skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ah fingerd.

In the early 90s, Cal Poly decided to put the entire campus on a cluster of AIX machines (a dozen PS/2s surrounding a 3090 mainframe). Fingering a user would display the contents of the .plan file in their home directory. Fingerd on AIX ran as root, and would follow symlinks. Replace your .plan with a symlink, finger yourself, and you could read any file on the system... the home directories, email mailboxes, everything of ten thousand students and instructors.

I didn't abuse this, but I'm sure others did. I kept everything "personal" on the CSc department machines.
Also, OP, the world is bigger than just the American continent :)
The main discussion aside, there is a living cost that education doesn’t bridge.

If you are living in say London plumbers, mechanics, housing, eggs are more expensive than in say Vietnam.

you can be paid more in London and have a lower quality of life
> - If you have a mostly independent QA team, they will find somewhat silly/trivial bugs like the login page not working in an extreme edge case scenario.

Fair but you have to keep in mind that part of QA's job is to explore the silly and extreme edge cases too. One of the nastiest bugs I ever found started as a joke of a test. What happens if you enter a massive long text string (I think it was something like 600 kilobytes) into the password field and enter it?

I expected the UI to barf and a bit of mischief. What I got was the entire server backend crashing and loosing every user session with it when it restarted. The joke test revealed a uncovered a serious denial of service attack vector that was trivial to execute, trivial to automate, difficult to detect, and incredibly effective.

I agree it would be silly if QA insisted that trivial or edge cases be fixed; every bug has to be judged on the cost of fixing vs the risk of it happening in the field. But finding those silly edge case bugs is still very well worth the time to explore. If not because chasing the edge can reveal serious problems, but also because it also helps define where the limits of sanity really are instead of were it is imagined to be.
If it is so easy for US companies to hire good remote developers en masse from places where it is cheaper to live than it is in the major US tech hubs, then why did US companies not start doing it years ago? Are the people who run software companies so cautious that it took mass enforced work from home to make them decide that hiring cheap developers remotely could actually work? I have some doubts about this. Maybe hiring good cheap remote developers is not as easy as it seems.
This is an outrageously selfish post. Americans aren't the only people in the world.

Trying to hoard jobs will not do the US any good.
That's heart wrenching, a smashed and shorting phone line could call but not a specific and relevant number, could be the phone doing it, or some short code for calling the last number.

Often time shorted lines will end up calling 911 by chance.
"I'm something of a scientist myself"
-- Data Scientist
I deeply wish that more sophisticated automated testing methods like Property-Based Testing were more prevalent among QA teams and organizations.
I think one reason why wages might not decrease is communication speed. My team works with folks in Europe and Singapore, and while the asynchronous communication works and we love our teammates the time delay can be killer. Worse, if you do need to speak realtime you need to hop on meetings at odd hours. Who wants to do that? It might be cheaper, but if cost reduction was a factor I feel like we’d already have done it. I think communication speed will minimize any salary impact by a globalized talent pool.

US domestic competition is a concern, but my hunch is that even with the wider talent pool companies will still have trouble recruiting and good developers will still have leverage over not needing to move. I think it would be interesting to find numbers on how concentrated developers are in expensive cities, I know plenty of people who moved to California for the work.

Also, if my wage suddenly decreased to match levels with places that are cheaper to live in I’d probably have to move away from all my friends and now family as I wouldn’t be able to afford to live where I currently do (SV). That would suck, and I think it’s fair that I feel concern over losing that. Not sure where all the negativity in this thread is coming from.
They are just normal federal laws:

> The United States does not have a British-style Official Secrets Act; instead, several laws protect classified information, including the Espionage Act of 1917, the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.[1]

The ALCU has a bunch of work[2] on this if you want to dig deeper.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_...

[2] https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/secrecy
Bingo. You've got it. I was talking about SparkFun trying to determine if he's infringing. When we look at a patent that way, we care mainly what the claim says.

On the other hand, every word of everything ever published can be used as prior art. So if SparkFun was trying to invalidate the patent, they would look for anything published anywhere, including patents but also journals, books, etc.

Your comment about the kitchen sink is also true -- when you're trying to get the patent through the PTO, you may want to add claims later, and you cannot change the spec. So you put everything in the spec you might want to claim later.
Sorry but it does matter. Back in Pakistan, I liked center left PTI and my dad liked left wing nationalist MQM. My mom once even voted for JUI but other wise votes center-right. We had no issues at the dinner table and these parties are at differt ends of the political spectrum.
If someone earning half your salary is able to satisfy everything that you offered to the company, I think the problem is not what you mentioned but it is a reflection of inflated salaries in the valley.

