skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
56 million cars sold last year. How many do you think were bought because they do not create emissions, or because of any serious consideration of the engineering behind them?

People buy a Toyota Corolla or Prius because it's below the median price, reliable and efficient. They will buy it and then never think about it again because it'll "just work."

People buy a Ford F150 because they either have some real use for a full-sized truck or, as we know is often the case, they want to feel like they are in the "big" vehicle, the "fancy" but "powerful" looking truck.

People buy a Porsche 911 because it's a symbol for having the money to throw at a fun, slightly exotic machine.

People buy a Tesla because it's a symbol of embracing the future, seeing cars as technology, and freeing them from generating exhaust and visiting gas stations.

People buy a Honda CR-V because it can do enough things well that they can just use it, fit people and stuff inside, feel safer when it snows, and so on.

People buy a Kia Soul because it's a little off the beaten path and comes in crazy colors.

Obviously the exact reasons behind each car purchase vary a little per person, but that's kind of the point. People want a car that feels like "them", and has enough practical use to justify their decision.

Automotive maker consolidation isn't new, just like any other industry, and it certainly would leave many unhappy if the options narrowed severely, because there are different use cases and preferences out there. For now, the market is so big that Toyota can have 6 different SUVs that are all slightly different, and you can configure a Ford F150 about a million different ways. (Though with colors converging back on black, white and gray, we're nearly back to the days of "You can have it any color, as long as it is black."
I'd go one step further and paraphrase some Deming and say that problem is both that Pat and the company are rating him against everyone else.

There are so many confounding factors in an organisational system that to try and rate people against each other effectively is nigh on impossible.

Also even if in some imaginary world you do manage to rate everyone against each other, guess what, half you people will be below average, that's statistics. And it could likely mean nothing to the effectiveness of your organisation.

In Pat's case and most software engineering we should set up the processes to ensure that quality is maintained. Add automated checking and testing, code style guide, clear service boundaries and all that.
"Little Bees (X for POS Destruction)" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p-m-0RlqMHM

Most stuff doesn't spill over onto the wider internet from forums, but this looks like a selection:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tgLJi7F4ozM

And a talk about it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=irjx80_jnyM
People still buy Omega and Rolex even if they don’t wear them every day. My dad uses a Fitbit instead of an Apple Watch so he can wear his nice watch and still get the data.

In the car market, the “heart” has been the same for a long time. The Honda Accord has about as luxurious (at least 90%, you get leather, great driving sensors, strong V6, etc.) of any luxury sedan under 100k, but people still buy those. Those brands mean something to people.
This is one of the most important legal decisions in the history of software. The US Supreme Court has basically just saved the whole software industry (and FOSS projects) from being wrecked by patent trolls.
There were some really cool design/UI ideas in the works for webOS on tablets. Shame it never came to fruition https://www.theverge.com/2014/1/2/5264580/the-lost-secrets-o...
Yep. This case was an existential threat to multitudes of industries and the assumptions they were built on.

The weird thing is it would of hurt Oracle as much as anyone. I have no clue how anyone w/any technical merit didn't understand that this was a footgun of the largest possible magnitude for them.
This is a pretty unfortunate ruling and I have some questions about the shoddy claims made in this document (the one suggesting Oracle benefitted from its platform being ripped off without license is particularly rich, especially considering it was the death warrant on Java as a mobile platform entirely, right before mobile became huge).

But what can we expect from the fine folks behind Citizens United?
They do use erasure coding: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architect...
Starting with paragraphs of side-story primed my bullshit detector as well and it kept flagging this article: not only is there too much text that has little to do with the headline, the paragraphs that focus on the subject hide wild claims behind citations. "U.S. officials were reported to have said" is an honest attribution, but not a quality source. However, the author has to deal with the problem that rumors are all we have. There are no new facts in this article, it's a write up of what is known, garnished with tales of journalists at work, intended for those who are new to the topic. (Edit: skipping the first ten looses the explanation of "air-gapped device" and what "transcription" even is.)

The relevant key elements for the topic are all there: undisclosed third parties, outsourcing to cheap labor, spy agency backdoors, governments wanting blanked access, subpoenas against sources and journalists, bad tech, bad laws, data breaches, hacks and overly broad clauses in the service contracts. But it is too shallow, not intended for those who already knew that and hoped for details and depth.

For a moment the article even hit my advertisement detection due to the way the "list of transcription services" at the end is formatted, how brand names are sprinkled in, how the author tries to avoid making it too one sided (which is a good thing!) and how the investigative journalists approach is related to overpacking and old fashioned motels. I suspected a bait and switch: bait with a cautionary tale, switch into a sales pitch. But the author says he does not endorse any of the named services and the short reviews focus on problems with their policies.

