skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thank you for taking the time to come on here and discuss and answer questions! Its great to see someone like you taking the time to answer questions from random people on HN.

It really does make me want to consider working with stripe for my next project (or, consider working for stripe for my next job)
I take your point. Hiring aside, though, I don’t know anywhere in the tech world where people specialize as much as they do in large, FAANG-like organizations.

I remember a fantastic Medium post by some self-taught/bootcamp coder who made his way into Uber and specialized in time-series databases, making himself the resident expert and developing deep knowledge of these databases. This quickly pulled him up the ranks and got him better compensation and recognition for his work. Now he is a uniquely qualified specialist in a deep niche.

FAANGs are full of people with deep knowledge like this, because there are so many niche problems that require strong specialization.

Perhaps you could argue they’re all T-shaped generalists, but then the lines between “specialist” and “generalist” become quite blurred.
I'm doubtful that this is really the best way to put it.

The US escalated it's involvement until the early 1970's when via strategic bombing of the North (which the US was unwilling to do previously), decisively destroyed the North Vietnamese ability to fight.

Then, the Americans left.

A couple of years later, the North Vietnamese rehabilitated their forces, and invaded the South.

The reality is such different perspective than 'North Vietnam Won' to the point wherein it's basically almost misinformation to just state it like that.

Finally, the tactical and strategic advantage of the US bombing with Nixon was enormous. The US could have feasibly stayed for a long time - after shedding their fears of 'Bombing the North' and just 'doing it', they finally gained the 'obvious advantage' that a major power should have had.

But Nixon ran on a platform of 'Getting out of Vietnam', and the folks back home lost interest in a miasma of populism.

I think those nuances are important, because I think it demonstrates how tactics, politics and populism fuelled the outcome.

The lessons of 'Fight to Win Only' and 'A long grinding war will turn your population against you' are straight out of the Art of War.

Those lessons informed the 1st US invasion of Iraq (and 2cnd), which was led by Vietnam vets. 'Overwhelming Force and Boots on the Ground to Unambiguously Overwhelm Enemy Forces', though the 2cnd occupation didn't go quite as well.

Finally, literally one day after Barack Obama ordered the last US units out of Baghdad, then Iraqi PM Malaki ordered a purge of Sunnis from his party and government. The Sunni Tribes, in fear of their lives from the then-emboldened Shia dominated Iraqi Army ... invited ISIS in. This very well could have been avoided by keeping a few units, neatly tucked away 'behind the wire' in Baghdad - just enough ongoing oversight and leverage to keep people like Malaki from self-destructing. It would have been better in hindsight to take a longer view of that situation as well.

It's hard to say if there is a direct parallel with Vietnam but it kind of looks like that.
That's not what the comment said at all.

He didn't claim that his action was ethical.

He said that YouTube's was unethical.

You completely misunderstood.
As an ex-FAANG who knows dozens of folks at FAANG companies: the vast, vast majority of folks there are generalists, whether they know it or not. The number of people doing anything remotely "hyper optimized" is extremely small relative to the number of employees.

They may work on more specialized problems, but only because the corps are big enough to have entire teams or orgs around things most companies can't even do in-house, but it doesn't make the ICs specialists themselves.

To give you an idea, the last offer I got from Google had me choosing between a team developing a proprietary database, a team working on low-level networking problems, and a team responsible for, essentially, refactoring another teams code to make it portable.

Specialist teams, mostly generalist individuals.
Depends if you want a job or a business. Employees do well specializing. Entrepreneurs have to be broadly competent.
Renewable Energy Is Suddenly Startlingly Cheap
Well done. That's the best I've ever heard that said.
What cops beating what antifa members?
Still crazy to think they drive through salted roads for a decade and are basically ok.

Btw were Deloreans pretty rust resistant? How will the cyber truck do living by the beach?
There is more than two options - you can be anywhere in between - there is no need to choose one or the other. I find having a specific technical skill helpful in getting your foot in the door as employers are often looking to have their existing systems maintained. Other than that you can diversify as you want.
> Do I really need to back up the claim that what applies to the rare talents doesn't automatically apply to everyone? That should be the default assumption unless proven otherwise.

You do actually, yes

This makes me think you are just ignoring what I'm actually saying. Read some of his source code like I mentioned multiple times and tell me this somehow only applies to John Carmack. There is no reason anyone couldn't program that way, but people have their head filled with nonsense and get distracted thinking they need unnecessary overhead. John Carmack's programs are incredibly simple and clear. Why would someone try to emulate this charlatan who doesn't make anything when they could mimic Carmack?

This isn't saying everyone can drive as fast as a race car driver, it's saying that you should at least go in the same direction if you want to get to the same place.
Because even through a user can grant a Chrome extension access to particular site, when that site has certain CSP policies enabled there's no way for the Chrome extension to interact with that page's JS. CSP is enforced on the extension's JS, even though the user wants to permit it.

