skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It’s terrible. It’s due to Coronavirus. People are calling in and not going to work at the processing centers, which are mainly in urban areas. Trucks aren’t taking the mail to or from post offices. Carriers are understaffed.

There definitely is overtime going on, I’m not sure where the article gets that confused. You can have all the hours you want if you work for the post office right now.

We went party invitations to my mom brother who lives downstate four weeks ago. We just got it back the other day, he never received it. My mother still pays her bills with a check and she got an overdue notice from the power company. When she called a few days later they finally got the payment and applied it to her bill.
My pal is a mail carrier in Portland. A few weeks ago the postmaster general ordered a normalized practice of overtime use to clear large amounts of mail from some bins to cease.

Regularly, employees would catch up on mail processing this way. Mail has been piling up ever since.

From what my pal told us, didn’t make sense given how mail is handled but it is also not unusual for unexplained top down orders in USPS to be given.

Questioning USPS management does not make you a valued team member—-most people are focused on making sure their vacation time gets granted or trying to get successful bids for new routes or workflows.

From many stories about the workings of USPS, it sounds to me like there are widespread inefficiencies in the post office.

(And as an aside, there are definitely USPS employees that would not have jobs without the powerful union that keeps them there. Stuff that never would be forgiven in private enterprise happens all of the time.)

However, this sudden action from the PM general is not the way to bring about change, it is just causing an organization with a lot of operational debt to redline.
I always wonder if they can slice the data where they compare with decent human driver.

I drove for 15 years and never have a single accident. All of my friends never have major accidents (e.g. breaking bones).

Sure, we are privileged. We don't drink and drive. We aren't deprived of sleep and overworked and etc. We never have to go out when the road condition is bad. We don't really drive over a speed limit.

I'm worried that this "US average" stats is skewed by some bad drivers.
The location of the drop box for my precinct wasn't included in the state's list, but it ended up being a slot at one of the service windows at the city clerks office. Quick and easy.
> The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been widely debunked. It feels right, so it keeps getting spread around as a fact.

You say this as if there were consensus around that, but that's not true. The very strong, original formulation of Sapir-Whorf probably doesn't hold much water, but you'll still find enough linguists claiming that language influences thought nontrivially. But of course, you'll also find linguists arguing the opposite.
Nor do the private companies provide complete nation-wide service. The charter and purposes of the USPS cover far larger ends than that of a profit-making company.
This is a critical threat to democracy given the circumstances of the upcoming election.
How so? The company was already dying on its own, Google only vultured and bailed them out from bankruptcy. The product was a "mutant" trying new things that wasn't viable in the end.
Demand is way up due to the pandemic. Amazon hired 175,000 temporary workers to keep up with demand [1]. All the Trump adminstration had to do to cause a problem was not hire any extra help and disallow overtime.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-reaches-1-million-w...
From my reading is impossible to bring a Rust compiler yet (or at that time) because Rust can't compile itself on x86 and he also complained about the compilation times. From other similar threads that were suggesting to rewrite Linux in Rust I seen that Rust supports far less architectures then C so IMO the best solution for Rust community is too contribute to Rust kernels writen from scratch, it will start from zero users but this is how Linux started, then if the kernel and base tools are much better I can see it getting adopted in niche stuff at the start then in more and more things, IMO the RIR makes no sense for existing operating systems as Linux or BSDs, maybe for iOS, OSX where Apple controls the hardware and has the money and engineers to make the change and force the users to like it.
I love when the universe throws my own ideas back at me but with a slightly better implementation

The backstory on this was me freaking out when I had a newborn coming and I wanted my legacy to be handed to him at the right age if something happened to me.
> I strongly suggest a blanket policy for video-on during all Zoom calls.

How about: Hell, no!?

Video is a distraction at best. Usually it prevents discussion by emphasizing shallow sidechannels to the communication that add nothing but mislead everyone. People need to say what they think and not rely on nonverbal clues. Those only work in person, not over video. A talking head doesn't have posture. Lag means mimic and speech are misaligned.

Just treat it like a phone call, no video, just maybe shared slides or whiteboards. More happiness, more productivity, less misunderstandings.
At my last job, we hosted our own git repo with gitolite. That doesn't give you a ticketing system of course, but it was fairly easy to administer. And it sat on a miscelanous jobs server we already needed and didn't use up too much resources.