I think it is a good thing if this happens. This salary inflation has made it impossible for anyone else to afford living there. It will also help curb the entitlement that valley IT employees carry around thinking that they are always changing the world.
BC had more than a millions acres burned a couple years ago. 85% of the damn province is forest, ravaged by beetle. Lots of tinder just waiting to catch fire, no excuse.
When I look up pictures of Arizona I see cacti and deserts. Lytton is hot but it’s a lot of forests and lakes. Would an equivalent be Arizona getting a severe Canadian winter with 1-2 weeks of -40 ?
Did it say anywhere in the article which drug they are testing? I couldn’t find it.
I did not say show me a vaccine with unexpected side effects… there are many examples of that.

I said show me one where the onset is hidden until after 6 months. The narcolepsy link above was concentrated in the first 6 months after the shot. At least try me with the dengue vaccine and ADE so I could explain why that is different.

Hundreds of millions of people have taken the vaccines and we know with huge amounts of power the side effects and their (incredibly tiny) probabilities. It is beyond uncommon for a hidden side effect to only appear later, especially with something like a vaccine. It produces an antibody response and goes away. If that antibody response is going to cause problems it generally happens sooner than later when there are the most antibodies.

I, like you, didn’t want to be the first person to take the vaccine. But at this point the safety record shows it is one of the safest, if not the safest, vaccine ever produced. Hopefully you don’t get COVID in the meantime of this point becoming clear to you.
I want one but wow... they seem to be quite rare. One on Aus Ebay and another on US Ebay. Going for around 500USD.

Would love get one that's in decent shape and build an interface to internet chess.
Has been happening since the 2000s

Tech salaries still went up.
Quite apart from the fact that you’re talking at cross-purposes to the article, you’re wrong about three of the four languages you mention.

Go strings aren’t actually UTF-8; they aren’t even Unicode: they can contain arbitrary bytes. In practice, most strings will be UTF-8, but you can’t depend on it at all.

Rust strings are strictly UTF-8. I appreciate this greatly.

Python 3 strings are sequences of Unicode code points (as distinct from Unicode scalar values), allowing ill-formed Unicode (unmatched surrogates), and its internal representation is a disaster because they decided indexing by code point was worthwhile (it’s not, given the costs), so since CPython 3.3 strings are encoded as ISO-8859-1 (only able to represent U+0000 to U+00FF), UCS-2 (further able to represent U+0100 to U+FFFF) or UCS-4 (able to represent all Unicode code points).

JavaScript strings allow ill-formed Unicode, and the public representation can be described as either UCS-2 or ill-formed UTF-16 (almost all string access techniques work in UTF-16 code units, though new stuff is now mostly working in Unicode and UTF-8 terms). I think all major engines now use an internal representation of ISO-8859-1 if the string contains only U+0000 to U+00FF, or ill-formed UTF-16 for anything else; but Servo’s work has demonstrated that it’s possible to shift to WTF-8 (UTF-8 plus allowing unmatched surrogates), saving lots of memory on some pages and simplifying and slightly speeding up some things, but at the cost of random access performance by code unit index.
A more generalized version is that beliefs can be used by other beliefs as a resource. Thus beliefs, especially persistent ones, are often minimally about their truth value, and more about their role in the mind's structured web of beliefs.

There is this weird sense in which people expect beliefs to quickly flip, in themselves but especially in others. Choice is a very hopeful word, but sometimes a weapon for terrible scar. Some beliefs are deeply embedded in people's minds that to forcibly remove them is to, well, leave the person so dysfunctional that it's not worth it.

And it's interesting that most beliefs of note are problematic beliefs (e.g. political, philosophical), and these are most difficult to "fix". So when one starts looking into one's own mind in search of some kind of integration of different narratives, the problem that inspired the introspection in the first place may be the last problem that gets solved.

So yes, beliefs are like clothes, but not in the bad way. Utility of beliefs beyond their truth value should not be underestimated (at least our mind, in its subconscious, actively utilizes beliefs in this way).
Here's a vote for tiny Denmark. We're starving for good salary comparison sites.
There’s an old turn of phrase, first comes the Navigator, then comes the Explorer, then…
Is it really normal to have temperatures in the 35-49 range there? I can’t even imagine
This was quite a fun read... One question I have is, in that short clip of the stripes produced by phthalocyanine, why are the slits closer together at the top than at the bottom?

Is this because it, moreso than a single neutron, is heavy, and so those slits being closer together is caused by gravity interference?
I'm in New Jersey, and while it's illegal here too, no one seems care that much. I usually let the attendant operate the pump for me, but I've done it myself a few dozen times over the decades, and I see other customers help themselves every so often. If there's a card reader on the pump and the attendant isn't around, I'll pump my own.
That’s what barrel makers told the horseshoe fitters :)

From Wikipedia
In some countries, such as the UK, horseshoeing is legally restricted to people with specific qualifications and experience
The question of working 4 hours is more like 4 hours of intense work and honestly nobody in any industry could consistently put more than 4 hours a day without burning themselves up (or they’re some type A personality and feel miserable not working every single waking moment of their lives). Second, the IT industry has some of the highest burnout rates, that must have something to do with the amount of work put in, don’t you think?
Facebook also recently put out a toolkit for time series analysis called Kats

https://facebookresearch.github.io/Kats/
According to wikipedia, it was probably real.

