skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree that this is an awfully conventional list. I don’t intend to argue the author’s taste here, just provide another counterpoint.

If you look at their favorite books, the ones in red, they are almost all standard space opera written decades ago. That’s a narrow slice of possibility. Writers from the canon are wildly over-represented, IMHO — Asimov has 8 books on the list, at least, but most circles I’ve run in consider him well surpassed even by his contemporaries. Even the LeGuin they include is old, before her shift to (in her own words) writing like a woman, rather than a fake man.

(By “circles I run in” I mean a degree in English literature with an emphasis on science fiction, and many geeky and literate friends in the ensuring 25 years. That’s not a judgement, just where I come from.)

They include no Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Ian McDonald — and those dudes are only “modern” from the perspective of the 80s. They include no James Tiptree Jr (a woman, for those not in the know), Pat Cadigan, Nancy Kress — and again, those are old-skool, established.

So I agree. This is a greatest hits list of popular and conventional science fiction over the last 100 years. As a reading journal I have no argument with it. As a way of understanding or modeling human diversity in the future, which is what they appear to claim in the followup article, it does feel like a small echo chamber.
Why do you assume good intentions? It's more likely that this law was the result of campaign bribes from unions.

Unions want to have fewer (unionized) people employed at higher compensation. Gig workers go against that because there is higher employment at lower compensation.
What happens if ride requests for both come in at the same time? Do you take the uber one or the lyft one? If you work for uber, you're obligated to take the uber ride. Ditto for lyft.
> the best way to allocate resources

i think the word that jumps out at me here is "best". what does this mean? is there an absolute agreed-upon best, or is best relative?

in this situation (re: ride-share companies), i think it's entirely possible that there are overall market wins -- more money ends up circulating -- but that there are local losers, specifically the employees of these companies, and local winners -- the management, investors, and employees of these companies -- and that the group of losers actually outnumbers the winners.

some folks put the rideshare-using public into the group of winners, which i think is debatable.

either way, i think it should be permissible to defend the group that's least able to defend itself -- rideshare drivers who are doing gig work to make ends meet -- even if that results in "suboptimal" global outcomes.

i think this debate broadly parallels the overall debate in neoliberal economics. for instance, yes, trade makes everyone better off on average, but in practice it makes some folks (the 1%) much, much better off, and impoverishes broad groups of other people.

i think i heard from this podcast:
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/17/21327166/american-compass-the-...

the term "economic piety" -- the naive idea that by growing the pie, everyone becomes better off. this hasn't proved to be true in practice, and some economists are beginning to regard the idea with a bit of embarrassment.
>Every decent chemist can produce that stuff.

After reading, "Novichok agents: a historical, current, and toxicological perspective"[1] it looks like the only places to have produced such agents are Russian chemical weapon labs and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Central Analytical Database.

Maybe someone who works in the field can provide some more evidence either way?

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6039123/#R19
It reminded me of those chatbots from the 70s which would give vague replies to your question that at first glance looks relevant to what you're saying, but are actually just generic nonsense.
Sure? I'm not particularly familiar with this law, but I generally agree patents should have relatively modest limits.

Not sure how this applies to the current conversation though, of all the things that Uber and Lyft are commonly accused of I don't think protectionist patent enforcement is among them?
Not quite. If Uber and Lyft must shoulder the burden of full-time employee status, they should get the benefits, too: dictating when someone works for maximum profit, and a no-compete clause in the contract.

The best solution is for the state to end the distinction between independent contractors and full-time employees. I wonder if there's a way to manipulate state corporate taxes and credits to essentially nullify the federal employee status rules. Increase corporate state income tax, use the revenue to credit the employer's portion of social security tax and the independent contractor's excess social security tax. Put a state sales tax on group medical insurance plans and use the funds to provide a public option. Could get complicated, but there's probably a way.
I also didn't really get the love of Foundation. I like a lot of Asimov's short stories but just found Foundation to be kind of dry.

While reading it I also noticed that there were no female characters in the book. Since I didn't like the book I haven't read any of the others in the series but I seem to recall someone saying that when the lack of women was pointed out to Asimov that he made women central to at least some of the prequels?
Good, this can wait till Covid-19, forest-fires and other urgent matters right now in California have been taken care of.
Parsing S-expressions in C (2019)
Update: https://twitter.com/redboxwire/status/1296521405010386944?s=...
Just a question - why build public transport at all if it's undesirable? That just pushes everyone who can afford NOT to take it out, which leads to pollution, but worse, the effect that the populace using the public transportation are probably seen by others as 'more undesirable', leading to a snowball effect of people not using it until it's fully subsidized and terrible. That's what basically happened to busses in my old city. Even the less well off people would tell you not to ride one because it's full of crazies/homeless/beggars/etc. We're like, worse off than if they'd never have built it at all.

