skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Facebook doesn’t want Libra to be a Facebook project, because of the negative connotations associated with the Facebook brand.

So the main goal of the blockchain part is to have friends (the Libra association) between which the responsibility is shared. It dilutes concerns and deflects issues: the headlines won’t be “Facebook faces regulatory sanctions” but “The Libra association (Facebook, Uber, Spotify, …) faces regulatory sanctions”.

Or at least that was their hope initially. The press, or the regulator, may have pushed scrutiny on Mastercard had they stayed involved, but I doubt they will assume that Spotify is responsible if something wrong happens in the Libra association.

But fundamentally, the creation of consensus on transactional history merely elects a leader, and other companies’ servers only record the leader’s blockchain.

Additionally, the assets backing the payment system are the real meat behind enabling this technology. And unlike traditional banking, Facebook & cie maintain control over those assets regardless of which company handles the Libra account.

Banks can handle your payments because they have ownership of your deposits, but funds do leave the bank when performing a transfer (ACH, SWIFT, etc.) to another bank.

In Libra, the assets remain controlled by the Libra association even when making a transfer from one Libra app to another, eg. from Novi to Spotify.
>Hospitals are currently postponing even life-saving procedures if they think their patients can survive a bit longer without them, because they don't have enough intensive care capacity in case things go wrong. That won't get better just because of a policy decision to return society to BAU.

There is very little stress on the intensive care capacity in most locations. If you are shutting down hospitals that don't have covid-19 cases because you might need capacity at some unspecified time in the future, you are doing it wrong.
Atlas finds evidence of spectacular four-top quark production
Military connectors seem a stretch whereas Lemo F connectors would fit the... whatever because they come in a cornucopia of sizes, from 2 to 68 pins. 69 if you count the shield. Just chuck the male side in a rotary hammer enclosed in a stamped metal case and the user won't know the difference. They're even suitable for harsh environments.

https://www.lemo.com/en/products/harsh-environment-connector...
I love Derek's stuff...

From the sounds of it - there's a number of potential vaccines that can head to phase II trials?
Compromising remote systems puts researchers, their work, and patient rights at risk. Patents are published publicly and available free of charge, so I'm not sure how that would be a reasonable justification for compromising other's computers. "Research" per se isn't patentable anyway.
I think TypeScript is about as standard for Javascript as it's going to get, I feel. I can't imagine writing Javascript without it anymore. But then again it took TypeScript coming along that made writing JavaScript something tolerable outside of having to use it for work.

I don't think there's going to be any new typing system that's 5% better that everyone is going to shift to just because it's the new hotness anymore. Or at least I hope not. TypeScript is good enough, let's just stick with it for the foreseeable future if you want to write type-safe Javascript, please.

I'm still using Angular at work, and I rather like it. If I needed to make an SPA outside of work I'd probably use it over React at this point. But that's a web framework, and those seem to come and go with the wind.
One of my goals is to maintain that same authoring simplicity. All I need to do is create a new `.md` file in the right directory and a new blog post is created - just like you. I just don't want to fight an uphill battle every time I want to leave that lane.
Yeah, the current offerings just won't cut it for professional use though, which I suspect account for much of chainsaw emissions.
Sorry, but content protections including DRM are the "death and taxes" of the online world. You will have to deal with them one way or another, because without them, authors and creators -- especially small-time ones -- will not be able to make a living doing what they love and so they will stop producing output.

Learn to accept DRM, or go without. Anything else is snatching food from the mouths of the children of authors, artists, and musicians.
duplicate, the older submission has the correct title https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23309302
Yeah that book is pretty amazing. I don't see how he got it cleared for publication, but he did.
The pharma example,is interesting because the FDA requires that the dosing information printed on packaging for over the counter medicine be written for a fifth grade reading level.

It’s not just the level of education but the clarity of instructions when the reader has a migraine or is worrying about their child.

This technique can be used as an antipattern: make the visitor’s own “happy path” satisfy their reason for visiting g (say, purchase); stuff all your extra fees into places they’ll skip over. The classic “fine print” technique.
This is a gross misunderstanding of what patent and copyright actually mean - specifically, they exist to encourage sharing of information, not secrecy. They require full disclosure by definition, so you can't patent a trade secret without revealing it to everyone. There's a period of exclusivity (~20 years), which is very different from "withholding information", but that's only after the IP has been published.
How Fast Can You Put North Carolina Back Together?
No, I completely under the point of freedom of thought and letting people think whatever they like. My sticking point is that I believe letting some ideas being carried to fruition in reality to measure their worthiness via their consequences is an extremely flawed metric. I see some consequences as holding nothing but irreversible harm and thus outweighing any benefits free expression of those ideas may bring.

