skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When I used to work in Japan I hated that rule. One day I feeling not so great, so I took the morning off. But we had an important release, so I still went to the office in the afternoon. The release ran into few issues, so I had to stay past the regular finish time of 6pm. I started to feel no so great again, so I wanted to finish the release and head home as soon as possible. But at 7pm, my boss came running towards me and forced me to take one hour break. I tried to explained to them (unsuccessfully) I only have about 5-10mins to finish the release. So I spent another one hour with watering eyes, massive headache, and chills, just to finish 5mins of work.
Imagine there is a magic button, that once pressed, solves the basic needs of shelter, food, clothing, access to water, education, healthcare... permanently, for every living person.

The only catch is that this magical work still costs natural resources to work. Topsoil, fresh water, oil, fish, lumber, pollinators, etc... every necessary resource to keep things working gets allocated and used automatically.

What will happen right after pressing this button is that there will be a massive population boost followed by a massive allocation of resources because perceive no longer perceives economic resistance as their families grow. So population grows exponentially and so does resource sage. Then, once resource depletion is imminent, a war over resources would take place.

After years of non-stop war, people will realize that peace is possible if they establish reproduction quotas. But each time the quotas are not respected, war happens again.

Would that be a better world? I don't think so.
Reagan, is that you?
You can watch this process, modulo medieval improvements (lime milk instead of urine for dehairing):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr5OZbF0XyA
Icing (and cold therapy in general) has been pretty thoroughly debunked now except for some very limited, specific scenarios. It might feel good, but there's no reliable evidence that it actually helps with long-term recovery or healing. "Good to Go" by Christie Aschwanden contains a great summary of icing (and other athletic recovery modalities).

https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393357714

NSAIDs can inhibit certain types of tissue healing. Some people eat them like candy because they're available OTC but the side effects can be significant.

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...

https://academic.oup.com/ptj/article/97/8/807/3826991
what's wrong with hour long lunches?
I __mostly__ agree. Though I disagree basic income, or even raising the minimum wage will have the intended effect.

Intended effect: Increase the buying power of those who proportionately receive the greatest additional income.

Likely real effect: The level of the tide rises, but the boat's don't change spots. The cost of rent and everything in the market goes up with the tide. The middle class, and even moderately well off professionals, get a quality of life and pay CUT (in effect, since they don't get the raise). The Rich who are rent-seeking, still get their rent and still win.

I agree with the Star Trek lifestyle goals, but they get there by providing for all equally. It's the major capitol things (leaving federation space, energy intensive development projects, etc) which still require funds other than basic allocation.
> I really don't want to be working in a place where I'm treated like a replaceable machine.

This seems like a leap. Where did I insinuate that anyone is a cog in a machine? Just because I said work should be about work? Why does it have to be about anything else? If you need your job to provide a social aspect to your life that’s completely fine. It’s just not a part of the business I’m building. It’s why I think having options is great. Everyone works differently.
From my experience with Chinese working culture, half of that time is most definitely spent not working.

I’d bet the factors are much more political in nature than productivity on the individual level.
In India, there's a job creation program that guarantees a paid job to anyone who wants it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guar...

Unsurprisingly, most of the job is the "dig a ditch today, fill it in tomorrow" variety.
Which is why I said ( Standard being different from person to person ).

Once it becomes a norm, people want more.
Yay can choose a alternative phone next time… just because you have a poorly supported phone doesn’t mean these options aren’t alternatives for you. Just that they aren’t free (as in beer).
https://github.com/matter-labs/awesome-zero-knowledge-proofs is more up to date.
Why don't we talk about raising taxes when we want to raise spending for ("subsidize") the police, or the military? Why does it only seem to be a concern when we're talking about services like public transportation?

Where are people opposed to taxes being used to fund fire departments, and why?

Why don't we see public transportation as one of your "public goods"?

Is it possible those people who you say are so concerned about value are maybe not seeing how they gain from having public transportation for their community, or are they more concerned about someone else deriving more value from a service than they would?
I think a lot of the replies in the thread so far have focused on tech (understandably, this is HN after all) but that's missing something obvious - the 4 day week would apply to everyone.

In tech it's very likely someone going from 5 days to 4 days could still achieve the same amount of actual work. As other commenters have said, many tech workers don't do productive work all the time they're present. Retail workers, factory workers, people who fill in the holes in roads, telephone support people, etc aren't contending with pointless meetings and busy work though. They can't do 40 hours of work in 32 hours by removing some of the hours they're not really working. What they do doesn't compress like that.