If we're serious about modernizing and reducing our carbon footprint, we should provide reliable, safe, comfortable transportation that people want to take. Not relegate it as a public service for the needy. (though the both can work together)
Which is why we get distortions like more research to breast cancer than prostate (quick googling suggests similar death rate 38:1, 41:1 respectively)

https://prostate.org.nz/2014/01/men-die-earlier-womens-healt...
This should be completely obvious, but largely irrelevant to the topic at hand. The linked tweet talks about how difficult it is to remember the order of the terms when you implement clamp a certain way; I just wanted to point out that with a different solution, the order surprisingly doesn’t matter at all.
There’s an obvious solution to this:

require('clamp')(num, min, max)

1 million monthly downloads
Imagine creating an app called "Clean Streets" - basically people can put bounties on streets, other people can collect the bounty by picking up the litter. Sounds like a great little idea right? The app takes a 1% fee for server upkeep. Win/win, bored teenagers make some extra money and your neighborhood gets cleaned up... right?

Wrong. Turns out, people aren't willing to pay that much for people to clean up their streets - only $1-5 on average per job. Yet it takes an hour to clean the street sometimes. That is an abysmal hourly wage, how can you expect desperate impoverished single mothers trying to work 3 jobs to live off of this?? Clean Streets ought to give a living wage and full health benefits to anyone who signs up. Oh, except... just one problem... the 1% transaction fee isn't enough to fund that, and jacking up pricing just means people stop using the app altogether.

So yes, in theory this app is great - if you can restrict its use to only non-desperate people. But desperate people would nevertheless try to make a living on it, and you would get lambasted by human rights activists for exploiting the poor. Sigh, I wish there were a way for things like this to exist.
You're correct about the antivax folks, but I do think flat earth is largely a right-leaning phenomenon. That aside...

> equality of outcome not equality of opportunity

Equality of opportunity is no greater thing to cherish. Opportunity comes from circumstance, and therefore this equates to wishing for equality in circumstances. Boiling this down to its fundamentals, this would mean important life decisions like whether to have children (and how many), what kind of hobbies and preferences people have, etc., would be left to the whims of balancing acts by the state.
This is still baffling. To have that many records leak, and try to play a hush-hush strategy AND pay the hackers makes no sense at all, especially from a former federal prosecutor standpoint.

There’s more to this story that is being told to the public.
Lawyers that do billable hours aren't the employees of the client they bill. So you actually are proving the point opposite to what you wanted to prove.
It's actually that there is no amount of thrust that would propel you to the speed of light - no 'almost' about it.

From the perspective of an outside observer, a constantly-accelerating spaceship will approach the speed of light, but never quite get there. This will happen regardless of the level of thrust.

Alcubierre drives are pretty sweet - the only trick is they seem to require negative mass [0]... at least they've gotten down the requirement from a negative Jupiter mass to a mere -700 kg!

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive#Mass%E2%80%93...
I was reading a scifi book the other day, and it just seemed to tickle something familiar. I eventually realized I must have read it long ago and totally forgotten it.

I've read thousands of books, but I never kept a log and have no way of remembering them all.

The standout in my mind, however, is "War of the Worlds" by Wells. It is the first scifi book I ever read, picking it out at the library because it had a cool illustration of the tripod on the cover.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, and like the purported first hit of heroin, the rest of my life I've looked for something that good again :-)
That is incorrect - I would actually owe my bank an additional prepayment penalty, according to my mortgage structure.
What Saudi Arabia has done in Yemen is a war crime in my opinion. But it's also part of an ongoing proxy war against Iran, whose government has made it clear that the goal is to destabilize the Saudi regime. So no, not comparable to Russia's ongoing attempt to reassemble its lost Soviet empire by destabilizing and invading neighbors who pose no threat to it.

Go read that wikipedia article you posted. It links to a good explanation of the Iran-Arab proxy conflict.
For those wondering why Lyft and Uber doing the shutdown, it's to bully voters into voting their way on Prop 22 in November.

They had two years to adjust their businesses for a proposition approved by voters. They chose to spend nine figures fighting it in the press and the courts.
I am not saying don't preserve food though, rather cut out the activities that make us need to preserve it so long. For example, shipping food internationally in cooled shipping containers. It seems pretty excessive, in some cases frivolous. Like shipping out of season fruits to Australia so we don't miss out year round.

I think I wouldn't have this opinion if shipping were carbon nuetral mind you.
Try counting the total number of your ancestors: you have 2 parents, they have 4 parents in total etc., i.e. 2^N where N is the number of generations. Going just 40 generations back (about 1000 years), you had 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776 ancestors.
Well, that edition came out in 1602 so it isn't surprising it is so expensive! :-P
Others have noticed this too— some examples:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/1qmtoi/sid_fro...

https://matthewdicks.com/film/2018-5-23-sid-from-toy-story-w...
You think Burger King gives a shit if their cashier also takes shifts at McDonalds?
Hehehe.... my condolences... we're still trying to recover
Is forcing wheelchair users to use subway human decency to you? We're talking about a situation where it's cheaper to let them use taxi service, and it's a better experience.

