skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've thought about a project like this. Although, in my fantasies it was a way to store wealth and provide incentives for revitalization while I am in cryogenic stasis waiting to be thawed out and revived.

Basically, I would write a few modules - Content, secrets, funder, tester, advertiser, executor, and get them running in some cloud deployment.

Content is whatever website you want to host. That part wasn't in my fantasies. Secrets module implements an API to share and store secret information provided the caller has the right keys. Funder is responsible for interfacing with financial accounts and making prudent, low risk, financial decisions. In our time, this would be like using a Robinhood/Webull/whatever account to buy blue chip companies with a long history of steady share prices and dividends. The tester module confirms that all other modules faithfully reproduce their intended purpose and providing functional models with contact information for the executor. The executor is responsible for starting the other modules and providing them with the credentials they need to access the secrets module and get the other credentials they will need to function. Finally, the advertiser module is responsible for hiring freelancers to build copies of the other modules.

The system should aim to reproduce itself every five years or so and to kill itself off, by transferring funds to surviving children, when it starts experiencing operational problems, it begins to amass too much wealth, or it's been around for too long.

When new systems, standards, financial patterns, whatever arise, the future developers of the day will implement the new modules to interact with those new systems. If freelance developers get replaced by automated AI systems, then hire those instead, etc. Ideally, nothing would change too radically in between generations.

The system should aim to have a growing number of descendants, all investing their funds in whatever the most stable opportunities of the day are. The reason to try to have a growing number of descendants is that some will die by bad or fraudulent reproduction. Others might lose all of their money due to unlucky investment outcomes. Still others might get disabled or shut down. However, so long as the system maintains a positive expected survival rate, and it reproduces, I think the population of systems will increase.
I just got out of jail after 8 years. Went through my del.ici.ous bookmarks. 99% of the sites either dead or can no longer be viewed properly.
Came here to post this - storing it on a blockchain is probably the most elegant answer to create high redundancy.
Trump signed an executive order to allow people to "silence and cancel" Twitter users after Twitter added a fact check to a single Tweet of his. Does that make him part of the Moderate Left or the Authoritarian Left?
Toyota actually isn't as JIT as you make it out to be, but that notwithstanding, what's the alternative? Stockpile 30 years' worth of Christmas ornaments in warehouses in Oklahoma, right next to the oil storage?
I had read Moby Dick before, and found it enjoyable, but listening to the William Hootkins audio version opened it up for me in a way my reading of the text never did (eg it's actually a very funny book, which entirely escaped my notice). Whether this is because I was an inattentive reader, or that 170 years ago people had fewer demands on their attention, I don't know.
hckrnews.com/

I've used this for ages.
When society collapses, software of any kind will probably be among the least of our concerns.
I think it's a historically significant dataset. We've seen other datasets be preserved, such as GitHub arctic vault.

I agree that it's tenuous. I would give it 20% odds of hitting the 500 year mark at best. And I don't think all of the data will survive.

But if archive.org ever becomes unsustainable to run, the existing data will likely be preserved. Lots of companies will be incentivized to continue hosting the data, as it's excellent PR if nothing else. They don't need to continue gathering the data, just host it.

Hosting is only going to become cheaper as t -> infinity, and given the massive amount of compute I've seen Google wield, it's hard to imagine that an operation like archive.org can't find some way to be preserved.

All that said, the biggest threat is sudden data loss. This only works as long as the data doesn't get lost. Has archive.org posted their operations policies anywhere? It would be interesting reading.
> To provide some incentive, I'd consider the responsibility for recycling if you're unwilling to support usage.

Germany put the onus on the sellers here. Since 2016 sellers of electronic appliances with a store space of >400m^2 and online sellers with a warehouse space of >400m^2 are required by law to take small electronic appliances (up to 25cm max side length) and dispose of them properly, which usually means recycling, no matter if you actually bought the thing from them or not, and no matter if you buy a new thing or not.

These sellers are furthermore required to take larger appliances if you buy a new replacement appliance from them.

This service has to provided free of charge (except for reasonable shipping costs).

In practice, almost every commercial seller of new appliances, even those who do not fall under the law, will take your old appliances at least when you buy a new similar one voluntarily. Because if not, a lot of customers would just go to a competitor who does.

This spread to other areas too, where e.g. a lot of sellers will voluntary take and dispose of your old mattress when you buy a new one from them.

The sellers do have to dispose of the appliances properly, which is usually also the least expensive option for them. Recycling companies will come and take that stuff for free from the sellers, because they make their money by stripping anything precious out of the stuff.