Chrome could make things much easier for developers, and arguable safer, by offering some straightforward way for an extension to interact with a page that doesn't involve messing with CSP headers.
Possibly.

"A recent innovation in the Japanese real estate industry to promote home ownership is the creation of a 100-year mortgage term. The home, encumbered by the mortgage, becomes an ancestral property and is passed on from grandparent to grandchild in a multigenerational fashion. We analyze the implications of this innovative practice, contrast it with the conventional 30-year mortgage popular in Western nations and explore its unique benefits and limitations within the Japanese economic and cultural framework."
The 100-year Japanese residential mortgage: An examination (1995) (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/106195....)
Yeah. The downfall of great nations begins with denying the reality. That slowly seeps into every nook and corner of the society, leading to rot from within. You can see this already happening in the US.

The drive is politics, the lube is the media. The denial of reality and the rejection of truth is more prominent than ever and it is showing its face everywhere in US politics.

As on date, for the last decade, no politician has ever resigned for lying or cheating, personally or professionally. The character and integrity of those in power is off the table for discussion (what he/she does in personal life is not for discussion)

Here is the fact. Perhaps in other jobs, white or blue collared ones, personal life may not affect the job. But when it comes to jobs that move the nation, political positions, powerful bodies, and what not, the personal character and integrity of the person ought to be the scale of foremost importance.
It might make sense if you subscribe to the idea of conformal cyclic cosmology. Where the big bang marks the transition between eons

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformal_cyclic_cosmology
are they putting transparent UI elements over the rating dialog and absorbing the taps? that's happened before in other platforms. not mobiles, but web browsers.
pro-Russian rebels of the Donbass war trying out bulletproof vest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ysQqHKYV1o
I so much cherish and enjoy great tools like this.
There are loads of YouTube channels dedicated to 3D printing alone. These are full time jobs for a number of people, and I bet there are more of them than there were employees at the six magazines. There may not be a Radio Shack that sells you gear but there certainly factories and online stores dedicated to maker spaces. Triangle Labs, Big Tree Tech, Prusa, Monoprice, JLCPCB, just to name a small handful of the ones I’ve interacted with recently. And the amount of stuff you can do today is staggering vs even a few years ago.

You might be seeing the situation through nostalgia goggles.
Are there a finite number of words? Language seems to grow and adapt to new concepts as needed, perhaps there is an infinity of linguistic descriptions available to us.
Absolutely, except in this case the U.S. wasn't even capable of that. They missed the importance of the ethnic dynamics, apparently too focused on political and economic dynamics that were at best comorbidities and at worst reflections and mirages.

From the random CIA dispatch reports from Laos and Indonesia I've read, low-level American officials were capable of regional socio-political savvy. I just don't think that appreciation ever translated up the chain. So, for example, people have claimed that the U.S. incited genocide in Indonesia. That seems both true and false. True because low-level CIA officers certainly seemed to understand how political and ethnic divisions overlapped and therefore how their anti-communist campaigning could and did devolve to ethnic cleansing. But I don't think leaders in Washington appreciated that at all. Perhaps mostly out of a racist disinclination to consider such aspects, but oblivious nonetheless.
I don't see how replacing "racist" by "Taiwanese nationalist", "liberal", or any other qualifier counter the point being made : you don't have to work enrich people whose ideas you do not support if you have a choice in the matter, period.
FYI the main language spoken in Belarus is Russian. Lukashenko effectively abandoned the Belarusian language early in his days of power. Most people under 35 can't even speak proper Belarusian.

https://www.quora.com/Do-the-Belarusians-still-speak-Belarus...
Gnome 40s Shell Theme Code Is Rather Expensive but Optimization Pursued
This captured everything I find upsetting about white backlash to anti-racism. Pointing out a problem doesn’t mean the response expected of you is guilt. Identifying that you benefit from it and have an opportunity to do something about it doesn’t mean self deprivation.

Imagine if the zillion things people admire on HN reacted this way. “Launch HN: infrastructure as a service being characterized as lock in, we didn’t build anything because we’re sick of being told what’s wrong with existing things!” “Show HN: I got tired of people complaining about privacy so I made my website purely out of tracking cookies!”
Most treadmills are advertised as gym equipment rather than home equipment.

Most gym areas have restrictions such as not allowing kids under a specific age (I can't remember the exact number, I think it was 14). Even gyms in residential buildings have this restriction.

Now, many treadmills don't have enough space under them to enable the kind of stuff that Peloton treadmills do to pets and kids ("sucking" them under the treadmill and killing them).
Is this snark meant to imply that you think that people shouldn't acknowledge a dilemma when one exists, unless they also have a solution to offer for said dilemma?