My uncle lives in a wheelchair by the way. The horror of imagining him having to use the subway...
It doesn't to me.

This sounds like saying someone in India who wrote code for a website being accessed from California needs to be paid CA minimum wage.
No, because tutoring companies don't give "microshifts" for this exact reason.
I'd love a version of this just on epic.com, but for now it seems you can use Geforce now on the web https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/08/20/how-to-play-geforce...
> And who is going to make the Space Force clean up our orbitals after a battle or war?

as if the rest of the military think that long for any conflict.

From past performance, they will probably install a terrorist organization and/or dictator in orbit.
I agree, but imagine that this Uber/Lyft experience was not subsidized by VC money. Would you be willing to pay 2x of a typical taxi to get this enhanced experience? Probably most people would stick with the street taxi in that case...
The idea isn't ludicrous, although the torch-ship speeds of 39-day transits are definitely out of reach for now. The basic idea is, let's attach a nuclear reactor to an ion engine. Further, let's make the propellant hydrogen so we can refuel anywhere in the solar system.

If we want to get serious about exploiting the solar system, we'll eventually have to give in and embrace nuclear technology, whether something like VASIMR or a nuclear-thermal design like NERVA. We already routinely park 100MW+ nuclear reactors in port for our navy, why not consider civilian use for space exploration? We already know many ways to mitigate risk for the launch of nuclear material.

I think Musk, Zubrin, et al. analyze propulsion technologies from the perspective of how to enable a journey to Mars now. In that light, something like Raptor makes much more sense. You still need a chemical rocket engine to lift off from Earth or Mars, so in the near term a nuclear ion thruster just adds far too much complexity to justify its inclusion. Further, it's difficult to imagine SpaceX obtaining the political backing to put nuclear tech into space as a private company. This is also why Musk would rather power Martian propellant plants with fields of solar arrays instead of the much more mass-efficient space-rated nuclear reactors that NASA has been developing.

But imagine if we actually developed a Mars colony with millions of people. The logistics of seeding a colony on Mars with chemical thrusters already boggle the mind. Economics would basically forbid meaningful interplanetary trade unless we develop new technology with much higher specific impulse. It would be even more impactful than moving from air-freight to container ships.
I respectfully disagree.

When I was a structural engineer (Ontario EIT) I did not think that buildings were going to change the world dramatically. I thought software, biotech, and nanotech would. And so far, it's been software that has been leading the way with biotech coming second. Software is huge.

We've only had the internet for a few decades and it's already dramatically changed almost anything I can think of. Politics (including war, espionage, campaigning, propaganda), the economy (gig economy, AirBnb / Outdoorsy, high frequency trading, remote work), society / culture (including the quality range of damn near everything from shows on Netflix to music to even food), funding (Kickstarter, cryptocurrencies).

Like, I struggle to even comprehend how many decisions are made by computers around the world each second. Cyber is the number one issue on the DNI report on global security. It's a big deal.
If this could convert passive voice to active voice, or underline it as an error, this could be a great technical writing tool for inexperienced writers. Good technical writing is hard, a tool similar to this could be useful.
How long do you need to accelerate at that pace to reach C? 299,792km/s / .01km/s => 29 million seconds? ~335 days?

I'm assuming a lot of things would go wrong as you get closer to C...
I totally agree, I think Foundation is a fun book, it just does not deserve the accolades it receives. Same thing with Heinlein, can be kinda fun, but an alien sex cult with the leader hovering naked women into his lap is not that interesting. I just read Ubik and you can see some of these amazing time travel sci-fi concepts playing out, conversely in Heinlein's 'Time Enough For Love' the protagonist goes back in time, sleeps with his own mom, and tells her he is her son from the future. It just feels dumb to me.
Look at the bigger picture. The loan here was probably made originally by Citibank to Revlon, and then the loan was sold to Brigade. That's implied by the expected payment flow - Revlon to Citibank to Brigade. So Citibank was the loan originator, and when they sold the loan, became just the servicer of the loan. That's all quite common.

Citibank, by paying off Brigade, effectively bought the loan back. Something Citibank might choose to do under some circumstances, and may have the contractual option do to. If Revlon were not going broke, this would be a non-problem. Revlon still has the obligation to pay Citibank. Citibank would just have another loan on the books, and could hold onto it and collect the payments, or sell it off again.

Revlon is in trouble and trying hard to restructure their debt.[1] As a servicer, that wasn't Citibank's problem. Having accidentally bought the loan back, now it is.