Overall i find it ok, even if it is a bit too heavy on the narrative of this journalist protects his sources, be like him for my taste.

EDIT: i ran the literal quotes through google and i think these are interviews backing the article as primary sources. This is no bullshit, it's good and honest work.
Population density of Norway is about 38 people per square mile.
Population density of LA is 7009 people per square mile.

I don't think it's a fair comparison just because absolute population is similar.
No, I'm not saying it's correlated with worse outcomes.

I'm saying there's barely any signal of being an early reader years later in academic performance (and some of what little remains may be explained by those with disabilities being less represented in early readers), and there's plenty of small practical downsides. Therefore, it's something that's OK if it happens, but quite alright if you go down another path.

And there's especially little evidence of receiving explicit reading instruction in school earlier results in better academic outcomes. But lots and lots of parents now try and seek out more "academic" kindergartens and pressure their kindergarten to spend more time on literacy skills.

You can even find studies that show minor disadvantages in later performance from earlier reading instruction (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08852... ) but I don't really believe these.
That's what I mean.

But the specific issue I see is that a piece of external JS got inserted into their web app, and their security team didn't realise it.

The fact that its from GTM is no excuse: give me Google tag manager, I'll exfil your users data in an hour ;)
I'm unfamiliar with the legal system (judicial system?).
I had thought that the jury's findings were final.
Am I understanding correctly that the case still went to the Supreme Court of the US, and now that court finds in favor of Google.

What happens after this, more appeals or is this like a proper static const readonly final?
Ask HN: What markets are changing the fastest and how?
How is it non-depreciating? You can’t practice medicine forever.
At least in the US
First of all, that money is never "out of the economy" whether its in a bank-account or a dividend it's circulating in the economy, either here or overseas.

Second, the main reason U.S. companies keep foreign profits offshore is they would be taxed if brought back to the U.S.

Your understanding of the problem is exactly backwards.
You said it right !! Its exactly how this happens.
I'm curious if one can inoculate oneself against this at all?

I follow a pattern of proactively trying to solicit critical feedback from coding peers as well as management. I've found this is a little unique, I think most people like the "no news is good news" model better.

I've found that often I have to dig hard to get people to give me some areas to improve upon. When I ask the "so where do I make changes to make me better", I often get a lot of compliments, I think because people are often uncomfortable sharing critical observations. I listen patiently and thank them, but then try to persist for areas of improvement. Giving people a day or two warning (I thought this might improve the process) just seems to amplify that effect.

But after all that, I wonder if I'm just "getting out ahead" of the DK effect by controlling its uncomfortable truths before they hit hard, in a subliminal effort to preserve my mediocrity.
This appears to be the "money quote":

We reach the conclusion that in this case, where Google
reimplemented a user interface, taking only what was
needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work
in a new and transformative program, Google’s copying of
the Sun Java API was a fair use of that material as a matter of law.

Also, while I hate to just repeat things that have already been said, I feel compelled to say

"What a relief!"

because this would have been a complete disaster if they had gotten this decision wrong. In fact, I'm not sure "complete disaster" is a strong enough phrase to reflect what it would have meant for the software industry if this had come down the other way. So getting this looming disaster out of the way is a tremendous relief.
> Computer programs differ to some extent from many
other copyrightable works because computer programs always serve a functional purpose.

So a computer program instructs processors to do things while books do not necessarily instruct neurons to do things. This seems like a leap. I could write a book with NOP for every word or I could write a program with NOP loops. Are these really instruction to do things? Like so, books do instruct people (aka knowledge).
Yes not being President of the USA does make a person less in the spotlight. Not sure what your point is.
Or just don't blow a ton on rings? My wife and I spent roughly $200 each on rings. Or even just buy some of those silicon rings that are roughly $50. I really like wearing a wedding ring, but not being attached to any one ring that I'm worried about losing or damaging is nice too.

Also like you say gems other than diamonds are nice. I'm seeing many more engagement rings recently that are opting for different stones as well.
They actually do. He describes in detail how agricultural production is estimated using historic data in farmland, yields and how it is painstakingly adjusted per region. In other words the tedious work needed to actually do this.

A long academic read nonetheless...
I urge you not to use food insecurity in argument. Even outside food stamps, food is extremely affordable to eat perfectly healthy. If nothing else it's an education issue, not a food issue.

https://efficiencyiseverything.com/eat-for-1-50-per-day-layo...

No comment on job security or wealth inequality.
3 years seems like a very short shelf life for a HD. You seem reasonably happy with it. Was it expected?
> Canada, Australia, NZ

Had much less focus on resource extraction than typical colonies. They were used more as a place for their own population to go and live.

