skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A sociologist I met described it as the "generation effect" which is that people live in a cohort of other people about their same age +/-10 years. Throughout one's life the composition of the cohort changes as you begin to specialize starting with college/first job and continuing if you focus on a particular area (for me it has been systems analysis).

This effect can drive people to over-pay to go to "good schools" or work for less than they think they should be paid at the "good places to work" because it lets them join a cohort with members who are statistically more likely to be "successful" (for some arbitrary definition of success). I personally never paid much attention to it but thought about it when talking with this person.

I know from experience that it happens in Silicon Valley that someone will say, "Oh I know someone at some previous company who is really good at that, let me see if they would be willing to change jobs." That is why companies pay people bonuses for "referrals."

I suspect it happens in LA in the entertainment industry as well. If you watch the old American television series "ER"[1]. Produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment production company, it is amazing to see people who were on that show first as guest actors and then show up later in series.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108757/
I often watch French language tv shows or movies to keep up my language skills. I recently watched "Call my agent." Way better than "Versailles" ;)

Thing is, it's very difficult for me to understand. But I realized that if I put on CC in French, I can understand it no problem, almost as well as if the CC was in English. But without the CC, I can't understand it well enough to enjoy the show.

This leads me to believe that my difficulty in understanding spoken vs written French might not be so much grammar and vocab of spoken French, but rather the difficulty of translating sounds to words in real time.

I really should leave the CC off entirely, but I want to enjoy the show, so for now, my compromise is to watch with CC in French. I am almost certainly compromising my language skills this way, though.
I must be in the minority here, but even after trying ddg exclusively, I find myself doing !g all the time, to the point where I just switched back.

I do many technical searches throughout the day, and ddg falls short basically every time. Google is always closer to the mark with my search intent, with for example, deep links to stack overflow answers that ddg misses.
same here. I've set DDG as my default search engine, yet for local stuff I have to use !g . At the same time the region selection/force feature is just great
I'm always suspicious when specifically “left” or “right” or any other specific political colors are mentioned as such with regards to censorship — it reeks of not being objective.

It is a problem of all mankind, not any particular political color; the only color above it are of course specifically the free speech advocates.
Just Vaccinate People
It's their fear of people constructing offensive names (<deity>-sucks, etc.) that will spark another Charlie Hebdo incident.
I tried a couple years ago, but didn't like it that much. Ended up going back to spotify.

I remember trying to get the Guardians of the Galaxy awesome mix, and it only had a youtube video with all songs glued together. Also, it was a bit weird experience overall because they matched so many random videos
I would have agreed with this a few weeks ago, but given recent events you would be shocked at how many people are swarming into things like Signal. The average person is realizing that they don't get to choose what opinions are allowed and what are not allowed.

It's no doubt a reflection of my social circle, but it includes plenty of people that barely know how to turn their computer on. Many of them are asking me what to do to protect their privacy and ability to communicate.

If I were Keybase right now, I'd be starting back up development and cranking out some marketing right about now. That's a huge opportunity.
Yeah, “first principles” is such a SV cliche, but it’s very powerful for getting around this.

I think the pendulum can swing too far the other way, though. People imagine a blank slate, but we don’t live in a blank slate, so you’re essentially imagining a fantasy world. Or, you just end up recreating the old world in the new one but worse.
Twitter has no business inserting itself into a dispute between Elbakyan and Elsevier et al. Few people would have issues if Twitter shut down the Sci-Hub account after they received a valid court order, but a private monopolist cannot be trusted to be the arbiter of what is permitted speech.
> This was about an hour ago, so I would expect it to take a

> few days before the tweet is removed.

Apparently Amazon's standard ToS policy dictates that if it's not removed within 36 hours, they will turn their servers off.
"who is that said by? By you?" By their devs, by their media, on their website, in their discord, at their AMA's. Planning already for their second game alpha release which is what the entire thread here is about ie the 800K NFT sale prep for Mirandus.
It is great, I just didn’t want it originally, but now that I paying for it I’ve started using it a fair bit.
Isn't this just describing a therapist? I don't mean that to belittle this (whether it be real or fake), I think therapy is great, and I often feel like therapy could (and does, I suppose) exist in many more formats than just sitting-on-couch-in-quiet-office (rent-a-friend, good psychics, good religious leaders, bartenders, etc, etc).