"It was initially coded in Applesoft BASIC, but Greenberg and Woodhead rewrote it in UCSD Pascal after BASIC proved too slow to be playable."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizardry:_Proving_Grounds_of_t...
Your arguments really need a jump in logic to be accepted.

They also completely fall apart when you realize two things:

Offshoring has been happening for decades. H1B abuse has been happening for decades.

Yet salaries rose.
2020: 347,104 hectares

2019: 21,138 hectares

2018: 1,354,284 hectares

2017: over 1.2 million hectares

2016: 91,817 hectares

2015: no global summary

2014: 360,000 hectares

Source: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/ab...
Every single thing JeanHeyd does goes far, far beyond what we are resigned to accept from lesser individuals.

That said, I am in the rowdy “Only UTF-8, ever, and nothing else” gang. Even thinking about UTF-16 gives me hives: life is too short. But Shift-JIS is OK.
> Second, the IT industry has some of the highest burnout rates, that must have something to do with the amount of work put in, don’t you think?

Citation needed? I don't see IT anywhere on this list... https://stress.lovetoknow.com/Which_Professionals_are_Prone_...
But if you can't choose your beliefs and your beliefs affected your choice of clothes, then ultimately you can't really choose your clothes.
They do it a lot. The whole India outsourcing story is about exactly this.
Downvotes are likely by people who read the article:

> “Most shocking is just how routine secrecy orders have become when law enforcement targets an American’s email, text messages or other sensitive data stored in the cloud,” said Burt, describing the widespread clandestine surveillance as a major shift from historical norms.

So it's mostly communications data stored in the cloud. We know Apple and Google receive similar requests because they also release data:

https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html (US: 4600 devices in Jan-Jul 2021)

https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?hl=... (US: about 60,000 in 2019)
Stop watching Fox. I have seen MSNBC and PBS criticise Biden a lot for mot fulfilling his campaign promises like minimum wage and not sending enough vaccines to other countries and lack of action on climate change. Meanwhile I never saw Fox criticize Trump and when they did do it very mildly, he immediately lashed out and pushed even more extreme OAN.
> you will destroy one of the last remaining well-paying job market in the long term.

Speaking of the long term, it's not hard to imagine it is doomed no matter what individuals choose.

SV exists because there was no efficient way to collaborate remotely. WFH still sucks today, but is much better than before. There are countless startups are trying to fix this, therefore it will get better gradually. Eventually, SV won't make sense anymore other than a cultural symbol, because the high-quality and cheaper talents reserve is all around the world.

Companies will take advantage of things when they see fit, and that does not depends too much on the choice of individuals. The question left is when will it happen rather than will or will not.
Home made ‘Ultra Large Format’ camera with a 600mm f/9 lens
Once co-mingling happened, they have no way of tracing one item back to one particular seller, unless the products have serial numbers. And Amazon is tracking those from Goods Receipt to shipping, which they are not. So if another seller is sending in counterfeits, with the same bar code, the whole co-mingled inventory is poisoned. And Amazon has no way of identifying the source of the counterfeits if those are not caught during goods receipt. No matter what they claim they can do.
Actually, you can do that already in M365 with Double Key Encryption [1]. The obvious trade-off though is that none of the cloud services will be able to work with your data. For example you won't be able to search or open the document inside the browser which basically renders your SaaS environment (partially) just a plain cloud storage.

DKE should not be confused with any other BYOK service, where you only manage the key, but host it on Azure so MS still has access to you private key.

I think there could be middle ground where customers could select a set of metadata that they are willing to share with the cloud provider or even better, select only the sensitive parts of the document that must be encrypted with their own key.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/do...
Absolutely. Disappointing to see this sort of shallow sales pitch blogspam making it to the frontpage. I'm surprised more HN readers don't see through this.

The entire purpose of this article is to self-servingly attempt to convince the reader that their product is the only solution to QA problems.

It correctly identifies some challenges with QA, but this solution is certainly not the only way to have effective QA. That Rainforest is resorting to such a disingenuous presentation of solutions to QA issues makes me think they probably don't actually solve QA problems very well.

"We have researched what makes QA successful and X, Y, and Z are what we found. Here's how we believe we're solving Z for our customers" would be a much more honest pitch.
I have been quite overwhelmed by the feedback (through the feedback button), attention and the number of visits this got. Thank you, really appreciate it!

