skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Just how long do you think an appraiser will last if they consistently aren't appraising high enough?

Well seeing as the banks don't get to always choose...long enough to remain solvent. You are coming at this with a conspiracy misconception and that is not how the industry works at all. There is not guiding hand incentivizing "only good appraisals." It's 100% autonomous. Do appraisers know how to game the system? Absolutely. Do they? Well if their comps are in the $100k range and the borrower thinks the house is $150k, an appraiser is not gonna risk their license because some schmuck thinks they're entitled to another $50k in equity. It. Doesn't. Happen.

>They all work for the same company, they all know each other.

No they don't. Most appraisers are independent contractors or work for a specific appraisal company. Of which there are a lot. Competition is extraordinarily healthy in the industry. In commercial, we had like seven we'd use for quotes consistently.

>And if they are using a neutral 3rd party to select appraisers, just who is selecting this neutral 3rd party? The bank of course.

Part of post 2008 rules say the bank can't pick them for residential mortgages. That is why it goes through an independent company as I stated before so the bank can wash their hands of bias. But the "bank" does not choose. The processors submit an appraisal request. That's it. No deciding who and the lenders don't say who they want. If anything, the lenders just want someone to do it quick.

>I suppose you also think that "3rd party" arbitrators selected and paid for by one of the parties to the issue being arbitrated is also unbiased?

I'd say it's more unbiased than what existed previously.

>As for racial bias, unconscious bias needs no incentive one way or another.

You need a cultural shift to fix that which is beyond the banks expertise.

I'm kind of getting annoyed how ignorant you are of the situation yet still actively looing for a way to dispute this. This is the system and the biases that you are fabricating just aren't there. If they are, they're so minimal; few and far between, that you're assuming the banks are run by some Bilderberg group trying to ensure some fraction of racial bias in one industry that fucks over thousands of people everyday who can't say they got screwed because of a racial bias.
Addressing legitimate problems of hardship can be dealt with from the other end, by channeling resources to those people. In the mean time, higher prices mean that supply isn't interrupted, and for the vast majority of people that means that you don't fill up your car and your wife's car and your lawnmower and a 55gal drum, because it's not worth it. You just skip a few trips and let your gas tank get below half a tank. And if you were wrong about thinking you could hold out, you can still buy gas because it's not sitting in your neighbor's new gas cans in his garage.

We shouldn't have widespread shortages for the sake of theoretical people whose existences are structured around 5 gallon commutes and razor thin margins tied with no lines of credit to float a week of double gas expenses.
Good point! And I don't want to imply that the only people left without a vaccine are those who "refuse" it. We're not there yet, but were close! Stay safe!

(what in the world is going on with downvotes in this thread? Are HNers really unable to have difficult conversations?)
Riiiight... supply shocks, labor shortages, free government money, panic buying, shipping constraints, raw input prices, energy instability, all have nothing to do with the highest inflation print in nearly a decade. It's all just "prior sharp decreases." Gotcha.
Why would PG (or anyone) want to live in a world where private companies can't decide to fire someone because they make coworkers uncomfortable and tarnish the brand?

There should be no compulsory hiring.
What would be the intended result of crashing comets into Mars? Do comets have enough mass that the addition of that much dry ice, regular ice, and assorted rubble would make a noticeable change in the climate, or is the goal to use the re-entry heat to warm things up? And would a large impact cause a dust cloud that would take years/decades to settle? (Which could be an acceptable side effect if the benefits are worth it, or if the dust itself creates a warming effect.)
I wish it was common and expected that those that want to go maskless, wear their vaccination cards around their necks. Not a requirement, but just having it be common enough that if you do, people will know what it means.

Here in San Francisco, more than 50% of people are fully vaccinated, but everyone is still wearing masks, even outdoors. I don't think it is just that SF hasn't changed the mandate, it is more about social pressure.