Whether real or not, I think the fact that it _sounds_ plausible [at least enough to be a good satire] suggests that there's probably something to the idea that having a fairly neutral companion is pretty valuable.
Please don't take HN into nationalistic flamewar, the last thing we need to pour on top of the hellfire that has engulfed HN (and everywhere else) in recent weeks.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is why the ideal scenario is the whole military is voluntary, meaning you're forced to make sure everyone is educated and trained well enough to understand the consequences of different scenarios, enough that people will volunteer when the time comes. Well, at least historically that's how it would work - now it's technology that's used without human life at stake, to those who send, and hopefully modern warfare will use AI and weapons that are designed for no collateral damage; destroy infrastructure and military tools, so if well targeted then soldiers et al will learn to simply avoid this infrastructure and tools and they will live.
Modern Time Series Analysis with Stumpy – PyData Global 2020
But who's 'the media' here? Occasionally you'll see a piece in a major publication about Japanese consumer trends or strange products that become big hits. More recently I've seen articles about the hikikomori (sp?) "lost generation" people that graduated just as the bubble burst 30 years ago. But the rest of the coverage is 'normal'; political, business and sports news.

The only place I ever see "weird Japan" content regularly is Reddit and western vloggers living in Japan posting the most sensationalist stuff possible.
> It's a vocal minority that slings the hate.

That's usually the case.

> at least enough so that I can self-host for my own product ... Vendor lock-in is a serious problem

I'm leery of vendor lock-in myself. Self-hosted will be the only way to run my product in the beginning, and the cloud service will follow when it's popular enough to make sense.

> May I ask what your product is? Just curious :-)

I haven't published the website yet (it will be at https://flowstate.dev), but it's a framework/runtime for building backend APIs using SQL and JavaScript. It lets you run SQL queries from the browser, among other things. Which sounds crazy, but it actually works well. Once I have a hosted cloud service it becomes a backend-as-a-service platform kind of like Parse or Firebase.

I'm not against open-sourcing it down the road, but it can't be an OSI license, and I'll wait until it's big enough that I'm less worried about competitors just lifting my source code. I know copyright laws protect against that, but that only matters if you have the resources to litigate.

I do want my users to be able to dig into the source if the documentation is lacking, and also to patch/modify it if they need to - so I need some kind of source-visible license down the road. I think I would also add a clause that if the company goes under or gets acquired and shutdown then all source code gets published under the Apache 2 license.
I don't think the NSA was engineered with internet / social networks scale though. But they were already failing in the 9/11 days soo..
I took it to mean that it doesn't matter if it's left or right, "Democrat" or "Republican".

The transfer of wealth has (in my personal theory) lead to the lobbying of everybody, no matter which political affiliation - to the point where both "sides" are agreeing on policies that are harming people and favoring corporations.
I’ve been on DuckDuckGo for nearly a year now and while I’m mostly happy, it can be a frustrating experience as somebody living in Ireland. When making a location specific search, often even including the word “Ireland” or the city I live in, I will get results from the UK, or the US. Bizarrely, toggling the “Ireland” location switcher on often makes the results worse - which is surprising since it will often prioritise .co.uk domains above .ie domains, which seems like a slam dunk for location-dependant searches (such as for example “buy new bike chain”) out of Ireland with an “ireland” toggle switched on.

Example: there is a mobile network named Three in both the UK and Ireland. With the Ireland location toggle enabled, the search “Three network coverage” places the Irish Three (three.ie) in fifth position, under four .co.uk results.

I’m at the point where if I need to search something that could be location dependant I throw a !g onto the search term by default.
There's plenty of illegal stuff on Twitter, too.
To make a counter point, in developing any technology that makes possible things that weren't before, you will eventually encounter problems that the creators never thought to consider. Fixing a problem once it's been identified, and thus refining the technology, is exactly what they're supposed to do. If you realize your ocean liners don't have enough life boats, you add more lifeboats, you don't ban ships.

I'm sure people will claim that this problem should have been foreseen, but it's really only obvious in hindsight. Just a few weeks ago, none of us would ever have thought to plan for the possibility of the US Capitol being stormed. Of course we could know that there would be problematic edge cases, but we couldn't have anticipated every single one, nonetheless handled all of them.

I think we sometimes forget that if Facebook were a person, they still wouldn't be old enough to drive. For all the billions of users and billions of dollars, this is still a technology in its infancy. I'll gladly hand out pitchforks if it's shown that Facebook has been dragging its feet fixing known problems, or if it's shown they've feigned ignorance about a problem they were warned would happen, but if we forbid any innovation that carries the risk of unforeseen issues, we will be banning all innovation.
They don’t block websites yet.

The browser makers will find a way to make it happen if they need to.
Here in New Zealand we have had struck lockdowns and have eradicated covid.
"The" goal of ML? No.

A goal? No. ML is a field, not something with agency.

One effect of ML is more generalization of prediction and inference problems. (I'm using inference in the statistical sense.)
Not a front-end developer, but could this simply be a generational issue? Every framework invented before my career is a clumsy dinosaur, every framework invented during my career is the silver bullet that will solve all problems...
I'm not sure about crappy quants. Some people of the "quantitatively inclined trader who has learned Python" variety are never going to be good at the engineering side - it takes years to learn to be a good software engineer, and that's not a good use of time, for them, or for their employer. But they can still do useful work.

