skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
well that's not quite fair,

"Canastilla and Benard found that, ironically, attempts to implement meritocracy leads to just the kinds of inequalities that it aims to eliminate. They suggest that this ‘paradox of meritocracy’ occurs because explicitly adopting meritocracy as a value convinces subjects of their own moral bona fides. Satisfied that they are just, they become less inclined to examine their own behaviour for signs of prejudice."
In all your replies you are defending against a claim nobody is making.

Nobody said the president will just remain a president if he just says so. What I originally said is that the fact this (the acting president refusing to go through peaceful transfer of power) is a serious discussion is symptomatic of a serious issue, and I maintain that, and nothing you said contradicts it. You then replied with a weird tangent about Obama.
My first question would be whether the culture of protesting and having constantly negative coverage of the government makes any difference in a country full of old money.
The new MacBook Air comes in gold.
You are correct, the pending H-1B petition is unaffected by the latest proclamation/H-1B visa ban; it only applies if and when you want to apply for an H-1B visa at a US Consulate abroad. And yes, you can travel on your F-1 visa while the H-1B petition is pending or even after it is approved; this just means that you might to leave the U.S. at some point and apply for an H-1B visa to "activate" your H-1B status. But make sure to check with your company's attorney because your ability to travel on your F-1 visa could be compromised if and when the H-1B petition is approved if approved as a change of status.
These consultancies may also finally reap what they sow re: quality of work. I work in a major bank and some senior managers say they'd rather get the plague than a team of those guys. The managers need to deliver what they promised to their higher ups, and they've learned that these teams, however cheap they are, in practice will not help them with that. Btw these companies still manage to get some business with us, which I suspect is to some degree helped with bribes.
Is it really only a belief? They support it with research further in the article, and follow with even stronger assertion: "Perhaps more disturbing, simply holding meritocracy as a value seems to promote discriminatory behaviour."
> Top Right: People who insist on pointing out that the rules on mask wearing are arbitrary and don't allow for common sense, even as they wear masks when common sense says you ought to.

You mean "... as they don't wear masks ..." , correct? Otherwise I think you are leaving out the people who reject masks at every opportunity.
Make a better argument.
> But the other one was just as important: the e1000e driver should never have left its hardware configured in a mode where a single stray write could turn it into a brick.

... because, like, it's totally okay for the hardware to be bricked by a single stray write?

Make like Microsoft and blame the driver. :)

It should be a basic manufacturing test to repeatedly write pseudo-random garbage to the entire I/O register space, and check that the hardware never gets into a state that is not recoverable by either a simple power cycle, or, failing that, a factory reset.
> If we truly do support these goals, we won't be sidetracked by potential insurance claims of large corporations.

The victims of violence aren't large corporations; they're individual people whose homes and neighborhoods and businesses are not safe. The very people that the protesters claim to be protesting on behalf of.

The valid claim of the protesters that the rule of law is not applied equally to everyone, as it should be, is undermined when people use the protests as a cover to violate the rule of law themselves.
It is lock-in when it makes it very hard to move to anything else even if it's better. That's Nvidia's point. They don't play fair. They give this "for free" with hard strings attached to Nvidia.
True, that's pretty infuriating. I have mostly seen illegal sports streaming sites do that.
Oh, well obviously there are hungry and cold people in the world, but I was talking about within a developed country like the UK. People who go on about equality are concerned with making themselves richer because of billionaires. They are not concerned with making themselves poorer because of hungry and cold people in other countries.
Best article I've read in a long long time.
Thanks for this, it's a great counter to the common thinking here.

It seems that most of the market just does it wrong when they outsource. They either assume that the outsourced resource is a black box that produces finished products/closed tickets/etc, or they assume that the people on the other end are like a western developer in terms of background/education/culture/language/career path/goals.

What it seems you've done is treat these engineers as first-class employees in your company. For a new starter you'd provide training, context, you'd have ways to get them up to speed, you'd invest in processes and communication to make a separate office or timezone difference work.

Congrats, well done. I'm not surprised that you're finding the results to be so good! It's a shame more companies who outsource don't recognise that this level of effort is necessary.
Content-based features predict social media influence operations
Well, Fargo adopted approval voting by a 64% majority, and a ballot measure to bring it to St Louis this November is polling at 72% support.
X-ray plus machine learning could probably solve that problem quite effectively.

Or tamper-resistant RFID tags attached directly to the product.
Thomas Piketty, in [Cap­i­tal in the Twenty-First Cen­tu­ry][money]:

> Yet it seems to me that all so­cial sci­en­tist­s, all jour­nal­ists and com­men­ta­tors, all ac­tivists in the unions and in pol­i­tics of what­ev­er stripe, and es­pe­cial­ly all cit­i­zens should take a se­ri­ous in­ter­est in mon­ey, its mea­sure­men­t, the facts sur­round­ing it, and its his­to­ry. Those who have a lot of it nev­er fail to de­fend their in­ter­est­s. Re­fus­ing to deal with num­bers rarely serves the in­ter­ests of the least well-off.