And I say that while at the same time, being proud to live in the big city that has done the best (i.e. least per capita deaths of any US large city), thanks to a culture of taking the pandemic seriously. But I'm ready to take advantage of being vaccinated, without people crossing the sidewalk to avoid me or otherwise getting looks.
> Hard mode is good enough that I'd like to see some sort of distance metric to the nearest real story, to be sure the model isn't accidentally copying truth.

Yeah, I ran into at least one example which basically regurgitated a real paper. The "fake" article was:

Efficient organic light-emitting diodes from delayed fluorescence

A class of metal-free organic electroluminescent molecules is designed in which both singlet and triplet excitons contribute to light emission, leading to an intrinsic fluorescence efficiency greater than 90 per cent and an external electroluminescence efficiency comparable to that achieved in high-efficiency phosphorescence-based organic light-emitting diodes.

and the real one at https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11687 has:

Highly efficient organic light-emitting diodes from delayed fluorescence

Here we report a class of metal-free organic electroluminescent molecules in which the energy gap between the singlet and triplet excited states is minimized by design4, thereby promoting highly efficient spin up-conversion from non-radiative triplet states to radiative singlet states while maintaining high radiative decay rates, of more than 106 decays per second. In other words, these molecules harness both singlet and triplet excitons for light emission through fluorescence decay channels, leading to an intrinsic fluorescence efficiency in excess of 90 per cent and a very high external electroluminescence efficiency, of more than 19 per cent, which is comparable to that achieved in high-efficiency phosphorescence-based OLEDs
Usually it is "minimize the integral of the thrust acceleration" (T/m).

Other metrics are to maximize the final mass, or to minimize the final time.
Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban
>Can they unbomb it for $5 million? Cause that would be cool

Yes, we could "unbomb" it for some amount of money. But, we generally use the term "repair".

But, that's a great point: as long as we can undo the damage for some amount of money (via repair or paying extortion), we should let foreign adversaries dictate the terms on which they'll allow us to operate our infrastructure.

Still, do let us know when you think we should be concerned. 2 more pipelines? 3 more hospitals? 4 more police stations?

$5 trillion ransoms? Maybe? No? Perhaps when infrastructure outages and other attacks cause deaths?
Why does this page declare Safari to be the easiest browser to exploit, when it also says it uses the same technique as it does in Firefox (and does not describe any scheme flooding protection in Firefox)?
It's not the only reference, but I bring it out because you and I are talking past each other, and shared definitions or discovering differences between our definitions and what others think is the only way past an impasse like that.

Thanks for the attempt at discussion, but looks like there's no more productive discussion to be had.
Interesting anecdote, KSR as of 2015 didn't believe in mars colonization any more. The perchlorate issue really got to him and he basically said we'd never live there. Maybe he's changed his mind again but I got a chance to ask him some questions at a reading from Aurora and the scales really fell from my eyes at his answers.
The tool, Autumn, is on GitHub. It is described as "A Java parser combinator library written with an unmatched feature set".

https://github.com/norswap/autumn
Is there a chat app that is native anymore? I know Hipchat was back in the day, but the 2 I've used in recent years (Slack and Cliq) are both Electron as well. (As is Mattermost, but I haven't used it)
I STRONGLY recommend optimizing for the average non technical user and mass adoption. Basically, copy Slack’s visual design as much as you can while retaining what makes Zulip great.

Branding and visual design matters. Far more than most folks think.
Ristretto255 for the PHP Community
Autumn: A Java parser combinator library written with an unmatched feature set
If you firmly believe that homo sapiens will self-destruct in such a time, then why would there be any value in preserving Mars?
The Kelly Criterion can be used to analyze the options from the defender’s point of view, e.g.:

• pay for security that prevents attacks = lg[company value – cost of security]

• don’t pay for security = attack probability × lg[company value – cost of dealing with attack] + (1 – attack probability) × lg[company value]
Grant to Ecohealth Alliance INC. – USAspending.gov
Can someone please ELI5 what this grant for 3.7M Obligated to the WUHAN INSTITUTE OF VIROLOGY CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES CAPITAL CONSTRUCTION actually means?

