skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
From what I can tell tricks are being pulled directly by brands in all online sales.

Repackaging, or even directly steering imperfect merchandise to online orders is happening all of the time.

“Model” or perfect versions are sent to retailers where consumers will interact with the product is purchased.

Online, photos and videos show the same “perfect” products.

I’ve seen clear examples of this by Fossil and Pendleton. I believe Apple does this in some cases, at least in repackaging.

There are rational reasons to do this as a business but it can be a bad thing for consumers.

Fwiw, Amazon has among the best return policies and the least friction in completing a return.

Return friction is where a company‘s selective inventory quality steering borders on anti-customer.
Has "cut costs" ever meant anything other than "hurt the worker"?
Have you ever heard of Wu Wei? Action-less action?

You think you have control of your life, but you do not.
As someone who was arrested for filming police brutality 10yrs ago: I was not given a call, I had no access to water. I was held in a fenced area of a Miami parking garage. I had to fake a medical emergency and only then did the EMT responders force the police to give me access to water. Another “inmate” also said he had a medical issue shortly thereafter and also needed water but they refused to call the ambulance. When I got out, the charges were not in the system. I spoke with numerous lawyers who advised if I pursued a complaint or lawsuit they’d be likely to retaliate and advised for my own safety not to pursue it.
Of course a version of it existed, but the going concern with cancel culture is that it doesn't require much thought or effort to cancel someone now. Social media allows you to easily join a mob without judging a person deeply by yourself.
My guess: The chat agent selected an incorrect reason for the return, causing Amazon to expect the actual item back.

Whenever possible, I always initiate the return myself to avoid customer service messing things up (there is a specific return reason "received incorrect item" in the dropdown).
I believe it's not really "rethink" as if we had once figured it out correctly in the past already. We are still actually thinking it for the first time, specially if you consider economists and policy makers were yet looking for "something new" (mentioned in the article) in macroeconomics during the last, what, 50 years? It's all pretty new, which suggests to me that it is all in a pretty extremist and radicalized state: it doesn't have to be 100% trickle down reaganomics or 100% state interventionism exclusively. I'm very confident a major crisis like this one will make key people finally realize that a mix of free global markets + welfare states focused on reducing inequality + democratic institutions will be the answer to many macroeconomics problems. Very few countries have realized this, the rest of the world meanwhile will keep shouting at each other doubling down on stupid policies not based in good examples and will keep blaming keynesianism or whatever neoliberal approach they can't understand.
Something that occurred to me might be referenced by that is the phenomenon of unidentified government personnel arresting protestors in Portland recently. It has been reported that they did not wear anything identifying the agency they work in or the particular individual (i.e. no equivalent of a badge number).
One problem with relying on this is that it throws the door open to state-funded trolls posing as independent citizen journalists.
The fundamental problem is that we (in the US) live in a permission-based system, not a freedom-based one. In this example, you have to ask for permissions related to running a business and using land.

The system that you have to ask permission from has a particular vision about how things ought to be done, and does not handle change or non-conformity well - even seeing them as a threat.

One hallmark for identifying such a system is that when there is not a law about something, it is referred to in terms like "legal grey area" or "outside the law."

We need to change the system to allow for freedom and individual decision making, without asking permission from the system. Freedom is what is left outside the boundaries of the law.
WRT to the "veto nonsense" you refer to: as far as I understand, the EU nowadays does have some sort of majority voting system for most areas, since the Treaty of Lisbon came into effect [1]. This also means that sovereignity of member states is already somewhat impaired (since any state alone cannot veto all EU decisions).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lisbon
> Leap years are fine. It’s leap seconds that annoy me.

The implementation of leap seconds is obviously worse than the implementation of leap years, though. (This might make more sense if leap seconds had come first...)

In a leap year, February 28 is followed by February 29, a day that doesn't ordinarily exist. It has the same weight as any other day. If you had a dentist appointment on the 29th, then on March 3rd people will all happily admit that the 29th happened and you might have had a dentist appointment on that day.

In a leap second, 23:59:59 is followed by 23:59:59 2, 23:59:59 Harder. Then, a few seconds later, everyone agrees to just pretend the whole thing never happened. The POSIX standard specifies that there are 86400 seconds in a day, and God forbid we deviate from the standard just because some days might -- but only in reality! -- have 86401 seconds.
You’re an affable rogue, after my own heart lol
Paul Graham has done it again -- vastly oversimplified things and cast himself and his peers as intellectually superior/nobler/braver.
I hope not for this future, we don't need a bigger leviathan which is disconnected from local population.
The only person here that knows what they're talking about. Everyone's talking about calipers :/
China vs. the USA New Cold War Historical Perspective
That has only been true for a few years. In any previous century, that claim was not political.
As far as I know, there is no currency that existed because there were taxes involved, and that's certainly not the experience of the major fiat currencies.

