skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Good points, well made. Especially about the hacking.

My only other thought is that a government/organization interested in using/misusing such a database would be willing to invent a pretense.

I'm not sure how heavily to weigh the precedent of government surveillance skirting these kinds of protections. I assume that Portland doesn't have a FISA court rubber-stamp equivalent, but I can't know for sure.

Either way, I think you're right that adding speedbumps to the process is a good thing, especially for data security. I just hope that people don't consider this too much of a victory, although it is definitely a victory.
Yes, and, sometimes code does not make the world a better place, or makes the world less better than those other things one could be doing to save the world that the GP alludes to.
How does the language know whether you care about a particular error or not? Is the actual act of typing really a significant amount of your time? What about time spent reading and debugging code, which actively benefit from clear error tracing? If typing really is a significant part of your time, how would you feel if your editor autofilled `if err != nil { return err }` for you? What if the language added a `try` operator a la Rust (e.g., whenever you type `?`, it expands into `if err != nil { return err }` code behind the scenes)?
Ulbricht is paying off Trump for clemency. Sounds crazy, but anything is believable right now.
As someone who has only loosely dabbled with emacs and org, is there a reason that an org equivalent couldn’t exist in vim?

I know there’s vimwiki and stuff but I mean is there a reason that the full functionality of orgmode couldn’t be ported to vim (modulo some keybindings)? Does it really on having more control over the UI than just what’s available in a terminal?
CBD Leaders Market Their Products Without Any Paid Ads
I don't think we're talking "start time" so much as "warm up time"; if I understand these things correctly it's likely the VM would start almost immediately, but would take a little bit of time for hot code paths to JIT and become highly performant. I don't think that would be much of a concern in your example.
Any interested individual or organization can fund political propaganda, but I certainly wouldn't say the state is coupled with BLM or the NRA.
Taking hierarchical notes in vim conflates content with presentation/representation, which is bad.
Way to go. How can you read about how these animals are farmed and the horrible existence they’re having and still say that.
So they literally use a kitchen tool? I'm not a native speaker, so I assumed the quotes meant that it's used figuratively.
No, but it's morally wrong to force people to use your code! Especially if they aren't allowed to read it.

That's like forcing someone to sign a contract (possibly without reading it.)
I think that folks are happy to say "oh just toss an Arc on it", and there's no like, moral opposition to doing so. But the issue is that it is much easier said than done.

So for example, let's take a really simple program:

fn takes_ref(r: &i32) {
println!("r: {}", r);
}

fn main() {
let v = 5;

takes_ref(&v);
}

Sure. Not a big deal. But imagine that, for some reason, we are having issues here. We can toss an Arc on it, sure, no big deal:

use std::sync::Arc;

fn takes_ref(r: &i32) {
println!("r: {}", r);
}

fn main() {
let v = Arc::new(5);

takes_ref(&v);
}

That's not too bad, we're only wrapping up the constructor. Okay, sure. But what happens when our requirements change, and we need to mutate something inside takes_ref? We can do that very easily in our original program:

fn takes_ref(r: &mut i32) {
*r += 1;
println!("r: {}", r);
}

fn main() {
let mut v = 5;

takes_ref(&mut v);
}

But if we want to do this in our Arc world... we have to do this:

use std::sync::{Arc, Mutex};

fn takes_ref(r: &mut i32) {
*r += 1;
println!("r: {}", r);
}

fn main() {
let v = Arc::new(Mutex::new(5));

takes_ref(&mut v.lock().unwrap());
}

This is way more boilerplate. And, I even messed it up the first time.

So the end experience here is "ugh so much boilerplate in Rust", when often times, the answer is "don't use Arc/Rc Mutex/RefCell" They exist because, in some cases, you legitimately do need to use them. But if we encourage people to reach for them too early, they can have an even worse time.
This statement makes no sense, you're confused between DB transaction ( rollback ) and error handling in a programming language.
> Isn't it totally useless

No, it clearly isn't totally useless. The case you point out means that there is an argument for stronger protections also.
In your blog post, you mention that you are doing all this in Homewood, IL which, while declining a bit from the time when you grew up, is still a pretty nice place. With a commuter train connection to one of the largest business districts in the US, there are still tons of ambitious and motivated people around you. Your local high school is shared with the much wealthier city next to you, etc.