Consequently looking at this from the context of tech workers is far less interesting. The Japanese government isn't saying "Let's get rid of pointless meetings and busy work!" In tech removing the pointless nonsense isn't actually reducing the amount of real work people do. Instead, Japan is saying "Our country is wealthy enough and advanced enough that our people can actually do less work." That's fascinating.

If you see this as "removing the wasteful time spent on things that aren't useful like meetinga" then you've missed the point. It is that, but it's much, much more than that too.
You've forgotten the core tenet of every engineering discipline is the master-apprentice relationship. The reason why what you describe is really the gig economy is because you've turned contractors into autodidacts to cut costs. You're not only expecting engineers to work for you, you're expecting them to learn their craft without capitalizing that yourself. Someone has to pay for that too; it probably won't be your other contractors -- otherwise you'd be something like a real company again.

Your success in this direction to turn software development into some kind of cattle feedlot is only a mirage. Let me make it clear in economic terms: you're up a few chips at the casino, for now, because the market allows you to be. In the long run it's not sustainable, and won't yield any major feats of engineering with any level of competence.
I'm a fan of UBI, but I don't think this cliff phenomenon is an argument for it; it's an argument for gradual phase-outs instead of cliffs.
Perhaps “lack of privacy” is what you mean?
If there's so few real jobs in India that that program actually makes sense to have, then maybe UBI does make sense there. But there's plenty of unfilled jobs in the US, so UBI doesn't make sense here.
This blows my mind. Throwing your prime (or prime-st remaining years) at an office. Can you put your foot down and take unpaid leave whether they like it or not? Come up with an excuse if you have to. They will always try to push you to follow their line but will you regret that later in life?
I like to learn new stuff by doing personal projects, but since there are so many things to learn, I select those that, one day, might benefit me professionally as well: as a consultant, to help me with perform some task at work more efficiently, etc.

Most new languages that gather some kind of following get their start outside a commercial environment.

If a tool has a license so toxic that many companies
(1) simply rule out their installation on company servers or company laptops out of principle, I move on and select something else to learn.

> the thing you need

The license makes it so that I'll never know whether I need it or not.

(1) Google is one of them: https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/
This is not new. It's been around for a while. E.g.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5t6BTQYRU
The poor pay a disproportionate amount of taxes for what they get back. They certainly pay more than the billionaire class does. Perhaps the lack of funding has to do with power structures more than some subjective measure of utility.
Even if you assume everything I said about Peter at face value, in the end it is just an anecdote. I know quite a few people who had a great experience with him. So make your own judgement call!

In my immigration journey, I worked with 8 different law firms for various applications, including big ones like Berry Appleman, Fragomen. So I have good experience dealing with lawyers across the spectrum.

If you have a straight forward case, almost any competent lawyer can do a good job. Maybe even Peter might work out for you. For a simple case, I would recommend working with a well recommended local lawyer. Because there are quite a few filings which need wet signature. It will logistically save you time, money and headache of not needing to Fedex things again and again.

If you have a complicated case, I would stay away from solo practitioners and instead choose a mid size firm.

A good place to start looking for good firms is US News national ranking for Immigration lawyers: https://bestlawfirms.usnews.com/search.aspx?practice_area_id...

Out of all the firms that I worked with, I liked Wolfsdorf Rosenthal LLP (https://wolfsdorf.com/) best. They are also Tier 1 in US News ranking. Though they have grown in size since I worked with them.

Talk to multiple firms, do your own due diligence. If someone isn't responding well and doesn't appreciate your business, while you are evaluating firms, it will be much worse after you have signed up!
Hate and demonization of homeless people is entirely inappropriate. I suggest you look at yourself before judging people you don't know.
I’ve been really enjoying their podcast covering this story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvg9/episodes/downloads
Definitely inspired by that also. As stated here https://github.com/hilmanski/freeStuffDev
The tragedy of the commons in action.
Not sure why this title has "goes viral", it is nothing new.
Almost 8 years ago, Dr. Jules White explained a simpler setup(at least IMO as less software) in very detail with a Mirror:

Building a Low-cost Lightboard for Video Lectures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYwXOLU4TKk
> It's an open secret at least in the tech world that absolutely no one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work a week.

Be grateful for your privilege. Most employees aren't tech.

The workers at companies that schlep things around are working a real, non-stop 8 hours. This is why Amazon warehouse jobs are so shitty.

Teachers are pretty much non-stop as well. This is why so many of them have medical issues with their bladders.

