skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't have a lot of time to comment to this, unfortunately, because I think it is a really important discussion. However, whenever I see these issues arise on Hacker News, I rarely see much said in defense of Terms of Service and Privacy Policies. Speaking only about Terms of Service right now, the problem is that if things are not laid out at the beginning, the business takes on all liability (or at least runs the serious risk of that liability). While that may sound reasonable initially, that means that nearly all of the amazing services we have would be impossible from a business perspective.

The problem is, we have an extremely litigious society, and lawyers are asked to think through and address all of the risks. The lower the dollar amount, the lower the liability that a company can reasonably take for the transaction.

Do you want to have an account? Great, but we need to be clear about who is responsible for use of the account and its credentials. We also need to clarify when it can be suspended or terminated. Do you want to submit content? Cool, but we should confirm that what you submit is your own responsibility, and we need to add some language about ownership and licensing to avoid copyright and other IP issues. We should also confirm that certain types of activities are not OK (e.g., pornography, harassment). Do you want to provide feedback? Awesome, but you cannot sue if it is used. Do you want to use APIs? Sweet, but there are things you can and cannot do so you don't break or abuse our system. Are you paying for things? We need to be clear how that works. And through it all, we need to have key provisions about warranties and limitations of liability so the business is not on the hook for millions when the account is worth $10.

And all this is for a simple service. There are countless ways to add complexity to a service.

I still agree with a ton of points here about the dangers of one-sided agreements, limited options for services, complex legalese, etc. But I will say that this is a trickier issue than people seem to give it credit. It may be nonsensical to say that a consumer read and understood a contract, but it is also nonsensical to say that companies should risk bankruptcy for free or cheap services (unless we are OK with free or cheap services no longer existing).
Imagine there was a certain kind of fuel required for all cars made by a certain manufacturer, and that manufacturer used DRM to restrict which companies could sell fuel to the car. In order to fuel the car, the manufacturer requires 30% of the fueler's revenue to authorize fueling. They provide no services for this fee aside from payment processing. Now imagine that that car company has 50% of the car market, and their only competitor is similar. Does this seem wrong?
You're right. I tend to click back, then revise my search to include the version, and then click the result, so Google gets the message that when I search for Postgres docs, I want the most recent version. I have no idea if this actually works, but I heard Google uses bounces to determine relevancy, so I thought it was worth a shot.
Fastmail's domain feature is the killer app for me. I have my @firstandlast.com secured for $7/year or something, and I can make anything@firstandlast.com and if someone starts spamming me I can just block it.
This is really cool, what you have just described is actually a pretty important concept in macroeconomics and is described in the Solow-Swan model [1].

As you say, infrastructure (and all physical capital) depreciates, so some amount of savings must be allocated towards replenishing it. Any leftover savings can be invested into more physical capital (be it tractors, roads, computers), which creates economic growth. However, if you assume that there are diminishing returns to physical capital, then eventually the capital required to replenish depreciation will be equal to the entire income saved (total income less consumption) by an economy. At this point, known as the "steady-state", economic growth falls to 0.

If you are interested in knowing more about the Solow-Swan model I'd recommend these introductory youtube videos [2]. The first three in the playlist in particular outline the basics pretty well.

It must be noted that the Solow-Swan model is quite a simple model and it doesn't completely explain how economies work. For example, the role of human capital (education) and technological advances aren't fully captured. However, it is useful for understanding some of the factors that drive economic growth, particularly in the cases of post-war Germany and Japan or modern day China.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solow%E2%80%93Swan_model

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-uRhZ_p-BM6L_I3IHvE8...
please don't call it server-side-rendering. The http server was always meant to respond with hypertext content. Serving json is the oddity, not the other way around
Apple advocates always point to Apple capturing the vast majority of the profits in the mobile market but when discussing antitrust issues it's only units sold that matters. You can't have it both ways.
I am happy with Fastmail too. Use it for more than 3 years and never look back. There is a hype about Hey mail recently but I won't buy it:

- It is more expensive than my current plan with Fastmail. Hey mail is 99$/year.

- As all of my current emails and contacts are in fastmail, I am not likely to switch to another providers. Also, because I am happy user, I don't see the need to switch.
Using R to visualize a Symbolic Regression model
Some idiot intern posting whatever red icon they could find?

I don't think the concentration camp symbol is very plausible either since no one has seen that symbol since 1945.

Can you point to any white supremacist posts or site that use it?
I presume A+ falls under A... ?
Sure it does. If you want to prepared for an epidemic, you have to accept that you’re going to waste money.