Isn't this what people are referring to on twitter about Fauci perjuring himself to congress the other day?
Besides gimballed rocket bells, it looks like they also use side venting of fuel, oxidizer, or inert gas. It's not steady, it starts and stops apparently to give an extra torque moment when rotating the body or stabilizing the upper end just prior to and after landing.

https://youtu.be/Y_9FZDnCaoU
Wikipedia lists it as such, at least.
These numbers are most likely people vaccinated whose address on the paperwork was zip code Z divided by census? population estimate of people who live in zip code Z.

There's lots of fun ways those numbers can be messed up including (but not limited to), people using a mailing address different from where they reside, census boundaries not matching mail delivery route boundaries, population movements, how people without mailing addresses are counted, data issues in the census, etc.

In the US, we have a lack of enthusiasm for comprehensive and compulsary tracking of where people reside, and as a result, data like this is always going to be messy.
Early in the pandemic, I was That Guy. I was the only person wearing a mask in O'Hare in mid-February, when I was flying to my new home.

I was That Guy in the grocery store, and CostCo, and at the bank. For almost a month.

Oh I got looks. Lots of sidelong glances. Back then I think people subconsciously (or maybe consciously sometimes) figured the mask meant I was diseased. People would physically move away from me. Good! They were standing too close.

Just, show some spine. Be That Guy. You're vaccinated, act like it.
In WA it only recently opened up to all, and even those with early access may still be working on a full course. I just finished my full course because I had early access due to volunteer work. So we're not quite through those who are choosing not to take it here. Soon tho it will be all down to choice here.
My guess: GP is young and healthy, so the chance of significant harm from COVID is nearly zero, and the vaccines for COVID have significantly worse side effects than pretty much any other vaccines given today. Thus, until today, it was a high-risk low-reward proposition.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was ~85% effective at preventing 'severe' covid (requiring medical intervention but not hospitalization) and 61% - 65% effective at preventing 'mild and moderate' covid in areas with the variants that are now the most prevalent in the US.

I would assume vaccinated people that are sick enough to be having symptoms are probably also infectious.
> Somebody probably just ordered some highly radioactive isotopes from Advanced Space Civilization Amazon, and told them to leave it at the doorstep.

You mean United Nuclear, which brokers[1] radio isotopes to the general public? https://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2_... I don't see any Plutonium for sale, but that's not as interesting or useful as Cesium-137 or Polonium-210. They also sell Uranium ore, and do so directly, not brokered, so they have to be careful to vent Radon from their storage room.

[1] IIRC, the Polonium-210 I received was sent directly from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

EDIT: The sample was actually sent by Spectrum Techniques (https://www.spectrumtechniques.com/). They must be ORNL adjacent or something.
On an objective basis, the risk to children is in line with colds and flu.

Which isn't zero, colds and flu kill a few children a year.

I support you in keeping your children healthy, not trying to second guess you as a parent. But "think of the children" is not a good basis for policy here.
Super clever to make this exploit work on Chrome by opening a PDF file prior to launching the custom app scheme, in order to activate the Chrome PDF viewer extension, which resets the global flag requiring a user gesture before any custom scheme launch. It didn't track me across Firefox, and Chrome on Windows 10, but it was still cool.

Weird that when I tried running it in chrome headless[0], it opened the popup window, and tried the first scheme, but then stopped, and hung.

[0]: https://comebrowsewithme.com:8002/
That would be interesting, I wonder what other elements will eventually join it. Also, I'm sure they know what they are doing, but it came out of the ocean floor off the coast of Japan, how did they rule out Fukushima? Is the way it was incorporated into the rock make it certain?
I understand wanting to protect your kids, but here’s some statistics (United States): on average, 500 kids a year die from RSV, a respiratory virus for which there is no vaccine. Last year, 200 kids died from COVID-19, for which a seemingly safe and effective vaccine exists. I understand this probably doesn’t help much since you don’t hear and think about RSV every day for a year straight, but hopefully the vaccines are approved for children soon. Hang in there :)
For children, COVID is less dangerous than the seasonal flu, and we've never mandated masks or vaccines to protect children from that.
I don't think it is responsible in the slightest to go to a crowded movie theater, unvaccinated, only wearing a paper mask. Even more so when a safe an effective vaccine is available. I understand your point, but this road goes both ways.
I get where you are coming from, but if it was truly "easy", there would be a lot more self-landing rockets.