The vast majority of workers are in positions that really do put in 40 hours of hard work a week--and they don't get paid anywhere near as much as tech.
Many homeless person are facing a little more than a hygiene crisis and it's not something a few free baths around can fix and you don't need that many to ruin the premises of a free service
One of the things I love most about Australia (New South Wales at least) is the mandatory 2 months long service leave after 10 years of service

https://www.industrialrelations.nsw.gov.au/employers/nsw-emp...
That's an interesting use! For similar reasons I considered building a little CRM utility just to keep track of acquaintances
It's called the tragedy of the commons.
You could try giving them money. I'm poor and after the reality of covid hit and I was out of a job, I confided in my best friend to give me a loan of $5000 in order to give me some sense of security, so that I could snap myself out of the curse of poverty-induced short term thinking. The kind of thinking that pushes someone into bad dead-end jobs instead of going back to school or learning a trade to gain superior skills because paying rent in the short term is more important, eat cheap nutritonally-void junk food to save a buck, and to skip the health insurance and pray for good luck that they may not get sick or have a freak accident everyday of their living, breathing lives. I have not actually used a single dollar of my friend's money. My mind was clear enough to figure out how to apply for unemployment insurance. Then the inflow of unemployment insurance only gave me compound interest on that sense of security that could only be afforded by a good enough lump sum of money in my savings account. At some point I decided I don't need the unemployment insurance anymore because I didn't want to just find some random minimum wage job to pay the bills (which was no longer a fear due to the money I had in my savings). So I got off of it, and then started making key efforts everyday to put myself into community college. So that's the short/long story of how I was able to find myself back in school in my late 20s after a long 7 years of struggle. Could've saved a lot of time if someone gave me that loan 7 years ago, but hey, better late than never.
Many people may not know this but Jeff Bezos clearly has a technical background as evidenced by this blurb from his Wikipedia entry:

“graduated from Princeton University in 1986. He holds a degree in electrical engineering and computer science”.

Of course he’s more known for his decision-making ability as an executive but he clearly has a solid understanding of computing fundamentals as his memo on Amazon S3 characterized it as “malloc for the Internet” [0][1].

0: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/eight-years-and-counting-of...

1: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-s3-path-deprecation-...
> Why don't we see public transportation as one of your "public goods"?

By definition, public goods must be non-excludable. Public transportation is excludable.

> Is it possible those people who you say are so concerned about value are maybe not seeing how they gain from having public transportation for their community, or are they more concerned about someone else deriving more value from a service than they would?

The problem isn't that the value to someone else is greater than the value to them. It's that what they'd pay for it in taxes is greater than the value to them.
Google and Apple are already tracking the bus/train/ferry through their mapping software. Wouldn't be hard to set up a crude geofilter and guestimate whether a user was on transit or not. Some transit agencies even integrate directly with the phone's wallet system, so you could measure that a fare was paid concievably.
There is an argument that low wages hold automation back by reducing cost pressure to automate, therefore UBI, since it would increase the cost of low-skill workers, would spur automation in that sector.

I think it's a simple, logical argument, but I'm not sure if it would survive a collision with reality^^
Asking people to be responsible for their own life is asked too much nowadays or what? What's the matter with you folks. If you fuck up, you deal with it, not society. Why should society pay for the mistakes of others? "Someone will fix it/Someone else will deal with it" will be the attitude of people then. Congrats you f'd society
Is that your main concern after reading the post above?
Germans will generally buy any pseudo-ecological snake oil, but this is a fad I also want to get behind.
I live in ATX near I-35. Homelessness is being brutally re-criminalized here. It's all about sweeping poor people under the rug so tourists can get drunk without being offended that the society is so unjust, uncaring, and unequal.
I see : yes, I’m compensated roughly $3000 / week. I don’t know how much I do cost per week but probably around $4000 ? Idk.

As I stated it’s easily worth 5k for me. ( 7 days, 5 days would be $3500 )

That négociation did not go well. I got 2 extra day off and was told to stop making noise.

Oh. well.
Your analogy is not exactly correct.
With an iDevice, this is someone else installing locks on your own door and not giving you the key, and they monitor who is allowed into your house. Even if you wanted the key they won't give it to you nor let you replace the locks.
Neither She nor the article claims it is new. The nifty part is the DIY aspect that makes this decade old technology potentially widwly accessible for teachers. Even that isn't new, but spreading the knowledge of the tool and how to make is accessible is still highly valuable.
Living close enough to the beach to be able to walk is one of my life goals!
A newsletter that (partially) curates HN stories that didn't make the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27492255

Ongoing investigations into email tracking and privacy: https://bengtan.com/blog/whats-in-email-tracking-links-and-p...

