skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We live in the most interesting 200 year period of Earth so far in its 4.5B year history

Even granting you the anthropocentric premise, the idea that the last 200 years are more interesting than any other similar period is not at all obvious.
I did not mention the configs, because those are plain text and do not really add dependencies I don’t already have.

Are you saying that Java projects tend to have more sane defaults and come bundled with more out of the box?

The last Java project I had to deploy was ElasticSearch/Kibana, and there was a LOT of configuration needed that required consulting a lot of disparate documentation.
OT, but if you are looking/curious about programming environments for her, please check out BlockStudio [0]. It's a text-free visual programming language for children (ages 8-13).

[0] www.blockstud.io
The article also says engineering is moving overseas. The Uber Engineering era is over. Cutting deep vs pay cuts is moot, any talented engineer will be headed to greener pastures.

“Uber by McKinsey” [1]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/how-mckins...
I think they generate cash flows. It's just that they're not as profitable as the others you mentioned. They've got be badly affected by the pandemic and the fallout. It's going to be a long way back...
Not if they fear something might leak first.
It will succeed if it handily wins side by side benchmarks, its that simple.
Is it similar to OWASP WebGoat?

https://owasp.org/www-project-webgoat/
It was reversible enough to write the Apache POI library. I maintain code that uses the HSSF streaming API portion of the library, which mainly gives you low-level access to the structures in XLS files. The OO.org folks made some very nice documentation: http://www.openoffice.org/sc/excelfileformat.pdf
What about games? People pay tons of money for them, and they are content too. When Cyberpunk 2077 comes out later this year, try telling people it's worth $0. I think the difference is social norms. The internet having no real built-in payment mechanism has obliterated the norm of paying for most content. Games have held the line, but things like Google Stadia and Apple Arcade are working to change that.
> This is quite a common claim from the Left in the US.

What about the source? Are you able to find anything that corroborates your extraordinary claim? Because I asked for a source, and you just reiterated your baseless assertion.
A KDF is not a hash function, and I said "significantly" for a reason.

If adding a megabyte of input causes the original megabyte to get hashed or otherwise processed once, then you pass the test.

If adding a megabyte of input causes the original megabyte to get fed into your algorithm 100000 times, then you fail the test.
They were using a VPN that was exiting in New York City and had never exited from Romania.
Btw, what I don't get about black holes: why is everyone so fixed on the event horizon and calls everything below 'a singularity'?

From our point of view, of course, we don't have much use for it. But inside it might be rather interesting. For one thing, everything under the event horizon is unlikely to be homogenous. Captured matter is likely to form a much less object in the center of the hole, with a much smaller radius. Between EH and this 'core' many things can happen. For example, if matter forms N accretion disk spinning around the hole and just above the EH, why should it stop doing the same thing after it goes below? Only because we no longer can see it doesn't mean it stops existing and loses all energy and angular momentum. Or it does?
Maybe the commenter above is thinking of a different point, or coming at it from an oddly phrased perspective.

The Democratic party relies on a certain segment of immigrant or immigrant-related citizens to vote in support of them. And if licensing / IDs are perceived to target and identify who is not a citizen (your relatives, friends), then they could lose support. I suppose it could be seen as a kind of "discrimination". And if some social services, policing, etc were to be able to use such ID, then illegal aliens would certainly be more at risk of being discovered or face more stringent (less porous) treatment in the law enforcement system.

I personally think this is a ridiculous situation from every angle, and unfortunately it's all tied up in our immigration and economic policies, so it's hard to disentangle or fix.
> The immediate problem isn't government abuse per se

The Snowden leaks proved that this isn’t true. The NSA dragnet surveillance program originated from the highest levels of our military intelligence apparatus, not private companies. Sure, companies were complicit, but it’s important to remember that those orders originated from the Government, not business.
"Delicately."
Spotify is 273MB (on Linux at least), 70MB for the binary and 137MB for Chrome, plus some other bits and bobs.

$ pacman -Qi spotify
Name : spotify
Version : 1:1.1.10.546-4
Description : A proprietary music streaming service
Architecture : x86_64
...
Installed Size : 272.79 MiB

So at least it's smaller than Slack.
Nassim Taleb: A Definition of Antifragile and Its Implications
I don't see what would change under a national ID. Here in Canada the provincial government is still the controller and printer for your national passport; and everything below passports (e.g. birth certificates, driver's licenses, etc.) is handled entirely at the province level, where it can be delegated to private/crown corporations (e.g. here in BC, ICBC—a province-majority-owned insurance company—handles issuing both driver's licenses and "BCID" cards.)