The area where this is problematic is non-commercial sellers and/or sellers of used stuff. But by law, municipalities have to take all electronic appliances free of charge, the drawback being that they do not have to provide collection/shipping. Getting your old washing machine to the recycling center can be a burden. In my city at least you can call them up and make an appointment for I believe 10 bucks. And they encourage you to tell your neighbors about the pick up time so they can put out their electro trash as well. My city also has about 40 collection containers all around the city for small appliances (up to desktop computer size). The one closest to me is about 7 mins by foot.

Of course, trashing perfectly fine electronic appliances may be a waste sometimes (but sometimes not, because these old things may be extremely power hungry compared to newer models), and a right to repair would be better, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
Ramses is still better known than Shelley, some 5k years later. Ozymandias won.
Isn't there an 'arrogance' in the premise when we ask these sorts of questions? Not a personal criticism; just an aside from the technical question for a moment.

It's the assumption that we've decided something we created should have permanence.

Similar to billionaires deciding they would like to live forever and trying to make it happen.

There's a beauty to the world, which is we get a short time to contribute, and then we give up our space/resources to make room for someone else. Our ancestors decide whether and what to carry forward.
>What does this even mean? This is way too vague and nebulous to ever get a grip on.

No, the idea that democracy is undermined when citizens are told that their elections are no longer valid or trustworthy, and when politicians no longer respect the results of those elections, is actually very clear and straightforward. The legitimacy of those in power is upheld by the legitimacy of elections. Take away the latter, and what remains is tyranny.

>Surely the summer riots are more deserving of a term like "mass violence", no?

We're talking specifically about lies told by the media that resulted in mass violence. So, no.

>Maxine Waters told people to harass Trump staffers

Remember, we're speaking now in terms of actual outcomes. You'd need to point to demonstrable mass violence that resulted from her comments.

>I am confident you can get the same kind of result (eroded faith in Democracy) by tweaking the questions to appeal to the sensibilities of people on the left

I'm sure you've got a great imagination, but what counts is evidence. Given your confidence, surely you can find a study or poll somewhere to support that hypothesis. And given the vast sums of money behind right-wing think tanks and PACs, I would not expect such studies to be wanting for funding.
I think their "unusual" M.O. sets them apart from others.
Blade isn't the best braising cut either. For braises short rib, chuck, oxtail, etc... are better. That's why I called it sub-par.
I don’t mean temporary overcapacity. Overcapacity could be near permanent / long lasting as governments step in to prevent their local fabs from failing as they want to maintain local production capability no matter what.

In general, if semiconductors become a national security issue, I think there will be a fundamental change in the nature of the business. It will not be business as usual for TSMC.
If you're using Google Chrome, shift+delete offenders.
> That cost reduction doesn't just come out of thin air. If you want to build software that is competitive with Windows in other aspects, then you will have to charge similar amounts.

The assumption here is that development costs are linear.

If you spend a thousand dollars developing an operating system and your competition spends a million dollars, theirs won't be a thousand times better than yours, it will be infinitely better because theirs might actually boot and yours won't.

But if you spend a billion dollars and they spend a trillion dollars, theirs won't be a thousand times better than yours, it will be 2% better. Maybe. Because your billion dollars already caused to exist an operating system that does everything people need from an operating system and there is a point of diminishing returns. Which is where all the major operating systems already are.

What you would expect in a market like this is price competition. 80% as good for 20% of the price wins. 98% as good for 0% of the price wins even more. We're already there -- Microsoft has been giving away the Windows 10 and Windows 11 upgrades for free. They now need that to be competitive.

They can add new APIs all they want, but if Valve is providing ones that are just as good and will allow your games to run on their consoles which have any non-zero market share in addition to Windows, developers will prefer those.
See also:

Roku tells customers it is unable to strike a deal with YouTube -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28943886
> Ubuntu has a lot of telemetry on by default (unlike Deepin, they disclose this, but I'm pointing this out) and for many years, Canonical really tried to push the whole account login thing (RIP Ubuntu One).

You can try to make me conflate Linux and Ubuntu but I'm not going to. Debian and Slackware don't have those kinds of things, and, more to the point, you can use the Linux kernel without those kinds of things. It's both technically and legally possible. Can't really say that about Windows or macOS.

> like user accounts (tied to app stores or whatever)

No, most package repos don't require user accounts.

> giving back telemetry (which is often really, really important for developers to have)

Plenty of developers manage just fine without it. The developers of most of the software on a Linux system, for example, with the exception of mainstream web browsers.

> or are part of major enterprise servicing agreements that have a lot of tracking and management by design.

Enterprise is Enterprise. They're off in a world all their own.

> But I think that ignores a fundamental way humans use computers and the web -- regardless of OS. You're being surveilled. Linux isn't going to save you.