I don't think the person writing the comment was imagining this kind of city. Good luck reversing the decline of the South Suburbs. It will take a lot of work. The largest problem, in my opinion, are the oppressive property taxes (municipal consolidation is probably the only solution). Do you really think that someone can live comfortably down there for $20-30k per year? Or are you talking in terms of founders that have plenty of capital and only need $20-30k in living costs? I really don't think it's that cheap...
Show HN: Ugliest.app – Ugly but good app platform
Makes me wonder if Python implemented in lua wouldn't just win over CPython
Great! These services are already expensive.
*recorded
I think the current understanding of the relationship between aging and cancer is a bit nuanced than this; e.g. immune system distinction is thought to play a major role in failing to eliminate precancerous cells.
So anywhere with zoning and parking tickets is authoritarian? Come on. What, specifically, is Portland doing that you'd consider to be authoritarian, and what would you propose in its place?

Also, tourists who become permanent residents are just residents. Trying to paint a group of fellow citizens as outsiders is a negative pattern, IMHO.
All the new plants Chinese government approve to build now are super critical coal plants. These are the most efficient ones. The gov also regulated older coal plants to retrofit NOx, SOx, pm2.5 treatment equipments. China doesn't have much oil and natural gas but has a lot of coal. So for energy security at the present moment they kinda have to still use coal. They already import lots of oil for transportation and industrial use. But at least they are doing something to reduce coal impact which I think is better than nothing. The air quality issue is known to every Chinese person now, so the government has a lot pressure to improve it. The gov also have good strategies to drive solar adoption. Like if farmers to build solar panels in their farm fields they get tax breaks and they earn money from selling to the grid. And with the price of solar and electricity rate, it's a profitable business. So far it's being working. Solar installation is growing year by year. The gov also pushed to build a few extreme high voltage DC transmission line from the west to the east to transit the renewables generated in that region to the east where energy is demanded. The China National Nuclear Corporation has a mandate to research and build new nuclear technologies. It's now building a number of gen 3 nuclear reactors and they are researching gen 4. A number of electric car companies are taking off in China. Big Chinese cities are already clogged by ICE cars. To buy a car you need to take a lottery for licence plates. In these cities they have separate lottery group for new energy vehicles, which includes hybrid and pure electric vehicles. The gov is now giving equal quota for both groups or more for NEVs. So a lot of people are buying NEVs just because the lottery line is shorter. These people probably won't consider a NEVs before. But companies like Tesla and nio is making great cars too and that is driving demand as well. Some cities are also transition public utility vehicles like buses to electric. Also the high speed rail system and subway system also has major environmental benefits. HSR moved 2.35 billion people in 2019. I think thats amazing. Thats 2.36 billion trips on electric transportation, and not on cars and airplanes. So without the massive investments and foresight to build the HSR, there will be more cars clogging the environment and oil used.
I’d suggest you’d have to factor the perceived sophistication of the species as much as the direct benefits for the homo sapiens facing the moral dilemma (you).

Dogs, pigs, cows, are good examples with varying cultural responses.

So... “depends on who you ask”.
How on earth does that address climate change? Get rid of ride share and encourage personal car ownership? The fundamental problem is that gas is cheap and no one is forced to pay for the externalities - not those shitty medallion taxis, not rideshare, not personal car owners - no one. Another fundamental problem is that people need to get around and personal cars are more attractive than public transit.

Impose a revenue-neutral carbon tax and you’ll address the externalities by encouraging more carbon efficient travel. Medallion taxis are a solution to exactly nothing.

AB5 has nothing to do with climate change. It’s grubby cartel-building disguised as labour-championing policy.
Goretex for all.
Well, technically it can already:

https://katex.org/

And the copy-pasted output isn't even very terrible.
From what I noticed in the news is that various European countries have similar policies. Meaning, government doesn't reduce employment by (as government) creating jobs or hiring people. However, they do offer support in fining jobs or making it easier to learn another job. Lastly, unemployment rate is often an important topic and the way that's influenced seems nicer than e.g. UK/US methods. For UK/US it doesn't feel like the government cares about their citizens.

To me (Dutch) the other person is speaking about Denmark without knowing a lot about it.
One thing that gets lost in these discussions is, a GC only helps with memory. Rust's ownership system (and to some degree, RAII & friends in C++) let you manage arbitrary resources here. There's a lot more than just memory going on.
Where double counting is most noticeable is economic arguments. Framing the debate around what maximizes GDP lets the RIAA for example make arguments like “good for the economy and good for musicians.”
there was also a cheat code that would change the top-left pixel of the screen black or white depending on whether you were hovering over a mine or not
Modern computers don't use a fixed amount of power. Just listen to the fans spin up to blow away heat when your laptop or desktop is running a compute-intensive program. And if it's a laptop, notice how it warms up at that time.