> Japan and South Korea

Those weren't colonies. Those were more of puppet states used as buffers against nearby powers. The focus wasn't on extracting wealth it was focused on having a strong ally in the region.
The NLRB is the legal system for deciding such matters. Amazon's legal theories no longer hold weight.

Do you expect the NYT to publish every failed, specious motion filed in standard court cases in the name of "both sides" after the case has been decided? No, you take statements from both sides, and report what the legal system has decided.
Yep, this is a repost. @dang this needs (2020)

Edit: arguably the blog post was put up in 2021, but something to indicate that it's old news would be useful. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-fo...
In my own mind, when CentOS died Oracle was saying you should move to "Oracle Unbreakable Linux"... which is a downstream clone of RHEL, just like CentOS was. Just one example of the hypocrisy.
Which of Breyer's clerks drafted this? They clearly understand many tech issues and I hope they find their place on some Federal circuit to herald an era of logic in tech law.

"Google’s limited copying of the API is a transformative use. Google copied only what was needed to allow programmers to work in a different computing environment without discarding a portion of a familiar programming language. Google’s purpose was to create a different task-related system for a different computing environment (smartphones) and to create a platform—the Android platform—that would help achieve and popularize that objective. "

...

"Here the record showed that Google’s new smartphone platform is not a market substitute for Java SE."

...

"Google copied these lines not because of their creativity or beauty but because they would allow programmers to bring their skills to a new smartphone computing environment. "

...

"the Court concludes that Google’s copying of the API to reimplement a user interface, taking only what was needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, constituted a fair use of that material as a matter of law. "
Well, the idea with Backblaze/Glacier is cheap long term storage in exchange for high request costs, no?

For me anyways, this is a tertiary backup of data that is duplicated in a zfs raid 10 pool and in external drives at a different house. A high request cost isn't much to get back my family photos, documents, etc, in a situation where neither of the first two backups are available.
there is a specific command you need to use to create a 3d index

CREATE INDEX [indexname] ON [tablename] USING GIST ([geometryfield] gist_geometry_ops_nd);

by default postgis just creates 2d ones
That just means that economics is a useful lens, which it is. The stratified model of classes, however, is absurd. I work as a developer, with some developers under me, with some stock in the company I work at. Am I labor, managerial, or capital class? I also bought a house and rent it out, but myself pay rent to live in my current apartment. Am I landlord class or tenant? Am I exploiting my tenants or being exploited? Why would I rent if I considered my relationship with my landlord to be exploitative? I don't think I know a single person who cleanly fits into the Marxist conception of class boundaries, because the world isn't made up of factory owning fat cats and lowly factory workers.
> BB doesn't have redundancy, right?

No, they do have redundancy.
> How many people actually remember their own code months later?

Certainly not me. Not only do I often not remember the code, but sometimes I don't even remember working on that particular problem/feature at all.
And that's fine right? If it was a desktop app instead, you could say that it's not secure against sandbox escapes and stack smashing attacks. It's still a step-up in security compared to cloud transcription services, and for most use cases perfectly adequate.
> Because the NLRB isn't some opaque body; it's a public body accountable to voters, and as a voter it's impossible to know if their explanation is valid if the press doesn't accurately and fully report on why a particular decision was made.

Since they’re a public institution their decisions are published for anyone to look up, read, and understand the rationale behind their decision.

It seems NYT got the scoop on this particular case but you can expect the decision to be posted on the NLRB site when it’s finalized. I suspect the NYT (and the person who tipped them off) does not yet know the reason for the Board’s decision. It’s very likely no one involved in this article has read the document yet and, for now, they’ve only been informed as to the outcome. NYT, Amazon, and the aggrieved parties will probably have to wait to read the Board’s written decision along with the rest of us.
>I'm skeptical of that. I don't think women in their 20's don't have kids because of a physical cost - they forgo because of a financial cost and social cost.
Before having kids people want a family structure and to be able to provide for a child's needs.

>Before having kids people want a family structure and to be able to provide for a child's needs. Those two things are intertwined. At the same time if you have those things by the time your fifty you don't have kids because you're fifty - and honestly you're either thinking about retirement or death, not kids.

I completely disagree. People in their 50s thinking about their retirement or death? In my country retirement age (for men) is 65. Being fifty is very far from retirement for many people.

>So for most people who aren't prodigies of one sort or another there's a windows from 30 to 40'ish where if they set things up straight kid or kids seem realistic.

This 30 to 40 age bracket you chose is also where many women experience physical issues due to having children. My sister had her first kid at 32. Now years later she is still dealing with health issues as a result.

I think the best age when most people are not just economically, but mentally prepared for having children is 30-50. For women in their late 30s and 40s the health risks start to outweigh the benefits of having a child.

