skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
His argument is not nonsense. Even assuming you buy the line that the media is not covering the story because it has "has all the hallmarks" of a Russian disinformation campaign as was argued by all the media outlets it makes no sense why they wouldn't cover it (unless your assume they are worried about how it might effect the election). Just months before the idea that a trump administration offical (or close personal adviser/lawyer) was working with a foreign power to effect the election was a impeachable offense! Now it's not even worth informing the public about?
> simply how many ads and subscriptions the stories can sell.

I don't think this is actually right. I think owners of news media companies want influence more than profit. I don't think Bezos is buying news media for the profits... The influence helps for their other goals.
You seem to be claiming that the computer really is good enough today for fully autonomous driving, and that the need for the driver to pay attention and keep hands in the wheel is really unnecessary. Is that right?
Who knew that even when you fund a company, if you get qualified people with integrity, they'll stop you from peddling foreign nation misinformation even if you're the boss.
Lol what a funny joke. It's really hard to exit vim, guys! Heh, I've never heard that one
I've experimented with Soylent for almost 1.5 years, and here are my main takeaways:

1. It's far from perfect, but can serve as a substitute for junk food. After six months of switching to Soylent, the cholesterol in my blood had dropped significantly, as verified by blood tests.

2. It's much easier to moderate food intake with Soylent. If you eat out, especially in the US, the portions tend to be huge, and there's often a post-meal slump. Soylent makes it possible to continuously consume little amounts of food.

3. Your body loses the ability to process solid food if you have too much Soylent. It's possible to get addicted to Soylent, and develop an aversion for regular food, and this is unhealthy, to say the least.

4. Cooking and eating home-cooked meals is an essential part of overall well-being. For snacking on-the-go, smoothies are a good substitute. With yoghurt, seeds, and protein powder blended it, it's arguably healthier than Soylent.

Conclusion: Soylent is like one of those fruit juices you might pick up at the supermarket, when you fancy it. Getting cartons of it shipped home every month is harmful to overall well-being.
I think authority is a critical differentiator between the SRE described in the Google book and SRE as it’s practiced elsewhere. Google SREs can impose moratoriums on feature development or deployments if they judge that a product is becoming critically unreliable (which has a well-defined meaning based on SLO breaches). SRE teams will also sometimes “offboard” a product that is insufficiently respectful of the finite attention that an SRE team needs to spread across multiple products, returning full production control to the development team along with the pager and all responsibilities thereof.
There was an almost mutiny from the NYT when they published Tom Cotton's article in their op-ed, which forced the editor to resign. They couldn't bear hearing from the other side, and this is just another example of the same mentality. This is exactly what Greenwald and Tabbiti have been reporting about, the fascist left censoring or wanting to censor the news to only those opinions that they want to hear.

EDIT: For the record, I'm "center-left". When I say fascist left, I mean the extreme left who believe that anyone who disagrees with them is the enemy. Unfortunately this belief is spreading more and more amongst the left, but I still believe there are a lot of moderate, even-headed left but the conversation is being dominated by the fascist left.
Probably meant beyond reproach - but yep.
Somewhat Off Topic: Glen just did an interview on Joe Rogan [1]. I would suggest it may be worth watching for those interested in this. He discussed some of these issues.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0rcLsoIKgA
(First-order) causality actually isn't hard to determine in environments where first-order effects dominate. The way to determine causality here is through a combination of physical laws and controlled experimentation [1]. In fact, we have plenty of causal models (e.g. 1st principles physics-based models, or design-of-experiments models). Without these models, machines/control systems/etc would not work.

The trouble is, outside of these 1st-order effect dominant, deterministic environments, causality becomes much harder. In complex systems, stochasticity, nonlinearity, feedback loops and higher-order effects dominate. There's also emergent behavior -- properties that are true in the small are not true in the large.

Consider a complex system like human society -- can we truly determine causality of broad interventions? Likely not in a first-order way like in the physical sciences. We can do it imperfectly through tools like causal inference (Rubin) which makes much more modest claims about the "strength" of effects (average causal effect). Randomized Controlled Tests (RCT) is another tool for making causal claims.

But in a complex world, 2nd, 3rd and higher order effects dominate and so the notion of root causes itself becomes ambiguous. Richard I. Cook once said "post-accident attribution to a 'root cause' is fundamentally wrong". Though humans are attracted to the idea of a chain of simple causes (which is why we have the myth of Mrs O'Leary's cow kick over a lantern and starting the Great Chicago Fire of 1871), there's typically no easily-identified root cause. First-order causal thinking assumes a Directed-Acyclic-Graph (DAG) idea of a causality chain which converge into a set of effects, but the reality is that such a DAG, if it can be represented, is likely to be infinitely complex in a complex environment.
First-order causal thinking is an insufficient mental model in a complex environments.

