skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not a Microsoft fan, but simple C / Windows API code from 25 years ago would likely compile and run on Windows 10 unchanged.

My limited experience with Swift suggests that even 25 hours ago could be a tall order...
I wonder if some sort of "non-person wealth tax" is mechanically feasible.

The goal is "big piles of money eventually go away"; estate/inheritance taxes stand at the boundary of individual ownership to try to chip away at the big piles of money when it is passed from one generation to the next.

The "loophole" is that non-person entities, in the form of corporations or trusts, do not die. Your family establishes a trust, dumps money into it, and within that trust it can be invested and grow indefinitely, even if money is taxed as it is taken out.

Assuming we don't want to just make non-corporate entities mortal -- require them to "die" and be replaced by a successor organization every 60 or 80 or 100 years -- the problem becomes "how do we keep an immortal entity from just sitting on an ever-growing pile of money, indefinitely".

So what if we just created a wealth tax and applied it to these immortal entities, of, say, 3% per year?

Could you apply it to all non-person entities, family trusts, for-profit corporations, non-profits, universities, etc? (If there is an exempt category, you're obviously going to suddenly have a lot of family chapels with billion dollar endowments.)

What would be the side effects, and which would be positive and which would be negative?

Assuming you taxed for-profit corporations on their wealth, and adjusted corporate income taxes appropriately, which sectors would benefit and which would go away? Would it be a good or bad thing for those sectors to become non-viable?

How hard would it be to reconcile internationally, could you tax entities sanely for the portion of their wealth resident in a jurisdiction, or would it be impossible to do fairly without leaving big tax havens?
"Basic" isn't necessarily "worse". I always found the voting/moderation on Slashdot to be very confusing and it made me not want to participate on the site.
Yeah, Perl 6 was certainly A Thing. I am not sure practicing Perl programmers cared much about it. I went to the talks and thought "neat" but it didn't really seem like "welp, this is taking forever, I'm switching to Python." Maybe if everyone working on Perl 6 decided to work on data science tooling instead, Perl would have "beaten" Python in that area and things would be different, but the world doesn't really work that way, so I don't think Perl 6 really mattered in terms of Perl fading away. A lot of people learned a lot of things about language design, and that will no doubt benefit the entire field for many years to come. (Look at "Go 2" versus "Perl 6", for example.)

On some level, everything is like that. Perl was a better awk/grep and was successful in replacing those tools. Then one day, someone decided to use it for CGI, and it got a huge popularity boost. But the people that decided to use it for CGI could have easily used something else, and it would have probably worked fine and Perl never would have been popular. It was just random chance that they picked Perl and made it popular. I feel like everything works that way. Javascript is popular for web UIs because someone decided to add it to a popular web browser. There is always some intrinsic randomness that plays a part in gaining mindshare. A bad tool with a good mindshare can do well, and a great tool with no boost can languish in obscurity. Perl benefited a lot from luck, but rolling the dice doesn't last forever.
For many years Perl subroutines didn't even have method signatures so you had to unroll @ on the first line of every sub. I think even today it may still be considered experimental. Jeez!
+1 on Windows doing this for forever. I regularly use devices that are 10+ years old: printer (10), scanner (11), webcam (10), professional audio interface (12). I can stil install old music software to work with old songs I've recorded/produced.

Every Windows machine but 1 in my house is >5 years old. The 1 that is newer was just built this year to replace a machine with an >11 year old motherboard (CPU/RAM had been upgraded since). It does help that I went 100% SSD and touch (for laptops) when Windows 8 came out.

I don't think there will ever be another OS that has the same level of backwards compatibility that Windows does. It is just too hard. Support longer than iOS on an ecosystem more diverse than Android. Windows users expect it though.
I disagree with your assumption that entrenching generational wealth furthers poverty. When inventors believe that they can build generational wealth, they are motivated to produce better products and services, which they are able to offer at far lower prices than their value to all of us, so we all become richer. For example, I am writing this on a smartphone that cost just a couple hundred dollars. With it, I can access all of the world's knowledge and communicate with anyone instantaneously. For just a couple hundred more dollars, I sit beside an air conditioner that keeps me comfortably cool even though it is boiling outside. The barons of the gilded age could not have purchased such products for any price. So who is richer, me or them? The inventors of these products are rich, but what do I care? I am lucky to have been born into a world where these products are available for such a low price. While it hasn't been proven conclusively, anecdotal evidence suggests that more invention occurs in countries which defend generational wealth, and we all benefit.
Rain forests are being burned down because these areas are poor and farming is the simplest way to make money starting from scratch. Multi-million dollar vertical farms don't help.
Sounds like a different symptom of the same illness.