>If you had to tack on the price of an artificial womb I think the window would get marginally smaller not larger.

Who says you wouldn't have people choosing to have children the traditional way? I bet an artificial womb would mean large number of people in their 40s and 50s would decide to have children. If the cost was for example comparable to a cost of a new mid range car many people in that age group could afford it.
It’s accidentally self referential. People who think it’s clever posting articles about dunning-Kruger are totally unaware it makes them look like a midwit, at the very least immature.
You know what else doesn’t pass the smell test? The whole “spend 3 months salary on a ring” propaganda I’ve heard more and more over the last 5 or so years. Some people really believe this like it’s some cultural rule.
Bloomberg Second Measure | San Francisco or New York City ONSITE (when we return to offices) | https://secondmeasure.com
----

Bloomberg Second Measure is a leading provider of data analytics that deliver valuable insights into company performance and consumer behavior. Using data from billions of anonymized transactions, we have created self-service analytics products for daily tracking and real-time exploration of 5,200+ public and private companies. Clients use our products to discover new markets, gain an advantage in financial investments, and inform their competitive strategies. {Bloomberg acquired Second Measure (YC '15) in Dec 2020}.

We help our clients – some of the world's largest brands and investment firms – answer questions like:

- How do restaurant delivery companies perform across different US cities? [1]
- Where is Uber gaining or losing market share? [2]
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- (Check out our research blog [2])

As a part of Bloomberg, the Second Measure team is 60 people — mostly senior engineers and data scientists. We're looking for other strong builders, especially those who can grow into leadership roles:

- Sr Data Engineer (Python/AWS/Spark)
- Data Platform Engineer (Python/AWS/Kubernetes)
- Content Marketer
- Sr Product Manager

Please apply directly [4] or email jobs@

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90405922/soulcycle-customers-tak...

[2] https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/rideshare-industry-over...

[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/grubhubs-struggles-could-chill-...

[4] https://secondmeasure.com/jobs/
What does "religious people" mean? ;-)

But sure, that works when people do it. Just like social distancing.

Relying on other people's good behavior at a large scale is a bad plan though.

Also not sure which number of partners brings the most frustration or alienation. One? Three? Zero? Each situation seems to bring its own problems. Life is suffering.

("One" is the best plan for most people, but it depends a lot on which one...)
One people, one government, one leader /s
This is a large scale defeat of the GPL and dual licensing, so I'm not sure how this could be anything but a sad day for sustainable open source development.

If you're big enough and have enough lawyers, there's no reason to license software you want to build on.
Libertarianism allows for opt-in communists. The reverse is not true.
I am glad Oracle didn't win. It seems to me that they bought Sun just to sue Google. I'm still bitter over for how they destroyed Sun... it's a shame that they didn't have a better steward.
I still have my Nexus 4 (LG manufactured) in a box somewhere. This was actually my first smartphone, and it turned out to be a great purchase. It was affordable, simple, and somewhat close to open. Rooting in place was as simple as could be, and with “Xposed” I was able to get features on my phone that wouldn’t be widespread on stock Android or iOS for many years.

It’s hard to point to anything very wrong with that phone. It even had an Amoled always on display, which was ahead of its time. Reviewers thought that front and rear glass was an awful design decision, and they may have been right, but look where we are now?
So, new brackets or not, tax capital gains, gifts, and inheritances as regular income to the recipient.

Also, apply taxes (and corresponding benefit eligibility) equivalent to payroll/self-employment taxes to that income.

At the same time, allow corporations to expense disbursements: you are taxing individual income fairly, corporate tax just is a tool to prevent indefinite tax-free deferral of income.
When to Use Docker on AWS Lambda, Lambda Layers, and Lambda Extensions
Talks by Paul Ramsey are usually a highlight of any GIS conference.
I skimmed both of those links, and while they did indeed show that inequality is increasing, they didn't show the same for poverty.
I had forgotten about this for quite awhile, given the pace at which these cases operate at.

The great sigh of relief I was unexpectedly gifted this morning upon seeing this at #1 was a nice surprise. Very important precedent, good job.
"(e) The fact that computer programs are primarily functional makes it difficult to apply traditional copyright concepts in that technological world."

So the opinion effectively preserves the status quo in the software industry while sidestepping the question of API copyrightability.
Germany has much stronger labor unions than the USA, a legal requirement we forced on them when they finalized the constitution (Basic Law) of 1949. Since that time, compare the fate of the American auto companies (GM, Ford, Chrysler and American Motors) to German auto companies (Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, BMW). The American companies ruled the world, and then lost market ground, one went bankrupt, another was bought. The German companies pulled themselves out of the ruins of WW II and became international powerhouses.
maybe rsync.net? I don’t use them (yet) but they seem cool.