Instead, I think instead of aiming for a deep understanding of epistemic causality (where we try to know and represent causality), it's probably more useful to focus on instrumental causality (where we aim to know the main points of leverage that are effective in changing the system). I think we'll likely get very far just by finding the knobs that have the most effect on the variables we would like to change (that don't also simultaneously change variables that we wouldn't want to change).

[1] to determine causality, we typically have to perturb the system -- determining causality through observational data is possible, e.g. via natural experiments, but there are many epistemic restrictions which limit the claims that can be made.
Yes, with the observation is that this is the base flexibility, while we will be adding much more transparent stuff in the future. So in 2.0, if you want a chunk of a distributed hypertable replicated, you don't do it manually, but just configure the distributed hypertable to use "replication_factor = 2", etc.

Native replication (and the approaches I described for regular "fact" tables as well) are major focuses of the 2.x roadmap.
Can you elaborate on this? If agent A interacts with a system and can learn causal relationships, how could agent B who observes all of agent A's experiments not be capable of drawing the same conclusions?

It seems that any theorem that rules out learning causality from observational data alone would also rule out learning causality from any kind of interactions.

Unless you're assuming that agent A "knows" it has free will so its own actions have no cause, while agent B can't tell whether the environment caused agent A's actions or vice-versa. But if that's what the proof hinges on, it's pretty shallow, because agent A has no such guarantee that its own choices have no root cause.
It hasn't been, though. Private citizens of a private company opted not to publish it in their paper, and that's not the same thing.
I don't agree with the premise of the discussion. Consider for a less controversial example the iPhone 12. It seems obvious that:

* Much of the discussion about the iPhone 12 is part of Apple's deliberate strategy to sell phones.

* The media is in some sense being exploited; Apple wouldn't sell so many iPhone 12s if not for media discussion of it.

* An outlet that refused as a blanket policy to discuss the iPhone 12 would present its readers with an inaccurate view of the world.
Is it your presumption that only people not "on the Right" are allowed on HN?
This appears to be correct. Most media outlets now are activists pretending to be journalists, run by businesspeople who care about revenue more than truth.
>and didn't need a new article on the eve of the election.

What the heck does that mean??!??! What do you mean it "didn't need a new article on the even of the election". WHY NOT?! Because you're voting for Biden?

And by the way, Biden has denied all wrongdoing by Hunter. It is certainly relevant when you have concrete proof that his denial was wrong.
This is where the distinction between "act" and "rule" consequentialism becomes important.

Perhaps there is "too much" on the line, but I think that we live in a complex world, it is difficult to estimate the downstream impacts of your action, and that every time you choose to suppress a story due to potential political consequences, you are undermining broader "trust."

Better to default to reporting freely since, as a rule, suppressing stories generally erodes trust, whereas the direct downstream impact of airing a specific story can be difficult to estimate in a complex world.
yoichi shimatsu made a compelling argument that "the intercept" is basically a honeypot for catching usgov whistleblowers. yoichi is a little out there, but given the track record--snowden, manning, winner--perhaps he's on the genius side of the line instead of the insanity side on this particular issue?
I think its not that things don't work, the explanation that people give for its working is junk.

To give a personal example, about a month go, I started taking a supplement that was advertised as a "muscle recovery" supplement. I took it for about two weeks, and sure enough I started feeling that I was getting much better sleep, which in turn made me feel like I was much more fresh and 'recovered' when I woke up.

I did some research on it and there was no data to backup the claim that the ingredients do anything useful. There was contrary data that some supplements can cause your kidneys to work harder to filter out the excess junk in the formulation. I stopped taking it because of fear of damaging my kidneys. Now, I can't explain why it worked, but I just know that it did help. I've heard that quite a bit from others, who seem to think certain supplements helped when, when there is zero data to support their claims.

I think we're going to unlock a large amount of human performance, both mental and physical, when we finally figure this stuff out.
Yes -- but slightly different, but without the network hop!

MySQL engine for Clickhouse sounds like dblink[0] or foreign data wrappers(fdw)[1] in Postgres. Doing it with Postgres allows for way more flexibility (the data could be local or remote) in this case, and the data will be at home in Postgres, with all the stability, features, operational knowledge (and also bugs/warts of course) that come with Postgres.

You may never get 100% of the performance you'd get from a purpose-built database that doesn't make the choices Postgres makes but the idea of getting 80/90% of the way there, with only one thing to maintain is very exciting to me.

[0]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/contrib-dblink-funct...

[1]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/postgres-fdw.html
What discredited Sy Hersh?
> I encouraged them to air their disagreements with me by writing their own articles that critique my perspectives and letting readers decide who is right, the way any confident and healthy media outlet would

Glenn Greenwald is advocating for an abdication of basic journalistic practice. The role of The Intercept is not simply to air Glenn Greenwald’s musings; it is not a blog. The entire point of an editorial process is to hold published materials to a high bar with regards to factual accuracy and quality.