In fact it might be otherwise: taxes are a deterrent to use currency, which is why barter is so often used by people and small businesses to avoid the tax-man today.
You're probably right, however, you could also argue that (my GP comment notwithstanding) diversity of modern academic thought is still somewhat reduced compared to what it was, because the modern academic system pushes out people who would have been successful there in the past (for example see Peter Higgs' comments on the matter https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-... )
> This feels like having it both ways. "Innovation is morally neutral" and "harmful uses are the inevitable consequences of innovation" can't both be true.

I agree with you and I think I confused myself. What I mean is that technology has no inherent morality. It's not good, bad or neutral. You could judge a certain application in those terms, but you are really judging the morality of the user. Say a knife, it can be used as a cooking tool or a killing too. That is not to say the knife is good or bad, but that the user and his intentions are.

> so the person who invents the tiny cameras or the image-recognition software is inescapably responsible for the use of that technology to target political dissidents

I wouldn't really say that either. Unless the person was actively trying to make spy things to target political dissidents.

> it becomes harder to stop someone from using the invention in bad ways

The bad ways are not always clear. I will quote Freud from Civilization and Its Discontents.

"One would like to ask: is there, then, no positive gain in pleasure, no unequivocal
increase in my feeling of happiness, if I can, as often as I please, hear the voice of a child
of mine who is living hundreds of miles away or if I can learn in the shortest possible time
after a friend has reached his destination that he has come through the long and difficult
voyage unharmed? Does it mean nothing that medicine has succeeded in enormously
reducing infant mortality and the danger of infection for women in childbirth, and,
indeed, in considerably lengthening the average life of a civilized man?"

"If there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child would never have left his
native town and I should need no telephone to hear his voice; if travelling across the
ocean by ship had not been introduced, my friend would not have embarked on his sea-
voyage and I should not need a cable to relieve my anxiety about him. What is the use of
reducing infantile mortality when it is precisely that reduction which imposes the greatest
restraint on us in the begetting of children, so that, taken all round, we nevertheless rear
no more children than in the days before the reign of hygiene, while at the same time we
have created difficult conditions for our sexual life in marriage.... And, finally, what good
to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we
can only welcome death as a deliverer?"
Synopsys - Open Source Security & Risk Analysis Report 2020 [pdf]
Also interesting, Duda got even more votes (in absolute numbers) than 5 years ago :o
Your "just count the cancelled" does not work.

I have lived in the East Europe pre-Perestroyka and back then, it was "just count political prisoners; see how few there are!". And it was true -- there were not that many by 1980s. But there were few not because thought police was not real, but because any appearance of acting against it would be quickly dealt with. So very few people would dare.

That's the path we are taking today.
Don't you believe it has largely the same negatives as other social media like Twitter or Facebook? (At least in terms of the present topic that "news is addictive".) Why drop one but not the other?
I love PGs essays, but his take on Robert George is the opposite of what Robert George was saying.

PG: "He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't."

Robert George from the quoted tweet:
"Of course, this is nonsense. Only the tiniest fraction of them, or of any of us, would have spoken up against slavery or lifted a finger to free the slaves. Most of them—and us—would have gone along. Many would have supported the slave system and happily benefited from it."

https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/1278529694355292161

It doesn't change PG's point, but its just odd he used the quote in this way.
Not a conspiracy theory.

Look up the Koch Brothers. They fund PACs that pretend to be grassroots campaigns to shut down public transit expansion and successfully unfortunately.

Also the street cars collapse was very much due to automaker lobbying, like someone else said, you don't need to kill it directly; just make it unsustainable. Basically how Republicans govern; you don't kill it directly, you just choke it to death.
You probably need to include information about how uncertain that number is.

> New data on COVID-19 are available daily, yet information about the biological and epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 remain limited, and uncertainty remains around nearly all parameter values. [...]

> Many uncertainties remain. [...] Observed parameter values may also change over time (e.g., the percentage of transmission occurring prior to symptom onset will be influenced by how quickly and effectively both symptomatic people and the contacts of known cases are quarantined).

> The parameters in the scenarios:

> Are estimates intended to support public health preparedness and planning.

> Are NOT predictions of the expected effects of COVID-19.

> Do not reflect the impact of any behavioral changes, social distancing, or other interventions.
You have to justify getting all that money for doing something that's ultimately not that important for society somehow.
I think this is a great idea. In fact, I would like to see Google partner with things like Craigslist or FB Marketplace to list items from anyone and then use USPS to ship them. It would be like the worlds largest yard sale.