Regarding getting people to power off their PCs, the PC itself may do a pretty good job of that on its own. It goes into a low power state whenever possible, and depending on your power management settings, may also put itself on standby after some idle time.
You do realize your argument is just as easily applied to every disadvantaged/disenfranchised population, right? "You just can't help those people..."
> when the thing is very important to you

Your preferences will change over time. When I was younger, I had an intense desire to provide some grand public good. Now I regret those wasted years, and all I want to do is take pleasant walks around my neighborhood with my dog, and maybe play soccer in the park.

Most of us, almost tautologically, are similar to each other. Ask some older people what their preferences are and you'll have a reasonable idea of what you'll be like at their age. Sure, there will be generational differences, but the shift in yourself will be comparable to the shift that other people went through.

I shouldn't say I regret those "wasted" years. I regret them only to the extent I regret not having won the lottery, which is to say almost not at all. However, I want to caution against committing to a decision that might limit your options in the future. In particular, the choice of where to live has a dramatic effect on your career, your friends, and your family.
I get the value prop and totally believe in your approach, I'm just confused why you would opt to write an entire editor when the LSP can do whatever you want and integrates into numerous editors.
As someone who's relatively new to Rust, I'm curious: what is an example of a situation where someone might lean on Rc/Arc as a "band-aid", and what would be a more "idiomatic", non-Rc/Arc solution?
Fully agree with you. But this is inconvenient to think about and a lot of people will make you feel like you’re an idiot for challenging our torturing of animals because it makes them uncomfortable. In a way it’s similar to how the most homophobic men are the ones who are the most afraid of their feminine side.
I'm not a lawyer either (just enough lawyer friends to be terrified of the legal system), although as far as I'm aware you're correct. I'm not even sure if such actions meet the legal definition of fraud, nor if it's be the most likely/appropriate charges brought in such a scenario.

But

1) Mens rea isn't an absolute defense. It doesn't refer to malicious intent, but more so specific intent[1], in this case, specifically performing a sequence of actions in order to discover/validate/confirm a vulnerability. You also don't have to know if what you're doing is a crime; if what you did fit the legal definition of fraud, and you performed that action fully cognizant of and in control of what you were doing, then it's still a crime irrespective of your awareness that it was a criminal act.

2) Mens rea is a legal argument. It may protect you from successful prosecution, but if you've hit this point, lawyers are already involved and you've more than likely already been arrested/charged.

3) The prosecutor could dismiss the case if they feel the likelihood of successful prosecution is minimal (such as when you produce the original permission you received) or the bank requests it. Or they could force a settlement if they think the case is shaky. Or they could be an ass and force the court/judge to decide. But you've still been arrested, your life has been disrupted, you've potentially sat in jail for some amount of time (at least until your bail hearing), and you've likely been economically harmed (via legal bills, cost of bail, potential impact to your state of employment, potential impairment to future earnings based purely on the arrest record even without prosecution, etc).

Which is why it's always good to involve or consult a lawyer before engaging with the company - the cost of doing so is effectively an insurance policy protecting you from ending up in a situation where you need to employ one for damage control. And you're likely to end up with a far larger bill if you end up having to pull a defense attorney in after the fact for damage control/crisis management than the bill you'd get for upfront risk mitigation.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/mens_rea
In China, support for the US, and western liberalism in general, is dropping. In 2020 it has reached a new low. One of the reasons for this is because mainland Chinese people feel that the western world doesn't judge them fairly, that the western world will never accept them.

Your comment is a good representation of what they're thinking of. Your comment basically comes down to "China can do no good". It doesn't matter what China's concrete actions are — in the end, an interpretation for those actions will be found in order to fit the narrative that China is sinister. You are in your full right to do this. But such an attitude has implications for the other party.

Why should Chinese people support western opinions, if they will never be accepted no matter what they do? Sometimes, China is willing to concede on a few issues in order to gain improved relations. But if improving relations is impossible, no matter how many concessions, then why should they concede anything? If one is treated like an enemy anyway, then one may as well become a real enemy, since there is no reputation to be gained.

For example, I've been arguing for a while that one of the reasons why they went ahead with the Hong Kong National Security Law after a year, is because they realized that they can't gain a better relationship with the US by not introducing the security law, so may as well do it and gain more social stability. But many people can't comprehend this idea because they're too stuck on the "China bad" narrative.

I am not arguing that China is all good — of course it isn't, China has lots of issues. But being skeptical of everything?

In this context, excessive cynicism is dangerous. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I fear that some day all this leads to increased polarization, and a hot war.
Excellent write up, so detailed! Thanks for posting it.

I wonder if AXPbox would compile on Pi? Will try it just to witness the history in progress, ES40 with numerous fans and whirrrs of the SCSI drives ... silently blinking on a Pi board.
No, I'm not missing that. I mentioned Germany because the sixteen German states have rights too, sufficiently so that it matters for politics in general.