These provincial documents have unique identifiers on them, but those identifiers are only required to be provincially unique, not nationally unique. But that number is still registered in a national database; they just have use a compound key consisting of the province-of-record plus the number as the primary key.

In other words, it works exactly like state license-plate registration works in the US. The state makes/issues the plates, with identifiers from its own numerical namespace; and then there's a national registry with the key (state, plate number). Nothing breaks. Works just fine.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-sing...
How can they not? Its supply and demand, Facebook and Google are setting the price of supply for top engineers. If Uber and Lyft want those types of engineers then they have to pay what the market demands. The assumption being that five 100k engineers won't be able to solve complex problems as well as one 500k engineer.
Interesting scaling problem: A kid should probably start out making a 6 inch mirror which only weighs maybe a pound. But mass goes up by a factor of a cube with diameter... the linked article 15 inch mirror blank is likely 75 to 100 pounds? You can buy special thinner blanks but it gets to the point where in a wet slippy fingers situation it doesn't matter all that much if 60 pounds or 80 pounds lands on your toe when you drop it.

Something the other responder didn't mention about wet grinding is after you finish with a coarser grit, perhaps 200 grit, you have to clean the mirror and the local environment VERY completely or else when you switch to finer 400 grit even one tiny grain of 200 grit will ruin and scratch up the attempt at a 400 grit polish. So its kind of self-fixing in that if you're not screwing up, there will never be aerosolized grit because your working area will be very clean indeed. Its a very clean hobby, compared to most.
Here's the tweet by the article author discussing the timing of the layoffs: https://twitter.com/amir/status/1262019344692723713?s=21
Ask HN: Entry Points for AR/VR?
I’m an experienced web designer and developer with degree in Computer Science and design works featured in galleries.

I found the web / apps scene quite boring and looking for a change. Any ideas where one can enter the VR/AR scene?

Does the programming and UI/UX skills really matter here or a different mindset is needed?

Most of all, is there a Hacker News like community for AR/VR?

Thanks a lot!
I had a hell of a time when I chose that in PA and the pharmacy didn't have the medication in stock.

It was 2 months before I was able to finally get it, because I made the mistake of trying to change my pharmacy to one that had it in stock.
I have implemented FIX for a living for a few years. It’s fragmented beyond belief. You can have different standards for different parts of the same brokerage. You have to do separate conformance tests for different asset classes at the same (big, well known, reputable) broker. The proprietary APIs like Bloomberg’s provide additional value rather than being alternatives to FIX. Make no mistake: you cannot interchange a FIX endpoint for another without making changes. The core problem is that you can impose arbitrary semantics on top of FIX messages. For example, a broker might require you to send timestamps in UTC for equities, and local time for FX, on the same FIX connection. Another might have a limit on the number of characters you can put in a ClOrdId - so GUIDs as ClOrdIds go out the window. Another big screw up is extensive use of non-ISO currency codes and the ambiguity of major and minor denomination. Is “GBp” pence? Sometimes yes! Sometimes not. Then - the most colossal screw up of them all - the reverse proxy people. They are companies that will convince management that they have a “network” and “access to liquidity”. It’s actually just a reverse proxy server that _manipulates messages in flight_! It sounds ideal, as if they will standardize your message flow so you don’t have to worry about broker specifics. In practice, it never works, and they opaquely mess with things you don’t want them to. Imagine sending an order denominated in cents, and the reverse proxy forwards it having changed the denomination to dollars. This really happened to me.

BTW, I love working on this stuff and swapping notes with other people. Drop me a line (email in profile) if you want to talk anything related to FIX!
It doesn't feel like that at all. More like we're on a sinking luxury cruise ship.
I hope those links didn't seem like criticism in any way! I just post them because readers like to look at past threads.
My recent links are shared here https://pegao.co/@zakokor
Eh. XUL isn't really a web technology the same way as Electron.
> ...with routine electronic authenticated messages from doctor to pharmacy.

These are professions that still use fax machines. The concept of sending scrips between random doctors and pharmacies over electronic means is too daunting (HIPPA, privacy lawsuits, child protection laws etc). They would rather stick them in envelopes. Giving it to the post office won't get them sued.
A coop operating alone in this space, or competing with other coops, would definitely make a profit. But a coop can't compete with a VC backed startup that will use every legal, illegal, ethical and unethical trick in the book it can get away with to, to destroy its competitors.
Thanks for the links! That rotary phone is pretty awesome.

