" is the better option.
I'll add another perspective to this, beyond the privacy/data ownership debate.

The global building stock currently supplies roughly 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions; and we are in the midst of the largest growth of urbanism in human history concentrated in neighborhoods least equipped to deal with it. I've worked in the architecture/urban design sector for 6+ years (half as an architect, half as a researcher), and one of the most critical problems we have to address is the way we are attempting to optimize the building energy/embodied carbon use of buildings. It's a messy multivariable optimization problem, tied to time-consuming, complex simulation engines, that the industry is forced to try and solve as single-variable optimization with various hacks and rule of thumbs.

I am very biased on this topic since I work in this area, but I feel this is fundamentally a ML/AI problem and I had/have some hope that Sidewalk labs could add the resources and brainpower to move the needle further, faster with the existing SOTA. Personally, I felt this provided the project with a very straightforward, explicit ethical utility, so as a Torontonian I've never been against it. I also was excited about the prospect of building up a community of building science-focused ML/AI researchers tackling a currently underserved existential threat. I know this isn't the end of Sidewalk Labs, but I feel like this is a huge loss for us.
>Or that Redux _was_ a reasonable choice at the time,

Was it tho? The entire point of the post you linked is really about how "you might not need Redux" and for those who do, hooks can't replace it. If hooks can replace your usage of Redux than you never really needed Redux in the first place.
I'm not in agreement - not fully at least. The Nokia was maybe preferable to the older Tandberg 2115 terminals, but the later Tandberg models were better in every respect (the last one I used was the 2400. Excellent. black-on-white, multiple serial inputs so that you could use one terminal with multiple computers, etc.)

The Tandberg keyboard was, on every model, vastly better than anything else out there, including the Nokia. I should mention that A) I have one Nokia 301 S terminal at home, and B) I still have ND/Tandberg keyboards with PS/2 interfaces, I use it today on my Linux box and it's still better than anything, for a touch typist like me.

One thing the Nokia terminal has is that it can switch to VT220 mode too. It's got several identities built in, including that one.

(I've got an ND-110 mini as well, that's what I need the Nokia for - the console port is current loop only. Which the Nokia terminal supports.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22995792
AS number or it didn't happen
> For one, these condos being built can essentially not be rented,

Non-occupancy tax. Vancouver has one.[1]

1. https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-t...
The article actually calls out that this wasn't the case for the ISP at least:

> As Ars Technica's interview with BowieNet co-founder Ron Roy confirms, Bowie didn't just lend the enterprise his brand but was "tremendously involved from day one." As Roy tells it, Bowie kept BowieNet fresh "by exploring new technologies to keep fans engaged and excited. He always preached [that] it's about the experience, the new."
yeah, we got lucky with our leadership and with our island status.

", where there were hundreds of thousands of infections"

well, EVENTUALLY, there were hundreds of thousands of infections. at one point there were, famously, 15...

"Were you thinking that the U.S. would be able to maintain a lockdown until eradication, perhaps with contact tracing? Is there evidence that such a plan could work?"

No, I dont think that would be a long term solution for the US, I dont have any source for my beliefs, but I suspect with the size of the US, the nature of its people and the incredibly porous border it has that a lockdown until eradication would be doomed to failure.

" I feel very strongly about individualism and anti-authority, while others may be more communitarian and authoritarian"

yess....the world does need both. Im not sure where that comes into the decision to lockdown or not, and for how long. I feel like there needs to be a more sciency approach taken there rather than some vague handwavy stuff about personalities.

"Why should the many young and healthy who face a negligible risk to continue in what is sometimes very difficult circumstances?"

I dont know. I dont have much use for the word 'should'.

I think that two things are true, first the young and healthy are at risk from this disease themselves - the stats prove that, and second its almost certainly true that the young and healthy have loved ones who are young and unhealthy, or old and healthy, or old and unhealthy, and....maybe....the young and healthy dont want to catch covid and then infect the people they love.

