skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The type of democracy practised in Athens was pretty widespread amongst various city-states (including non Greek ones like Rome, which arguable had a form of "democracy" much closer to the modern one because in Athens most public officials were chosen by lot) it's just due to a variety of reasons very few written records from cities other than Athens survived.

From wikipedia: "The concepts (and name) of democracy and constitution as a form of government originated in ancient Athens circa 508 B.C." Rome was a representative republic starting in 509 B.C. their ideas absolutely helped democracy become a thing, but it was ultimately invented by Athens.

> Also you mixed up the battles, Greeks lost the battle of Thermopylae (the one in which the 300 Spartans fought) pretty decisively as a result the Persians invaded Attica and sacked and razed Athens to the ground (most of the population was evacuated to nearby islands). The decisive battle after which the Persian were mostly expelled from mainland Greece was Plataea (during which at least 70 thousand Greeks (including 10 000 hoplites from Sparta) faced a Persian army similar in size.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I said they held off the brunt of the Persian infantry and cavalry, which they absolutely and historically did do, for three days with a fraction of the men. You are correct that they decisively lost the battle, but I also said that the majority of the Persians left Greece after this. Again, historically, after the spanking the Persian navy took at the Battle of Salamis, and three days of heavy fighting and casualties at the battle of Thermoplaye, Emperor Xerxes retreated to Asia with much of his army, leaving Mardonius to complete the conquest of Greece. It was almost a year later that the battle of Plataea happened, but the majority of the Persian forces left with Xerxes. Mardonius tried to convince Xerxes to continue after the defeat at Salamis, but his heart was no longer in it.

> Besides Sparta itself was anything but a Democracy so I can't imagine they were fight to protect it. And the also defeated Athens and their allies in the Peloponnesian War a few decades later (in large part due to Persian financial support).

Yes, I'm aware. Sparta forced the tyrant Hippias out of Athens, who ultimately fled to Persia. Realizing that a democracy was bad for Sparta, they attempted to recall him and reinstate him back as the tyrant of Athens. I believe it was the Corinthians and some of their allies who forced Hippias back into exile. Having tasted democracy, they were not keen on going back to a tyranny. Athens even told Persia no, they would not accept Hippias and that was what ultimately lead to the Ionian revolt and Darius's first Persian campaign into greece, whee.

I might be a bit off here as I've not read Landmark Thucydides since the beginning of covid (I have a hardcopy). What did I get wrong? Besides Athens inventing democracy, I think we're mostly in agreement.
KAUST was pushed hard as an option while I was at MIT, very curious as to how well the instruments were maintained for research, since it seemed like they bought anything asked for (if you have any stories :)).
yes of course, it's a feedback loop
I recently got both my Pfizer shots.

1st one was super simple and easy... not even a sore arm.

2nd one, 3 weeks later was a different story.
approx 15 hours after the shot I woke up from a decent nights sleep feeling like i'd been hit by a truck.

everything ached, muscles, joints, eyeballs even my teeth hurt.
Migraine like headache that triggered painful spikes with light and sound or head movements.
At lunch time I dragged my sorry arse out of bed to make a meal and nearly passed out in the kitchen. If I hadn't laid down on the kitchen floor I might have seriously caused injury to myself. I was super nauseous and light headed, my heart felt like it was fluttering out its last.
about 20 mins after laying down i crawled to the couch for an hour then went back to bed.

the next day I felt a lot better, was still achy and fuzzy headed but much much better.
The third day I was almost normal again and now a week later I'm just fine.

Worse side effect I've ever had, but I still count it as totally worth it.
Another thing students can do before taking on debt is to google career prospects. None of this is secret information, nobody needs to surprised if graduates in their chosen field are unemployable.
Oh wow, Pandas and sklearn were there - I was able to train a random forest classifier on the iris dataset. That's pretty slick!
Update: SaveVideo is Back
National Medal of Science
Architecture is a trip in that regard, at least in my experience. Gruelling hyper-competitive school*, high tuition, and terrible job prospects.

* Anecdotally, I’ve never seen a group of students more willing to undermine each other than the architecture students where I took university. Because of the “accept many then weed the lowest XX%” approach it seemed like they were always trying to tear each other down. I’m sure it’s not like that everywhere, but I saw this firsthand at one school and heard secondhand for another.
First taste is free...
I work at a University with an top-tier, elite MFA program (not in film) that attracts star-eyed students from around the world. I've seen so many really talented folks chewed up and spit out by a pretty brutal system where there is not much besides enormous debt and creative bankruptcy on the other side of graduation. However, I've learned not to be a dick about squashing dreams. Most of them know the reality in the back of their minds but are so enamored with the idea of the MFA that they are compelled to move on it.
I've got to agree. If anything, the pretension of using bloviating and nascent in the same sentence is counterbalanced with a well placed asshole.
This case was a “thread storm” instead of a single thread. Each post was a different thread over days/weeks. Challenging to link.