The trick is to figure out how to work effectively with those people. Build infrastructure that keeps them on the rails, refactor their code, push them in the right direction, tell them when they've fucked up, teach them little things with high leverage. As long as that doesn't turn into being their slave, that's fine.
good article, most dream jobs also involve work that is not very pleasant.
The Art of Pixar
10x per capita for permanent residency compared to the US.

And the point based system is also... interesting, as one can score very high and yet be unemployable.
One thing I loved about DDG, that 'forced' me to use it on mobile, is being able to filter by date (last week/month/year) on mobile. Google and Bing don't offer that simple feature in any way.
If the messages are encrypted at rest on your phone, it seems reasonable to expect the same of backups on the server.
I always grant courtesy.
Fellow long time FitBit user and agree with everything you said.

Furthermore, I pay for FitBit Premium and would strongly encourage Google to always keep FitBit a paid product/service and never monetize it via ads.

I don't have any expertise in this area, but my hunch from what I saw with Apple vs WhatsApp, is that in the long run sticking with paid products and not switching to Ads is better for success. Also, likely a lot harder to build up a base of paying users and if you throw that away would be a colossal mistake.

Anyway, I'm not a business expert but am a passionate FitBit user and very happy about this acquisition because just like you I was worried for their survival.
If it was up to me, there were no transitions. I am happy I can disable them on Android... Everything that does or manipulates animation is terrible. Scroll hijackers, image carousels, icon transitions, they are all wasting cpu cycles to please UX/designers!
Tech Companies Are Profiling Us from Before Birth
They are losing big enterprises to Office 365 too. I know at least three 100k+ companies which moved to OneDrive from Dropbox (with lot of grumble from employees to add) in the last couple of years.

They compete with Google for startups and small companies.

They are stuck in the middle and both Google and Microsoft are crushing them from above and below.

Having healthy consumer subscriptions wouldn’t hurt.
I think one of the problems with banning alcohol is that it's too easy to make. Synthing LSD is hard. Fermentation can happen accidentally.

When you look at something like Meth, you may not realize it's a schedule 2 drug in the US (so are cocaine, and pcp). While weed is a schedule 1.

We really need to look at how this scheduling works, and consider lowering the bar for certain substances, and raising it for other.
Brilliant. I'll take this one step further, if you want peace, study health.
This is because science has yet to prove ownership isn't a real concept.
According to the CEO of Parler, banks and payment vendors, law firms, text and mail services also cancelled on them. Shouldn’t there be some discussion about banning those banks and lawyers too?

Should a law firm be able to quit you? Should a bank be able to cancel on you? We even have major banks cancelling on the US President. At what point ought those who despise you be free to ditch you? These are all parties exercising their freedom of association.

Parler was a red hot potato for anyone who didn’t leave fast enough.
I deleted my account and uninstalled the app a few days ago - just in time to prevent google from slurping up my health data.

I purchased a Mi Band 5 for $35 which is a vastly better device than fitbit equivalents for a quarter of the price. You can use it without data being sent to the cloud if you use the open source package GadgetBridge.
>true UFO reports

But what is that? A report of an object, that is unidentified. The only truth is that an observation was made.

There are many many mundane things, albeit rare, which can explain these observations. Rare mundane things that even trained observers aren't aware of in the moment.

Point is, UFO report is step one. After that comes a boring process of trying to explain the observation with all in all the mundane ways before jumping to extreme conclusions.
Thundering voice from the heavens above: THOU SHALT NOT LIE!

edit: just cited THE supralegal authority here, regarding fake nyuz...
I suspect in rare cases this is by design, because engineers would object to the behavior of the Business Intelligence department on ethical grounds.
That's certainly one perspective, but OTOH if you play 1e or 2e monsters straight, there are alot of instant death effects that are much higher risk and far more debilitating impacts :) If the players are comfortable with it, it can bring back some of the old-school feel of D&D where death is behind every door...
This is exactly what I did. Snap's are basically docker gone wrong. Snaps are sandboxed, blocking access to NFS shares which I use extensively. Under Ubuntu, Chromium is usually broke (apt-get installs a deb that then installs a snap); You have to install either a debian .deb or use a PPA to make it work. I love that Ubuntu is directly including ZFS, but the distro has gotten so bad that I don't want to go near it anymore. Arch works, and works well.
Yes, this isn't just _therapy_. Although apparently he provides that in a highly limited way. I think "someone to tag along in uncertain & common situations" is a useful service.

I also think that there's probably a lot lost in translation, and would be very interested in a JP resident / speaker providing commentary and context.
Precautionary Principle.