All I was saying with my comment above, is I dont understand the rush to sacrifice those people who are vulnerable to this disease.

Even here in NZ where we have been very lucky so far it is obvious that eventually we will have to reopen the borders and let the rest of the world in, and at that point infections will start again, but by then we have the best possible chance of understanding how to treat the disease most effectively.

I dont believe "lockdown for eradication" in the US is a viable choice, but I do think "lockdown to slowdown" is a sensible option for a while yet, to give every one of your citizens the best possible chance of survival.

The economy will recover, it always does. It reflects the nature of people, and for that reason is endlessly resilient.
It's not just blood. If you donate your organs, those are also sold. And the cost of the donated blood or organ is passed on to the recipient (or their insurance at least), probably with additional markup.
WASM isn't just for the web, though. It's beginning to look a lot like the next "portable ISA" (successor to Pascal's pcode, applet-era JVM bytecode, Google's PNaCl, etc.)

Add a progressive web-app to your mobile's home screen—get a cached WASM bundle, for near-native performance of the resulting "app." Download an Electron app—get a WASM bundle wrapped in a projector.

Even then, there are still browser use-cases where "full fat" apps are no problem. The "apps" in the Chrome Web Store—Adobe has a version of Photoshop in there, I think—make a lot of sense to be WASM. You'll launch them once and keep them open for hours.
Ask HN: Are Product Owners Necessary?
That’s a super simplistic perspective.

Property developers are probably going to preferentially build high-margin housing, right?

And they’re going to preferentially build those at a rate that doesn’t meet demand, in order to keep prices high.

So what’s missing?
Harry Potter and the Deep Learning Experiment
You list a bunch of terms, but pretty much all of those things have a different side to the story.

I'll start with one thing, because addressing them all takes too long.

You think the Hong Kong rioters are fighting for freedom? Take a look at how they attack innocent women and elderly that simply disagree with them:

https://twitter.com/Mondayfreemary/status/125844037836732416...

Western media romanticizes the whole thing by not reporting anything about the dark side of the movement, and by cutting footage to make the rioters look like heroes: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/125835760285075456...

Here's the real story, I've written a summary just earlier today: https://twitter.com/honglilai/status/1258294860618108928

This isn't just about one or two people who are criminals. The rioting, the violence, the hate for mainlanders (hate for PEOPLE, not just CCP) has completely taken over the movement. Heck, I don't even dare going to Hong Kong anymore -- as someone with a mainland background, I fear for my life.

Furthermore, 'Liking China but opposing CCP' is, in actuality, a statement that doesn't make much sense once you understand how the CCP - Chinese people relationship actually works: https://twitter.com/Bkerrychina/status/1253635970236375040

The CCP enjoys a pretty high level of support in China. Real support. Even many people who use VPN to use Twitter say they support the CCP. This support has grown tremendously in the past decade, in no small part thanks to all the demonization bullshit that western media tries to pull on China. Many Chinese read western media, think 'wtf is this overblown nonsense?', and end up supporting CCP more, even if they were previously neutral or slightly anti.

My point: by listing all those terms, you are painting a one-dimensional, stereotypical, overblown and distorted view of China. If you really want to help Chinese people, you gotta first understand where they come from. This begins with gaining an accurate image of what China is, not the media stereotype.
Food stamps allow wealthy people to hire help for less than it costs to feed their children.

Before anyone jumps on me, I'm not saying letting their children starve is a valid solution.

But anti-poverty programs unquestionably allow illegal immigrants to work for wages less than it would take to support their families lifestyle, which encourages them to come to the US.

Upper middle class and wealthy people benefit from that.

The other issue with food stamps is that it's pretty common for poor people with drug problems to turn them into cash by buying steaks / meat and selling to restaurants.