I remember it happening live and the endless up-anteing was amazing! Just when you thought the trend was dead someone would drop a new more elaborate take.
So it really is just a way for them to suck out the cash flow of Aramco and leave nothing but a husk for external investors?
I feel like students are already aware of this.

The question for me in a country that almost (90%) fully funds students going to college, is about whether we fund them as much as students going for degrees that will lead to jobs.
Probably not. I've heard of it, never looked too in depth.

As mentioned I've become a fan of Scheme. The definitive text for learning it is probably SICP, in which Sussman and Ableson call programming a form of magic - calling out certain incantations, knowing their meaning, use, and producing data manipulation from them. I find this accurate, but as an English speaker, I think I just prefer the Latin Vulgate versions, and not the runespeak of the forgotten gods. I guess maybe I was a bit harsh to say there is no use case. Perhaps there is, for someone with a deeper cognitive and memorization pool than I. For me, though, interpreting such an incantation would be the equivalent of breaking down each operation into it's C-like forms. If it were broken down for me on the screen, I could back-reference each step, and view each incantation within the framework of the larger piece. Mentally interpreting the above would require me to do the same, but with each step stored in my own mental stack memory allocation, which would quickly overflow and crash.

Perhaps not, as mentioned I never tried APL, but I doubt I have the capacity to keep it all straight.
In fairness, it's lightly curated, or perhaps just misses a bunch.
I've had one of these for nearly a couple years now and I absolutely love it. I ended up getting a second so I could have one at work and home and not have to move either.

After I got the second I had the issue of keeping the two firmwares in sync, so to solve that I wrote a github action[1] to build the firmware and a quick Nim app[2] to pull it down & flash it, although it turns out I haven't felt the need to really change the key map after I settled on something.

I wish I could get a good laptop with an ortholinear layout, it's just that much more comfortable for me. Your hands will kind of torque when typing on a regular keyboard layout after getting used to an ortho.

[1] https://github.com/kryptn/qmk_firmware/blob/master/.github/w...

This build doesn't work anymore, I actually just tried it the other day and I haven't bothered to figure out what to update but I assume the action would still work with a valid target.

[2] https://github.com/kryptn/kb-sync
I saw some sensible commentary that basically.. these types of degree programs have always existed for the bored children of the rich. It just seems some didn't get the memo and took on huge debts to join them. This could be said of a lot of elite, expensive, liberal art degree programs..

The scale of these degree programs and the irresponsibility of upscale universities marketing them to those that clearly cannot afford them is evil. Just absolutely ruining peoples lives.

An interesting idea I saw was the idea of making schools have skin in the game on these degree programs by requiring them to back some percent of the debt of these federal loans. I'd imagine admissions criteria, prices and career outcomes would adjust accordingly.

Also a question of when personal responsibility comes into play, I mean sure we can side with the 18 year olds making bad financial decisions taking on debt for a BA degree.
But by the time you are 22.. 24...26 and going for these six-figure MA/PHD tracks .. cmon.

Lastly - the idea that the professors in these programs were basically failed in making themselves careers in the fields themselves is not entirely shocking. Even in many STEM universities/programs, teaching is not very career outcome focus.

My personal experience was that professors cared about research first, PHD track students second, and career track BS degree students.. somewhere a few more notches down.

We all coach/develop people into molds of ourselves, and professors have a hard time looking beyond turning students into more professors. Obviously this does not scale..
So many college reps don't suggest basic things like this, it's insane with how much money you're investing.

It's been a while since I faced this, but I'm guessing it's even worse now with uni's becoming less financial viable.
Physics is a pretty solid foundation for any stem related profession.
Most westerner's views of Saudi Arabia are very much influenced by actions the country's government has previously taken [1]. It isn't so much propaganda, as much as it is the government, lead by MSB, taking actions that greatly offends our sensibilities, most notably the killing of Jamal Khashoggi among other smaller incidents and snafus which have made Saudi Arabia and MSB look horrible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_Khashoggi
Interesting, had no idea about that with the lymphs
With Amazon and any variable pricing model, there is no limit to how much you will pay. It's a conscious business model decision and a very smart one by Amazon. You want to be smart about costs? Limit your downside risk ie. Fix your costs.
Columbia seems to be especially bad here.
My close friend got an MFA in film from a fancy art school and the majority of her cohort (who didn't come from money) are working professionally and clearing 50k+
Aren't those who didn't have covid the control here? They would provide a baseline of tired/depressed feelings in the current population.
It's frustrating that it took an an at-home heart rate monitor and a smartphone video of my heart rate for my cardiologist to do something about it (they sent me home w/ an ECG for a day or so), but I eventually managed to get a prescription for it. Doctor still can't explain the "something else going on there" but thankfully my heart rate no longer spikes for no apparent reason.
This seems easy to say, but how can small groups of people make actionable change on burning less fossil fuel? Will you protest outside coal plants? Cement plants? Steel plants? Stop flying in airplanes? Do you still use a car that burns gasoline? Will oil companies do the right thing and simply choose to make less money?