1. Dig something out of your basement that might be worth something; Treadmill, Pokemon Cards, etc.
2. "List" it on Google Shopping
3. USPS picks it up and delivers it
4. PROFIT!
This looks really good, but it mentions it uses AWS Simple Email Service to actually send the emails.

I was under the impression that one of the big value adds of the more expensive email services is that, basically, they work on solving the issue of avoiding your email landing in spam, whereas if you use a more 'direct' commodity service like AWS Simple Email Service or other cloud equivalents you have to kind of solve that problem yourself which is really, really hard and hence not worth the saving.

Is that roughly true? Or do I have it wrong?
Not that I make a practice of walking on country lanes in the US either, but when I've been on long distance walks in the UK and had to walk on a road for a stretch, there does seem to be a disproportionate number where there's a hedge or a stone wall inches from some twisty turny road surface. I've definitely walked stretches of road where I've felt very exposed, especially if the light was starting to fade.
I'm not sure why. The drive for me in Michigan to get to the nearest grocery store, was not meaningfully different than it was from, say a random suburb in the UK to get to the nearest Tesco.
Senate approves $2.8B plan to boost conservation, parks
SARS-CoV-2 as Wolverine: mutant take over
I personally tend to write very short, to the point Bio/Cover Letters. I feel like I have had good experiences with job applications as a result.

I have only had 3 serious applications (and been accepted for all), so I do not have much experience.

I do think it fits me as a person too. Short and to the point over digital communication - doesn’t shut up outside of it.
I really struggle to understand how you could have used the term "well-respected" here. It ain't muscle memory, this was done deliberately. Could you explain how you can refer to Boeing being well-respected after the 737 MAX fiasco? Maybe I am missing something.

[edit] remove a word
The United States is not a democracy. It’s a democratic republic. The founders explicitly did not want to create a democracy.
The Console War Is Over
Hopefully by then they should be available, we will be discussing how they are unsound and how it was a mistake to add them in like that, while everyone will be discussing this new language that is going to be so much better and fix all the problems.
Yes and yes, so long as you link to more info. It’s an attention economy
Is there more context on this? Why is he in the UK for example?
A/B test it L0L
Similarly I had to get a refund on a 10-pack of items when I only received a 5-pack. Months later I get an email saying I didn't return all 10 that I had ordered.

No shit, that was the problem!
Adding a bit to that, the EU made clear what its terms, dictated by internal rules and treaties (for instance, the Good Friday Agreement forbidding border controls within Ireland) would be and those terms haven't changed.

The UK has multiple times tried to ask for terms that violated previous agreements and that was refused.

The pain for the UK is entirely self-inflicted. It was clear from the start it was a foolish idea. It's clear now it was a foolish idea and it'll continue to be abundantly clear it was a mindboggingly foolish idea from the start.
> the rise of suburbs is directly related to the boom years after WWII

The idea of suburbs was created by Levitt & Sons when building Levittown, PA post-WWII. A neighborhood that had explicit terms that the owners would not sell or rent to non-white people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York
So one quadrant upvotes the posts they like, and downvotes the ones they don't like, another quadrant simply upvotes the posts they like, another tries to find a middle ground and mend rifts, another has no account, lurks and laughs inside.
>People have to realize

This is how I see it as well. We, collectively, are confronted with the reality that clean information is required for a healthy civic function.

Maybe like the Broad Street Pump cholera outbreak rectified unsanitary civic water management?
The problem is that Intel still can't ship 10nm in mass production.

Apple's has been shipping all new chips, in TSMC 7nm, since the iPhone XS in 2018, at tens of millions per quarter, in fact nearly every product Apple sells is 7nm.

They probably sell more Watches every quarter with 7nm than Intel has sold 10nm in all time. It's a mess and TSMC will ship 5nm this quarter. They are seriously behind in MASSIVE ways.
Not for Camera View
HSBC accomplice of U.S. political scheme against Meng Wanzhou
You could argue that automation is one of those improvements with no disadvantage. But it can also result in people losing their jobs and those people might be opposed to it.

I would argue that the same is true with the gig economy. It benefits the people participating in it greatly but it also cost some people their jobs (e.g. taxi drivers).
Techie here. I have one.
Unlock Samsung by 5 second free
Another way to put this..how much does the news media influence people?

In the U.S. 90% of the news media is held by 5 conglomerates.

You get creepy stuff like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI&feature=emb_logo

Makes you wonder how reliable the news media is in the U.S.

I can't even imagine how bad it is in countries where oligarchs control things.
There are powerful forces whose giant profits would be threatened by such a consensus. It’s hard to say if it will actually happen.
> Suppose I use "Shaq" as a stand in for a generic basketball player ... is that racist...?

Assuming you mean a negative stereotype, so for example not just a basketball player but one who does it instead of studying academic subjects: then certainly, yes. Imagine someone saying "oh those guys won't have a clue, they're just a bunch of Shaqs". Even if Shaq is the name of a real person, the racist undertone is clear.