It makes one almost-impossible thing... possible. Not "easy".
Transport Protocols and the Network
“... looking forward to the age just beyond the age of electronics” - a prescient closing comment.
I tried to use notion and liked the functionalities, even I only used < 10% of them. You can basically create your own static website in it. But I stopped using it after finding I can't even copy the whole note on iOS, only one paragraph at a time. Weird design decision.
Of course political terrorists can be negotiated with, they have an agenda and stated goals. You might not like it but they're not actually mad they just use means you are not comfortable being brought to bear so close to home.
I might agree if I had any faith that the people who paid this ransom would do any more than the bare minimum to close this one specific vulnerability and nothing else.
I cant wait for the businesses that demand masks to be disconnected from the ability to operate by market pressures

Most brick and mortar was barely viable during the best market in history so all we gotta do is wait! And also not go to them lol have fun with that gofundme
> I wish there was data on fully vaccinated people being able to spread infection to others, but that won't be available for a long time.

There is such data. That data is what led the CDC to make this change.
To be fair, the Discord URIs are passed around in chat, etc. They're not that opaque, for a guild message it's just serverid/channelid/messageid. The numbers are snowflakes.
TIL: Chrome and Firefox have built-in XSLT processor
The Fukushima disaster was only 10 years ago, which is an eye blink in geology.
may be. Here's the problem, many see this as let's upend society for a "may be". Versus, isolate the sick as we've always done before
That's terrible news for people who depended on GhC. OTOH, they blame [news.greyhound.ca/] 'the impact of a changing and increasingly challenging transportation environment, including de-regulation and subsidized competition such as VIA Rail and publicly owned bus systems' as well as the May 2020 suspension (which, if I read it right, they state led to a 95% volume loss).

So certainly the 'subsidized' and 'public' systems will see a benefit from this loss, and pick up the pieces. Traveling GH was never a picnic, and I doubt it's gotten better in this century.
Similar approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T15gXm6ha_I
I wish them nothing but bad luck. Podcasting is great as the wild west.
false positives and crappy pcr tests, never meant as diagnostics
I believe that people with hyperphantasia can actually visualize chess boards on ceilings. As somebody who cannot actually visualize things with my mind’s eye (aphantasia) I cannot comprehend this.
IUD efficacy is a lot higher than that, around 99%. Condoms are lower than 91%, around 85% in real life use.

The various vaccines have a spread of efficacy as well. It's a valid analogy.
Not me, but a coworker of mine is the only guy in my office who hasn't been vaccinated (rest of us got second dose at end of January) because of adverse reactions to past (milder) vaccinations. He correctly assesses that he's in a very low risk environment, but at some point he'll probably risk the vaccine to not have pariah status.

But for the last 3 months, there was nothing to make the tradeoff worthwhile to him.
This, among a few other nuggets of which I was unaware, are described in Snowden’s book Permanent Record (although briefly, it’s a biography first and foremost) which I enjoyed.
There's also defogger you can apply that kind of works (I got it at a hockey store, marketted for the clear face masks some people wear instead of metal cages). An adjusted mask probably works better, but the defogger is better than without in situations where I know my glasses will fog up and I have to have a mask.
It sounds like you're saying that it would be better if our init were literally a bash script. Is that what you're saying?
A) this is awesome. Great job

B) they seem to be leaving some motherboard longevity on the table by not using an AMD and/or server CPUs, which tend to use the same socket & chipset for longer.
Keep in mind there are some who genuinely can't get it, for one medical reason or another. We still need to keep them safe.
Great concept. Would love to see a larger version with the same aspect ratio and peripherals.
I used to live 20 minutes walk from the closest non-convenience store.

