skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: PhD vs. job @Google vs. starting a startup
In a few months, I will be finishing up my master's degree in computer engineering from a fairly well-considered European university, and I am finding it hard to decide what to do after that.

At some point in my life, I want to found a startup, but I don't know if this is the right time for me.
The main thing stopping me from founding one right now is that I don't feel at the edge of some field; I don't feel like "I'm living in the future," like a good startup founder should[1].
Side note: thank you YC for the amazing curriculum you put together in Startup School for Future Founders[2].

As the title suggests, I have three possible paths that I would be equally interested in following:

- Ph.D.:
- Pros:
- This seems the best option to get at the edge of some technology;
- getting paid to study what I am most interested in sounds great;
- Cons:
- Academic bureaucracy;
- I might be forced to write more papers than I want to.
- Google: this summer I interned here and got a conversion offer.
- Pro: If I get picked by the right team I might learn a lot of interesting stuff and get at the edge of some technology.
- Con: "[...]getting a normal job may actually make you less able to start a startup, by turning you into a tame animal who thinks he needs an office to work in and a product manager to tell him what software to write."[3]
- Starting a startup: "So now I'd advise people to go ahead and start startups right out of college. There's no better time to take risks than when you're young. Sure, you'll probably fail. But even failure will get you to the ultimate goal faster than getting a job."[3]

Startup founders, what would you have done if right after finishing university you had these options?

1: http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html
2: https://www.startupschool.org/future-founders
3: http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html
Let me try to explain again. In Ableton one signal path executes in one thread. Any track that goes to send or to a group gets added to one thread, so that if you have [A, B, C] on track one and [D, E, F] on track two - they will run in parallel - that's fine. However, if you send track one and track two to a send track with [G], they both run on a single thread, so it becomes [A, B, C, D, E, F, G], if a single core can only process four plugins, Ableton will be stalling. If you run each plugin in a separate process, then [A, B, C] and [D, E, F] will run in parallel and the results will go to [G]. As long as either [A, B, C] or [D, E, F] will not exhaust the single core, the playback will be smooth. The same happens if you group tracks or use side chain. Plugins in the chain will all run on single thread, but they could run in parallel up until the point where they "meet". Simplest way to achieve that is to do that sandboxing or more efficient way would be to improve the thread allocation to be more granular.
I'm not a Rubyist, but I like this writing style.

Why do you feel the need to be condescending and combative?
Maybe if it was anywhere close to feature parity, but this is more like a 'markdown WYSIWYG editor in the style of Notion' than a full clone.

i.e. Nobody's (very few people are) going to be looking for Notion and then be happy finding this instead, it seems to me more like I might use it as well, liking Notion's editor, but not wanting all of my/plain notes in Notion itself.

Edit: I should probably add that I think people vary quite heavily in how they use Notion - I've previously been berated on HN for comparing it to Airtable, since to me the defining feature and main use is the tables/cards/database/multi-views on to the same data, but others it seems just use it for 'pages' and I suppose perhaps page hierarchy as part of that.
I think you can achieve this with pg_stat_statements and auto_explain.
The three most promising types of Covid therapies in development
Hm, this post is from 2014 so many of the arguments presented don't stand anymore.

Today you can containerize and autoscale Celery workers, so having task specific queues and worker groups will solve your resource utilization problems. For even better utilization, you can have gevent and process based workers depending if the task is resource or I/O heavy.

In years I have never seen Celery workers hang, we process millions of tasks (hundreds of task types) every day. Since the post is very old, I'm sure that they had to deal with a few nasty bugs back then.

However, Celery does have real scalability issues: If you run over 1000 worker nodes Celery gossip alone will be well over 1000 messages per second. Having 1000s of gossip queues isn't ideal either given that RabbitMQ is not easily scalable. You might end up with multiple clusters which can be a bit of a pain in a single codebase.
I'm not sure if running Celery on SQS solves some of these issues.
> The service was promised for free…

Please point out exactly where Google, or any of their competitors, ever promised that any of their free services would remain available—much less free—forever. Anyone who expected that was kidding themselves, especially given the history of high-profile services being shut down or significantly redesigned on a regular basis.
I feel all of this is why email is dead. It's not because Slack or anything killed email. It's because Gmail (and other web clients) killed email. They made it dreadfully slow to do anything in. Go download Thunderbird. I haven't used it in 10 years, so it could be worse today. But I remember it being a joy to use. Or the Agent usenet/email reader.
45 years experience, and your first thought is that they are being stored as a binary blob in a database??
Any good tools to evacuate all my photos and videos from Google Photos?
I don't know who _why is, but I get the impression that he/she is something of a legend. I love the whimsical style of this book.
One side wants a photo Id to vote. A basic fraud prevention technique.