Some German states even partly devolve elections further. There was a minor scandal regarding that last year, when one city chose to deploy some software that broke (and as a result, some votes weren't tallied until many hours later than expected, perhaps >24h). That's the kind of scandal federally devolved elections can have, the kind the Americans should aspire to having.
Completely agree. Buttigieg (Mayor Pete) talked about this a great deal in his book. As a gay man, he recounted working with Mike Pence (Trump's VP) while Pence was governor of Indiana and he was mayor of South Bend. Talk about two guys you wouldn't expect to get along.

The key, as you pointed out, as did Buttigieg, is to identify areas where there are shared problems you can work together to solve. There's something about local government that seems to encourage this, in my opinion. Maybe you think gay people are awful and I go the pride march every year. Guess what, the water main is still leaking, and building permits take too long. Maybe we can just focus on working together to solve real problems, and accept that there are a range of social issues where we probably won't ever agree? And that's just fine?

I think we used to know how to do this in the United States, but something changed.
Help in Validation of New Business
Hi everyone,
After a recent pivot, my business model depends on attracting health insurance companies and large employers. What are some strategies to validate their demand? Unlike normal consumers where you can easily make a fake landing page or draft surveys, I don't see these same strategies as working in this context.

Any help on this would be appreciated.

-Wildpants
Perhaps demand for mink collapsed and now mink farmers feel they need to be compensated before exiting the market altogether.
Does it mean that if the police obtain a video from a crime scene they can't run any algorithm on it to find the people in the video? They must do it only manually comparing them to pictures or something like that?
It's resilient because it's the only service that isn't centrally managed by one company, and anybody can federate and set up an e-mail system that communicates with all the other e-mail systems.

It's the same reason SMS is still around, because it's the only communications tool that can send a message to any cell phone.
“Well plaintiffs always want me to define relevant markets as narrowly as possible. It helps their case.” — Judge YGR on Epic/Apple case.
> they all sort of know there's something going pretty right in these coastal cities [..]

and yet

> given how dysfunctional a lot of the coastal cities have become [...]

(Genuine) Q: Are you saying other places should, or shouldn't, attempt to copy the coastal cities?

EDIT: For full disclosure, should add that we happen to live in a small town with abnormally high tax revenue compared to the rest of this region - and indeed this country - due to the taxation arrangements in this part of the world. Lots of money to go round, sounds good? Certainly we have local amenities that other towns nearby would kill for. Yet town local politics sucks, over-engineering is rife, and money is regularly wasted. It's blessing and curse in equal measures.
Completing a survey on remote work to win one of the $1k Visa gift cards
Want your venture to be featured in a case study at UNC-Chapel Hill?

Want to benchmark your remote work practices against other startups?

Want to learn how to design an effective remote work model for your teams?

Participate in this survey for startups on remote work models during COVID-19 and enter into a drawing to win one of the $1,000 Visa gift cards!

Link is here: https://unc.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6QzDXBy2zeSeUlf

Context: We are currently studying how entrepreneurial ventures adapt to different remote work models during COVID-19, as well as the implications of these choices. We are running a short business survey to study the phenomenon and looking for founders/employees to complete the survey.

Incentive and eligibility: Participants who completed the survey will automatically be entered into a lottery of several $1,000 Visa gift cards. We do not have any requirements regarding the industry/size of the venture - the only requirement is that participants need to be founders/employees at a U.S. business that identifies itself as an entrepreneurial firm.

Data privacy: All responses are confidential and will only be shared after aggregation. As a thank-you, we will send all participants a summary of results so that they can benchmark their business practices against trends in the startup space and gain insights into the effectiveness of alternative remote work models.

Principal investigator: This research project is led by Jiayi Bao (https://publicpolicy.unc.edu/people/jiayi-bao/), an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Any questions about the survey can be directed to this email: jiayibao@email.unc.edu.
City Pages, the Alt-Weekly Where Music Writing Reigned Supreme
Possibly related to Silk Road
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990233
That do-nothing idle code uses much less power. Computers are always ramping their power consumption up or down depending on the task they're given.
Private auction. You wouldn't be anonymous to your broker, but no one else needs to know who you are.
> Go doesn't even have try-catch.

This is true in the narrow sense that Go doesn't use the keywords "try" and "catch" .

Its false, though, in that the defer/recover/panic set of tools provides similar functionality to try/catch/finally/throw, with somewhat different syntax.

Idiomatic Go uses panics and the associated handling infrastructure less than many other languages use exceptions and their handling infrastructure, though.
There are even commercial operations who can have scheduled downtime.

Last time I wanted to check on my savings account, the bank was doing maintenance all Sunday.