skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That sounds rather weak - the fact I have not left the country does not imply I have voted for Boris Johnson as PM.

Although Trump could then claim that 11M card-less Mexicans who have not left the USA in November were actually voting for him, which would give him California in the Electoral College.

In the end I do not see a way to imply someone's vote - one needs to actually count their vote in the normal way.

I respect your position but I remain convinced that some form of democracy is needed in corporate life.
I’m sure you’ve run into a less egregious version of this at some point yeah? Automation doesn’t always take longer than doing the task. But it does mean zero progress for part of it.

In any group of 7 engineers there is at least one who is more than happy to do a repetitive task. The pay is the same. Whether there is one who would rather do anything but that? I think that depends on luck, and whether the other 6 chased them off already.

The “it’s not so bad” crowd always fits in easily, but they might not be that effective when push comes to shove.
The force cannot possibly depend on the drive's kinetic energy, because the kinetic energy is based on the velocity, which is relative to the frame of reference you use to measure it. If your frame of reference is the drive itself, then the kinetic energy is always zero, and conversely it's always possible to use a remote galaxy as a frame of reference, which makes the kinetic energy (and velocity) absurdly high.
> Phosphine can be made from elemental phosphorus by simple acid catalysis.

Can you point me to a resource that describes phosphine occurring in nature from an abiotic process?

The Wikipedia article on Phosphine[1] describes an acid-based route to create Phosphine industrially, but notes that:

> The acid route requires purification and pressurizing.

While Venus would seemingly have the needed atmospheric pressure, what about the conditions for purification?

> The most likely source is reduction of phosphate in decaying organic matter, possibly via partial reductions and disproportionations, since environmental systems do not have known reducing agents of sufficient strength to directly convert phosphate to phosphine

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine
You know I did a bit more reading about this, and it sounds like you’re right. There’s a great discussion about it here:

https://mesa-dev.freedesktop.narkive.com/qq4iQ7RR/egl-stream...
Disappointingly, it turns out that Przewalski's horse is not as exotic as people used to think.

There were several species of horse in the Americas until quite recently. It would be more interesting to clone some of them.

Also camels, a really big bison and bear, saber-toothed tigers, dire wolf, giant beaver, giant sloth, and glyptodont, never mind woolly mammoth and mastodon.
And what’s the issue with this?
CBP is Customs and Border Protection (part of the US federal government). CBSA is
Canada Border Services Agency which is the Canadian border patrol. There is no mention of Canada in the article
This is definitely a huge factor.

A 2 party system is another one. Some founding fathers even wrote against it [1]

[1] https://ritholtz.com/2011/07/founding-fathers-beware-two-par...
I do numerical linear algebra stuff, but every time I hear about interval arithmetic my ears perk up. It just seems like our error bounds require caveats (a-hah, I actually gave you the backward error, nyaah!) while theirs are just numbers.
In NY if you buy clothing items less than $100, they are tax free. If you buy 3 items of $50 each on the same ticket, you pay no tax. Using the same technology (already deployed in tons of stores), you could add rules per ranges and at least big companies will have to comply. i.e. items more than $1k get sales tax of 5%, items more than $10k get sales tax of %10, etc
Exit means exactly after.
I’ve long been in favor of rewriting the constitution. Everyone hates how the government operates—courts are politicized and at risk of being captured, the legislature is at a constant impasse, everything is hyper partisan, the executive is either way too powerful, or not powerful enough. The only things people can point to that they like about the constitution are the first amendment, and sometimes the second and fourteenth amendments. Other countries have tried out different forms of representative government in the last 231 years. There’s a lot we can learn from them.
Can the exam be the confounder here, where the exam is just not good at differentiating the different in educational experience between the universities.

Second the job interview and exam might just be looking for skills on different dimensions ?
Can screen readers correctly parse clean PDFs? As in, if I'm able to copy paste text from a PDF and get clean results, are the current screen readers able to read from those types of PDFs or is it a completely unimplemented format?

I'm asking because I don't think the problem is with PDF itself as much as it is with certain PDF output programs.
Serious question - how do you think this applies to states that have historically, and recently, discriminated against race, relationships, abortion, and blurred the lines between not separating church & state (as IIRC, the way things were supposed to be)?

It's not really a speculation, more of a fact, that if some higher power doesn't make them be what many see as humane/practice equality, then... they just wouldn't. If they don't, other states might have major issue with them... which isn't good for the prosperity of the nation.
As long as we are having fun -
What if Venusians after ruining their planet 3.5B years ago decided to pack up an scoot?

What if we are all just refugee Venusians who have evolved into different life forms. :D
"And all of this has happened before, and will happen again."
"Where are youngsters seeing java?"