This will probably all turn on the contract terms. Did Citibank have the option to buy back the loan from Brigade? Details like that.

I have a friend at a big law firm who deals with contract law messes like this. She's said that IPOs and startups are fun - everybody is happy and upbeat. In bankruptcies and workouts, everybody hates everybody else. No fun.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-04/revlon-wi...
What has your posts got to do with anything ? Are you saying that the massive success of LA, SF, and CA economies are due to Democratic politicians ?
I think MLM is different. A small number of people might make a lot of money, funded by the losses of most of the rest. In that respect its more like gambling, and people can be more easily fooled to think that they'll be one of the lucky few.

Working as a driver for uber/lyft isn't really like that at all. You know approximately how much you can stand to make per hour. There isn't a small pool of drivers somehow making tons of money at the expense of the rest. Being a driver isn't predicated on mistakenly calculating your odds of winning big.
$3.3M raised during a pandemic for NLP focused startup
Shutdown has been averted by judge: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24227340
Where in California does your sister live that doesn't offer Paratransit services?
You're correct in the sense that this is what science is per Popperian definition. However, I would be careful to assume that many scientists are actually so busy refuting hypotheses. The Popperian ideal and the reality in science are two different things.

To cite a paper I currently read:

> "As Chalmers (1999) remarks, when we turn to history of science, the idea that falsificationism is actively undertaken borders on laughable (see especially Feyerabend, 1975). Not only do scientists exhibit extreme reluctance to falsify their work (Woodward and Goodstein, 1996), but if falsification had been followed as a scientific method, then many of the theories generated by some of the best minds in science would never have progressed beyond their earliest explications (see Chalmers, 1999: ch. 7; Feyerabend, 1975; Kuhn, 1970c: 234; 1970d: 13; Von Dietz, 2001: 22)." (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1350508409104504)

I haven't read all the sources. But it's worth mentioning that your point is controversial.
My customers have iPhones. They want to install some private, custom business software that I built for them. Most of the time, I can build a web app to satisfy their needs. Sometimes I can't and that's when things get really annoying.

iPhones have 50% of the market in the US where I do business. Either I have to go through their review process or register for the Enterprise app development program. All for phones that they already made money on when they sold it to us.

Maybe another option for iPhone users is to form a giant co-op corporation, get a D&B number, "hire" everybody who wants custom apps as "employees" and start our own internal app store... it'll cost us $299 per year.

Anyone interested?
Actual Title:

GPT-3 Is an Amazing Research Tool. But OpenAI Isn’t Sharing the Code.
I use Elixir day to day, and I agree, piping is one of the nicest things about it. And your code is the way I would have written it.
Not for nothing (and feeling somewhat old for remembering this) but lyrics from a song from the late 80s come to mind[1].

"That those who know what's best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves"

It was on a playlist I was listening to last week walking my dog. Seems quite apropos here.

[1] https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rush/witchhunt.html
anyone have a non-paywall version

edit: found one:

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/904113981/former-uber-executi...
If you keep financial instruments simple (e.g. basic bonds), then risk is easier to measure.
moral victory? this is government overreach. people set their own hours. they are contractors not employees. the government changed the rules not because they care for you but because they collect more taxes from employers than contractors.
I think that's where a lot of people really overlook this. I'd be curious to see the percentages of 'full time' drivers vs gig drivers. Plenty of drivers I know just work this a couple hours a day to help cover cost of a new car or for beer money. It's not intended to support full time work. Like a small protein bar isn't meant to be a meal replacement. I wonder if Uber/Lyft should have fought the amount of time or rides that somebody can complete per day as a means to keep it really classified as a gig whereas they've set themselves up by allowing people to attempt to be full time drivers.
The law makes their business model unprofitable so they are losing money if they keep operation

Of course the next step is to stop operating.
Competitive markets combined with regulation are the way we allocate resources in virtually every country. Unchecked competition can lead to exploitative races to the bottom, concentration of capital in the hands of people who cannot use it efficiently, and wanton externalising of costs (pollution, insurance, congestion). Ridesharing did create a competitive market and now its negative aspects should be curtailed.

I'm not in favour of a return to the 40 hour workweek which seems arbitrary and archaic and smacks of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I would prefer an equivalent to the 40 hour workweek for contractors, we have price controls for farm workers, but for some reason act as though it's normal for Uber drivers to work for effectively well under minimum wage. We need to ensure the drivers are getting a bigger share of the proceeds at the time the profits are being generated, not afterwards after labour has lost all of its negotiating leverage and granted a massive warchest of money to capital. States like California should be competitive and fight for a share of profits, not passively roll over.
"You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you."
If you are writing code that is clamping a lot of numbers, the GC churn from building a new array every time might be a problem.