> ... so is that ... sexist?

Not so much, maybe borderline, just as Karen is only borderline racist.

> The original Karen (from /r/FuckYouKaren) was a real person named Karen.

I dispute that many people using the term know exactly who that Karen is, and even moreso the people hearing it. To most, it simply sounds like a generic name that white middle-class women are likely to have.

(After a little Google research it seems there actually isn't an original Karen. KnowYourMeme (not exactly a reliable publication but relevant here!) had a few candidates but no clear winner - in fact the main contender was just a bad comedian using it for an unspecific annoying woman. In a post I found on /r/FuckYouKaren itself no one had any ideas. But that's all irrelevant anyway, if people using the term don't know.)

> If using a woman's name is sexist then so would using a man's name. ... And if it's "fantastic" to select a female ... sometimes it goes the other way too.

Actually, by "avoidable" I meant there's no reason to use any name at all. But let's put that aside.

Look, I get it, I honestly do. Equality really means treating people equally, and that means if we're allowed to use a male name as an insult then we ought to be able to use a female one too, right? I actually do think it makes a lot of logical sense.

The problem is that it only makes sense if the current base line is men and women already being treated equally - then adding extra opportunities, compliments and even insults equally would preserve equality. In practice, current societal norms are absolutely flooded with little microagressions that subconsciously make men and even women themselves think of women as somehow less important than men. I remember a very awkward encounter at a team building exercise where a colleague (actually a fantastically nice guy) jokingly let me go first at something with a cheeky "ladies first" comment, only to realise a female colleague was actually nearby (near enough to cause a bit of confusion!). Note that one woman jokingly accusing another of being a man would never be an insult, even jokingly.

Yes I realise there's the odd extreme feminist that genuinely thinks men are less important or worthwhile than women (e.g. those that say that men accused of sexual assault by women should be assumed guilty). But those numbers are absolutely dwarfed by men who think less of women. In that context, your idea (allowing insults that reinforce stereotypes against women in the name of equality) does not make sense.
> it is in line with the progressive left and thus implicitly at least supportive of "cancel culture" and censorship.

It's very easy to say everyone is in favour of cancel culture if you say that any support of the "progressive left" amounts to support for cancel culture.
It's most certainly better for your soul, but get ready to take a pay cut. After a short career in game development and a much longer career in museum/library/archives, my take is that our societies values are out of whack: the more your job benefits your community and the planet the less you will get paid, and vice versa. It's even worse for social services.

You'll also take a hit in your reputation among other developers, most of whom seem to have gone into it for money and don't seem to care whether or not their labor is doing anything to benefit society.

Good work is still worth doing of course. You just have to count the work itself as one of the benefits.

"Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation."
Hi, ${user_name}! How do you like our product?

We are working hard on ${first_clicked_link}.

BTW, ${user_browser} rules!
There are scammers who will buy the item, open the shrink wrap and remove the item before rewrapping it to make it look like they never opened it. This becomes more difficult if there are security seals.

See: https://lawyerrant.wordpress.com/favorite-scams/the-empty-bo...
I agree that funding != Control. More specifically the more diverse is the source of funding the less it is subject to control by that source.

But then the rest of your message seems to contradict that statement.

If "healthy and diverse press" is only guaranteed by single source of funding (state) then I don't see how this is diverse or healthy or independent.
And this may be obvious to some, but why does use inhibit rust?
It likely uses the data published by RiRs. I wrote something similar that discusses where it sources the data and how to generate it. https://github.com/geoacumen/geoacumen-country

I've been meaning to make automatic Github releases for it.
Boy are people stressed nowadays.
Maybe if you made it a two word email and removed the signature it would get 16x the engagement. Or if you had an empty email and put the question in the subject you’d get 32x engagement.

Attention spans these days are terrible.
Here is an interesting analysis on TFiR Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku5yfEMH0ug
Thanks. I know the CNN crew were definitely arrested for cause, but I hadn't heard about the Australian crew. Although, I'll have to do more research on that one, because the link doesn't really give much context as to why they were confronted in the first place.
There have been quite a few protests lately. Some of them involved vandalism, especially on the first day. In Portland over the last few days, there was some fireworks and a few trash cans were burning.

But the vast majority of protests were entirely peaceful. And and even greater number of individual protesters have done nothing wrong.

The police doesn’t get to shoot you in the head because you look like the people they saw on the news doing something wrong half-way across the country.

And even actual criminals aren’t fair game to police violence. This isn’t some gang war between equals. The police is expected to be better than that sort of revengeful sadism.
This practice predates internet shopping; before Amazon, it was the discount retailers like Walmart that were getting seconds.