Other side opposes it strongly.

Can’t argue about fraud if one won’t even take a basic precaution.
The only party claiming election fraud / voter fraud in 2016 was the winner.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/27/politics/donald-trump-voter-f...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/80297294453220966...
I think there's some "both sides are equal" aspects in your position that mischaracterize the reality as I understand it.

In 2016 Democrats thought manipulation / fake news (exactly the root problem in this article) was happening, and it appears it was. They recognized there is risk to systems and proposed to enhance election security based on the new (and proven) information that state actors were directly involved in trying to manipulate our election. I do not remember (I may be proven wrong), Democrats undermining the fidelity of the election itself, or alleging fraudulent votes, excepting one or two places where it was proven to happen (see the Dan McCready campaign).

My understanding is both parties now are roughly aligned with their longstanding positions in terms of how they view election security and relative occurrence of voter fraud and malfeasance. Comparing the 2016 positions on interference via fake news is apples and oranges, it is fundamentally a different subject – and the allegations of election interference were literally proven true by a justice system run by the Republican party.
Meanwhile there is literal beheading going on in France - but mainstream media is completely silent on topics like immigration. The general dissatisfaction with mass immigration in the USA and Europe, and the failure of the mainstream media to acknowledge this, is what is fueling the rise of Breitbarts.
I have Google One for $20/yr and iCloud for $12/yr and they provide sufficient value. Google Photos is the best photo app there is. It really takes advantage of Google's skill with hard CS problems and their platform advantage.

The search is unparalleled. The Google Location History integration is beautiful.

Just today I used it to find a dish I ate in a place years ago by finding the place in Location History and clicking through to the photo of the dish that was integrated into the view. Jesus Christ. This was the promise of AI assistants. It is here.
This article spreads misinformation about Bannon. He said «heads should be on spike» which means people should be sacked. This article excaggerates it as «beheading». What a nasty trick to fool the readers
Or, bare with me (bear? beer? bayer?), tax high income people and businesses properly?
If you're using the Desktop app the only way is to open a new window then navigate to the other page you want.
Just moved out of CA. Went through Loma Prieta, Camp Fire, and numerous power outages. The other likely natural disaster is a megaflood like 1861-2.
Just to be clear here: You're saying you don't personally have a problem with people making money from publishing specific and credible threats of violence (which is the case discussed in the original post), or from publishing intentional misinformation with real-world partisan political goals.

It also sounds like you don't support the ability of people who purchase ads to have any control over whether their money funds publishers of the type described above.

Do I have that right?
Trump lawyer: There's a non-zero number of people in the room
How many prominent Democrats refused to acknowledge election results in 2016?

Edit – the fact that I'm getting downvoted (-2 right now) instead of getting a single valid answer pretty clearly shows the political lean of this forum.
Ronald Burt’s Structural Holes [1]. It’s a bit formal for my MBA friends. But gives you a basic model to string intuition on.

Slightly more fun, but still based on serious research: The Dictator’s Handbook [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_holes

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook
Ask HN: Is there an elite level at which the tech interview coding tests stop?
I've recently impressed upon my startup that we don't need to always do "coding tests" of engineering candidates (e.g., if obvious from discussion, past roles, open source, etc.)

And that one way we can stand out from many other companies is by treating prospective new team members collegially, honestly, and humbly (with some earned confidence and bravery). I suspect this will convey and reinforce a good tone for our culture.

I said that some companies, like a certain FAANG, do the coding tests for everyone, perhaps partly because they're huge enough to want objective metrics and standardization, and maybe in some cases also as an institutionalized power move. And they can do it, because they're otherwise attractive enough to many candidates, and can also afford to alienate some candidates.

Early startups are different: There's an opportunity to get a feel for each candidate, and to discuss among the team. And that we should be able to get a sufficient qualitative feel isn't unreasonable: it's just as fair for the candidate to wonder how competent the team they're considering joining, yet we don't let the candidate give us coding tests. And a startup will usually mean less money and prestige, so we're not paying for the right to have interviews be one-sided.

Then I wondered how universal the coding tests really are, among the FAANGs: at what level (or VIP situation, or other circumstances) do any of them not do the coding tests?

If, for example, one of the few inventors of a super-popular programming language/framework/technology were interviewing (with ample public evidence that they're the desired technical caliber), what companies wouldn't insist that they go through the coding test rituals?
I think you're misrepresenting both sides. The Republican position has always been "Voter fraud is common and affects our elections". The Democrat position has always been, "Voter disenfranchisement and misinformation is common and affects our elections".