The team rushes at the problem, has a honeymoon period where things look nice and progress is fast but... it all then goes to shit. If your reaction is to blame technologies or the previous generation of staff, dump the code and repeat the cycle, you end up in the same place.
We don't often get to peek behind the courtain, but it is hard not to feel repelled by this.
Ibiza Warmtime Trance (2020)
The correct title should actually be "Edge imports Firefox data if you say yes when it asks you". Because that is what is happening. The article on Reddit is just wrong.
How? Pretty simple:

Transition during an acquisition is driven by the M&A and legal teams which are more focused on mitigating deal risk than providing customer/product benefit. It's just simply not top of mind for them. It then takes a while for the acquired team and tech to work their way into the engineering organization but by that time the damage of the initial decisions is done.
> Do you actually think anyone would notice if the Times did not publish this article? Couldn't the same thing then be said about any MSM publisher relating to all topics/content?

I would. Because this "news" will eventually get out, and I would wonder why it was not covered by the MSM. I've seen a lot of anecdotal stories about things not being covered in the MSM, so yes, people will wonder why there was no news coverage about a boycott, instigated by prominent civil rights groups like the Anti Defamation League, the NAACP, and supported by well known companies like Patagonia, REI et al against a well known company and platform like Facebook.
Are there any OS projects that would turn a computer into a word processor like this? Seems like a nice way to bring an old laptop back to life.
For error logging (https://molily.de/robust-javascript/#error-logging in the article), can anyone recommend a logging service that has a small JavaScript footprint?

I use Sentry on one site but it has a 56K library you have to load before any of your JavaScript loads, so bad for page size + bad for page blocking. I would have thought they'd at least let you use a shim to capture errors quickly while you defer loading the full library (like how Google Analytics does it) but I can't see an obvious way to do that.

Sentry has really nice features but 56K (17K compressed) is a big chunk when I'm trying to keep a page to about 100K transferred.
But that's totally the opposite of the common (and maybe false) narrative that Apple is pushing users to upgrade faster than their counterparts.
I use it for hiking mostly. It's basically the default source for most hiking apps, and is quite good for it.

I wish I could use it for more but it lacks a good app like Google or Apple Maps.
I can't find it, but I saw a comment on HN back in April I believe (when the Pentagon released videos of UFOs) explaining exactly your theory with some interesting sources.
> I take it that you don't have children?

Believe it or not, some people want to raise children who are properly incentivized to be productive members of society.

> Sure, you could argue on a bigger level because of the power concentration, but you are applying the same thought to a small biz.

The proposal here is about people with 8+ figures in personal wealth. That's not the typical small family business.

> go build something yourself.

I mean, this is literally the point of the death tax, that people should have to build wealth for themselves...
Dockerising Visual C++ with Wine
Google may have issues too, I don't know. It's a DNS problem that has existed for a while.
you say that now but you'll change your tune when future control theory only works on dogs
> much as it is controlling the winner after they've won

But they can only win re-election if (and only if) their constituents believe that they continue to represent their interests.

Also, direct donations to campaigns run by the candidates themselves are ALREADY capped, both for individuals as well as corporations. It is only uncapped for organizations that are not affiliated with the candidate directly (SuperPACs), and this is strictly regulated.

So the point that you're making is: upon winning the 2016 election, if a bunch of billionaires promised Trump that they would donate to an unaffiliated SuperPAC for his 2020 re-election bid if Trump enacted policies opposite to what he campaigned on, he might be able to win his re-election. There is no evidence of this happening. Trump's base will refuse to vote for him if he flip-flopped on his immigration stances.
Google doesn't expect an average user to know that either. The difference from such a user's perspectice is just that Android devices become unable to run the most recent software more quickly than iOS ones. The post above is discussing the underlying causes of that. You are on a website called "Hacker News".
FYI, SSC actually has demographic surveys of its readership. Of course, the blog is down now, but I bet if you search the Internet Archives you can find some. As I recall, there were quite a number of dimensions along which the readership could be classified as diverse.

Of course, if you are hell-bent on judging the man and his readers along those demographic dimensions where they aren't diverse, or even just your own assumptions about the kind of people that read SSC, then carry on.
Show HN: Let your friends add articles to your reading list
Can the asymptomatic who never present symptoms, or those whose symptoms don't land them in a testing facility / hospital, also develop these chronic illnesses? Is that known?
I found a big difference in application and app store support for older versions. You need to keep updating the iPhone to the newest version of iOS because if you don't, all the apps will be undownloadable. When they stop updating it, it's toast.