[Rutger Bregman][ubi]:

> Poverty isn’t a lack of character; it’s a lack of cash.

[money]:https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/05/01/Piketty-C...

[ubi]:https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lac...
Actually, US News does seem to measure those things:

Duke student-faculty ratio is 6:1.
NC A&T is 18:1.

Duke is #17 in Best Undergraduate Teaching. Seems for NC A&T that info is paywalled.

Duke is #8 in Co-ops/Internships. This might also be paywalled for NC A&T.

Duke acceptance rate is 9%. NC A&T is 61%.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/duke-university-2920/ov...

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/north-carolina-at-2905/...
I learned my lesson with TVs on Amazon a few years ago too. There were a couple reviews noting cracked screens, thought it was probably just rare bad luck. Bought the TV, it arrived cracked.

Had Amazon schedule a UPS pickup for return and bought the TV locally. Poor packaging for TVs on Amazon just seems to be normal.
Rioters aren't protesters and there is nothing even close to "brutal" happening to the rioters. If anything, the state is showing remarkable restraint. Imagine if this shit was happening in China or Russia.

If you/they get what you want out of all of this, a neo-marxist-anarcho-commune-socialist-green-whatever, no-rules, but lots of rules enforced randomly by the mob, THEN you'll see real brutal-ism like you saw in CHAZ when the 'security' force gunned down two teenagers who were joy riding in a stolen car. The fact that current rioters have no real fear is because they know that the police are extremely restrained in what they do. Getting tear gassed or (rarely) hit with a baton/bean-bag is nothing close to what real brutality is.

Also, the fact that you are not aware of the deep reaches of cancel culture today is because you are aggressively conformist with your peer group so you only get your information from sources that are deeply filtered.
Filtering out the best articles out there is something I struggle with everyday. A very useful website, awesome!
The biggest issue with the idea of a meritocracy is defining merit.

One recurring issue I've seen throughout my career (and I have to admit to having fallen for this trap when I was younger) is, as an engineer, overvaluing technical merit and undervaluing both interpersonal and product/business skills.
Have you read the book that promoted the word meritocracy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

This critiques meritocracy. It also coins it.
Probably related to German language structure / separation of 'megawords' would be my guess.

T-Online is actually named T-Online as a corporate entity, so the domain isn't odd or anything.
What chance someone from western europe with a Bsc in maths and an Msc in computing science from a mid-tier university stand at getting a work visa into the US? From what I know, I would need to have a job lined up beforehand to stand any chance.

Moreover, if given such a visa, how beholden would I be to my employer. That is, if I were fired would I have to immediately leave the country, or could I perhaps stick with the life I had built up in the meantime.
Even then, it avoids open, path traversal, read read read, close.

More important is avoiding having to answer the question "where are my assets".
Yes, playing VR I think this technology is amazingly undervalued.

A lot of people focus on the negatives. Needing space, being locked off from your surroundings. But being entranced in a PS4 game is a type of locking off as well.

HL:Alyx really showed the potential of the platform and it's amazing. With the rumoured cheaper Oculus Quest and the less social outside world, I do expect these to be on the shopping list of many. https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1285917195562672130

(PS: He says it's not a cheaper version but it looks to be though. Probably one single LCD display as it has no IPD adjustment, cheaper headstrap.. I do think this is a cheaper version to bring it to the masses, which has been Oculus' goal all along.
Ha ha. This is the shortest!
> The "Rat Race": There is no better word to describe this. 90% of people who enter computer science / engineering courses don't have any interest in computers. They enter because they scored well in entrance exam (which can be games by studying some books relentlessly for some years), and since Software is still one of the highest paying fields.

I've seen this a lot, especially in ODC parts of Capgemini, TCS, Cognizant etc - it felt like only a very small number of people actually wanted to be developers or even architects; everyone else just wanted to be "a manager".

I'd asked about this strangenes, and Indian friends told me that managers were seen as superior, and even their families would push them to become managers.
Ask HN: Why Aren't FAANG Companies Lobbying More?
Especially for things like copyright reform, where large tech companies have more to gain than others in various fields do. We've all heard stuff about Getty Images vs Google over Google Images and the MPAA's actions being the original reason for YouTube's ridiculous content ID setup and broken copyright system.

So why don't Google and co try and lobby for copyright terms to be shortened, fair use expanded, etc? They've got more money than these older companies and organisations do, and seem like they could easily say, outbid/spend Disney in pushing for changes here.