... and whatever I feel like :)
I think it says a lot about Japanese workplace pay if a small business at 3-4 days per week can outperform it. Not that I doubt it in any way: I've just started my own sideline and I'm already at 25% of my job income yet only putting in 5 hours of effort to do so.
Freedom at work is a beautiful thing.
The World’s First Search Engine Based on Synthetic AI-Generated Data
I didn't see a Seinfeld reference in the Vice piece.

Example: "No sound chip for you! Come back, one year!"
Most people need spare time to be happy, productive, not burn out. And as a company or society, you don't want to encourage people to work too hard for money because most people are stupid and will actually work too hard for money, and not be happy, become less productive, and burnout.

That's how it works in Europe. It's common that a boss will ask an employee to work less, because the amount of time they work is not even legal sometimes, or to force people to go on vacation for weeks to use their vacation days. It's also more fair and don't put pressure for other employees that value their life outside work.
It's sort of hard to compare these approaches, since it's not like Amazon and Apple only have 1 principle that they follow. I'll try to analyze them in a generic way. Disclaimer that I don't have experience in marketing or executive leadership.

Apple's focus on design allows it to charge higher for its products and to build new high-margin products that people end up buying. It allows them to "scale" revenue by entering new markets with new products.

Amazon has a similar focus on the customer which is centered around customer support. This approach also gives them the "brand reputation" to build new services (that businesses will pay for). You may note that Apple's approach works better for customers who pay without much planning/budgeting (like consumers/households), scales better with the number of customers (again like consumers/households), and scales more poorly with # of products (making it a worse fit for SaaS).

Amazon's API mandate value is felt in how it allows them to make software development more efficient. Customers do not feel the impact directly. Instead, since data is exposed through well-defined APIs, new service (or product) development can be done with far less human communication, as mentioned in the article. However, while this makes inter-team efficiency better, it reduces intra-team efficiency by forcing developers to build things that they don't need. If services are too small, the APIs are not high-quality, or the service boundaries change too frequently, then it's possible that this approach doesn't make software engineering more efficient at Amazon.
Consumer SSDs (unlike enterprise SSDs) must have a retention time of at least 1 year at the end of their life.

To achieve that target, when they are new they must have a retention time of a few years, but you should better not count on that.
Did we not have a similar discussion with Douglas Crockford's Do No Evil MIT License?

The complexity of moral issues is that they are hard to define. And lawyers hated it.

So the only way to solve this problem would be to use the Open Source License that please you with its worst possible usage scenario.
Nuh. None of those fix the problem. They just fix tiny issues around the problem.

The only way to reduce homeless is rebuild traditional value and traditional family structure. Less people get divorced, less kids get abandoned. People always get last resort from the big family and the church and family friends and church friends, etc.

Get help from the government and charity organizations should be rare cases.

But we are on the destructive path for a long time. Part of it is natural consequence of social change, but it's also partly due to some people think they are capable of design a new society from top to bottom.
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first" --Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
Exactly. I stay longer in a previous company with unlimited PTO ( real one ) for that reason.

It’s crazy how they don’t realize it’s just alienate workers.
> grabbing your sandwich from the fridge

Get out of the building, take the bicycle to a park to eat, take a small nap and read a book, come back to the office fresh and mind reset.

This was my routine before I switched to WFH. Official hours where 9h to 12h, then 14h to 18h. 35h workweek, 2h lunch break, (France).
> It doesn’t matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols — doesn’t matter.

CORBA is quite close to direct linking, with a network in between. The developer does not see it as a service or protocol, but a library call, which is rather the point. And it's not very compatible with the next one:

> All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions.

CORBA/COM never played well over the internet.
What Is Social Capital and Why Is It So Important?
> But if it is enough to survive on, then too many people who are capable of working will choose to instead just survive on it indefinitely.

So what? I would argue that most people want to feel purpose in life. If they don’t work, they want to do something else to feel fulfilled, something to be looked up to for, something to feel good about doing. It could be art, a sport, maybe just gardening, picking up trash in their neighborhood or organizing local events/classes. Most retired people don’t just sit in front of the tv waiting to die, or become criminals because they don’t have a job.

I think it would be amazing if most people didn’t have to work for a living. And only the people that want to work did so.
Good for you!
I will cash a few years more of that sweat US money and go back retire at home. Where every gas station attendant has 5 weeks of PTO.
This is an excerpt from the book "How to Invent Everything" which I thumbed through at a book store once. It's good, but not excellent. It skips over a lot of vital things (as can be expected) but one thing that really bugged me is the same thing that bugs me at the end of this article. The author loves to comment how things have been used for torture. While historically accurate, describing how the thing you just 'invented' can be used for torture... that just turns my stomach. I don't see the utility in bringing it up in this context.