Sorry that the mobile version is not yet ready. I am still trying to figure out how to best do this on mobile, to still make it a dashboard but make it useful on small screen with the same/similar experience like on the desktop.
Co-worker from Mumbai (yeah, here-say, I know) mentioned temperature up to 50C in the summer.
I feel it was long overdue for the market to correct this anomaly. I believe there have been some synergies in concentrating geeks in one place but it just went out of control.
I never get what motivates people to blame the system here.

If you have 150k in the bank you could go to a remote place in the US, take a lowkey job where you work 25 hours a week, and live perfectly fine. No one is stopping you.

The only reason you don't do this is because you like nice things, nice food cooked for you, nice immenities, and want your kids to have material prosperity.
> to a country that doesn't federally provide basic social services

Mate if you're going to try that one don't be defending America with it haha. Gofundme campaigns are a part of your healthcare system..

e: acknowledging your edit and comment, throttling for downvotes does suck. I wont force a back and forth through edits.
A belief in moral objectivism makes fashionable beliefs more dangerous, because those within a given fashion would think they were objectively right. It's the "this time is different" of morality.
This article is a very shallow take on an old question.

I mean, clearly, yes, authority (and marketing) influence people's beliefs. Beliefs are hard to change in others and in yourself.

But the core question of epistemology is very well-trod ground. Going back to Socrates and his distinction between true beliefs and knowledge, the idea that beliefs are things we wear like clothes has been dismissed for millennia.
Sure, I'm being lied to by everybody - literally all media is a lie to some degree. There is bias everywhere.

The system is working as designed. We are stuck in grid lock. Everything will resolve _somehow_ eventually... how it resolves doesn't matter to me honestly, I'm just a passenger on this ship.
What language is/where is the title image from?
Thank you so much. I'm mostly using Perl, but I can relate to the problem. I'm working on implementing an ASCII-only and ANSI-only modes in my static html generator, and it's far trickier than I imagined, even with Perl.

(My reasons for doing so are backwards compatibility support and lowering the attack surface.)
I think moral fashions tend to pertain to especially indirect and tenuous consequences. The morality of the supposed consequences themselves aren't usually at issue, it's the causation.
That type of thing is one of the reasons I moved to Mexico about 3 years ago.
There's also ASCII...
Four Vietnamese were sued by Facebook for $36M fraud
Oddly enough, I just finished watching this video which explains
all the scales succinctly. I was struck by all the permutations that are possible.

Simple method to organize ALL MUSICAL SCALES of harmonies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq2xt2D3e3E
The US more than earned the advantage. It built half of the global tech industry from the ground up.

Shall I begin listing all the consequential technologies that were invented in the US in the post WW2 era? It's an exceptionally long, comprehensive list, spanning from the GUI to the router to the microprocessor to Unix to the transistor to the LED and LCD to DSP to ethernet to RAM to hypertext to streaming media to the digital modem to the PC modem to the cable modem to the modern laser to the supercomputer to the personal computer & mobile computer to the PDA to digital graphics to virtual reality to USB to the cellphone & smartphone to the IBM hard drive & solid state storage to fiber optics to email to GPS to the relational database to Java & C & C++ & JavaScript & Basic to TCP/IP to the spreadsheet to the digital camera to the lithium ion battery all the way down to the mouse. And a zillion more things.

To pretend that the US didn't earn its advantage, is plain bunk. The entire tech industry rides on the shoulders of what the US built up over the past six decades.
I've been sounding this alarm for years, on def ears.

Nobody wants to hear it but the truth has never been more clear. There is a HUGE pool of talented, hungry developers around the world who want YOUR job for 1/4th of your pay.

The second US companies open their doors to those engineers, we will see dramatic decline in SW salaries. What has held this at bay so far as definitely been the companies that don't allow remote work, and, the companies that are unwilling to hire across language or timezone boundaries.

I agree with the OP here that this WFH trend will not be the rosy future many picture it as being. Expect much lower salaries across the board, and possible even less job flexibility here in the US as competition for those positions rises dramatically.

BTW - This is NOT meant as a dig toward developers from outside the US. The point I am trying to make is that they are JUST as qualified, if not MORE qualified, than many here in the US. There's no reason they shouldn't have access to good jobs. It's just been a convenient reality for US engineers that the market has been something of a walled garden. That may change sooner than they'd like to admit.
Threejs is awesome. Good idea, thanks - will keep the scroll fader in mind for my next blog iteration (when gridsome finally updates). I couldn't make up my mind on background color so I randomized and fade bounced. I sure as heck aint going to win any UX prizes for that ;)
I'm in SV.

What a horrible take. Globalization of tech jobs is net positive for the whole world including the US. We're all gonna have more thing made cheaper and faster, isn't that great?

I can see how you can argue it's not the case with some industries, e.g steel and coal (see poverty in Appalachia), because it's hurting those communities. But this is tech, we already have it way too easy.

I say let's double down on the whole WFH thing instead and bring opportunity to people all around the world.