Responding to a disagreement about accuracy or fact-checking with your own editors by claiming they are ‘New York-based’ and ‘Biden is their preferred candidate’ is deeply unprofessional. If you disagree with an editor’s call, have an adult conversation; if you cannot see eye to eye, feel free to resign. If you want, you can even publish a piece about the disagreement - including details over what was alleged as true, and what information you believe editors incorrectly assumed or overlooked.

The one thing you should never do is resort to simply calling your editors ‘angry libs’ and claim you are being ‘censored’. This does nothing to further a conversation, and it certainly disincentives anyone from honestly editing your work in the future.
Absolutely not. Your comment is absolutely not describing the world.

This story has been completely debunked. I welcome real facts suggesting otherwise, but there truly aren’t any. This story is not being cut because of Evil Democrat Socialites. It’s cut because it truly, really, actually is debunked by well-regarded professional journalists at many other trusted outlets.

Greenwald has spent the last four years on a bizarre war path against the Democratic establishment. This is just more of the same.
Oh! I'm really sorry about that, my mistake.
Misinformation is factually-incorrect information that is spread to push an agenda.

That's no so hard.

A news organization has a responsibility to find out if the news they are reporting is factually correct, and if it's important.

If they can't verify the facts, then they may just publish the people's claims, but again, the matter of importance comes in -- is the fact that someone is making the claim important? If someone in power says a lie about COVID, that may still be worth reporting, because the fact that a person in power misled is, itself, important. But if some rando political operatives push an unverifiable story, the fact that they are claiming it isn't itself a story, unless the facts are true.
@coldpie: ‘If you're putting the words "secure" and "computer" in the same sentence, you've already lost. There is no such thing as computer security.’

We should borrow an idea from nature and not create a monoculture. That way when a ‘computer virus’ comes along, it won't run rampant through the ecosystem.
The Erasure of Arsenal's Mesut Özil
On first glance Intercept's editorial staff could be trying to avoid becoming like Wikileaks during the 2016 election. That is, going from a broadly anti-surveillance state, "information wants to be free" publication to one that unintentionally gets involved in partisan electioneering.
That's a very short sighted approach. They're going to pay for it in the long term.
his track record is good enough proof for any editor to know that story is NOT a garbage. I guess this is WHY they actually censored it.
You're assuming it's a garbage story and that it's intended to influence the election based on absolutely nothing. Why not make counter-arguments to the actual piece, when it comes out?

I'd argue that all of the rampant censorship about any conceivable questioning or criticism of Biden is the thing that history is likely going to look back on in a few months, and perhaps years, as unethical and irresponsible journalistic conduct.

I disagree with some of Greenwald's stances, but he and Matt Taibbi seem to be the only actual journalists left in the country, that I'm aware of. It's mind-boggling.

I strongly dislike Trump as president and as a person, I think he's probably the worst president we've had from a domestic perspective, and I couldn't disagree more with him and his party's agenda, but as of the past few days I almost want to see him win due to all of this recent censorship tipping the scales. Almost like an Oedipus-style prophecy ironically fulfilled by the attempt to prevent it. I don't actually want him to win, but I want these people to have this blow up in their face.

The cover-up is probably a lot worse than the allegations (which don't seem that damaging, going by the leaked emails, but I'm curious to see Greenwald's analysis), and I bet this is turning many more people further from media outlets and closer to Trump or at least further from the left. Even if he loses the election, I think the past few weeks have shown he might have already won. Not due to anything he did, but solely due to an entirely avoidable shooting of oneself in the foot. This could have ripple effects that last longer than the next 4 years.
It goes back to what a company's value proposition is. Media companies certainly benefit from optimizing this KPI, but it means they are now going to become entertainment companies. This isn't necessarily "bad" from the standpoint of the media companies or their shareholders, but insofar as the people who make up those organizations still want the company's value proposition to their customers to be providing journalism, the company has failed. Given the culture of journalism being a mission-oriented pursuit, it's fair to assume that many people will feel remorse at these changes occurring within these organizations, even if those organizations become very valuable entertainment companies.
That is not generally how journalism operates. Remember "Rathergate"? Would it have made the slightest bit of difference if CBS had inserted the disclaimer that "Of course we can't be 100% sure these docs are legit but we'll keep investigating."?
How come Marcy Wheeler and others have so many criticisms of the accuracy and sourcing of his journalism?
It seems impossible to hold a strong opinion on this without reading the article, and in particular, seeing how it is sourced.