Funny you should ask that. If a high school kid takes Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science in the US (including the kids here in my neighborhood in Silicon Valley), the only language taught is Java. Kids who want my help with their programming projects or classes here in the Valley, even the undergrad CS majors at Stanford, are always going to ask about one of three languages: Python, JavaScript, or Java.

In the shadow of the Apple spaceship, the iPhone is exactly as Apple intends: an appliance for you to communicate with friends and buy things from Apple, certainly not a computer for you to program. Nobody ever asks me about Swift. If you want to program a computer--sorry, "code"--it's always and only Python, JavaScript, or Java.
40 year old you is not going to like 30 year old you.
I disagree. Consider our inability to coordinate a proper pandemic response, or the current smoke catastrophe spanning the west coast. The problems facing our country are increasingly national in scope, and require coordinated responses at the federal level. I believe our entrenched commitment to federalism and state's rights is going to hold us back more and more in the years ahead.
California’s Apocalyptic ‘Second Nature’
Another interesting thing is that power is often relative. The presence of the billionaires blunts the power of the multimillionaires.
Only if you ignore the UFO footage and data released by the Pentagon (and others over the years).

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/us/pentagon-ufo-videos.ht...
https://twitter.com/OnePlus_USA/status/1305366058501509121
Why should states have more power?
If the nation was intended to be a union of states, then the electoral college is one mechanism that can be used to ensure that each state, as an entity, has an equal vote for federal leadership. I understand it as less of a person voting directly for the President, and more as each person voting for how their state should vote for President. The idea from the article that any argument for the electoral college is racist is a shallow attempt to quiet any real discussion.

edit: grammar
Semion Mogilevich
Dump states too while you're at it. Might as well divide people up by watersheds or timezones or tectonic plates.
For me, foxit reader solves this problem most of the time. Selecting in Sumatra I often get these annoying spaces, I guess Foxit filters them somehow...
It's the last 20% that's the hardest, though (apart from the first 1%). No state with Republican leadership will ever sign it, because they know that they depend on minority rule. That means that the Democrats effectively have to run enough states to control the Electoral College anyway, and winning enough branches of a state legislature to pass laws is generally more difficult than winning that state in a presidential election. The one thing that's working in favor of the NPVIC happening is that it doesn't have to happen all at once, but that's a double-edged sword - if we get a state or two in the purpleish zone to sign on one year, but it's not enough to get to 270, then they could repeal it the next year.

In particular, it'll be really interesting to see what happens if/when we get to the point where any state joining the NPVIC would push it over the edge. Would that state waver knowing that they're going to be the ones to press the big red button?

You also have the judiciary to worry about. It's not obvious that the NPVIC is constitutional, and I highly doubt that the current Supreme Court, packed as it is with activist right-wing judges, would let it happen.
There are much more constructive ways government can help. They can for example fund the core devs of programming languages, databases and similar foundational systems. A lot of this work is now done part time on their free time.
Lego’s letter to parents: How not to tell a fake when you don’t see one (2014)
I really can't grant that first paragraph in good faith without some evidence.

How could you possibly divine the intent of the 2016 Trump campaign? We still can't agree on a vast number of its actions, let alone its strategy.
What about continuing to rely on private contractors, but with a mandate to open-source everything they develop with public funds? Perhaps that would address the issues you describe?
What is Bubble Sort and How does it work?
As Bubble Sort represents the basic foundations of sorting, we've tried to demystify this sorting algorithm.
For those whose gains are substantial enough that they can decide how much to realise in the current tax period, the US income tax serves as a baroque, but progressive, consumption tax.
Does it? I thought it was pretty much a given that landlords had to provide 24 hours written notice, excepting emergency.
This is a VERY well known and well defined mechanism. It’s called a luxury tax and you tax luxuries at a higher rate. Yachts, expensive cars, expensive bottles of wine, expensive artwork, etc...
It's supposedly waste product from the timber industry but I have my doubts about that.
No one asking for an edit feature wants the strawman version, and it's intellectually disrespectful to even bring up such a well-trodden point.
It's rare for the acquiring companies stock to not decline, regardless of whether the market thinks they overpaid.
Technically that would be either a luxury or high value item tax as opposed to a consumption tax because of the itemization of it.

If it was applied across the board to everything a high value item tax would be an absolutely terrible component to competitiveness however given that large capital outlays are how first world industry stays competitive and produces large real utility returns on investment. It would encourage more 'sweatshop' style production instead of a mechanized line let alone automated production lines.
Deepin 20 – Innovation is Ongoing
Unless:

1) The Drake Equation is wrong and its difficult to detect advanced civilizations.