The only thing that changed between 2016 and 2020 is the party of the winners.
>From 2016-2020, the Democratic partisans insisted that there had been some sort of fraud or malfeasance

What notable Democrats have "insisted" there was "fraud or malfeasance" in the 2106 election? I'm genuinely curious. The only claims of 2016 fraud that I can recall at the moment are those of Trump (when he tried to account for losing the popular vote).
The easiest thing is to buy staples to use them FIFO. That way, you're not stuck with 100 lbs of honey, flour, or such.
I like how whenever I start losing faith in HN out of the blue encouragements in the form of your comment manifest.
> And half the country genuinely believes it was stolen by fraud to the tune of hundreds of thousands of ballots across at least four states.

If you're going to write a comment lamenting about how disinformation is unstoppable, you probably shouldn't use disinformation to try and make a point.
Probably one of the deepest and most contentious questions possible. So, you'll find lots of answers out there from lots of people from lots of traditions.

I've got an easy answer for you:

I listen to my conscience. If it says don't do it, I don't do it.

Hard to implement. Nearly impossible sometimes.

But it's bit me in the butt enough to force me to comply.

In addition I try to keep things simple. One of my favourite uncles is a simple man. Not stupid, by far, just not overly complicated. Pretty much wears his heart on his sleeve. I try to be like that. A bit of Occam's Razor lifestyle.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187962572...

See the section on COVID-19 near the end.
Almost nobody alleged fraud in the process of tallying votes for the 2016 election. The assertion was that a rival country fomented (and continues to foment) misinformation with the intent of swaying our elections. Reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee and statements from our own intelligence services affirm that this happened and that it presents a significant risk to the functioning of our democracy.

On the flip side, the allegations from the 2020 election are repudiated by virtually all elections officials. Direct accusations of election misconduct have been recanted by their original claimants. At least as of a few days ago, ten out of ten suits filed by the Trump campaign were lost or thrown out of court. And even if every single suit filed to date was won, it wouldn't overturn the results of the election.

The two sides are not the same at all.
Bannon didn't call for Fauci to be beheaded becuase of immigration... Fauci does disease response for the NIH.
France routinely varies the output of its nuclear power plant intraday to follow the demand
> They don’t want to make difficult decisions. One inventory manager told us that the only research they did before approving conspiracy theory website The Epoch Times for their inventory was to check out the All Sides media bias chart.

This changes my view from "media bias websites are dumb and shouldn't be taken seriously" to "media bias websites are dumb and shouldn't be taken seriously, but are also potentially useful for reputation laundering."

I have played around with the idea of the "minimum viable journalism," given what private equity has done with Sports Illustrated. Generate 1000 word pieces via MTurk or GPT-3, host on Netlify, cheap DNS name, buy traffic on Fiverr. Would $50/mo be enough to be rated on one of these sites? Get on publisher ad exchanges?
> This article spreads misinformation about Bannon. He said «heads should be on spike» which means people should be sacked. This article excaggerates it as «beheading». What a nasty trick to fool the readers

I know HN looks down on this but I want to you to know you're a fucking piece of shit for defending that sort of rhetoric and trying to downplay it so "oh he was just kidding"

Fuck you man.
Photo ID at the poll is not a "basic precaution" it is an intentional vote suppression tactic. Many people lack government IDs and a significant number of those lack them because the racist regimes into which they were born did not bother documenting their birth.
I feel like there’s interesting personal opinion in your comments in this thread, but it’s losing potency because you’re surrounding it in this aura of being older and wiser than anyone else in the thread.

Things like “But you'll have to trust me when I say that as you get older, your perception of time changes drastically” just sound condescending.
Ah, that's basically a frameless maximized window. It requires some tinkering but there are tools to force that behavior on other applications; for both windows and various linux window managers.
If I could get better music support, that'd be a killer feature. A coworker and I immediately looked for a spotify or other music option and didn't find one. We resorted to placing TVs with really long youtube URLs, and synchronized so they auto-start when you're near.
Thanks for the encouragement.
I run a mastermind group that sounds similar to your idea. You could try that, maybe make your own mastermind group. I'm thinking of making a public one that's paid though, for accountability.
Here's a link to a New Yorker article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-hel...

And a Time article: https://time.com/5565991/russia-influence-2016-election/

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/26/us/2016-presidential-campaign...

And the Wikipedia page on all the allegations of Russian involvement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...

There are more...
Instead we could tax money laundering and loans to tinpot despots - but that might hit Deutsche a bit close to home.
I don’t know. Busy straining my biology knowledge trying to figure that out.

The paper seems to imply maybe not? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187962572...
> They are also cheaper per kWh (levelized cost).

That seems to contradict the thread I linked to above.

> the rapidly [sic] decline of the cost of renewables and storage soon and suddenly runs into a brick wall

That doesn’t seem too unlikely given how tiny the combined storage capacity of all the batteries ever made, and all that could be made with all the raw lithium that can mined on Earth, would be compared to modern energy needs.
So elimination of free speech?