I had an Android Gingerbread (2.3) phone for a while when KitKat was out, and I had lots of software to download. Then I updated to one on Marshmallow (6.0) and it had plenty of software and probably still does. I'm not sure how much software is still available that works on Nougat (7.0.1) on the S6 all the way through Android 10, but I was really disappointed that I couldn't even keep the iPhone 4S alive as a toy because all the old software was gone.

However, it's lame that Google drops security updates so early.
I think you're right to believe that because it is true and I skirted over why I believe it takes generations.

It is not impossible but difficult to document how to do effective farming because every farm has its own individual needs. And what may be true for one farm will likely not be true for another. Hence relying on first hand knowledge, albeit extremely fallible, is more reliable than reading a book and then destroying your crop for a year. (Obviously farmers read, study and improve)

The main reason would be location.

- How does water irrigate around your property? Where is the clay? Where does the water lock in when it sinks in different acres? What happens when there is a drought in this area? What happens when it floods? What should you do when there is extreme weather?
- What makes the soil in this locale good? What is it naturally good at growing? How should you replenish the soil? What native wildlife contributes to the soil? What insects plague the area and do they have decade long life cycle bursts? What to do when a swarm of locust come?
- When does your first frost generally occur? What plants can you grow through a frost? Maybe Kale will survive because although there is frost, you live in a valley where the humidity is higher so the Kale can live. You can't grow X crop because the wind is ever so slightly stronger every 5 years because of atmospheric shifts.

And just to make it more fun, sprinkle on the problem of economics(supply/demand) and logistics.

Also it would be hard not to meet a farmer who calls it a "way of life" because it absolutely is. They live far away from the spoils of civilisation, work incredible hours and live isolated lifestyles. They laugh at city folk because a city man "wouldn't last a week on the farm", which is probably true. Fun fact: Australian farmers have twice the national suicide rate than the average man.
Why do you believe Windows running on someone else's computer is a threat to your network? It seems to me that if Windows's telemetry is a threat, it's a threat to that person's computer and not your network. So this strikes me as an extreme overreaction.

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on the Windows accessibility team. But this is my own opinion, posted on my initiative, and I do try to have nuanced positions even when it comes to my employer.
What Is the OpenTelemetry Specification?
Hello HN!

We made an app to remove personal recommendations from communication channels and provide a social read-it-later solution instead.

A challenge we are facing right now is to find out how we can make the product more viral. Users can already use the app to send content to non-users but few actually do.

Any insights on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

The app is developed with Flutter/Firebase and available in Play Store and App Store.

Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.listo

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1502284126

We're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and questions!
Most devs in bigTechs micro optimize very little things (ie, cogs in the machine). It makes sense only at a scale where those micro-optimization can pay for themselves.

I'm not sure how you stay sane working on those micro-issues though.
> Comparing any modern private company’s power to the government is like comparing a flea to the sun.

Well, that's trivially true for corporations, since each corporation is itself an exercise of government power, so all of their power is a subset of government power.
The Extinction of Mentorship
Fleetsmith has always been one of the only two commercial products I've endorsed for Mac management. They do great work and have the right vision.

I work a lot in this space on https://micromdm.io/ an open source service, and have industry experience doing device management at various organizations.
Answering my own question: https://raymii.org/s/blog/Vim_as_PID_1_Boot_to_Vim.html
> How does one tell Python to pass the contents of said array as distinct parameters to the function, instead of as a lone array parameter?

With an asterisk: method(*array)
> ... SquirrelMail ...

Oh thank you for that trip down memory lane! Ran my own SquirrelMail servers for years...
This is lovely news. I am rather new to the smartphone world, I hardly use my iPhone SE, which was about discontinued when I first bought it. I like the smallness of it, primarily.
The JS API is a bit safer as the user has to "explicitly enable this feature". Although in some browsers, full access is granted. Thanks for pointing it out. Another reason to surf with JS disabled and whitelist for sites that require it.
Only because I'm involved in this today and have apparently decided to not work on other things while I wait to go to the doctor:

6 -> 6S was a 450MHz clock speed (1.4GHz -> 1.85GHz) jump and doubled the RAM from 1GB to 2GB. That's a significant step up in capabilities. You probably noticed snappier application starts and transitions (more RAM, more apps can stay up at a time, or at least part of them so they start or seem to start faster) and better general performance (that 32% clock speed jump).
This will be really useful when the AR goggles launch. And for interesting AR or other fun (but ultimately throwaway) experiences before that.

