skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
While not directly tied to economic growth, one factor this article leaves out is that global human population growth could possibly peak within our lifetime (although more likely around 2100) [1].

In the last 60 years, total fertility rate has dropped from 5 to 2.5 [2], and most industrialized nations are hovering right around replacement rate of 2.1 or actively shrinking (Japan, 1.4, Germany, 1.6). Albeit during COVID, the 2020 TFR in the United States was only 1.64, and has declined for the last four years in a row [3].

With technology, I'd still expect the overall "size of the economy" to grow, but it will be interesting to see how growth is affected by substantial changes in demography that play out over the next 100-200 years (if only I could stick around to watch!).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/us/us-birthrate-falls-cov...
I think both the Valve Index and HP Reverb G2 are better headsets, and also better purchases by not having anything to do with Facebook.

So, no risk of a Facebook monopoly here.
I have never laid brick but I've done a lot of shingled roofs. The "fun" part of shingling is long stretches of full sheets in the middle of the roof. This goes quickly and is rewarding. The less fun, and what occupies the time, is where there is a chimney or a valley or a dormer or some other feature that you need to figure out and cut some flashing for, and custom fit each shingle that butts up against the feature, seal with tar sometimes, etc.

I picture a lot of automated solutions focusing on the "in the field" part where the work is easy and rewarding, and glossing over the manual intervention and craftsmanship that is needed for all the nonstandard bits. I don't know about bricklaying though I imagine it has similar characteristics, where a square windowless wall goes very fast, and could be pleasant work, and all the time is spent dealing with windows and the frame not being level and other edge cases.
Which is exactly why they used a security guard, to inject that deniability.

This is how corruption in corporations works. It's all about not putting things down in writing and setting unlawful expectations all while adding layers of obfuscation to avoid personal liability.

Amazon will fire the guard, the guy that hired the guard, the manager of the floor, etc. All the way up to middle management. And they'll do that HAPPILY because the cost of firing that group of people is a lot less than the cost of having a union in their warehouse.
Another option: Tesla FSD is just driver assist, and most people know that. Yet from time to time, people get into accidents either because they overestimate the abilities of FSD or because they don't react quickly enough when FSD puts them into an unsafe situation.
And that is assuming you can get permits - which in many jurisdictions can take years to figure out, and multiple major changes.

The intent in many jurisdictions is to tarpit change as much as possible and it shows.

It isn't the permits themselves which are usually the problem.
15 Ideas on How to Improve Your Google SEO Ranking
> why can't I buy a box to live in without spending $300,000?

Manufactured homes are like $20,000. The plot of land that they go on however, is subject to political rules. Turns out that people don't like cheap housing to be available, because it attracts the underclass.

Its important to remember that housing is mostly a solved problem. The politics of housing are not solved however: too much "progress" (aka: higher prices) and people complain about gentrification.

Bringing down the cost of housing is akin to inviting gangs and thieves into your neighborhood. Everyone wants to support the poor and needy, but just not in their backyard.

Its very difficult to convince a typical city / town / county to support the development of a new trailer park. That's just how politics are today. Politicians are screwed if prices go up. Politicians are screwed if prices go down. Politicians are screwed if prices remain the same.

-------------

Its not very difficult to physically build any kind of "underclass" home. Trailer parks, low-income housing / mixed-income housing (be it a high-rise or low-cost apartment/condo complex), etc. etc. But its very, very difficult to convince local board members to zone an area for that kind of home.
Thanks for the response and glad to hear the new hires have been good!

Admittedly I'm a little burned on this issue. My previous (and first job) was severely underpaying me and all my coworkers. I stayed there for 3 years, wanted to leave after 1.5/2, put a pause on it when covid hit, and finally completed the move earlier this year just around my 3 year mark.

Leaving got me an 80% raise in total compensation and 4 other people on my team/org all left with at least a 50% bump.

All within a few weeks of each other too o.O!

It's such an interesting dynamic and market today and so fascinating to hear about people's experiences as they jump around. Thanks for sharing your perspective!
I can see an automated tomato picker working well for tomato varieties that are uniform and grow on largely uniform plants. But those tomatoes are bland.

Heirloom tomatoes look like a topology project gone horribly wrong, and the colors aren't found in any Pantone catalog. They are also the most delicious.

There's definitely a place for both. We have to get ketchup ingredients from somewhere, and gourmands will always want the ugly heirlooms.
I can't speak to HN (although it seems to me that spy tools are more in line with HN areas of interest than arms sales), but if you haven't noticed that US arms sales to Saudi Arabia (and other nations) were major news stories, then I can't help you. Because they absolutely have been, and likely will continue to be.