So the hallmarks of the wealthy Cali lifestyle end up indirectly subsidized by food stamps.
Ask HN: Do we need this many[700] Programming languages?
Unfortunately, a lot of people in tech ascribe to a kind of utopian imperialism. It doesn’t matter what people themselves want, it’s about what engineered fantasies can be imposed upon them.
> got shut down by the locals

That's not what happened though. Google was free to continue the project but decided not too, using Covid-19 as a fig leaf.

I agree with the thrust of your comment (we need more experimentation with cities, not less) but this is Google doing what Google does: changing it's mind and abandoning projects.
CSS min() and max() functions are counterintuitive
Sure you can. Prices fluctuate all the time.

Your customers don't like being swindled. And oftentimes, when a price jumps, they feel swindled. I think the consumer's swindle perception factor is more dependent on the second derivative of the price history than the first.
How would you actually use these, save getting a green screen fitted?
There is the innate immune system, the body's first line of defense, which is 'always on', and does not use antibodies.

It is the adaptive immune system that produces antibodies for a specific antigen - I guess for very mild infections the innate immune response is sufficient, and the adaptive never gets triggered.
Contrast with Patrick Collison's essay on the value of speed.

https://patrickcollison.com/fast
Past elections have told us exit polling is a load of horseshit. These are useless metrics.
Context: I worked for 16 years for a company that did, among other things, debt collection. It was a small but profitable part of their business. We’re talking relatively low dollar bills - cell phone, cable, power, etc - rather than student loans, medical, or credit card.

There are different levels of debt collection. The first level is generally done by the guarantor. Someone falls behind on a bill, service is shut off, and the company tries to get the consumer to pay the bill. The next level is when a company sends the bill to an outside collection agency to attempt to collect on it. The collection agency will get some commission on that if they manage to collect. The debt is maybe 6-12 months old at this time. If the first agency fails, sometimes it will get sent to a second or third agency to see if they have more luck. At some point in time the company will decide that the debt is unlikely to be collected and they will write it off. It’s at this point that debt may get sold. The debt is likely years old at this point. The company that buys it will buy for pennies on the dollar (it’s like any market, sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less). They are then the owner of the debt and any money they collect they get to keep. They’re able to settle for much lower amounts. If you have a $1000 debt that was bought for $50, you can settle for $250 and still make a profit. The consumer is able to clear the debt from their credit report for a fraction of what they owed (though it still shows they paid it to a collection agency and that still hurts their credit, but not as much as an unpaid debt).

Long answer to your question, but yes there can be good money in it, and there is probably an opportunity here to do some good.
Professor Says We've Been Looking at the Coronavirus Data Wrong
Haha I will try to find a copy. Anecdotally, the goods I saw were far from conspicuous. They all looked straight out of some music videos (heard of the "Ugly" shoes?).
My head says people should pay for things, my heart says soldiers ought to get free coffee and doughnuts.
Ask HN: Where do you buy and sell side projects?
Some of it (and Class) is just plain good advice. Prefer nice clothes/things, but use the hell out of them and don’t be afraid to repair them. Don’t comment on how nice something someone bought is (this middle-class habit seems really weird after having it pointed out). Avoid “collectibles” and for god’s sake don’t think of them as an investment. That sort of thing.
Facebook will allow most employees to work from home through end of 2020
SpaceX Plans Sunshades to Save Night Skies from Starlink Satellites
There’s a difference between being nit picky and blacklisting a company for being openly hostile to their customers. Will I ever create a new Facebook account? No. Will I ever open a Wells Fargo account after their habit of making faking ones? Nope.

Writing off a company for adding root kits to their machines out of the box seems to be perfectly reasonable.
I like the jumphost model we’re using in our current AWS accounts: dynamically-generated ecs instances that automatically shut down after a certain period of time.
The point that ML requires lots of compute on few bytes makes senses as ML performs mostly repetitive matrix operations, but doesn't a series of SQL queries on database data with a "star schema" also require lots of compute on the same bytes?
Because they won’t default now.