2) We have detected other civilizations but we haven't recognized their signals properly.

3) We have detected other civilizations and the government is concealing it from us.

4) The UFO footage released recently by the Pentagon is proof of detection.
This paragraph really stood out as this:

> “The late seventeenth-century invention of shops and shopping by an urban middle class who lived by trade was mirrored by the growth of a new type of domestic space,” Worsley writes. “What might be termed the ‘middle-class’ living room was full of superfluous objects, chosen for ornament rather than use yet cheap and not truly beautiful: a barricade of possessions intended to stabilize a precarious position in the world.”

It kind of reminds me of a famous watch Youtuber who berates anyone who wastes their money on a watch that costs more than a Casio, but less than a Rolex.
Hopefully this deal will be stopped in it's tracks by regulators.

If not then it's very likely that NVIDIA will do everything in it's power to increase prices for ARM designs.
If you include the ejected mass, then momentum is conserved in that system. The ejected mass goes one way, the rocket goes the other. The momentum of the rocket is equal and opposite to the momentum of the ejected fuel.

Not true for the EmDrive.
It's interesting to read this nuanced and economically informed take with his more recent post saying we should raise taxes on capital.

See https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2...

Reading them side by side, it really seems like his more recent opinion just wasn't thought out, which is surprising given that he clearly thought about the topic 5 years earlier. My guess is he decided to support what he felt was going to be supported by mainstream Democrats anyway, instead of the economically correct views he clearly understood in 2014.
As others have pointed out, changing the Electoral College is a really big task.

However, there is a similar kind of injustice, that is much easier to get rid of.

In the NBA Championships and MLB World Series, not every basket and run counts the same. Some are worth more than others. This is because instead of just counting the total number of points scored in the whole series of games and making the team with the most total points the winner, we arcanely insist, on splitting those points up by game, and making the winner of the series, the team that wins the majority of the games. You can easily end up with a series, where the team that actually has fewer points, wins the series, because those points were scored more strategically across the games. As should be obvious, that is an injustice. This type of arrangement might be understood in the past where we did not have the Internet and instant communication and had to rely on slower forms of news with less bandwidth, so being able to summarize a series as tied at 3 games apiece was easier than trying to give the entire score. But now, there is no reason to retain this archaic system. We should just consider total points scored. All points should be equal!
They we would not have access to petroleum, so no plastic.
> System design rounds require me to solve problems that the top engineers in the world spend months on

Usually with these they just want to see how you think. Nobody's really expecting a complete answer, much less something you could go implement and have it solve the problem flawlessly from the get-go. They just want to watch the gears turn; don't be so hard on yourself.
Related discussions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24009177

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24173539

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24454958
I agree with you; in practice, however, when Alabama enacts anti-abortion law New Yorkers get pissed; when New Jersey enacts anti-gun law Texans get pissed. Everyone want to push their favorite ideology nationwide and the federal government grows as a result.
I rolled the dice three times and got two parked domains and a domain squatter. How was your luck?
This may be why an 18-year old me chose to do a degree in Cybernetics and Control Engineering! Excited by the first word, I didn't dwell too much on the last two.

Sure, there was some fun robotics, electronics and math, but also some truly baffling control theory. Thankfully there was also a small amount of Computer Science, which sent me down the programming path that I remain on today...
What a weird take.

The idea that America could keep the same broken and easy to manipulate electoral system if only the president had less power is ridiculous.

The election process is worth fixing no matter how powerful or not powerful the elected official is.

Stop pushing your small government agenda on HN.
You mean how GNU/Linux would react to it?
Tri Repetae is Latin for "three repeats".
Carbon intensity has fallen further this year although no doubt it will bounce back when the thing is over.

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/reports/report-2020-q2/deta...
I remember one of my teachers proudly saying how great the constitution was since it has hardly changed in 200 years. I now realize that while the constitution was great for it's time, the fact that we haven't changed it to apply what we've learned from both our own experience, and that of other democracie, or account for changes in technology and society, is not a good thing.
What are the reasons for the US to not already have a VAT? That’s one of those things that seems to be agreed upon by almost every country in the world but not the US.
Loosely:
Literal translation (syntax):
It walks, or, it moves.
Meaning (semantics): It is acceptable, or, it is accepted (by people, so no need to do better).
With the way our legislature and senators are captives of lobbyists, global dictators and billionaires today, what makes you think a rewrite would be in your best interests?