I mean take anti-vaxxers for example, if enough people become anti-vaxxers and don't have their children vaccinated - herd immunity is compromised, children get sick, some of them die. I do not see how easily preventable deaths can ever be held as worth the unfettered spread of the ideas that directly contributed to them.

The other gripe with consequences as the sole value metric of an idea is just because an idea doesn't work when carried out, doesn't mean the idea is discarded everyone at large. Some awful ideas keep resurfacing again and again despite all evidence to their contrary.

You are right though that suppressing such opinions would have to be done by large, controlling institutions like governments or corporations. However as much as I distrust such institutions like anyone else, I think the compelling interest of society is enough to grant them the ability to censor - at least in specific instances of universally condemnable opinions like anti-vaccinations, eugenics, etc.

Take from this what you will.
If you mean that Facebook should be regulated as a utility, by all means make that argument - I think you’ll find broad support.

As it is, Facebook is constantly making editorial decisions in terms of what content is shown (which posts, in what order, with what presentation). Their own research had found that some of those editorial decisions have externalities in the form of increasing social conflict. Rather than take steps to address it, or even research this question more, they wiped their hands of it.
Well, from what I'm seeing Apple Pay is gaining traction here in the U.S. Since the NFC part isn't proprietary, it works with almost any terminal (Ingenico, Verifone) that supports contactless payments (with few exceptions).

It supports Apple Cash, which in turn can funded via a bank debit card. (kind of like Venmo). There's no transaction fee with Apple Cash.

I believe there are currently no additional fees on the merchant side to accept Apple Pay [1], unless the customer uses a credit card via Apple Pay in which case the standard credit card fees apply.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204274
Production of tangible goods is in a different category from either being allowed to use Twitter or having a cell phone. Denial of production of tangible goods by a local provider conjures up the grim specter of Jim Crow laws in the United States. And discrimination regarding sexual orientation is an understood protected class in the US, where political opinion is not.

I think people having different attitudes regarding the three categories of service is reasonable.
On Android, there's Instant Apps[1] though for some reason Google hasn't integrated them on all devices. They work through links/QR codes and through NFC tags. I believe they might also be accessible though the Google Bluetooth Le beacon API (so when you enable the specific feature, you'll get a popup like "this location serves the following app" which you can then instantly launch).

I don't know about iOS but the two copy features from each other all the time so Apple probably has it too (if they weren't the first to launch them).

Honestly, if you're working from a QR code you might as well just serve a mobile web app. If you add PWA support your customers might even install it if they come around often.

[1]: https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7683278
> When is this nonsense going to end?

When a critical mass of people start treating women (as a group) with the same respect and dignity as men are treated (as a group) would be a good start, no? Or are we post-sexism now?
That is an excellent list. There's also a guide that compares Google Cloud with AWS and highlights the similarities and differences between the two. https://cloud.google.com/docs/compare/aws
Oh well. Guess we won't agree on this one then.

Block button go brrrrrr.
The FBI is a highly political organization that uses its position of authority to routinely intervene in politics often at the behest of the state.

Usually I list the interference they do in left wing movements where they spy and infiltrate spaces to disrupt and discredit vital activities aimed at e.g. preserving the environment. As a highlight, they tried to get MLK to kill himself. Much of this was documented by the revelations of COINTELPRO. That stuff was never punished, so why would they ever stop? It's good for the integrity of the state.

For a conservative example, the recent "Obamagate" disclosures show how the FBI was instrumental in creating the now totally discredited Russiagate conspiracy which raged in the media for two years as a ploy to disrupt the Trump administration by an insane xenophobic conspiracy that Trump was the manchurian candidate, going so far as to create speculation that he was some kind of soviet sleeper agent from the 1980s. He's of course a bad guy, but this stuff is off the wall.

Now the FBI is being brought under control by the current administration which is attempting to distract from it's total failure to respond to the pandemic and its actions which are widely acknowledged to have made it far worse that it should have been. The United States, the richest most powerful country in the world, has had one of the worst responses in the world. So the administration is attempting to clumsily pin the blame on a "foreign enemy" by saying it's attempting unfairly to do something about the pandemic. What an incredible world we live in.

EDIT: To conclude: Is withholding medical information in a pandemic for any reason ethical? What about for making money? Is stealing such information from such an actor unethical?
He doesn't claim to pirate all of his books (or any actually), and he only wished to lend it to one friend (whilst noting that lots of other people were interested in the book as well).

There is also no need to put 'lend' in quotes; it is perfectly legal to lend someone a book.
my point is that if you want to do better than 'pretty much', you should buy a machine from an OEM that actually supports linux

If you're installing it on a random windows laptop, you're never going to get better than 'pretty much', because the OEM doesn't support linux or test their hardware with linux.
Here is a prediction: This article will not age well. Asking why "AI is so useless for business" in 2020 is like asking why can't I easily order clothes from the internet in 1994. The question is simply 5-10 years too early. The AI startup rush started maybe 2 years ago. Pytorch (the Netscape of ml) has only been released 3 years ago! It's simply too early to make any judgment.