I agree that not using fossil fuels is the most efficient method, but it's also not easy to take action on. We need to pursue every viable avenue in parallel, and carbon removal solutions are, if not particularly efficient yet, at least very actionable. And with R&D, perhaps they will become more efficient.
The series may have taken things a little far: https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/guilty-until-proven-guil...

> This is a comic that Norrin wrote. It is about the Ace Attorney system of law, in which your client is not only guilty until proven innocent, but also guilty until someone else is proven guilty. If you want to get away with murder in this universe, all you need to do is not wander into the courtroom after the system has inevitably arrested the wrong person.
No. I really hope that it’s safe, I can take it without fear and never look back.

If you think I’m really against vaccines you’re wrong.
or just eliminate the nondischargability clause for private student loans, which then means the spigot will close and the sensible maximums built into federal loans will put back pressure on soaring tuitions...
Just read other replies. I'm not going regurgitate other comments to you. You're clearly way more annoyed by this than average. I don't feel like this is worth engaging with anymore.
Yes. Absent further evidence, this article is crap. It fails to incorporate the family-state-corporate nexus unique to Aramco.
I had one that would work, but only if you rotated the knob very slowly. So if you turned the car on and the music was deafening, you had to oh-so-slowly turn down the volume with one hand, while trying to staunch the bleeding from your ears with the other hand.
A Vision for DeFi in Chia
StarLink?
mhm. I often find people underestimate what learning something like physics can do for career prospects.

Logical system thinking applies outside the domain of physics.
I'm certainly not hoping it goes badly for him. I just don't think it's healthy to learn about a source of volatility and then immediately go all-in on the next one.
So what do you think it means then?
> The average Saudi does not live as comfortable a life compared to the 100k or so members of the Al Saud family and their cronies.

Sure, but even the average Saudi has a substantially higher QOL due to Aramco than their peers in most other nations. Nowhere else in the region has a comparable HDI.
I ran a trade school and that's exactly what we already have to do. Trade schools have to show 70%+ placement in the field to continue to be accredited and qualify for financial aid. Yet one political party likes to go on TV and talk about "predatory trade schools" when this is what goes on at credit-hour colleges. Trades also get attacked for having higher default rates, with no consideration of mediating variables like the fact that they serve more people from poor families.
I never understood why Americans consider Iran the enemy and Saudi Arabia the friend. Iran is a democracy, they appear to have legit elections, while Saudi is an absolute monarchy. Iranian women enjoy way better equality compared to Saudi Arabian women. As a software developer in the US I have even come across Iranian-born women software engineers. Iranians seem more modern in ever way. Citizens of both countries seem to hate America, but ordinary Iranian citizens never did a 911-style attack on the US. Is it because of historical reasons that Saudis are the friend and Iranians the enemy?
I'd argue it's in many ways worse than that as at least professional sports is some combination of natural talent, hard work, and luck in terms of scouting.

A lot of these cultural elite journalism/media/creative jobs do not pay enough even for those that make the cut, and it really turns into a combination of nepotism & having rich enough parents to fund your Manhattan lifestyle while you make barely enough money to even cover rent.
Tesla Dating
What's the latest information on presymptomatic spreading?
Recently learned that Swift also uses TimSort, really cool to see other language implementations:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20884208
I sort of feel that the right way to pay for higher education should be to set up some sort of income-based payback system, where some percentage of the income a student makes over the income a high-school graduate makes would be given to the school.

The government's role would likely be to collect and distribute the income, but the actual financing would be set up between colleges and banks, both of which would have a vested interest in student success.
Actually, I don't know how true this is. Saudi Arabia has an enormous welfare state - both officially with many subsidies, and and hoc "grants" that you can get off your local royal family representative for one off emergency expenses etc.

In many ways this is what is bankrupting the country, much more than the rampant corruption (which is still enormous, but pales into comparison with public spending).

The population of Saudi is absolutely exploding - nearly doubling every 20 years. It has a very young population with poor job opportunities, in a very energy intensive place to house people (AC demands and lack of fresh water).

This had led to completely unsustainable public spending. The revenue from oil is enormous but it's not growing in line with population and welfare spending. And the Saudi royal family know the people will turn quickly against them if the welfare tap is turned off.