Remote access followed production norms, so no extra work there (other than a lot more people need access to git than other production servers). Maybe a few hours one time to lock down permissions for git etc, probably less fuss than getting SSO setup for a git SaaS.
If you haven't already, check out https://projecteuler.net/. It's a huge collection of logic problems of varying difficulty that require a mix of math and programming to solve. There are 723 problems at the time of this writing, and a new one is added each week. After solving a problem (you need an account to submit solutions, but can view all problems anonymously), you get access to a discussion thread where you can gawk at the often mind-blowing solutions that other solvers have hacked up in all kinds of languages.
Don’t be a clown.

Medicare has worked pretty well for the elderly for years. Old people and their families don’t lose everything for routine care anymore. Until it comes time for long term nursing home type care.

Everyone else is one car accident or cancer diagnosis away from ruin.
Ask HN: Best Dark Sky Replacement for Android
Apple officially shut down Dark Sky for all Android users yesterday. The app helpfully cleared out the 7 day forecast on the widget to let me know that it really wasn't going to work at all after August 1st.

What is currently the best replacement on Android? I don't mind paying for a reasonable subscription service if its privacy conscious or atleast isn't egregiously anti-consumer privacy. Dark Sky hadn't been as good for the past year but previously it was amazing knowing when rain was starting and stopping down to the minute, so it'd be nice to have great features like that.

I initially switched to Dark Sky and became a paying user due to the controversy of Accuweather's free app taking and selling user's location data without permissions [1] so I'd prefer not going back to their ecosystem. However when I was doing light research when the shut down was announced I couldn't find any good alternatives. Carrot seemed like the strongest contender, but it relies on Dark Sky's API in the background [2] so I don't know if its safe from Apple. After deleting Dark Sky I realized that on my 6 home screens half had some kind of widget with weather data from Dark Sky so I'd really like to get something setup soon.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/accuweather-caught-sending-geo-location-data-even-when-denied-access/

[2] http://support.meetcarrot.com/weather/
That's a very good point, thanks for bringing it up, with all the examples to back it up.

I agree that "cloud" is becoming a thought-terminating cliché (and I myself fall prey to reflexive reactions to that word all too often). I think the core issue is something different - it's about relationships. It's a point of view I've been exploring recently, and I find it to be illuminating. Some thoughts:

1. Individuals do not handle relationships as well as companies. That's the source of "subscription fatigue" - you end up having to mentally keep track of all the third parties you may or may not owe money to, that may or may not do something that impacts your life down the line. Companies have dedicated people and processes for handling this, most individuals do not (rich people can hire help).

2. Individuals do not necessarily want all these relationships. If I buy a toaster, I don't want any relationship with its maker[0] - for the same reason that when I buy bread from a grocery store, I don't want to enter into relationship with the seller, or the baker, or the farmer that provided the flour[1].

3. Power imbalance in relationships matter. Individuals are almost always irrelevant to the service provider, so for a regular person it's better to not have any relationship at all. For companies, it depends. A corporation like Microsoft or Google can be rather certain that Salesforce isn't going to pull a fast one over them, due to relative sizes and the amount of money changing hands. Smaller companies fall somewhere on the spectrum between individuals and megacorps.

4. The above colors risk calculation. If my relationship with the service provider is closer to that of peers, I can feel safer about depositing data with them or making myself dependent on their service, because they're incentivized to provide a good service to me, and I can hurt them if they don't (say, by switching to a competitor). Companies do the same calculus. A small studio is best to think twice about depending on third-party services for anything that may outlive such services. A large company can derisk the relationship through a contract.

5. Part of the objection I and many others have to SaaS is that consumer-oriented SaaS (including "stuff as a service", aka. turning products into services) tends to be exploitative by design. You wouldn't consider a friend a person that abuses you mentally or tries to cheat you out of your money, so why enter into a relationship with a company that tries the same? Except when you have no other choice, which is why everything becoming a service is a worrying trend.

--

[0] - Beyond the one managed by consumer protection laws. But this kind of relationship is something you do not need to mentally keep track of - it doesn't come with any unexpected consequences, and the terms of relationship are shared (they're part of the law).

[1] - Again, beyond the implicit ones fully handled by consumer protection and health&safety laws.
It's almost a semitone off, which means one key on a piano keyboard. People do hear that.
>Just because localization is at most one can do, it is not cure to solve all puzzles/problems.

But who is saying it does?
The Jedi were a death cult of religious fanatics who coerced child soldiers into fighting their wars of conquest.
Hi HN,

Personally, I created PM News to learn from the best.

I’m 21 and I love building products. I’ve made a few.[0]

I even started a popular newsletter [1] about making products.

Over time, I noticed that many of my readers wanted career advice to help them along their product career.