Even if that weren't true, I don't see how the amount of press coverage something gets speaks to whether or not that thing is despicable.
At some point you may get bitten by just nc’ing files around as tcp checksums alone are not that great. A lot of transfers or large files will at some point introduce errors. This is where an application layer error check may be desirable.
He's a major fuckup and cokehead. Take everything he says with a winter's road crew pile of salt.
I haven’t had any issues with that. I think the major issues (at least with my wife) came from the fact that she usually disconnects by pulling the cable, and not the body of the connection. She still does this, but the spring covers about 2 inches of the cable and I haven’t had any frayed cables since I started doing this.
> We haven't automated driving

Yeah, we pretty much have... it just hasn't been widely adopted yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjztvddhZmI

And honestly, from a business perspective, most people really don't care about the skills ordinary people have.

Look at the wine industry for example. Top shelf wine is hand-picked, for exactly the reasons you outline, and some people are willing to pay top dollar for that end product.

But the vast majority of grapes are harvested by very simple machines, because scale and profit, and most people just want a $10 bottle of decent-ish wine.

We absolutely can automate cooking a fucking hamburger, and as soon as it's cheaper than the cheapest labour, McDonald's, Burger King, etc, WILL automate cooking a fucking hamburger.

Will it be as good as a "hand made" burger? Maybe.. maybe not?

Will the people paying a few bucks for a burger care? Nope.

This isn't an issue with "computer people"... this is an issue with economics.
Better tools amplify human skills instead of attempting to replace them.
And yet the list of jobs that have been successfully automated over the decades is considerably longer. Everything you mentioned will eventually be conquered as well (driving, farming and cooking are probably the worst examples you could have used – we are well on our way to automating all of them).
Well, many people have had issues with unions creating an environment where most employees 'soldier' (work slowly and uncreatively), by protecting the unproductive, and preventing the productive from being rewarded.

Another issue is that unions seem to 'strangle' marginal, unprotected (by tariff) industries; they drive up the employer's costs, which can kill a business if prices can not be adjusted to compensate (because of foreign competition). In cases where domestic companies are protected, the unions tend to try acting as a cartel and raising the whole industry's cost structure (e.g. auto manufacturing 1940-1970).

Lastly, unions have been known to use violence and intimidation, generally in one-on-one situations (against managers and anti-union employees) rather than the large scale that the Pinkertons (and the like) were known for.
I'd do the opposite: use an alias for your personal life (blog, social media, etc).
Programming will be automated long before brick laying. We can barely print a document with confidence.
Hello, I am using Firefox on Ubuntu with an AZERTY keyboard. I couldn't move with (unnatural) WASD, nor (more natural) ZQSD, nor (most natural) arrow keys. I could look around using the mouse. A couple of empty white rectangles were in front of me. Suddenly became four empty white squares (like keys ?) when I clicked them. No idea what they are for. All this still need some UI polishing, I would say.
Early Riser
Left out of your comment is the true hero of SpaceX: Gwynne Shotwell, who saved SpaceX from Musk's excesses and turned it into the highly profitable company it is today with a string of successful launches.

Shotwell is the reason that SpaceX was able to install 29 Raptor engines in a single night to satisfy Musk's whims.

Every launch failure that SpaceX has had in the past few years? That's Musk, gallivanting in at the last minute and interrupting the processes Shotwell set up to ensure successful launches to satisfy some silly little last-minute whim.

All of Musk's "successes" at SpaceX are literally just him waltzing in and stealing the credit for the work she's actually doing.
> If construction costs are cheaper than ever (are they really?) why can't I buy a box to live in without spending $300,000?

They're not cheaper than ever. Materials are expensive and in short supply. Labor is expensive because demand is high and few people want to do manual construction work.

But you're not literally buying just a structure. You have to buy a property for the house. In many locations, the valuation of the land a house sits on is higher than the value of the structure itself. My house could burn to the ground and my property would lose less than half its value, and I'm not even in a very high cost of living area.

You can buy a house for $300,000 if you're not picky about where it is. One of my family members had a new construction house built in the 2500 sq. ft. range for under $300,000 recently. The trick was that they live in a small town where property can be purchased for around $10K.

> See also: trying to renovate or buy a home in Arizona.

A quick search on Zillow shows over 1,500 listings for freestanding single family homes (not apartments, condos, townhomes, or other properties) for $300,000 or less. Many of them are even recently renovated, have 2-car garages, and frankly look quite nice.

Usually when someone is talking about starter houses being exorbitantly expensive, they're actually referring to the property being expensive. Loosen your requirements for location and it becomes much easier to find affordable housing. In most states you don't even need to move that far out of city centers. There are hundreds of properties within Phoenix and Tuscon that are $300K or less.
We've had the technology to make arbitrary shapes quickly and cheaply for decades: poured concrete.

The problems with new building tech are twofold:

First of all, for most people a house is the biggest investment they'll ever make, so they're not really keen to gamble. Oh, they'll make minor gambles - but a complete new way of building houses is a tough sell.