Inviting the surveillance into my home is different from being watched when I go outside.
Is the CEO's job to maximise payroll?
You are correct. The current multi-node deployment (if you need it for your workload) does have one "managing" access node. All ANs and DNs can be replicated and configured with tooling such as patroni for HA.

We have a few users that have larger multi-node clusters setup this way (one at 40+ nodes so far) and happy with the offering overall. Obviously YMMV depending on requirements/IT support.
Sweet and Delicious piece of code, Thank you!
> Instead the drivers rebel all the time against corporate's intransigent and blatantly-exploitative shenanigans. Hint: it's not because the company sees its workforce as people.

For what it's worth, it's not like co-ops are immune to this criticism. For example, Winco had a case a while ago where employees were claiming that they were being mistreated. In a worker co-op with sufficient numbers of members, no individual member is powerful enough to effect change.

> If you think there's a viable way to get from here to there, well, I think I can get Bezos to sell you a bridge, on Amazon of course.

Except there is. Now that Uber has pioneered the model, I've seen worker co-ops pop up in my own town. I imagine these models will grow, as more people feel emboldened to take on such professions now that the model is validated. I don't see why this is such a stretch. It seems to me you have reached a conclusion, and don't seem interested in listening to alternatives.

> Sigh, sometimes I regret being a liberal rather than a leftist, because I can see all the complaints they have about us. I think I'm really done now, I've heard enough. In a nutshell, it's easy to defend the existing order when we're the one's benefiting from it.

Alright man. My family immigrated to this country, my father was working as a slave for a while, and my parents started off with nothing when we were small kids. Trust me, I've not benefited a whole lot from this system. I've probably seen it worse than you. So sick of being gaslit by people who think I'm some privileged WASP kid, and that they know better. Maybe try listening?
That's interesting, Wells at least seems to have increased cash withdrawal limits from their ATMs during the pandemic (and/or it's been years since I withdrew enough cash to notice), my memory was that I couldn't pull out more than ~$300/day but I see there's a $1000 option now (not sure how many customers they could serve taking that much out, I did recently see one ATM out of service to be refilled in the middle of the afternoon).
1414° – A scathing Silicon Valley satire
Paul Bradley Carr’s satirical thriller is a darkly funny page-turner and a very good read.
Uh... name one toolkit or platform or library that became incompatible with the JS engines after a couple of years? JS inherits the Web property of extreme backwards-compatibility. Breakages do happen, but they're extraordinarily rare.

Unless you mean something different by compatibility? Sure, you won't be able to mix wildly different versions of libraries because their APIs change. But I wouldn't call that a "runtime environment".
America is the big winner of China’s crypto crackdown
I can't trust them until they've replaced their leadership structure from the tippy top (Mitchell) with reputable people with good track records.
I signed up for the platform as an engineer looking for non-engineers. Unlike some of the engineer types here, I'm of the opinion that engineering is as important (not more important) than non-technical skill sets. In some startups, it's probably less important.

The problem is that the profiles I match with read like resumes. I don't care too much that you were early employee at XYZ Corp or that you had a successful $100m exit. I care about your heart.

I've cofounded too many times with cofounders whose worldview, politics, and level of emotional empathy and openness were incompatible with mine. It sucked every time and was the #1 cause for failure.

Sometimes I feel like a vox clamantis in deserto when it comes to advocating for founders with higher emotional awareness. I'm happy whenever I read posts on HN about why neurodiversity matters in tech, but they almost always focus on folks on the spectrum. Then there are folks like me, oftentimes survivors of abuse who are neuro-atypical in a different way. We are empaths--and very much not fitting in the mold of a "typical" engineer or how non-engineers perceive typical engineers.

I don't need a fellow empath as a co-founder, but at least I need someone who understands where I'm coming from and is compatible. Brag sheets tend to drive me away, but that's the ethos we've built into our industry, so I don't blame the individuals.
Agreed. I tried to find a compiled list of the proper about:config settings to disable all ads and integrations but it was constantly a guess and check. I still haven't figured out how to remove ALL of the default search/suggestion providers without manually removing them.
Social Making. Not Social Media
Measured by how much I've bought by clicking on Google ads vs by clicking on Facebook ads, Facebook ads are better by a couple of orders of magnitude at least I think (I'm actually not sure if I ever bought something based on a Google ad).

Add to this how little time I use on Facebook vs Google properties and how I used to love Google and despise Facebook it becomes even worse.

Maybe Google just failed spectacularly for a decade and everyone else had fantastic experience but I doubt it.
Apple is one of the only companies I dare buy content from because they are too big to be acquired. I (begrudgingly) wrote DRM code to encrypt all the music for one of Apple's competitors and then they got acquired and all the music and video was just dead bytes on the users' hard drives and there were no refunds.