So I thought, “why not just create a place with the best product career advice on the web?”

PM News allows me to help those that want to advance in their career.

It also gives me an excuse to have conversations with some of the best product people in the biz like Chris Messina. And Brian Norgard (fingers crossed).

This is designed for people already in their career that want insights to advance further.

Hope you all find it useful :)

[0] https://antdke.co/pages/projects

[1] https://theproductperson.com
The article you linked to, does not appear to debunk the thesis mentioned in TFA, namely, most academic papers are never read by anyone other than the author(s) and the reviewers.
That sounds like a development nightmare like the one of the IE6 era, and even worse for supporting customers.

Basically you are saying code performance is nondeterministic across your user base and across time too?

I am glad WebGL is a thing for pages that need some 3D widgets where performance is not a big deal. But for general software or games? I will keep my native software.
Let's Talk about Cache
Wattpad – Where Stories Live
Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project
A lot of discussion on PredictIt is people trying to lie/mislead/emphasize certain facts to perform a pump n dump
Well, yes, obviously, but I'd counter-argue that the training regimes used for these games tend to focus on the mechanical side, while tactics and strategy are improved through playing matches. And even that part is called "The Grind" for a reason.
I am not disputing this statement.

Moreover, it is well known to sociolinguists that political and economic power is something that makes a language spoken by that nation more prestigious and more desirable to attain, and, therefore, contributes to the spread of that language. So, for the purposes of my dream, I can only wish that the US remains as influential as it is (and doesn't switch to Spanish in the process) :-)

I guess my point is that I am not sure that, say, having other countries where English is the primary language (as listed in the previous comment) contributes to the power of the US. Likewise, I am not sure that the further spread of English as an international language will by itself contribute significantly to the power of the US.

> I personally think Esperanto would be a good choice as an International Language

Ugh, not a fan. English is a vibrant, living language that already is being used by huge swathes of people for various purposes; Esperanto is not.
Analysis – How Netflix is winning the world?
I can tell that this comment has been downvoted, and I don't think it's fair to downvote people with first hand, daily lived experiences.

Perhaps it sheds additional light on the matter - a denizen of Berlin doesn't think the dogs are a problem. This idea both supports and undermines the parent thread's idea under discussion depending on how you take it, but it certainly adds color to it.

Don't we want their input?
God, I hate the rhetoric around the 3/5ths compromise.

Not because I support it, but because in the circumstances in question the implication that they should have been treated as "full people" (in the only place 3/5 applied) is the pro slavery position.

Of course the slaves should have had freedom. Of course they should have had the vote. But they had zero of either of those. Increasing the power of the society that enslaves by 3/5 the number of slaves isn't treating them as 3/5 of a person! Morally speaking the number should have been zero (or negative!) if it had to be a question at all.
Hypercapitalism would make it unprofitable to not hire women if they consistently ask for lower wages the same way it is unprofitable to not hire chinese labor. People are just fungible resources, the cheaper the better.
DEC missing the PC
That might be true, maybe you could help me understand what this means:

“Additions I would have I have benefited“
I think if you want people to learn about a subject, it's probably better to edit Wikipedia than to write books or papers on it. It's the first (and last) place most people look.
iRobot Root rt0 is a low-cost coding robot for kids
They’re quite different languages in almost every way.

Rust is a low level systems language, where you care about memory. You may not be malloc’ing, but you’re borrowing.

Conversely OCaml is an interpreted functional language. It has a much richer and more concise syntax than rust.

You can’t define operators in rust. That means no ‘|>’, no parser combinators. I doubt I’ll ever write a parser in a non-ML language, after my experiences with FParsec.

Rust can’t do partial application properly. I can’t compose functions in rust.

Don’t get me wrong though - Rust is a fantastic language and miles ahead of similar languages in terms of functional features. The only popular C-like language that’s catching up is C#, but discriminated unions aren’t due until next autumn.

Rust is better for manipulating a computer, OCaml is better for math-ey things such as parsers.

You should try OCaml, even if you don’t use it you’ll learn about programming from it.
> The all electric version in a Tesla uses around 3000 watts if I remember correctly, while a window unit use about 450.

Surely the 3000W unit will use 3000W when running full tilt and will cool significantly more and faster than a 450W window unit, and would achieve the same cooling as the 450W unit by only running about 15% of the time? (or at 15% power if it's an inverter AC).
Yeah, but there's a huge difference between publishing bleeding edge research that may still have fluctuating epistemic status and publishing literature reviews/overviews/surveys of the core foundations of particular fields that are well-studied and proven.