Among creative workers, which there are a lot of here, MS, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's are all seen as living hells you would not wish on your worst enemy. Essentially, the consequences are infinity, so if probability > 0, prevention is justified.

(And in some circles, assisted suicide).
> Many "data scientists" (not all, but many) have little to no ability to do anything other than apply "recipes" of algorithms or classification methods or logistic regressions, etc.

This is because they rarely hire people with scientific thinking ability. They just hire people who can code and program from set recipes. Once you hire such people you can not expect them to do non-recipe work. If you don't want recipe work, don't hire people will recipe skills. Do not have job interviews that select for recipe people. But, that is exactly what most companies do.
Here is a project to reverse engineer the Xilinx series 7 FPGAs to be able to target them with open source tools:

https://github.com/SymbiFlow/prjxray
Personal stance: I've heard direct feedback from others that it makes them feel more welcome and normalizes an idea that is important to them, so I tend to include them in various places.

Previous employer: A group dedicated to inclusion & belonging recommended to HR, who clarified that including pronouns was certainly welcome but not required. Several people changed it.

Current employer: I just decided to include them in my signature as part of the "name" line. I did agree with another comment's hesitation because it's a sort of expression of a company's brand, but I know enough about my current employer and their stance on D&I that I'm not worried I'll upset anyone.
What’s your opinion on their takedown of @realDonaldTrump?
Nobody that I seek advice for in online communities seems to understand this. Too often I know I'm doing it wrong, and I get told back the equivalent of "well, because you're doing it wrong. What did you expect?"

I keep thinking that just sharing a room with someone that ignores me and just does exactly what it is I'm trying to do would be ten times more helpful than being picked apart for all my flaws (which I understand exist, that's why I want accountability to fix them).

The less time it takes for me to go from a game over screen to my next life, the more likely I'm not going to just quit the game in frustration. Preferably that time is zero seconds.
TBP has been down all week (everything showing 0 seeds). sup with dat?
So the options are a) Facebook sells tactical equipment to one side, and body armor to the other, or b) They ban these product categories altogether.

In context with the fact that Facebook also served up the precise content day after day, year after year, which put people (the whole population) into this inconsistent-with-reality, individually tailored emotional state which is nothing if not a constant reflection and validation of their worst tendencies and pre-dispositions.

Think of an honestly shitty person whose problems are of their own creation in every way (for the purpose of this thought experiment, you can even pretend it’s not you). Do you think Facebook ever gave them a series of posts that reflects that? Or would they log on to see all the ways other people are the problem? And that’s everyone.

We all have flaws, but this is a profit-driven platform. And if you’re trying to sell someone something, making them feel like the true piece of shit they really are isn’t exactly in the ABCs of how to make a sale, much less at their machine-driven scale.

Facebook is basically the automated version of the guy rubbing a boxer’s shoulders in the corner of the ring, whispering in their ear a never-ending slew of made-up things the other guy said so that when the fight starts, he’s angry as can be.
That wasn’t my point. Your point is that there is a bar that kicks out patrons. Noted. So some people will avoid that bar. Why pretend that it’s open to all.

Clearly it’s only open to those who fit the bartender’s definition of acceptable conduct.

HST: Sensible people would opine that if the bartender doesn’t have want non bartender approved behaviour, he should clearly paste the instructions and definition of what’s acceptable and what’s not. Also: not serve alcohol or substances that encourage unruly behaviour.

In the current scenario, anything pro-trump is not acceptable. Done. We have established that. Case closed.

Conclusion: Big Tech is against free speech.

We need a baseline understanding of the rules of the game. Why are they acting coy about it? Why not state it and move on?
Enabled, I would say at a more fundamental level, by an erosion of the middle class.

Note the election rhetoric for several iterations now has focused on promising improvements in prosperity for the common man.

Nothing new of course, but the subsequent inaction and worsening of the situation by the time the next election cycle rolls around just leads to the rhetoric intensifying and a populace increasingly willing to elect whomever makes the most outlandish promises.
Agree with the general idea. Data engineers are like the essential workers of the data world, people who today may not receive the appropriate level of appreciation that they deserve.

I think the glut of data scientist occurs because we clump so many different skills and disciplines under the single term "data scientist". Data scientists today come from so many different backgrounds that the definition means something different to everyone. Because of this, the surface area of possible skills that could be expected of a data scientist is vast, to the point where it's pretty unlikely to be sufficiently competent in all of them, let alone a majority.

I'd like to go back to a world where we had a little more specificity about what kind of data scientist you are (e.g. I had no problem with terms like statistician and data miner), which could help ground expectations that others have of us, and it'd also help clearly define the scope of various career paths for the next generation.

Sadly the individual who coined the term shows no contrition for the degree of confusion that the rest of us have been left to deal with: https://observer.com/2019/11/data-scientist-inventor-dj-pati...