I have poked around on those arduino shields links before - definitely the route I would go. I was more looking for ideas about how to tie it all together in a single (small) unit, and maybe that rotary phone posting will give me some ideas. So thanks again!
just being curious, What is the stack and does server works on xml/json apis?
Any other setup info of system will be appreciated.
Governments’ Response to the Economic Crisis Will Boost Bitcoin Price
Hmmmm, it's not blind nationalism but it looks like plain old racism.
If they imposed this in California you'd see mass exodus of Adderall addicted techies leaving.
This is amazing thanks!

I do loved smoked meats, but do you have any concerns around the health / carcinogen risks associated with eating too much?
If you enjoy this at all, you may want to subscribe. The channel is always like this. Fantastic stuff.
Reminds me of how the Graphing Calculator Story has been submitted around a similar number of times. I don’t mind it.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Feedly is an RSS reader. It’s not one or the other.
Inkos, OS for e-ink devices. No colors, low refresh-rate. Contributors needed
> Debian found itself in a position where the amount of work to sustain a non-systemd path in a systemd-dominated ecosystem would be too much work _for them_

Just as a side note for the interested, there is a project named Devuan that launched to keep alive a Debian sans systemd.

https://devuan.org/

(I've never run it myself; I just happen to know it exists.)
I recommend this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD4Ly-G0z5oD9zlmftgeK... — it may seem slow-going but stick with it. Ignore the Hindi-language parts if you don't understand them; they are an annoyance anyway. You can repeat along to what you hear, to reinforce the language in your head.

Otherwise if you prefer text there is http://learnsanskrit.org/ etc.
Why do you think the demand for programmers is going to decrease?
There are many sources, if you don't trust me you should search yourself.

Here's one, representative of the general attitude. Voter ID's are discriminatory or pushed with discriminatory intent: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/heres-what-you-need-to-kn_b_9...
Coming from a jewish background (Judaism also "bans interest/usury"), I advise you to take these rules with a grain of salt. In the case of Judaism, there were (sometimes still are) many tricks to the system, for example: you could lend with interest to non-jews, you could have and trade slaves, etc.

I'd assume Islam, being similar to Judaism, uses the same kind of tricks. For example, after a quick search, I found this:

"The common view of riba (usury) among classical jurists of Islamic law and economics during the Islamic
Golden Age was that it is only riba and therefore unlawful to apply interest to money exnatura sua—
exclusively gold and silver currencies—but that it is not riba and is therefore acceptable to apply interest to
fiat money—currencies made up of other materials such as paper or base metals—to an extent."

Source:
https://books.google.cl/books?id=1MKrCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA23&lpg=PA...
It is a general drug abuse screen, referred to as: PAIN MANAGEMENT PANEL 4 RFLX

It tests for dozens of drugs, including THC.

All patients prescribed a controlled substance have to take it.

Here is a link to a random lab describing it:
https://etd.paml.com/etd/display.php?id=8412
Another explanation for the Fermi paradox I had heard, which certainly is less rigorous than the linked article but easier to understand is:

The root of the paradox is that with so many planets in the universe (in the order of 10^24), there must be more life in the universe. But even with this unbelievably large number of potential planets, if creation of intelligent life on a planet requires only 24 independent parameters to be favourable, and each of them are favourable with a probability of 10%, then we should expect intelligent life in just one planet: ours.
Except the market is rather bad right now due to all the engineers looking for jobs and all the companies with hiring freezes.
I personally don't think there should be any government involvement with tracking individuals, I think it's too ripe for abuse. It makes me think of the Patriot Act where the government used a tragedy as a way to "temporarily" exapand its power, then keeps voting to not repeal it. I think it would be fine to ask people for the zip code they live in, that way if there was an outbreak in an area, the government could get an idea of where those residents were shopping. People could give false info, but I've seen enough people unquestioningly give up their phone number when asked, that I don't think it would be a big issue.
BitGreen: Pushing Crypto to a Green Future
Maybe what we need is an accessibility equivalent to the SSL Server Test. Input your domain and it gives you a letter grade on how accessible your site is. RSS access should be heavily weighted, of course.
Musings on a New Interface for Mathematics
As a pedantic note, Gruyere does not have holes.
Emmentaler is probably the one people are thinking of.
Clojure Observability and Debugging Tools
i imagine a lot of Uber people are reading this. what an awful way to for them to find out about impending layoffs... through a news scoop instead of their own boss.
I’ve learned a lot from blog posts and still follow a handful of outstanding blogs by experts in specific domains.

That said, I rarely read company blog posts any more as many companies seem to be phoning it in. Writing high quality blog posts likely to be useful to an audience is a lot of work.