And at any rate, I know the gov’t has deals with pharma companies. They’ll often swap expired product so the stockpile stays current.
Steam: 30% for the first 10M in sales, 25% for 10M-50M, 20% for sales above 50M

Windows Store: 15% or 30%, depending on the product/platform

Epic Store: 12%

Amazon app store: 30% in most cases

Play Store: 30%

Does Walmart actually sell apps?
> Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith said it’s time for antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe to discuss tactics that app stores use to take advantage of those who want to distribute their software.

I agree. Microsoft store on Windows 10 should accept browser engine other than Microsoft Edge like Firefox. It's insane on Windows 10S you can't use any other browser other than Microsoft Edge.
Links to artists you recommend?
DEC VMS equivalent of this is 'Access Violation', which as such is a Fault, and manifests itself in logs as the dreadful ACCVIO, though one is always hopeful it's debuggabble, unlike 'AST fault' (where AST stands for Async System Trap, which is not a Fault, but the fault happened while trying to deliver the AST...), meant a lot of head scratching and likely call to support. The worst by far is a 'Machine Check', next thing one hopes to see is the carrots >>> prompt on reset.

It's a very nuanced and structured terminology, but does make sense after reading all those hefty and well-written manuals. People like to use those volumes as monitor risers these days, but those are often true standards of quality technical writing. I once was amazed by the clarity, so the VMS doc volume migrated to the shelf in exchange for some old conference proceedings volume of the same heft.
I don’t disagree.

I guess my point is we are well beyond “normalization”. We’ve been using “war against...” for the past 50 years at least.
My favorite part is where the Hey app can't even copy Fastmail and put the same note in the app description because the rules randomly became stricter to maximize profits. ("Note: You must be either a paid subscriber or have verified your trial Fastmail account to use this app. You must be online to access your mail.")
It's disheartening that Mozilla is continuing to actively avoid partnering with the Tor project for problems like this, despite the fact that the Tor project has contributed to Firefox for many years (mostly related to fingerprint resistance). I get that Mozilla needs to make money, but the fact that they still haven't made "private browsing mode" actually private by making it use Tor is a real shame.
> I can't really see any 4d chess moves from the Australian Government here.

Or ever, at least from any of the parties we have contending for power right now... But "how good is coal?" :sigh:

(I assume you're the Gonzo who's sharpening up a nice knife for this weekend? ;-) )
I'm confused. Hillary isn't jewish. ...yet his daughter is. ...as is his grandson, and most of his New York friends - and also Jared Kushner.

Frankly, the narrative that he's anti-Semitic is not credible considering his "favorite" daughter converted to Christianity with his support.
This is a good list. Not great, and not applicable when you're at a crappy organization with bad traditions--likely many young web dev's position. This is much more useful to me now that I'm in a good position at a great company with a good culture.
Well, I have a lot of Apple hardware, think they generally do a decent job on the OS, and mostly appreciate the fact that the app store has rules that keeps it from turning into a dumpster fire.

But I don't see how that applies here. There's too many random carve outs for me to take this as being in good faith. If you can trust 37Signals to handle their own logins and payments for one app but not another, you're making stuff up.
The Twitter character limit prohibits going in depth. That is the opposite of what I am looking for. Also, the lack of threading discourages having branches of discussion for the lesser important points.
I am an advocate of a journalism tax rebate. That way there can be government funding for Journalism that is not controled by a government.
Yeah, it's very confusing. I've heard it explained but I still think it doesn't really make sense. The core of the argument that I've heard is that Windows has multiple subsystems so they say it's a "Windows Subsystem", but the 'for' in "For Linux" still makes no sense.

The arguments for not calling it something like "Linux Subsystem [for/on/in] Windows" don't seem to match up with the fact that there used to be a similar thing which was called "Microsoft POSIX Subsystem" also.
I scanned through the comments. There is no editor war anymore these days ;) For development I wouldn't have issues as I just use VIM and CLI. Neovim currently has linting and auto-complete and works so much better then before. Actually also using the language server protocol same like vscode. So no issues on DPI. The other tool used is chrome and that handles DPI quite nicely on linux.

But I switched to mac long time ago. Because I agree it handles text and HDPI displays much better. Maybe windows improved on this but reading text on it was such a downgrade to a mac. If windows would have as nice text rendering as mac I would switch instantly. Cheaper hardware for better price and all. No have best of both worlds windows and linux all in one.
Down Dog app removed from Play Store for allowing users to pay on their website
In Europe you have VAT around 20%, so about 50% of what the user's pay end up in the developer's account.

Also it's Apple's decision to subsidize all the free app with fees from the paid apps. Why not charge some fee to free apps after 100k / 1 million downloads or something instead of having all the burden on the paid apps?

They decided it's worth it to have this free stuff on the app store to juice up their numbers, so why should it be so expensive for paid apps developers?

I'm not sure the support developers get from that 30% cut when they have app store problem really feel like it's worth it.