Google has nigh-on monopoly power over the browser ecosystem. Also, extensions are by-and-large malware. Making people aware that extensions are mostly malware helps Google to consolidate its monopoly; but also (obviously) helps people to avoid malware.

We don't want Google to control the Internet, and we don't want browsers to be full of malware. That's a dilemma. It has no obvious solution. But it's better to be aware of the dilemma — and so realize there is no easy solution — than to ignorantly push for one side or the other to "win."
> Just work on shit you find interesting, the money will follow.

Unless it's video games, in which case pick something else.
Do you find yourself doing freelance work in one or two specific industries or is your clientele generalized as well?
> Budgets are strained precisely because they are saddle with 50 year old structures in need of maintenance. Only a small % of the budget goes to new construction.

You have it exactly backwards - most of the budget goes to capital construction - replacement of existing structures and roads. The maintenance budget is constantly shrunk.

>Stainless steel rebar does not double the cost of construction, and neither does high quality concrete.

Last I checked stainless rebar was ~3x the cost of regular rebar...

"high quality" concrete doesn't mean anything. Most concrete is high quality.

>We need to stop buying subscribtion to "bridge as a service"

All infrastructure requires maintenance and eventual replacement. Bridges will never be permanent and will always require regular inspection, maintenance, etc.
The discussion a few months ago on the article "Short Fat Engineers Are Undervalued"[0] was really helpful to me in thinking about this issue. The top comment's perspective resonated with me:

> The argument of specialist vs generalist is futile. They simple fit in distinct parts of the journey and evolution of a software product.

> Generalists are highly valuable for many types of orgs and projects especially nascent projects. But sometimes you need the precise output of a specialist to achieve something.

So, whether being a specialist or generalist is better depends on the context. In the end, it depends on what kinds of jobs you want to work on. If you enjoy working on the full stack, then there are still plenty of people who will want to hire you, especially smaller businesses. Larger organizations hiring a contractor are probably more likely to be seeking a specialist for a very specific job.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.cdidam?id=26119087
Even if it was 70%, it is hard to put a price on the additional 30%. As an example lets look at the Camera API. It is possible do full encoding at high resolution of two independent sensors recording simultaneously (front + back camera for instance). There is no 1st party functionality that uses this. This requires a combination of hardware (media + sensor chips), OS, API, testing, docs, etc, that is built for 3P. This is just 1 example. It is hard to argue that Apple is not investing a fair share of the 30% platform fees back into the platform itself (hardware, software and services).
I wouldn't characterize HN as left-leaning. Maybe liberal with a dash of libertarian techbro thrown in.

Also to quote you: "I would hope CEO to protect someone saying “be safe from rioters and looters in BLM marches”, but that won’t happen.

It’s easy to protect someone who is supported by the majority. " Is pretty borderline racist. Maybe not overtly so, but the fact that you equate protesting getting killed with looting and rioting rubs a little too close to it. Oh and then denying racist policies are, in fact, racist just because they don't meet the dictionary definition of it.

Also - freedom of speech being the greatest achievement of western civ? No wonder it took the Muslim civilizations to get us out of the dark ages. And left-leaning activists shutting it down? Jesus dude. Read the constitution. You clearly have no idea what freedom of speech (in America) is.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances"

That's it. CONGRESS. Nothing about market forces pushing tech companies to deplatform people. Nothing about "cancel culture" or whatever. I mean, I also remember the Bush years, when we had "Free Speech Zones" and nobody on the right was really concerned about it because it only affected people who were protesting the Iraq/Afghanistan debacle.

I mean, Florida (a state run by a pretty right-wing governor) just passed a law essentially denying tech companies freedom of speech. The projection from the right is absolutely ridiculous at this point.

Sometimes, you're just wrong. Whether you admit it or whether you claim you are being some superior moral authority and refusing to bend to "groupthink."
Despite their stated intentions, the hiring pipelines are for specialists. The leetcode tests are good at selecting for specialists, since the nature of those tests (irrespective of the subject matter) matches the specialist skillset.

It's important to distinguish between specialist/generalist roles versus specialist/generalist people. Most of FAANG is hiring specialists people for both roles. That's my sense of it anyway.
To read what? DC comics, Vogue, Hello, etc? Just because people have reading time doesn't mean they are going to read what you are hoping they might.
S. Koreans are unambiguously 'better off' than their counterparts in the North.

That's the closest comparable we have.

If the US were to have 'stayed' in S. Vietnamese, much like they did in S. Korea, that S. Vietnam would look 'somewhat' like S. Korea, but not nearly as prosperous given their agrarian history etc..

But definitely better off.
4 Easy Ways to Contribute to an OSS project
Reminds me of an old comic "Calvin and Hobbs" where Calvin's Dad explains why all old photos where black and white.

http://calvin-and-hobbes-comic-strips.blogspot.com/2011/11/c...
My rule of thumb is to disregard snarky know-it-all comments by random people on the Internet.
Don't be too broad, hiring managers won't know what to do with you.
I have too many differing specialisations and interviews start with "what would you say you actually do?"
People want to know which box you fit into.
Also don't work for consultancies for very long.
It isn't that simple. We want to know what percentage of tweets have property X given event Y. We can estimate that using a sample and error bars.