I’d love to see the return of blogs as a priority not an after thought done mostly for SEO.
Whale fall described in chapter 81 of Moby Dick:

Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the surface. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and broken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all their bones heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason assert that this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him. But it is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm flush and May of life, with all their panting lard about them; even these brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.
You need to verify you identity at time of registration which includes photo Id and other documents to verify where you live. This is all governed at the federal level with the "Help America Vote Act". Why do I need to show an ID at the polls every time i vote? They have my signature on file and can check that but there isn't a problem with people voting with someone's registration.

Voter ID is all about voter suppression, in Texas you don't need an ID to vote if you over 65. Only in person voting in Texas requires ID but you can do mail-in if your over 65.
I am not in the valley, but I have seen postings dramatically increase for software engineers where I am (Canada). Businesses are desperate to move as much as possible to technology so they can continue operations.

The high salary bonanza may be over, but work still seems plentiful.

This kind of recession plays to our skills.
Hoare partitioning can also be implemented in a branchless manner, my algorithm pdqsort does this: https://github.com/orlp/pdqsort
I think it should be possible to buy or use software from third parties. One thing I'm disappointed about and think we need better tools to avoid is the fact that third parties provide their tools as services rather than libraries. There's reasons they do that, deploying a library that all your customers can easily use is hard right now, but there's no reason it has to be that way.

Some things can't easily be libraries like databases, but other things like some caches, miscellaneous operations like image resizing (depending on an architecture that can handle the load on those servers), and a bunch of other things could just be libraries.
Many of my favourite blogs mutated into (video) podcasts. Unfortunate because a 5 min read turned into a 50 min listen.
omg it happens elsewhere too? at prev_job we called it "Fire Fridays", wasnt sure how common it was
Honestly, sucks for a lot of people. But an organization might be better off if they cut the workforce if " effective work needed in the future" < "work that can be done by workforce".

Work tends to always fill the available work capacity. Creating fake work that holds up the whole organization. Wasting time and money. The first one is much more important than the second.

I wrote about Overhiring in a much too long article here https://medium.com/@franz.enzenhofer/overhiring-b966a6ff383d... (free to read medium link, must migrate away from them soon).
IMHO native applications represent a valuable class of niche software tools that deliver very highly specialised functionality in concert with desktop software. Add ons for MSProject and Excel abound and there really isn't an equivalent for online tools or indeed a viable or stable market.
In the blog post it says "Blogger was shut down by Google years ago" which is not true as far as I know. Google just did a big update to the Blogger interface, which is not something they do to (the many) platforms they abandon. I blog frequently about games and art and have a steady audience of between 3k and 4k readers monthly.
It may not, but the effective supply will increase due to remote work's acceptance
it very directly means --to a rough order of magnitude-- that you will need to wait 30 to 100 years to break even

Only if earnings stay flat. Which won't be true for many, many companies. For example Startbucks (which you mentioned upthread) is currently growing earnings at a rate of 15% a year or so.

The fact that you are ignoring earnings growth is at the heart of your mistakes in reasoning especially for technology companies, many of which have the ability to grow very fast.
Well, 120 years ago moon landing was from fantasy domain too :)
This strikes me a similar to a dynamic at the level of entire corporations and industries—commodification/modularization on one end, wholeness/integration on the other: https://stratechery.com/2015/netflix-and-the-conservation-of...
My understanding is that an NP is considered as autonomous as a physician. I know several of my friends who are PAs and they're lobbying to be treated the same as NPs, as they feel that some of their restrictions are unnecessary and bureaucratic, logistical issues only, rather than based on patient care.
This is good advice regardless of the time. But this post made me realize that for the past 10+11 years we've had nothing but boom times in the software dev world and a lot of developers have never experienced anything but good times. Even the Great Recession didn't hurt programmers that bad IMO.

The .com bust was really the last time there was a huge wave of layoffs in the software industry. I'm glad I was able to go through that early in my career to get perspective. And honestly, at the end of the day I think it was a good thing. It flushed out most the people who didn't give 2 shits about software but saw it as the place to get money. Perhaps another downturn like that is needed.
Of course!

I would rather reverse the question:
In which situations is it acceptable to use Electron, for example? Something like Balena Etcher makes sense, but Logic Audio not so much.

Don't let hype and popularity on HN (not to mention market share of JS as pertains to the amount of web front-end work vs desktop work) serve as a surrogate for noting actual performance given a specific application.

Wrap-a-browser approaches and bloaty non-native frameworks are good for configuration ware, and things that don't need to engage in high amounts of real time processing saturating the CPU and RAM.

Many applications continue to squeeze required performance out of each platform.
Cross platform approaches can serve just fine if there are zero-cost abstractions.

Audio/Video/3D/Image production software, for example.
CAD, not to mention developers tools and compilers, just for the tip of the iceberg.