There are so many more reasonable fees level and structures they could try, but no. They're stuck to that level from 2002 when apps were new.
Well I'm not seeing any mention of it here, so let me fill you in on a little secret: this symbol is commonly used in cartography to indicate a confirmed hazard. Anyone with any time in the military or emergency management (and maybe hazmat) should immediately recognize the symbol.

Fact check it yourself: search "NATO landmine symbol". You'll find the symbol in use by the UN and NATO, you'll also find standards that dictate orientation, fill style, and scaling factors.

It has absolutely nothing to do with Nazi concentration camps, and the amount of hyperventilating over secret Nazi symbols is really disturbing. I don't know which is worse, that this may largely be performative outrage, or if it is genuine derangement.
Ask yourself: why haven't you been told this already? Why is the media winding people up instead of fact checking? Why is facebook outsourcing this disgusting task to the ADL? Also: I predicted this just yesterday :)
Australia is under cyber-attack from 'state-based actor', Scott Morrison says
Unless you need your stuff to work on older devices. HTML is really really good at what it does, and often it's good enough. Yeah, don't be a purist, but html and css is just fine for landing pages and static sites.
If you didn't laugh out loud at that, you clearly do not know many Australians (or probably Canadians either...)
Phoenix LiveView gives you excellent interactivity with backend rendering.
I agree. ...at the same time, an upside-down red triangle doesn't mean anything to anybody either.

...so really the logical conclusion here is that the intern that posted it is an idiot.

The notion that there is a secret KKK/Nazi message here is conspiracy theory territory.

Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
CA Gov. Newsom Vetoes Bill Allowing Ranked-Choice Voting (2019)
It certainly sounds crazy, compared to the maybe 10KB of init.d scripts on a typical older Unix system.

Yeah, I realize that isn't quite apples-to-apples, but still, systemd is a ridiculous beast. We used to mock Windows for this sort of thing, and now we've become them.
I don't think the car analogy really applies, for the reason that there aren't very many third-party services in a car, and not much demand by customers to install software in their car. Cars are essentially a single piece of equipment, where the car itself provides the primary value, and the number of people customizing their car is fairly small.

In comparison, with computers there's a much clearer separation between the device itself and third-party integrations. Almost everyone customizes their computer by installing software on it, and the computer and OS itself don't provide the main value - instead, it's a tool to run different software applications on it, and so Apple's attempt to control third-party software based on the fact that they make the hardware and OS is an attempt to use their power in one market to interfere in another, rather than just an attempt to control their product.

And to take this further: supposing that cars were people's primary computing devices, and everyone began using apps on their car, I would argue that car companies would be obligated to let people install the apps of their choosing.

I think the market share argument also tends to ignore the economics of how the software business works (and as you stated, all the high-paying users are on iOS, because they're generally higher-end devices than Android). If I create a new service that Apple won't allow, and it's only available on Android, iOS users aren't going to switch no matter how good my service is (because that involves spending hundreds of dollars on a new device and transferring all your other services, which is a ridiculously high bar to clear). And without those users, the chances of my service surviving are much lower, so it's most likely going to disappear from Android as well. The result is that even though Apple has a minority market share, they end up controlling the entire ecosystem. And in turn, that means that when consumers are choosing a phone, they don't actually have a free choice to avoid Apple's policies, because even if they buy an Android phone, Apple's policies will affect the services available to them. (And since the available services end up being the same, more people buy iOS devices for various reasons, which increases Apple's power even further).
> seem to be saying that renewables require improvement due to the scale of the problem.

Certainly they must be competitive in terms of energy density otherwise how can they substantially displace another energy source? Today renewable tech is not energy dense enough.

> Once renewables are sufficiently cheap

..cheap in total lifecycle cost (not end user cost of panel), carbon negative and sufficiently energy dense (transportable at light weight/low volume relative to stored energy)

> it's just building more of them.

For all of this, please remember we're talking global scale for electricity generation (<30% of fossil fuel use today), plus transportation, and manufacturing, not just electric use at my house or even a small country.

Straight cost - you mention taxes and regulation. This implies regulatory disincentives to produce and consume fossil fuels. It's relevant to note that at no time in recorded human history have humans backed off the consumption of an energy source unless a better replacement (more dense) was found. We nearly deforested the US east coast and almost killed off a whale species until coal came along and saved both (true story). Now we couldn't go back if we wanted to because civilization assumes a certain amount of energy input. Reducing it would have huge humanitarian impacts. Stabilizing it would be good, but this unfairly puts a huge burden on developing regions who would likely not tolerate it anyway.