I carried a medium-sized rucksack and went shopping more regularly.

Obviously not quite as easy for an old age pensioner or people that might also have issues walking with a heavy bag, but the vast majority of people do not fall into that category.

Nowadays I get my big shopping delivered, but still sometimes walk (to the now closer shop) with rucksack. For the further afield discount alcohol shop I often bike there, again with rucksack and/or side bags.
Kinda hard to trust anything out of Washington at the moment too, considering neither nation's government appears to have publicly audited gain of function research programs or reconsidered their utility and potential risks/benefits in the first place
I know we have to show some sympathy, but this is still equivalent to the alleged Nigerian prince or some Treasury giveaway. It would be great if everyone would be honest, but that's not the world we live in. So it still boggles my mind some people can still be so naïve.
Hypochondria is a mental illness.

It's ok to get help.

I'm not mocking you. It's been a traumatic year for all of us.
It’s mostly just accepting reality and gives states an alibi out of their partisan pandemic response

Like, on one end you have states waiting for an impossibly high threshold of vaccination before masks go away or nightclubs open up with dance floors. And now they can say “oh ok that was old guidance, we’re good now”

On the other hand it also caters to the states that ignored old guidance “ah! Sanity has prevailed! Now can these few businesses that demand masks stop fighting us on this?”
Not really, < 12 is a big concern.
I believe that guidance was based upon a prioritization necessity to make sure that medical first responders had access to PPE. Once the supply of PPE was great enough the guidance was also changed
Making Money Online Is “Simple” but Not Easy
Hmm...why not?
Keep in mind that that’s not gonna happen.

Unless the President said that, your message is not going to get across.

848 Americans died today marked as a Covid contributed death. There were lockdowns across 90% of the country a year ago when less people were dying from this. So we’re just past that, sorry. Good luck to them.

The goal was just to keep ICU capacity available for the normal distribution of emergencies in society. We’ve done that.
Does Skype no longer do POTS calls?
California is bleeding citizens.
Why do you need to own Bitcoin for transactions?

Someone wants to buy a 50k car. They give you 50k worth of Bitcoin. You immediately sell the Bitcoin for 50k of dollars.

At no time did you need to own Bitcoin before the transaction.
>colluding with the GRU to create false documents

[Citation Needed]
So you have todo a DB call to get this key on every page load or API request?

You’re back to square one. Just use an opaque random session ID
> A smile as you hold the elevator door for someone goes unseen; all the other person gets is a withering stare from behind a sterile surgeon's mask. A joke that's good enough to make someone grin but not laugh is now a joke that falls flat on its face. An inappropriate remark that is met with a frown or pressed lips is now emboldened with apparent silence.

The only significant communicative downside I've felt over a year of regularly wearing a mask in public is a slight latency at the beginning of friendly conversations with other people. Once my voice takes over the task of communicating intention and tone, I'm golden. (And unless every other mask-wearer has been gaslighting me, they have been golden, too, at least wrt to clear communication.)

> Especially when you think of them as more than breathing holes.

This has got to be the cutest expression of concern I've ever seen on HN. I feel like the euphemism "Oh, cheese and crackers!" could easily have been in the next sentence.

Whatever the case, it sure makes a nice counterpoint to a year of watching Facebook's outrage algo convert disinformed mask-less dipshits into unwitting human bioweapons.
Couldn't read in that he was being dense or couldn't read in that he was actually illiterate? How do you survive like that?
You were allowed to wear a veil before the pandemic as well, and no one is going to stop you now.

I adopted the Asian custom of wearing a surgical mask when feeling under the weather four years ago, for the record. Got a lot of weird looks on the BART, but also some supportive ones from, you guessed it, Asians.
In the near future, only pseudonyms and fools will challenge the thoughts of the day.