Most academic journals publish the former, not the latter. Academics are typically publishing research they think will push their fields forward some day or illuminate something as of yet misunderstood. These papers typically require lots of subject area knowledge about the current cutting edge research and landscape of very specialized fields--thus partly explaining the low readership.

I think it'd be a mistake to try to jam everything, especially theories or results for which the jury is still out, into wikipedia. The average person is not typically scientifically literate and has difficulties distinguishing between claims that have substantial evidence and history backing them and more recent claims that are still being researched.

Also, what's up with this article? It's quite insubstantial and has little to no content, let alone careful analysis of the situation. It's quite evident to me that it's biased garbage with an agenda of tricking poorly educated people into thinking modern higher-education is a waste of time and money (spoiler alert--it isn't, and without it we wouldn't even have many of the practical commercial developments (usually not associated w/ academia) we see today).
Note that the Telegram messaging app is free, with no in-app purchases or premium membership. They are paying Apple only the annual developer program membership.

> Telegram said that in 2016 Apple restricted the messaging app from launching a gaming platform on the grounds that it went against App Store rules.

Ok, so they wanted to launch their own game store, basically? And what would their business model have been?

> In its complaint, Telegram took issue with Apple’s argument that the App Store commission keeps it running.

Why do I doubt that they were going to offer their gaming platform at-cost?
This library is great.

Computers are so fast these days. It’s amazing how crap they do often are when it comes to plotting a few thousand data points.
I know it's completely unrelated to the article, but I would like to take a moment to plug an absolutely beautiful proof of the uncountability of [0,1], which I first saw in http://people.math.gatech.edu/~mbaker/pdf/realgame.pdf .

Briefly: Alice and Bob play a game. Alice starts at 0, Bob starts at 1, and they alternate taking turns (starting with Alice), each picking a number between Alice and Bob's current numbers. (So start with A:0, B:1, then A:0.5, B:0.75, A:0.6, … is an example of the start of a valid sequence of plays.) We fix a subset S of [0,1] in advance, and Alice will win if at the end of all time the sequence of numbers she has picked converges to a number in S; Bob wins otherwise. (Alice's sequence does converge: it's increasing and bounded above by 1.)

It's obvious that if S = [0,1] then Alice wins no matter what strategy either of them uses: a convergent sequence drawn from [0,1] must converge to something in [0,1].

Also, if S = (s1, s2, …) is countable then Bob has a winning strategy: at move n, pick s_n if possible, and otherwise make any legal move. (Think for a couple of minutes to see why this is true: if Bob couldn't pick s_n at time n, then either Alice has already picked a number bigger, in which case she can't ever get back down near s_n again, or Bob has already picked a number b which is smaller, in which case she is blocked off from reaching s_n because she can't get past b.)

So if [0,1] is countable then Alice must win no matter what either of them does, but Bob has a winning strategy; contradiction.
Yeah people might want to read "The Inside Story Of Jeff Bezos’s Fire Phone Debacle" for a counterpoint

https://www.fastcompany.com/3039887/under-fire
The spam is what pays the bills so it will not get de-prioritized.
Apple performs scan of all uploaded applications to check that they're not using private APIs. I might be wrong, but I think that unrestricted use of private APIs might result in broken security model. So allowing users to install any apps might affect security.

Probably better approach would be to develop better web APIs, so Telegram could be run in a browser with identical experience.
I know nothing about this but it sounds super interesting. Care to share more?
True, but you have to rewrite your application to switch to a receive queue polling model, whereas "tuning" is stuff you can get for free with your existing program.
That's a feature, not a bug. For those currently in charge at least.
AI can't tell the difference between interests and curiosity
“Can We Use Machine Learning in Safety Critical Systems?”-Richard Murray
For a short trip, I'll sometimes take laptop and Kindle. But, especially for long plane trips, I can't comfortably use a laptop and a tablet just gives me a lot more entertainment options. (It's also sometimes useful for taking notes by hand.)

And to another comment, yes the Kindle is small and light but it's something else I need to keep track of so I tend not to bring laptop + tablet + Kindle. (And I've never been able to make an iPad work for me as a laptop replacement.)
They can file complaints but that's not going to change much. If the EC decides to bring a case against Apple they will have the herculean task of arguing to the courts that Apple is dominant with less than 25% share of the smartphone market. I'm willing to bet it will be a repeat of the EC's state aid case.
So many Belgian cities. Dear God, after the rain, trying to pick your path through. Ugh.

And SF. And London.