Technology improvement - Look in the graph below at where diesel is relative to a Li-Ion battery. That's the gap it needs to make up at 5% efficiency gain per year (many orders of magnitude). It's beyond optimistic to say that would be covered any time soon barring a miracle (the track record shows that Moore's law doesn't apply to solar cells and batteries).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#/media/File:Ene...

Even if you doubled the rate of efficiency improvements to 10% annualized, it's still an unrealistically wide gap to make up in my lifetime at least.

Fundamentally, for your position to be true you have to assume a miraculous leap forward in technology. And/or you have to assume some global-scale rational decision making (or force) to reduce consumption voluntarily (or involuntarily :/), in contrast with the whole of historic human behavior regarding energy consumption. Seems like there's a lot of hope involved there.
Which would include Electron apps
I think it's also related to how capitalism derives towards ultra specialisation of individuals. We help solving a very specific (often very indirect as well) need of society, extremely efficiently, and expect all our needs to be fulfilled in return. Or at least that's what we assume the system should do. But the system is never well adjusted, we just inherit it from another time. And no one makes the effort to try to improve it. We think voting is the only job we have to do in that regard, when in practice we simply contribute to perpetuating an inefficient "management", that accumulated a lot misaligned incentives over time...
I wonder how well road projects scale in terms of length - if it would be better or worse per mile to have to do 50 or 500 miles of contiguous road vs 0.32 miles. The absolute cost would be far higher of course but if it it scales slower than linear it suggests a consolidation process as more efficient or whatever the "peak efficency segment" may be.
Ever hear of inflation? If my pay isn't keeping up with inflation I'm not as valuable as I was last year.
Congratulations to you!! I hope that your efforts continue to bring you everything you hope for.

For me, I think it is hard for me to monetize the content that I really enjoy producing. There's tangentially related things that would probably make a bit more money (native youtube ads, teaching, t shirts), but since I am fortunate enough to have a good day job, I am able to make the content available entirely for free, uninfluenced by profit motives.

Life is just a big navigation of trade-offs, it seems.
First of all, it could be argued that it would actually be beneficial for Apple to give up on their 30% because it would make iOS much harder to dethrone, which in the long run is much more valuable than cash.

Secondly, nobody complains on the 30% Play store tax because you can easily dodge it, see for instance... Apple Music.
Gcp terraform linting is sorely needed,.
This is the contradiction:

Apples’s defense of its in-app payments rule is that having a single payment system owned by the platform used by every app on that platform provides the best experience for users. According to them, Apple isn't being greedy but rather they are ensuring their users have the best experience on their platform.

But if a single payment system for a platform is such a great user experience, why does Apple not offer that superior experience to their Apple Music customers on Android?

Of course, one could argue that Google's refusal to require apps on their platform to use their in-app purchase system means that superior user experience of a uniform payment system is out of reach regardless of what Apple does with their own apps on Android, so maybe it's not a contradiction after all.
My confusion stems from the fact that when you say "implementing" animations, I think of shuffling pixels around. By your logic, every HTML marquee tag "implements" an animation.
I don't think that ContraPoints of all people meant hard right reactionaries when she wrote about real debates on YouTube.

Now where can I find this far left consensus? The closest I've been able to find is a soft left toothless socialism, the tepid centrism of FDR cheerleaders, and the soft right wing stance of the modern liberal, seeking a more inclusive-looking, more profitable status quo. I'd love to find like-minded leftists!
yeah, but it's kinda self limiting. If the fee was 5% maybe netflix would still be offering subscriptions in the app. And there might be more paid app in the store. And spotify might not be pushing for antitrust in Europe. The kindle app might offer in app purchase.

How many developers look at the fee, see the app they want to make and realize they would never be able to charge enough to make it worth it after the cut and the sales taxes? I think that's one reason the iPad software is not the success it could be.
It's not just "not obvious" - it's not used at all. ...and hasn't been since 1945. ...and even then it wasn't known except to the people in a few camps.

...so what's your hypothesis here? That he told them to use a near-nonexistent symbol as a secret message to the, maybe 5 people in the world that remembered that symbol?

Does that sound like a credible theory to you?

...or isn't it more likely that some stupid intern just fucked up?
Which you pay for w/ your $99/yr. dev fee.
I live here, and while yeah I would sorta kinda have preferred the sidewalks from the start, I have no interest in ripping up peoples' front yards to retrofit them in.

What Seattle is doing now (making a lot of streets limited-access) is way better for pedestrians than a slow, expensive, abortive sidewalk-building-and-street-reconstructing campaign.
Robert Evans (Astronomer)
I'm a very happy migadu.com user. Set fee for unlimited storage and unlimited addresses. Very simple but effective admin UI too.
So is it just me or is this guy basically advocating for anarcho-communism? Like I don't disagree that's probably the direction we need to head towards, but I never thought I'd see ancoms on HN.
Does that imply Windows?