The elephant in the room (which Greenwald barely acknowledges in this essay) is that many mainstream news organizations have concluded that the evidence for this story was too weak to publish, and some believe it was fabricated by Russian intelligence. If Greenwald has evidence to the contrary, great, the world wants to see it, and (claims of "censorship" notwithstanding) he will have no trouble getting the word out. If all he has is salacious hearsay, it's hard to fault his former editors.
I agree there is a huge opportunity for a trusted institution to do journalism. But who would anyone trust? The incentives in the media point towards pandering and outraging. Left to the shareholders a news organization is mandated to maximize short term profit in whatever way it can. So capitalism is out. Perhaps a benevolent billionaire could support such an effort? But again, who would trust him? Its a pikle.
It has PCIe slots for graphics, so of course no HDMI. This isn't a SoC-on-SBC type product like the RPi. The competitor here is a PC motherboard + CPU combination, not an RPi.

Yes, it will be far slower than a new PC, but this is still pretty damn cool.

To price compare you need to look at a 4+ core processor + modern motherboard + 8GB RAM + 32GB flash (EDIT: 32MB, so meh). I'm sure once you did that you'd find something half the price, but when you consider the volumes involved...
For what I understood it's going to be raw HTML, not markdown.
> The entire spectrum of details around the Biden emails has been roundly debunked

Although I've been following this story, I am not familiar with this round debunking. I realize that the email headers are not available, but have the emails decisively been shown to be illegitimate? Or just difficult to verify?
My conclusion is the opposite. The Mueller report was heavily redacted, and misrepresented by AG Barr - precisely because it is so damning. Trump got impeached by congress over the Ukraine scandal later on, again enlisting foreign help. Trump asked a foreign power to help him against a political opponent - the Ukraine facts are not in dispute. Trump's campaign took multiple meetings with Russians bearing emails, and multiple members of his campaign are now in jail. These two facts are also not in dispute.
"International Election Monitors Arrive in the US for the Nov. 3 Poll"

https://www.passblue.com/2020/10/07/international-election-m...

>The OSCE, based in Vienna, is an intergovernmental body of 57 countries from Europe, North America and Central Asia. It has been monitoring elections in the US since 2002, most recently the 2018 midterm elections.

https://www.osce.org/participating-states

>Russian Federation
My presumption is that someone on the Right would not be making these specific misleading claims.

Don't worry, I am well aware that there are quite a few right-wingers here.
Show HN: Reduce distractions on YouTube and gain back your focus
Hey HN,

This product (https://www.producthunt.com/posts/youtube-productivity-mode) is inspired from Indistractable by Nir Eyal. According to the book, one source of distraction are the external triggers that lead us to distracting activities and thus leave less time for things that we actually intend to do.

YouTube is one such place on the internet where we often wander and get lost from the focus track that we plan to be on. No doubt YouTube is a great place to learn but it does have a lot of distracting content too.

Taking cue from the book, we created YouTube Productivity Mode, with an objective to reduce the triggers. Switch YPM in “Productivity Mode” to blur all the thumbnails on YouTube so that the catchy and clickbaity thumbnails don’t grab your attention. So now if you get redirected to YouTube while working/studying, the recommended thumbnails won’t catch your eyes and you will hopefully switch back to your task again without losing your focus.

We would love to hear about our product from you all.

P.S. We made our project open-source. Play around and add something cool and valuable to it.
You seem to have insider info that the rest of us are not privy to. What misinformation was he attempting to spread?
The first amendment has nothing to do with activities outside Congress making laws.
Which isn't a great surrogate because the original settlers of the Americas were not some organized exploratory group dispatched by the queen to find new lands. They were nomads hunting megafauna that were on the other side of the proverbial river when the ice melted after ten millennia.
Trump campaign out $2.3M after hack of Wisconsin GOP
Look at Europe and the Syrian refugee crisis.

Global warming will make that look like a small band of visiting tourists.

Global warming will impact the poor far more than the rich, and there will be BILLIONS of refugees running towards borders.

One would hope it would be gradual and not as catastrophic as a bloody civil war, but a series of warming-fueled storms or a pronounced month-long heat wave could have similar effects.

At some point, nations will close borders.

Resource/Environmental wars are never apparent as such. Since they involve movements of entire ethnicities, they become ethnic wars that are actually resource wars where the haves vs have-nots to deal with the environmental or resource disaster are delineated along ethnic divides.

The Sudan crisis was explained to me as being fundamentally a water war in this way.
We elected George W Bush to President, whose history isn't so far away from Hunter Biden's except that the Biden family isn't insanely wealthy.

This wasn't that long ago. Everybody should remember Bush's coke problems.

You are right that there's a double standard, but I don't think that double standard is where you assert it is.

I mean, has there been any investigation of the intelligence response to Russia having bounties on US soldiers' heads? And you think that "any small thing" by Trump gets investigated?

Four years ago we were obsessing over emails from the Clintons, which Trump would have us believe were worthy of jailing Clinton. Yet here we are four years later with absolutely no wrongdoing exposed, no grand jury indictments, etc.

The lack of awareness and short memories are astounding.