Let's wait 5 years and see. I predict that all the business processes he mentioned will be automated (maybe with mechanical Turk oversight). In 10 years, most of the menial desk jobs will not exist.
Lots of European cities are broke at this point and have much bigger problems to fix right now than EV charging stations and if private companies would install them across the cities, the charging costs would be high enough to make EVs ownership unappealing.

These European city planners should have listened to Strongtowns and other New Urbanists, and instead of encouraging suburban development style which makes prohibitively expensive for cities to maintain streets, instead followed the dense urban pattern of American cities.
Looking Glass is just lenticular sheet glued to LCD, same technology as cheap 3D postcards and stickers from the ‘90s made of vertical grated plastic that you tilt left and right and picture changes. Probably not even 3D. Acrylic block part is just a gimmick as well.

But reportedly they execute that principle super well, gimmick part included, to the point it looks almost VR.
The key to this is you don't build too many of them.

The wires aren't the problem; you've already got a power grid carrying kilovolts along the same streets to power the buildings. The cost is the charging ports. So start with one, reserve the space for EVs and make it expensive.

Then people won't want to use it. Most of the time they'll charge at work or some restaurant that installed a charging port to drive customers to its business. Which is why you only have to start with one -- the first one on the street is just for emergencies. You might have ten EVs in the area and one charging port because at any given time only one person is willing to pay that much to use it. Which also means that it's regularly in use and can recover its costs quickly. But then it's there if you really need it, so more people can feel comfortable buying EVs.

Then once there are more EVs, you can install more charging ports -- they're paying for themselves, after all, as long as you don't install so many they don't stay in use.

Then once you've paid off the capital cost you can lower the price, so more people use them, so you can build even more. When you have 10 charging ports but 9 are already paid off, you only have to charge 10% of the original premium to pay off the 10th. So in the long term you still end up with plenty of charging ports on the street at only a slightly higher price than they are in other places.
> my work limits Internet only to hackernews

A workplace of dreams. What else do you need anyway?
Twitter Community Wants Trump to Delete His Account
I recall years ago when someone had rediscovered sleeve valves and was going to apply them to small displacement 4 cycles in order to get the weight down to be more competitive with 2 cycle engines.

It wasn't clear that the article author was aware of them either (and in fact I don't think I'd heard of them until the movie Sahara)
I'm a mid-list author formally published by one of the world's largest publishing houses. Deliberately seeding pirate sites with my novel would place me in breach of contract. It's an interesting idea if I were entirely self-published, but not realistic for me.
You need a refresher on logical fallacies from debate class.
Some of the larger demoparties will often have breakout sessions where sceners provide talks on how they do what they do.
Those are good points, I'd add two more:

- "If you want to buy our vaccine, you need to buy Huawei equipment for all your communications systems" - we've already seen that in France with PPE

- What would that do for investment in vaccine research if you know China can drop in theirs at any time and address the entire market? Investments dries up, China pulls back, go back to 1.
The author has made a rebuttal to this comment:
https://github.com/expnkx/fast_io/commit/8cf7497593eb185bba1...
Yes, with any kind of contactless payment, you need an NFC reader (which a smartphone kinda is), but it's much easier to print out a QR code.
I think the avenue for this to get traction would be for Facebook to sneak it into people's online lives without them really consenting to it. For instance, some type of activity starts giving you Libre as a reward, and you can use it to buy things on the site. Then certain essential things might start coming with a Libre price tag attached.

Similar logic to how premium currencies in mobile games work.
Where do you draw the line?

If the customers are willing to pay a huge markup on a product, who are you to tell them wiser?

- youdontchargeenough11 (probably)
I think the idea with this kind of thing is that ML can make pretty-good guesses really quickly, and then a formalized process can verify them (usually much more quickly than it could derive them). This hybrid model fits lots of different kinds of problems.
Holographic displays are one approach being studied for use in VR/AR headsets. My understanding is that they may help solve the vergence-accommodation conflict, which causes a lot of the motion sickness, headaches, eye strain and other issues people have with VR:

https://xinreality.com/wiki/Vergence-Accommodation_Conflict

Current headsets use two flat screen displays positioned a fixed distance from your head showing two slightly different 2D images. This tricks your brain into thinking you're seeing a 3D environment with objects closer or further away than the displays actually are, but some parts of your visual system are not fooled - leading to a conflict where your eyes try to focus and adjust to what you're seeing in two different ways at the same time.