Still, Apple is known to lock people's accounts for a variety of bogus reasons and then all your purchased content is lost.
The Discord itself has no explicit purpose, but it was a companion to a now defunct constellation of facebook pages that were designed to give leftists and rightists neutral ground to discuss their criticisms of society and the media landscape the typical brigading or flamewars. After two or three facebook purges, the admins gave up on maintaining that community, but the Discord's still around and mostly runs itself, because the environment is inherently toxic to knee-jerk ideologues.
Claim the webpage was revealed to you in a vision from God, and tell folks they’ll go to heaven if they study it. Seemed to work for Mohammed, Moses, Joseph Smith, and many others.
It seems to me that our consumeristic culture makes people extremely jealous. As I've stated countless times here, I don't like Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos. I want to make sure that their wealth cannot buy them the ability to affect my life (and I've called openly for their prosecution for when they've done those things based on existing criminal law).

That being said... I don't begrudge them their wealth. I don't begrudge them their private jets. I have nothing to complain about. I have a home, a wonderful family, a lovely spiritual life, a fantastic community, etc. I have things that their money would never buy. Half the time I feel sorry for them.

It seems to me many of my fellow citizens are simply jealous of their material goods and want their private jets and all that nonsense for themselves. No thanks. We should discourage this kind of materialism.
I think some companies recognized that it's possible for once-in-a-generation and once-in-a-lifetime disruptive events to occur, but they crunched the numbers and decided that they could squeeze more from lean practices over the long term than they stood to lose in the disruptive events.

Like, suppose you could make $X in profit that is highly resilient to infrequent disruption or twice that with the understanding that every 20 years or so, you're going to have a few bad years because of black swan events. You might determine that you're willing to take your lumps during the chaotic times.
I guarantee you there are plenty of smart, capable, clever engineers willing (and likely motivated by sincerer personal belief) to work on Trump's Mastodon media clone.

I'm not one of them, but I also put active effort into not letting my social spheres from taint my view of "the other"'s ability too much.
Yeah, very impressive, but uh, 240p.
Leslie Lamport: Programing Should Be More Than Coding (2015)
The Voyager Golden Record is an attempt to do this. It's a record that contains sounds and images to portray life on earth [1].

This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours - President Jimmy Carter

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
Cut the data into the surface of a chunk of highly reflective and stable metal. Lob that into a high orbit. It will blink out your data from on high with nothing more than the incident light of the sun to anyone with a basic telescope, or even their naked eyes if it's big enough.

Obviously the details would be rather complicated. How is the data encoded? Morse code? Maybe ok for 500 years assuming the language it decodes to stays around. You could treat it like the messages we send to deep space and make it only pictograms. But that might take some effort if you are trying to bemoan the complexity of k8s for generations to come. That brings up the question of what are you trying to say? Do you already have something you think is worth saying across deep time? A person could spend their life solving that problem before they even get to the engineering challenges...
>Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved.

It's hard to argue this is the case, especially for businesses that require a significant amount of upfront capital. The trivial example in utilities are ISPs. You can argue that ISPs are not a "free market" because of the government doing X, Y, Z, but if it's the case that government intervention is required anyways, then removing the profit motive and having the government just build seems preferable.

>Considering how much they pay for being default search engine on Apple, $1B is a pittance.

The $1B number is a red herring. It cost them $1B to maintain the system. The costs of acquiring rockets and designing satellites, as a private company, is likely far greater. Secondly in the case of Google Maps, that product doesn't exist as it's own standalone business, but as one that was largely subsidized by another, more grossly profitable business. The question you should ask would if a company like Waze (pre-acquisition of course) could have built the infrastructure for GPS. The answer is likely no.

Edit: Thinking about this more, there is a trivial counter-example to your point about being charged egress on the internet, and it's just Google Maps. Google did the work of mapping a huge amount of the US, and generally has the highest quality maps. If you wanted to use that data, much like a business uses GPS, Google charges an fee which has been often derided as exorbitant. Even in the face of new competitors like Apple Maps and OpenStreetMaps, Google has even increased prices. I feel we would be worse off if GPS was privatized like this as this would put companies like Uber, Flexport, and Waze at the mercy of a single profit driven "competitor". The "App Store" but for GPS doesn't sound like a better alternative.
What is the definition of a "user"? Is every visiting rando from the Internet a user? If a person has five sock-puppet accounts, is that five users or one?

If a software robot creates an account, is that a user? Do we owe the source code to the robot? Or to the author of the robot?

Are users of the service entitled to free-of-charge access to the source code? Or could you comply by stating, "for a processing fee of $17,750 USD, we will mail a thumb drive to a real person's residential address"?