There's so much cool stuff you can only do with an app but currently there's just too much friction. I hear someone say "No one downloads apps anymore" daily. Well, now they don't have to, and we can still make the fun thing we want to.
The fashion retailer Net-A-Porter has been a Perl shop since 2000. Haven't checked if that's still the case. They used to employ quite a few leading lights in the UK Perl community a few years ago.
I don’t understand the points being made. It looks like someone wants to cut funding by 50% for OPD and the majority don’t, but they’re going to anyway? Does this article confuse anyone else? I’ve googled, but other sources don’t have this information.
Google Will Delete Your Data by Default–In 18 Months
That side-note is really interesting, actually. They found a way to bypass all the hassle of trying to deal with compatibility issues with different computers (at least with the PC clones... Apple used a different port) and applications by using a near-universal port. No need for a file system or networking to transfer your files to the target PC. Just plug it into the keyboard port, and send your text directly into whatever program you want.

How does the saying go? "If it looks stupid but it works, it ain't stupid."
I'm using an old asus transformer with external powerbank because its battery has crapped out. It's one of the worst devices I've ever possessed but still gets the job done.

Now if I only knew where to get antiglare screen protection that actually works. I renewed it recently and the new one is not anti-glare at all. :/
people tend to like the news sources they've self-selected as trustworthy and reliable, and complaints about "the media" are usually borne out of a specific gripe, not anything that can actually be provably shown as an accurate generalization of every single outlet that generates news content

I’d say this is just a reflection of people choosing outlets that reflect their views which is politics.

No news organization is immune from this. That is my point. Pretending that news organizations are apolitical is the problem.

Also, the press simply isn’t made up of tens of thousands of people making individual choices.

It’s made up of people working for hierarchical corporations with owners whose direction they must follow in order to remain employed. You can certainly argue that the individuals are just doing their jobs and are not political actors per se, but they are definitely working towards the goals of politically driven organizations.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but geothermal is only useful in volcanically active regions, right?
The issue is when there's more than one team that needs access. There are multiple ways to share a document and the links to the original are all different (based on how it was shared: via a shared drive or via a shared folder or via a shared document link). And finding that shared document (if you don't remember how it was shared in the first place) can be a nightmare.

Sometimes you don't have a choice - we are a small team, and we're pretty good about using a shared drive and a shared folder. But sometimes you have to share a document with an external collaborator (or someone in another firm shares a document with you). And if you forgot how that document was shared, then google makes it practically impossible to find the original.
FFMpeg Dynamic Splatter Effect
The site lists:

http://www.jimmyr.com/

which might be it.
Much as people complain about Perl, it is the language which I use when I want to have something which will run 10-20 years from now.

I recently wrote a consistency checker for file archives (so that I know when bitrot sets in) in Perl, precisely because I want it to be usable for a long time (https://github.com/jwr/ccheck).

Very happy to see a path forward for Perl 5.32.
Yes, that's why it happens, but it doesn't make it less obnoxious. It's obnoxious that Microsoft periodically breaks my audio and it's doubly obnoxious that some designer at Bose thought that trading away a physical button for this two-bluetooth-endpoint nonsense was a UX win (or, cynically, a portfolio win).

The fact that I've been able to figure out what's going on and am therefore able to work around the problem with only minor inconvenience is neither here nor there. Most users with the same setup will not be in a position to understand or do anything about the problem. Microsoft will degrade their audio, and they will live with it. Same with Edge.
Ask HN: What to Pursue?
I'm tired of making stuff (software) that has no impact on anyone's lives.
Ultimately I'd like to pursue AI research and/or to build the future of humanity in some manner, but meanwhile I also need some money to live.

I've been bouncing off various ideas, but either I'm prematurely killing them, or they haven't had any (apparently) feasible target markets:

- a service to save 2-factor authentication backup codes with client-side encryption - I couldn't convince myself finishing this was worth the effort

- a personal analytics service, taking in "the kitchen sink" from health devices and other data sources, drawing up correlations, etc. -- it didn't seem like anyone would pay for this

- a service to lend expertise on demand inside software engineering teams, like a 'virtual engineer' inside a client team (I figured there are loads of inefficiencies in software development) -- I couldn't find a way to even start this. I think the 'silos' separating companies from the outside are probably considered a feature so there's no chance even for this

- an index of all geospatial open(/closed) datasets -- I made some preliminary work here but ultimately I fail to see who would possibly pay for this in some way

- tools for geospatial processing -- GDAL/OSGeo/QGIS/rasterio came short so I made some of my own for joining datasets and such -- also doesn't seem monetizable easily?

- reproducible datasets and computation -- this also didn't seem worth the effort

Am I just prematurely killing off all my ideas without finding a single customer?

Is there some productive way to refine ideas and find better ones?

Should I find a different viewpoint to this entirely?