So why don't they do that? Maybe even buy out a bunch of these organisations too.
The guy they’re “arresting” also doesn’t say anything, and is extremely compliant for someone who’s allegedly an anti-police protester. I believe that is a video of an informant extraction.
Of these two emulators, Ryujinx is almost certainly never going to achieve a good level of performance, because they chose to write it in C# of all languages. Take my advice: if you're going to write an emulator, do it in C or C++, preferrably C. Ryujinx is a mind bogglingly massive amount of wasted effort.
Next step: emulating nintendo switch games on linux on their nintendo switch. Switchroot (https://download.switchroot.org/) makes Ubuntu (based on L4T) and android releases available for running on older switches.
I live in a small (400-sqft) 1-bedroom that has no internal doors. It was never rented as a WFH space. If you and your partner are both on calls a lot of the day - it's kinda hard to do them if you have to talk over one another. It used to be you had 8-hours of separation a day. Now, you don't have any. More bedrooms would provide some of that.

Some people like having living rooms without office furniture jammed into them - go figure. Most people I know would have to get rid of some furniture in order to fit a desk nicely into their living room.

> I'm apalled that there are adults getting 3 free meals and are upset that they now have to get those meals themselves

The 3 meals a day thing just sounds like gatekeeping. "You must not be a real adult because you want food that's included in your benefits instead of having to labor over it like the rest of us who don't have such benefits!" (Or you have to pay for those meals to be delivered - which is very costly on an individual scale)

What if you can't go get your oil changed now? Should I say, "I'm appalled that there are adults getting oil changes at service centers and are upset that they now have to get those oil changes done themselves"
The fact that America is extremely non-racist and business in America is extraordinarily meritocratic might be the most common “it’s true but we can’t admit it” thing these days.

Disappointed that racists (“your race determines what you can accomplish”) are firmly in control these days.
60 Minutes had a great episode on the state of politics and populism in Hungary last week.

"We do not want to be diverse": Why Hungary is paying its citizens to start families

https://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/M777NaE_R1H9_e4sn...
The third party solutions have to resort to writing out source files, proper support in tooling can be much more efficient.
It's fair and fine to critique the implementations of "meritocracy" that we see in the world, and also to critique the inflationary aspects of how it's usually articulated (e.g., person X is good at taking calculated financial risks that result in lots of money, therefore that person is "good" and should possess political power and authority).

But the sort of rhetoric presented here risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If you attack also the noble parts of the meritocratic ideal -- impartial, universalist fairness -- what's to stop you from winding up with what amounts to a caste system wherein unfair a priori privileges go unexamined and treated as merely "the way things are"? (Which, historically, is the norm for human societies?)

Far better to reconstruct meritocracy, or replace it with a new iteration, that 1) provides genuine, unfettered opportunity to all individuals at all stages of life (so, for instance, one can obtain education, however defined, at any age) and 2) grants only domain-specific authority, without making false generalizations about aptitude (e.g. someone who's good at X isn't sloppily regarded as having some sort of a priori genius that also makes them good at Y and Z).
Bad citations in this article.

Original article:

> Talent and the capacity for determined effort, sometimes called ‘grit’, depend a great deal on one’s genetic endowments and upbringing.

Linked article (on 'depend') has the following conclusion which explicitly disagrees with this claim:

> Our results based on 584 effect sizes from 88 independent samples representing 66,807 individuals indicate that the higher order structure of grit is not confirmed, that grit is only moderately correlated with performance and retention, and that grit is very strongly correlated with conscientiousness. We also find that the perseverance of effort facet has significantly stronger criterion validities than the consistency of interest facet and that perseverance of effort explains variance in academic performance even after controlling for conscientiousness. In aggregate our results suggest that interventions designed to enhance grit may only have weak effects on performance and success, that the construct validity of grit is in question, and that the primary utility of the grit construct may lie in the perseverance facet.

Further, the logic here is unsound:

> According to Frank, this is especially true where the success in question is great, and where the context in which it is achieved is competitive. There are certainly programmers nearly as skilful as Gates who nonetheless failed to become the richest person on Earth. In competitive contexts, many have merit, but few succeed. What separates the two is luck.

The author asserts Gates was successful because he was a good programmer, and that therefore other good programmers should have equal success. Yet most people understand Gates is not an amazing programmer but rather has his strengths in understanding business. Microsoft did well because of business positioning in a new and rapidly evolving field, not because they were a revolutionary future codebase.
There is no restriction on helping illegal immigrants (a lot of charities do this); the issue is paying them for work done since they don't have work authorization.
I got the same feeling from that part.
I am sympathetic to the practical issues & biases at play when discussing the systems we often call meritocracies; especially when those systems result in anti-meritocratic behavior.