Second of all, building a house involves so many different costs that even a big saving in one area is only a drop in the ocean on the total project cost. If I'm building a brick-and-block house, the total cost of materials and labour might be $180,000 with brickwork comprising 10% of that. That's nothing to be sniffed at - but no matter how great and cheap your brickwork replacement is, someone taking a risk and using your new tech can't possible save more than 10%.
> [mortor] it’s a non-newtonian fluid, and it’s viscosity increases when it’s moved or shaken.

Which is why the points about non-Newtonian fluids like mortor changing viscosity seems right on the money. Anyone trying automation with normal mortor gives me zero confidence. I like the robot truck idea, seems like a winner compared to others.

Exo suits / better humans in the meantime, purpose built machines later.
Ask HN: CDN outage? Discord and Steam are both down for me
Keyword is: "good" (tech company). Majority are not.

The moment engineer became founder - tables are turned.
It's no different from people saying the same thing about chess and chess players, or go and go players...

Well, car assembling plants are older than Deep Blue, IIRC and they are very complex and "very robotic" in a physical sense.
Proprietary, not PCI, but expansion slots, yes. On HPs it was called the MIO slot and later the EIO slot. If your printer came with a MIO card that only did serial and parallel, you could swap it for one that added networking.
I recently tried that with my Epson Ecotank, but instead of rendering the document, it just printed out the literal source code. It then held the paper halfway through the machine until I sent enough newlines.

I was only half disappointed.
The main problem in CS is "how to develop correct programs". H ow to write programs without bugs. This is a hard problem that everyone just ignores.
Silly question, are items you need to share private or can they be public? If they can be public IPFS can solve your challenge. Its free and open source. Another solution is weshare. There are size limits but it’s not really public. Hope it helps
PrepScholar | Boston / Remote | Full-time | CEO | $200,000+

PrepScholar is an online education company focusing on test preparation and college admissions. Our flagship product is an automated prep program that diagnoses a student's strengths and weaknesses and customizes the educational plan to it (think of it like an automated tutor). We also offer live online tutoring and admissions consulting.

We're now hiring a CEO to lead the company's next stage of growth. The two founders had already transitioned out of day-to-day management in 2019, leaving it in the hands of our directors. We're now hiring a CEO to oversee the entire company.

The ideal candidate will be able to take what we've built and scale it further. We think the ideal CEO has these attributes:

- Scrappy and entrepreneurial: We want you to be eager to roll up your sleeves and spearhead projects.

- Broad competence across product, marketing, strategy, and operations. You won't be world-class at all functions, but you should know enough to spot opportunities and lead people in those functions.

- Experience managing teams (or being in companies) of size 10-50.

- Understands the private education/high school market. If you don't have this, you should be eager to learn.

Compensation will include flat salary and significant profit sharing, so you share in the upside of the growth you create.

To apply, email ceosearch@prepscholar.com with your resume and cover letter discussing your fit and interest in leading PrepScholar.
Same, I have the keyboard sitting on a nearby shelf to my iMac for the TouchID feature. For anyone that uses some kind of keyboard a standalone TouchID device would be a godsend. :/
> Let everyone else use TAI, and in a few millennia when high noon isn't noon anymore, we'll worry about it then.

Or when we exist as a society on the moon and Mars and in the asteroid belt - and the relevance of the rotational angle of earth will be no more interesting to almost everybody the same way local time in Greenwich UK doesn't matter to 23/24ths of the planet.

(Hopefully that's well before the "few millennia" it'll take for TAI to be radically different to what we use UTC for these days, and "soon enough" that it's worth taking into account already.)
You don't need external assets in an HTML file
Further, those same demographic changes are taking place elsewhere too, e.g. take the fertility rates of Native (Christian) and Muslim European populations and project forward a few decades. Lebanon is but a proverbial canary.
That's a great comment, but I disagree that the trend is ...worrisome.

The purpose of the military is to fight. And in the local sense, it is only increasing in effectiveness at its primary task.

But the primary task of a 20 year "war", is not fighting. It is the building a nation state.

That is something the military is not designed to do. It's absolutely insane we didn't have an entirely different branch of government whose job was to build a lasting system of compromises and coordination between local people. Even if the military did have that skillset and training, which they don't, the resentment from the local populace against the group of people they just fought against would be enough to compromise any mission.