Holographs may be able to provide more depth cues to each eye, helping to convince the visual system that the images are real.
Well, if it’s that standard it could be put into the ES spec, and if that ever happens, Babel will deprecate Typescript. That’s all it would take before Typescript will become another relic.

I am not opposed to Typescript, but I am trying to show that we’ve been here before many times.
IoT Home Irrigation System Using Losant and Particle Photon
Excellent! Love the idea. Just joined and set up my twtxt.txt file on a public repo on GitHub (and using the raw as my twturl). I'm getting a cert trying to interact with the registry, but might be something on my end.

Great job! Hopefully I'll get this working. Curious to see how hackers use it.
A consumer goods company operates two brands that sell the same products to different target audiences. The company works from a database that comprises 15 million+ entries for customers/leads/etc. Each brand sends one email a day, mails 6 catalogs throughout the year on different schedules based on seasonal buying patterns, runs search/display/etc ads across Google and Bing every day, runs Facebook/Insta/Messenger/etc ads every day, posts on various social networks every day, works with hundreds of affiliate advertisers that advertise every day, puts time/effort/money into SEO every day, and just started running TikTok campaigns because the founder’s daughter’s friend is an “influencer” on the network.

Some people buy. Some of those people have bought before when they lived in a different state before they were married. Some people see an ad on their phone and purchase by telling their spouse to order from Amazon. Some people wait until their paycheck clears the bank two weeks later then buy, but not before they’ve seen the brand an additional 15 times on various channels.

Multichannel attribution aims to attribute those purchases to the correct channels, usually to determine ROI and help with planning.

Keeping track of all those customers and touch points is non-trivial. Assigning weight to each touch point is non-trivial. Modeling behavior accurately is non-trivial. It’s theoretically 100% possible. Software companies and consultants sell solutions that seem plausible. In practice it feels impossible.

Source: A decade of agency and in-house advertising/marketing work for some of the largest brands in the world
For other bear-themed writing tools:

* https://bear.app/
So true, but i kind of like the unterstatement of it.
I am glad that people are creating these services, but I always see a problem with this: what happens if the developer can no longer maintain the service or does not scale economically. All the blogs will end up being lost. Unless the developer is a philanthropist who plans to keep this up to the end of the day, I see these services as ideal for very specific things, not as your new home.
A model I haven't fully fleshed out but which looked promising was a single source of truth, and then copying out to Docker instances of each tenant's database. Obviously the nature of data access may not make this practical, but would for our use case (end user is mostly read only, and most writes occur in background that we control)
You might find io-ts [1] interesting. It allows to write composable parsers that do both runtime checks and have correct result types.

Opt-in runtime checks for SQL queries are also on the roadmap for PgTyped. You are welcome to open an issue to track our progress there if you think this feature will be useful for you.

[1] https://github.com/gcanti/io-ts
Consider adding a “skip to main content” link to your website
My Asian company have this kind of super apps as highlight product, the "hub" of everything imaginable. I hates it with the bottom of my heart.

I think super apps can be good, useful and fast if made well, but most of the time it's slow, bloat, messy, cluttered, etc. - seriously, no amount of negative adjectives can describe this kind of abomination of app. I feel bad for our users - our exe seems to like it though...I guess they never use it.
The Many Ways Markdown Conversion Toolkit for Microsoft Word Excels over Pandoc
Oh I can see that. When QR codes are so prevalent, the appeal of Apple Pay is probably not great.

I'm kind of thinking of markets outside China though.
That's what happens when you try to "build an intuition" for a concept instead of defining it.

Okay, I get what a third of a sixpack is, it's two bottles. And half a sixpack is three bottles. I can even add them: one third (of a sixpack) plus one half (of a sixpack) is five bottles, hence five sixths! Now what's a quarter of a sixpack? That don't make no sense!!

The whole point of common fractions is to close integer arithmetic over division by introducing a new kind of numbers, precisely those fractions that don't correspond to integers. The question isn't so much "What is half a bottle of water?", it's "How do you calculate with one half (a bottle or whatever)."

Math is beautiful, but only if built up from simple rules. It's amazing how much you can make from counting and a handful of convenient notations. Even children can recognize that beauty. But high school instead teaches math as a jumbled mess of things you have to memorize, without structure, without rhyme and reason. Needless to say, I hated it. (School, not math.)
You lost me at "plugins" I'm afraid. I looked into ways to mix in React + TypeScript into both Hugo and Jekyll and it just seemed like an uphill battle. Based on my criteria (which I'm realizing aren't very popular on HN!) the best approach is to build everything "React-first" with Markdown mixed in, instead of the other way around.
yes, the number is greatly reduced, but you're leaving out a source of more variation. A sudoku puzzle not the solution, it's the constrained choice of what is shown vs hidden in the initial state. One solution could be parent to a number of solvable puzzles of varying difficulty.