However, what is the reader supposed to come away with here as an alternative? Equality of outcome? Should it really be that any given combination of work ethic, dedication, novelty, and a bit of luck will not land you above the mean? I personally am all for improving meritocracies so they live up to the name, but abolishing them due to their implementation failures seems silly and more importantly, the alternatives are dangerous.
Indian IT consultancies have been struggling against technological obsolescence for 30 years. And they will continue to struggle for many more. This is an idiotic hit piece hit written by a journalist who needs to meet his quota. This journalist has never worked for one of these consultancies, a tech company, or been in C-suite of any org.

I have worked in these "consultancies" so here is my take. There is a wide range of talent in these consultancies. Some examples are web app developers/software engineers, website people, implementation engineers/enterprise app software, supply chain, cybersecurity, etc.
Yes, unfortunately, some of this talent is not familiar with basic software tooling like basic linux commands or git or setting up a path variable. This sounds really bad until you work with a Georgia Tech computer engineering grad and realize he doesn't know this either.

Many methods of sales. A sale can be considered a billion dollar deal or having a director hiring a contractor. The billion dollar deal is closer to consulting. The director hiring a contractor is closer to professional services firm.

Prior to these consultancies, the orgs would hire their own employees and train them. What changed? Contractors easier to layoff than W-2 employees. Maybe their own employees didn't have the expertise.

The truth of the matter is for most organizations, IT is a cost center along with legal and finance. It is not their money maker. They have no interest in innovative IT/software "technology" until their competitor in the same industry as them has it. Price matters. Laying off people easily matter.

"Consultancies" exist for that reason. Look past their marketing/branding and their official classification is a professional services firm.
Looking for startup ideas? Watch out for unbundlings
That depends on how you define "productivity" - is it how quickly an individual can solve a defined use-case on a timescale of a few days or how well a team, division or company can solve the overall problem.

As a former Perl wrangler, I was super-productive in the short term with terse, elegant, and often clever Perl code: I could really express myself. Maintaining the codebase on the long-term was a nightmare though, so team productivity wasn't great. Go is the opposite, "harder" to write, but much easier to read and understand - which pushes up team productivity significantly.
Who says that meritocracy aims to eliminate inequality?
I agree with this, but the case grows even stronger when you consider native mobile applications. I think we're going to be seeing a lot more apps in the future, and far fewer websites.

Why?

- Power consumption is much, much lower in a native mobile app

- SwiftUI is easier than React and CSS. I've used both, and I can't think of a drawback. (Friends tell me good things about Flutter, though I have not used it.)

- Web-like linking is just going to keep growing in apps

- App store guarantees that my parents won't get hacked via their iPad, but I can't say the same about their old computers that run Chrome!
If you're going to buy a Lenovo laptop from Lenovo, why not buy it directly from Lenovo? You'll get free shipping either way. Shipping speed, or something else?
While your premise is true, any supplier giving Walmart seconds has their days numbered. Walmart runs such a tight ship around their supply chain that it'd neither go unnoticed nor unpunished.

What appears to be Walmart getting factory seconds is usually Walmart demanding a custom variant of a product. Walmart uses their own consumer research and sales (and just as importantly, returns) data to form strong opinions on optimal price points, margins, feature requirements, warranty periods, materials, etc for a given product/category, and they'll use their volume to get a manufacturer to create a custom variant of a product with what Walmart considers an optimized design/bill of materials.

It's true the "Walmart version" of a product is likely less robust than the non-Walmart version, but that is the result of explicit and precise demands formed from actual consumer behavior. Manufacturers then have to consistently and reliably fulfill Walmart's orders to those exacting demands; that's rarely achievable by binning seconds to Walmart. Especially so for product variants that require actual BOM changes. Rather, it usually entails dedicated production runs, with all of the level of care and QC as the original product's manufacturing.
While I agree that your use-case is not shady, I am not sure how I would work that in the marketing material for the website — maybe I just suck at writing marketing copy.

But in any case, your response does tell me that there are other things that can be done with that information, so maybe I should focus on the IP thing, and have the geolocation features kinda hidden away in the documentation pages.
No, actually you had too few blockers running. The article loads fine for me with all js/css disabled.
Seems a bizarre decision when if the hype is to be believed the real jump this generation is the increased drive speed meaning you not longer have to design levels around loading corridors. Once you release cross generation you can't build a game around that anymore.
> What's happening in the US emerging from below

Partly, yes. But it is also being co-opted by people whose actual motives are very different from the perfectly justifiable demands for equality before the law.

> without anyone orchestrating it

It may have started without anyone orchestrating it, but I don't think it's that way now. See above.
That half paragraph should have been the basis of the entire article and is a much more interesting discussion.