It's like if we asked the same police officer to arrest a drug addict, then be the judge in the case, then be their parole officer, and finally help them find a job after their time served. It's a nice idea in a Utopian kind of way, but there are so many opportunities along that chain for the relationship to sour.
Why not both? You make it sound like only as long as we don't have an automated hamburger maker we should respect the people who cook our hamburgers, but not afterwards. Progress in any field is usually a function of amount of money poured into it, if the margins for hamburgers were large enough, ie. no cheap labor or higher food prices we would have invested more engineering effort into making smart enough robots that make hamburgers and probably by now have them being made automatically.
Keep it to a nearby time zone, call it "near shore", quietly pay less than half the in-country rate.
If Apple's cables were so great fewer people would be buying replacement cables and/or complaining about them. To me, it indicates that they were not designed tough enough to accommodate the average person's use. You can reject it as anecdotal but almost all of my apple cables have frayed at-least once in their lifetime - headphone, charging, lightning/usb. The only one that didn't fray is the power cable to my mac mini.
Unconventional Ways of Using GraphQL
Some teams parallel to mine have an event based contract with their upstream, vs my team has a service contract.

We've been doing some refractors to combine common systems, so now the same team is upstream for both.

Talking to the sister teams, theyrepretty unhappy about their relationship with the upstream and are trying to avoid and replace them internally, vs we quite enjoy them.

I think the big difference is in mental model. When you're passed an event stream, the producer doesn't care about the events going out, and it's on you to handle all of them, and for failures, you have to reach out to whoever made failures in the upstream system, rather than the upstream team doing it. Otoh, for a service call, you only need to throw an exception for a bad event, and the upstream team is responsible for communicating the failure.

The more event based interfaces you have between your team and the folks making the change, the harder it gets to tell them that they're doing something wrong, and the less you even know about what they're doing or how to find them.

Mind you, immediately after the service call, we put messages on a queue. Distributing the message between systems we own works just fine
Laying brick is hard. I bricked up a small gap in a two-foot-tall brick wall in my back yard recently. It took me literally all day, and looks exactly as messy as someone who lays bricks might expect from someone who uses a computer for a living.

Watching those people on youtube who make tutorial videos that go super fast and make it look really easy... You can record yourself writing a python script and make it look easy. Those people are pros, and have skills and experience to back it up. It isn't easy.
It's Chrome running on Wayland under Linux. There can be non-Chrome Wayland clients, and Linux VMs can run any Linux Wayland/XWayland app.
I recently had this thought and I'm wondering if any experts in biology/genetics can chime in and help me. Yes it seems to me that this will be a problem faced by the developed world for the short-medium term future. But does evolution also play a role here as well? By creating a shrinking population, does that not sort of "select" for people with a natural inclination to have more children? How strongly is the desire to have more children tied to genetics?

I can imagine this problem solving itself on some timeline if that is the case e.g. people with a strong desire to have children have more kids, their genes are more prevalent while people inclined to have fewer kids sort of select themselves out of the gene pool by having 1 or 0 kids. This seems to me entirely possible, as I know genes can code for basically any arbitrary behavior, but I'm not an expert.
> If you build a robot that only handles the main workflow and can't handle any of the exceptions, you're not automating anything; you're building a convenience tool. Basically, you're removing some of the labor part of the job, but still keeping the decision making part of the job for humans.

You are wayyy underselling the importance of convenience tools. Even without working out edge cases you can reduce a workforce of 100 people to 95 robots and 5 supervisors/decision makers.
any chance you can email us a screenshot? info@muse.place, if not thanks for flagging this. We did a merge a pr recently for AZERTY keyboards: https://github.com/spacesvr/spacesvr/pull/51
I think it is different from people saying we couldn't automate chess or go. The difference is between a purely data domain, chess or go, where it can both be translated 1-1 into a computer simulation of the game AND the inputs are data.

I realise that you could define everything as data - laying a brick, you take the inputs of where to position the brick, etc. However I think we can make the distinction between chess where the data is "Pawn is on e4" and the much greater complexity of the real world where we are dealing with billions of atoms. Perhaps not everyone agrees with me.
I'm not the grandparent poster, but I share the same thought.

The ~4% SWR for FIRE assumes that we'll see sustained growth in equities markets, because that's what we've seen before. But the data really only goes back to the early 20th century (the data from the "Trinity Study" looked at the period from 1925 to 1995).

I agree with you that people in the FIRE camp will still be far better off than the average person. But to me the terrifying scenario is retiring at 30 and then running out of money at 60 because the 4% rule didn't work out.
> I'm an unapologetic trump supporter, so I guess I'm the low status swine.

Sure, if you say so. I was more mocking the classism of his position though, as if putting the same basic wine in a more ideologically appealing bottle with a better brand makes it more palatable.

> China is an evil country because it supports an evil ideology, communism. There is no redemption for it other than to end the CCP and establish new good governance.

What is the market place alternative to the dialectic? I don't see them as 'evil' since they have a system that addresses the material problems of their citizens. We have to hope and pray that the market interests align in the right way that more people end up helped than hurt. I don't think we'll ever figure out healthcare.
Isn't that going to be a breach of damned near every FTA that they've signed?
They've probably gone to the pub