Or do you imagine the little people like us would have a say in such a rewrite?
That’s why they keep mining coal in West Virginia and Wyoming. Florida and Delaware will be under water and mountain states will be sitting pretty.
Huh?? So government overreach and manipulation of free market and global trade is your example of “jugaad”?
Alternatively, "the journal only accepts LaTeX."

I quite like PDFs, but this thread has been an eye-opener.
What Is Bicep? The ARM Template DSL
excellent text extraction using pdfbox.apache.org
It's still an issue in that this wouldn't afford equal representation. The way the number of electors is determined is {senators + members of congress + 3}. Since the senate affords massively more representation per person to rural states, rural states will be overrepresented in this system as well.
Is it that hard to see that China might see this as an American company further monopolizing silicon tech, potentially cutting China off from Arm designs.

But more to the point, this is also China. If you want to do business in China, you're going to do as they tell you, or you get the stick. And if you don't like it, what are you going to do?
- Investing in their kid’s education in a broad sense (attitude, career).

- Marrying well i.e. marrying smart and successful people so that your progeny’s genes are the best they can be.

The British aristocracy was famous for doing this. Marrying old blood to new blood. However, many cultures do the same. That is why marriage was so often a negotiated affair.
Here's a rich dude named Peter Schiff: https://twitter.com/PeterSchiff/status/1294454477299363840

He moved to Puerto Rico to avoid taxes. He is an outlier but his sentiment is correct.

This is a spectrum. If California raised it's taxes to 100% no one would live in the state. If they dropped the taxes to near zero lots of people would move in given everything wasn't chaos. The higher the taxes go the more likely someone is to not move here.

> Buy a condo in Las Vegas, register to vote there, and spend all your time in San Diego.

California will charge you income tax for the time you spent in San Diego. California will even charge you income tax if you never set foot in the state if your income is earned from the state: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2019/10/22/now-calif...

> I sincerely doubt California’s greatest problem is too few wannabe founders

You underestimate the influence of the rich. People mimic what they perceive to work. If rich people don't move here, people who aspire to become rich will not move here.
> You also have the judiciary to worry about. It's not obvious that the NPVIC is constitutional

Interstate compacts without the blessing of the federal government are unconstitutional. This is because the federal government has sovereign power over interstate relations, and a bloc of states that coordinate action are effectively challenging that sovereign power. So if the NPVIC is passed, it would also need to be approved by federal legislation to be deemed constitutional.
There is a mechanism to amend the constitution, which has been used numerous times over the years, as the country and culture have shifted. I think it's somewhat naive to think, especially in the current climate, that a rewriting of the constitution would do anything to serve the people.
> it could be argued that he only didn't win the popular vote because he didn't focus on that,

This is exceedingly unlikely. At least not without major platform changes. A trump that appeals to an additional 3-5 million people looks significantly different.

> I think the founding fathers would cite our current president as the reason they didn't trust direct democracy

This makes even less sense, a more direct democracy (proportional approtianmemt in the house and senate) would be a much stronger check on an unpopular president. What you're seeing now is what happens when the value of votes are distributed unevenly, such that a party can appeal to a minority while retaining political power.

That said even if it were the case, a popular vote would have other useful far reaching consequences in terms of how federal funding is apportioned.
What's going on in New Caledonia? 19.85 tons? Oh it's a per capita measure.. and a coal plant to power mining operations
https://newcaledoniatoday.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/new-caled...
Don't get me started on PDF's obsession with nice ligatures.. For the love god, when you have a special ligature like "ti", please convert the text in the copy buffer to a "ti" instead of an unpasteable nothing.

Nothing is more annoying than having to manual search a document that has been exported from PDF and have to make sure you catch all the now incorrect spellings when all the ligatures have just disappeared "action" -> "ac on", "finish" -> " nish".
I thought flowed text in PDFs was possible, but rarely used because it removes half of the benefit of PDFs (that is, page-exact references and rendering).

There already is a solution, based on html and very easy to deal with: epub. Publishers are gradually shifting to it, even for things like science textbooks, as they realize that PDFs might look pretty but they're a usability nightmare. There are still some stupid things publishers do with epubs, but they'll get it right eventually; meanwhile the main text and font settings can be overridden by ereaders.
And given all of these screwed up things, you would put it to these people to write a better framework?

You say "The only things people can point to that they like about the constitution are..." and then proceed to point out things that are not even in the constitution.

Here is something to like about the constitution: a system of government that has seen the peaceful transition of power every 4 years for 244 consecutive years.
small price to pay to unlock everyones' vote mattering instead of just a couple battleground states.

Also, giving a bit more representation to less populous areas may be a feature you don't want to get rid of quite so hastily.
That would be a great analogy, if the purpose of US presidential election is to entertain people and garner ad revenue.