They are in a really tricky position. While the royal family is outrageously wealthy, the country itself over the past decade is getting pretty broke. And with such population growth every year it becomes harder and harder to keep up.

I imagine this is why MBS is trying to push economic reform so much, almost at all costs, because he knows the game is up. But it is going to be very difficult to turn this quite literal oil tanker around.
This exact scenario happened to me twice just today. Amazing what waiting for a little while before responding can do.

The downside of this, however, is that you miss out on information. What if it's multiple folks asking the same question, but then figuring it out on their own? Or what if the requester "figured it out" in a way that doesn't actually solve the issue or outright introduces new ones? For me, the "nvm I figured it out" message is almost more frustrating than the "hey can I ask you a question" message.
Because people spent the year at home watching propaganda about how bad it is to go near other people, and germaphobes and hypochondriacs were glorified to the point that no act of crazy germ avoidance was too much. Honestly I think it's only a small percentage of people actually affected by this, that media is racing to pander to and act as it they're normal. Most regular people are happy to get back to seeing their friends and having a normal work life, and were only avoiding it because of what was imposed on them. But that would be a boring article.
I do agree that the terminology isn't ideal and easily misleading, that's why it's so commonly used incorrectly. And weakening might be more fitting than punishment.

> So, linguistically speaking, using the term "negative reinforcement" to mean "weakening by removal of a positive stimulus" rather than "reinforcement via application of a negative stimulus" is simply misleading, and bad choice of terminology.

Using your terminology "Negative reinforcement" actually means "reinforcement by removal of a negative stimulus". "Weakening by removal of a positive stimulus" is the description of negative punishment. The crux of the problem is that positive and negative are not a descriptive property of the stimulus in this context, but just synonyms for additive/subtractive and I agree that this is misleading.
The iPhone lovingly reducing the volume claiming to protect your hearing (a feature that seems impossible to disable even after changing the phone’s region) as an added iOS 14 feature was a volume control “option” that I found annoying and insanely unsafe. I don’t even think there was initially an option to disable it for specific outputs. The best part was at that stage when it kept nearly muting itself in my car while I was driving and had the windows down, taking my attention away from the road forcing me to fiddle with the volume up button. I know that it’s possible to mark each individual output as “other” now but it’s still kind of insane to force this on users.
The previous comment made a joke of how despite being a capable device for education, it didn't have the features that drive commercial success. How was it unsubstantive?
Show HN: Sol Scout, AR webapp tracing the sun over the year
Wow I had no idea a Masters could be that expensive! I paid $16k for a Masters in Computer Engineering at a local unglamorous state university (half paid for by my employer) and immediately got a promotion for $30k when I was done, so it was a pretty good rate of return!
I'm positive it's used in crypto, but there's nothing novel about append only logs. It just means you don't remove the old stuff.

To elaborate a bit, crypto is backed by tokens specifically to ensure integrity in a distributed network (on machines you don't own)

If you own the DB you don't need this.
... Most top tier universities exploit masters programs. It's pretty much what a masters is in the US.
Wow, this is actually a great idea. I've been reading that a lot of the leading anti-vaccine proponents are essentially grifters who are getting a social media following from vaccine hesitant people as part of their long game to hawk garbage nutritional supplements. The more that can be done to shut down these scams, the better.
Part of the issue is that there is no mechanism to discourage universities from doing this. With the state underwriting student debt without limit, and universities effectively gatekeeping the path towards middle class employment, there is effectively no social or financial mechanism to push back on them.

Heck, there is a huge amount of social pressure pushing 18 year old kids to do this. They can’t possibly know better, but the adults encouraging such reckless behavior really should not be doing this.
Really? I've been following along some of the W3c work on privacy and they seem to have about as much political power there as Apple. Part of that seems to be from their first-mover advantage in the privacy space relative to Microsoft or Google, but the rest seems to be because they aren't seen as acting in their own interests (like say Google or Apple).

As an aside: In some ways it's kind of funny to hear a bunch of engineers talk about technology while all casting shade at the other participant's motivations.
They should at least let you know how long you'd need to work in an average, entry-level-plus job in that field, to realistically pay back the loan. That should be on the disclosure form for the loan.
The 99% conviction rate number that is mentioned can be misleading. This article[1] details how prosecutors drop cases and only bring 'airtight' cases before a judge.

However, Carlos Ghosn's case was not simple some street crime uncovered by local cops, it was investigated by the special investigation section of the Tokyo prosecutors office. Cases brought by them are far less likely to be dropped. The defendant more or less has to prove their innocence.

The power of prosecutors in the current system is clearly out of balance, but it doesn't seem to show signs of correcting anytime soon.

[1]https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c05401/order-in-the-c...