Russia used to have a joke department to ensure all jokes were politically correct.

Worked with some Russians who kept going on about how serious a matter it was.
There was a poll just yesterday showing 86% of Trump voters felt that the election result was fraudulent! Are you really dinging me for "hyberbole" for rounding 41% (or whatever) up to "half"?

Just to be clear though, since I'm guessing how this answer will go: do you believe that the election result was correct? Because if you don't, it's rather a different kind of fallacy to argue sideways about it.
Why am I getting abused?? Im even a «liberal» voter, but i stand up against misinformation against my worst enemy
There's a big difference between influencing the way people vote, and election fraud.

The evidence that Russians do try to influence out electorate is pretty ... evident.
>>And, because so few new nuclear power stations are built, there are very few opportunities to learn from mistakes.

That is a horrible turn of phrase for nuclear power. In the real world, having very few nuclear mistakes from which to learn is a good thing. I'm all for nuclear power, but it doesn't help the cause for the BBC to imply that building more plants will allow for more learning from more mistakes.

A better wording: The economies of scale will allow lessons learned during construction of early units to be quickly integrated during production of subsequent units.
> As soon as you leave the jeweler with a diamond, it loses over 50% of its value.

If someone can point out a place where one can purchase a diamond for half off retail price, please do so.
Here's a story on H. Clinton saying Trump is illegitimate: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum...
Check out the book Million Dollar One Person Business.
> From 2016-2020, the Democratic partisans insisted that there had been some sort of fraud or malfeasance, and the Republicans insisted that it was impossible.

Please provide evidence for this claim. I don’t recall any democrats claiming fraud in the 2016 election. This has been parroted repeatedly lately and I don’t recall anyone saying trump won because of electoral ballot fraud.

There is plenty of evidence that outside nations targeted American voters on social media in 2016. There is 0 evidence for widepspread ballot fraud in 2020.
That is an incredible artwork (the device). I only caught the right one on the second viewing of the light changes.

However, it uses an equivalently expensive piece of hardware, right? The LG 5k from Apple is $1300.
That's a very real trade-off and something we have to carefully make a judgement call on every time. In this specific case the decision is made a lot easier due to the fact that string unions are often a simpler alternative.

type Color = "red" | "green" | "blue";

Glad to hear you appreciated the article!
Totally agree. I switched from the Electron app to Safari and everything is much nicer and I use it more. I admittedly don't have the most modern computer but this scrolling through a page of text should not be sluggish and unable to maintain a normal frame rate.
Is a national photo ID that is freely provided and easy to obtain (no strange DMV hours) acceptable?

As that is where many of the issues with an ID requirement are: https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/Dem...
awesome technical work, but why would you want to stare at lies & political propaganda all day
Blame Google. Android has a craptastic audio stack and only Google can fix it.

Google would have to rip the heart out of Android and fix it for real time programming properly like OS X did way back in like 10.2?.

However, don't get me wrong, iOS isn't great--it's just at least possible. The fact that you can't actually send a defined packet (just a bag of bytes and you don't know how many until the call--"HAH! HAH! You device decided to prioritize something in the OS and your latency just quadrupled--sucks to be you.") to the Audio system on iOS is infuriating.

However, at least it's possible on iOS. On Android, not so much.
Europe: 12% Plugin Vehicle Share in September
I said "fraud and malfeasance" for a reason, you're omitting the second word.
The full quote:

> I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put the heads on pikes. I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats.

He seems to mean it literally. Or he's taking the metaphor way beyond it's reasonable limit.

I'd say that not including the full quote while attempting to defend is a "nasty trick".
This is totally irrational.
Google Photos Just Made the Case for Breaking Up Big Tech
Ah, but both in 2016, and at the time that the article is written, she acknowledges that he won the election, and that the election was counted correctly.
That is not election fraud.
It shows how slow your CPU's single threaded performance is and the trade off between latency and throughout in modern computing more than anything.

My experience from actually writing low latency schedulers in user space as well as the publicly available material - like in Ardour - suggests different conclusions from yours.

Keep in mind that a naive benchmark like "cpu usage" is entirely meaningless. What you look at is round trip latency required for a threshold of underruns/missed deadlines. Threading requires additional latency, and process synchronization even more. While I'm sure you report fewer underruns when splitting off into sandboxed plugins I'm suspicious if it's hitting the same performance as doubling or tripling the buffer size in terms of latency in the first place.
Your article is from 2019. Here is her concession speech from the day after the 2016 election - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv4hsmfgRuI.
Or as you might call them in parts of South Africa... gravel.
There's nothing "older and wiser" about it, it's just (subjectively) true that the years seem to go by faster as you get older.

Like, 15-25 was an eternity compared to 25-35.