Note that the quotes specifically avoid this inference because the error bars would be silly. 500 million total tweets a day can't be talked about based on 7,000 hand categorized tweets.

But non staticians don't have any reference point for how powerful a predictor it is so a short hand is < 10% probably means in the error bars so less believable.
"I feel like there's a consumer lack of understanding. The invisible hand can't push effectively here"

When I asked the real estate agent what's the expected lifespan of a house, she looked at me like she's just seen an alien. In fact, half the time, they don't even get the floor space right and every floor plan comes with a disclaimer "maybe this is wrong"
thank you for your eloquence and honesty and bravery.
I wish more folks on HN would attempt to write like this..me included. don't stop.
Also in the news today:

Conservative congressman Tom Cotton is showing a headline (I think from CNN) that bashes him for repeating the 'debunked' idea that corona may have come from the Wahun lab. Of course that theory is very much alive and viable today.

Republican Rand Paul is upset that some songwriter made a Twitter post offering to buy drinks for someone who 'finishes the job his neighbor started', a reference to the neighbor who physically attacked Paul a few years back. Paul correctly points out that Twitter is supposed to have a policy against threats and violence.

So yes, there seems to be something there.
8 and 9 aren't valid octal digits since C89 :)
Yet our transportation infrastructure is decaying; our healthcare is among the worst in the world--the governments pays AND we pay out of pocket AND it still sucks; and our education sucks.
> Well if assumption is gaza itself is military threat basically there are no innocent people or buildings there, so no evidence will suffice.

I don't think that Israel is claiming that, although some
people might make such a stupid claim.

>It is extremely hard to believe that at least by accident that Israel has not bombed civilian target, harder still to believe that all the "Intel" they have is so accurate that they know exactly always which civilian buildings Hamas operates out of during the middle of a war.

That seems sadly quite possible and hard to verify either way. Also my guess would be that most of the intel was gathered prior to the war.
The Open Locksport kickstarter is one notable disaster: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/10/schuyler-towne-a... Back in the day there were an endless series of "$100 3d printers". Etc etc.

Adding the required 50% margin to the BOM of a consumer product is painful and unintuitive. Most kickstarters are done by regular people, and as a normal consumer it can be hard to be appropriately pessimistic when pricing a product you have to manufacture and sell. It's endlessly temping to lower the price.
He is not silenced, he can write all he wants on his blog and his ideas are available to the public.
He is labelled a racist because he defends racist views, this is what he actively promotes. It might be against the zeitgeist, but a lot of people "against he zeitgeist" are not labelled racist just for being so.
I’m not bot-level strength of course but yes, this would be interesting to model/test!
spend some of your millions or hiring a competent PR droid for godsake

at the moment every post makes you look more and more ridiculous
when you are a freelancer, having a niche really helps with marketing more than anything else, easier for you to find jobs and for jobs to find you.

It's not really about "better" its all about what advantages there are to different things and what advantages do you want to pursue
The hypocrisy of it is the entire point. It's a demonstration of power. Combined with the rhetoric what it clearly communicates is "play the farce or we'll do this to you too."

They don't suck at PR, they are doing exact what they want and it is extremely effective. You simply are coming into it with the wrong frame, one based on viewing it in the detached and abstract hypothetical, vs the embodied view of someone who is in that society and has everything to lose.

Everyone ultimately knows the Big Lie is false. The PR is showing that the truth does not matter vs the power of the regime.

One of the most chilling examples of this is the footage from when Saddam took absolute power. He paraded out a "confessor" that showed signs of torture in front of the legislature. The confessor started reading a list of names of sitting members of the legislature. As he continued, the entire congress became panic'd. Many of them began screaming hyperbolic pledges of loyalty to Saddam, prostrating in the aisles, etc.

Once the list of names was done, roughly half the legislature was named. Saddam took everyone outside, distributed firearms, and made the half that was not named execute the half that was. He did that to make the survivors complicit in his new dictatorship. The message was: if I go down, you go with me now.

That's what this sort of stuff is about. Not some armchair platonic musing about whether it's hypocritical vs the ideals of democracy.
Cuba is Communist. Do some research about the actual conditions there. It's a slave pen and a hellhole.
If you have no actual preliminary evidence that Tesla did this you probably wouldn't have a case - getting to deposition (and thus getting access to emails for evidence) requires claims to have some basis and rescinding a job offer can be explained by many other things easily. (I am not your lawyer, of course)
Five digit years is a Long Now foundation thing. Saying "it looks like octal" is new to me though.