skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Social media in particular really degraded my social life for a number of years prior to minimizing Facebook in my life. I found that:

1. With all the little updates you get through Facebook, a lot of people feel that there isn't as much need for meeting, talking, or doing stuff together. I've found the reality to be otherwise; connections are deeper with better quality of time with a person and there are a lot of things that people simply aren't comfortable discussing on FB (mental health, relationship problems, health problems, etc).

2. Social media can give the impression that you have nothing new to talk about with someone. Since I've cut social media out of a lot of my personal life, I can actually call somebody I haven't talked to a year and have a lot to discuss. It's a lot more fulfilling to hear about somebody's new relationship/breakup/child/vacation than it is to get a sanitized summary of the same online.

3. I hadn't realized it since I stopped using FB, but there's a general sense of anxiety that I've found comes from regular usage. I think between the unfeeling algorithmic drive for engagement and the human tendency for information addiction, the need to check one's feed or friend group is a constant thing. I've been a lot happier and experiencing a lot less ambient anxiety without it.

The conclusion I've come to is that social networks, at least how they're run and built today, or a very bad replacement for real human connection. I'd urge everyone to do the following whenever someone you care about comes to mind:

1. Have you spoken with them recently? If not, send them a text and see if they're free to call.

2. Are you not close and nervous about calling? Send them a text/email/letter letting them know you thought about them and share something.

3. Have someone you haven't spoken to in a while due to an argument or disagreement and regret losing touch? Reach out! Talk about it. Time heals many wounds, and with perspective, empathy, and a willingness to hear each other out you'll be surprised at how many friendships can be rekindled.

It's been a rough few years. A contact out of the blue from an old acquaintance or friend can me the world to people. Remember that you're not alone and that whatever anxiety or loneliness you feel is a very human experience we all share.
Specifically, GA allows you to invent complex numbers, quaternions, etc. very easily instead of it taking hundreds of years.

I've read linear and geometric algebra and it's amazing for linear operations. Unfortunately it gets more complex when you want to use it for nonlinear operations (such as translation) - now you need to use CGA or PGA or something. Still, seems like it would be amazing for computer graphics, physical simulation, etc. especially if someone can figure out a good strategy for efficient compilation (e.g. representing a multivector with exactly the minimal number of non-zero entries, with non-zero basis elements tracked at compile time).
Houses are not consumer goods, they are assets, like stocks on the stock market. If the stock market goes up 2%, we do not make a habit of saying "Terrible news today, the stock market suffered 2% inflation."

This sentence is unmanageable:

"You're conflating appreciation and depreciation (rise or fall in real value) with inflation/deflation (rise or fall of nominal value)."

First of all, I'm explaining the government's definition of consumer inflation, which you seem to misunderstand. The government does not formally model rising asset prices as consumer inflation, the government models that increasing wealth.

Second of all, you're conflating nominal appreciation and nominal depreciation with the concept of the "real," which is to say, inflation adjusted value. If the value of your house increases by 5% then you are 5% wealthier. Whether this has kept up with the pace of inflation is a separate issue. We need to talk cleanly and cogently about nominal value versus real changes in value. You can do that by adjusting your changing value of wealth by the consumer inflation, but clearly you cannot do that mental adjustment if you're trying to base the calculation off the real value of your assets -- in that case you would be double counting the inflation.

To put that differently:

Suppose your house increases a nominal 5% and consumer inflation is 6%. You might say "Oh, I'm 1% poorer in real terms." But you can't say that if, as you seem to want, asset values are included in the calculation of consumer inflation. In other words, if the 5% increase is already part of the 6% increase, then you've mushed the concepts together to such an extent that the calculation becomes meaningless.
But based on that graph, the price has actually be higher than it is currently even before the pandemic
Yes to both the parent and some of the grandparent comments. We need people to have the freedom to be wrong, but that gives cover to intentional liars.
I think the suggestion is that if the company had been fined, there wouldn't be a tax deduction. So why wasn't the settlement structured as a big fine, rather than a cleanup expense?
Iron rusts over historical timescales, metal deposits form over geological ones.
Out of a Housing Crisis, into Vans
Thanks for your question, geeB! I have not tested the accuracy of the readings from the sensor, but after searching the web I found that the easiest solution would be to bring it outside once in a while. The other solutions would require a sensor that is calibrated or a room with a known value of CO2.

Maybe it is better to create a christmas star for the window (If we have to keep the christmas vibe)? Then it would be able to recalibrate because it is frequently being exposed to 400 ppm? I will do some tests in my working environment to see how big of a problem the recalibration is.
100% agree that bivectors are an easier to way to think about quaternions with less magical hand-waving. However, I have an opinion that feels important which I like to post whenever geometric algebra comes up:

Just because multivectors are intuitively superior doesn't mean GA is a solved pedagogical solution to rotations. It is itself very strange and unintuitive. In particular there is no satisfying explanation for what the geometric product means that I'm aware of (and I have read more-or-less everything there is on the subject). Certain restrictions of the product have a geometric interpretation but the overall operation doesn't. The product tends to be introduced in a just-so way: look, an operation! How neat! But if you're a student who's already wondering "wtf is a quaternion and why does this work" you're not going to be much better off wondering "wtf is a geometric product and why does it work".

I happen to think that the superior pedagogical solution is to do away with the geometric product as well and just focus on rotations as an application of the exponential map [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_map_(Lie_theory)]. That is, quaternions emerge like this:

1. apply rotations via the exponential map acting on rotation operators: e^(iB) = 1 + (iB) + (iB)^2/2! + ...

2. in a flash of insight, realize that rotating vectors with two half-rotations is more stable than one full rotation: e^(iB) v => e^(iB/2) v e^(-iB/2)

I don't really understand the point of (2). I remember hearing that it works better in higher dimensions but couldn't tell you why.

But the point is, the useful properties -- like avoiding gimbal lock -- follow from just oriented planes and the exponential map. Gimbal lock is avoided by expressing rotations as a single rotation around an arbitrary axis, instead of, say composing Euler angles around fixed axes. But you don't need to mention the geometric product anywhere for this.

Anyway I think that this is a relatively 'unsolved' space, pedagogically. There is probably a really good explanation of why this all works that feels like it is still missing and doesn't involve any magic handwaving steps at all.
In a city plagued by a decades-long, top-down devotion to capture value from tourism at the expense of the quality of life for its own citizens, Airbnb democratized things so the average Joe can contribute to ruining things for permanent residents, too.
Yup, case closed.

And on a completely unrelated note:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
I came here to report the same two typos. Thanks.
Cars.

I appreciate all of the advances in emissions reduction, safety, etc., but when I was a kid I learned the basics of working on nearly any car on the market, and now even with an OBD scanner most of them are still near unfixable without visiting a dealership. Cars are literally immobilized by things like faulty sensors when if ignored, the car would legitimately still work just fine.

That's just the purely functional stuff. The hassle-ware that's been installed between in dash "infotainment" systems, integrations with remote third parties, etc., I honestly believe is more distracting and dangerous than genuinely helpful. We've grown accustomed to this so much that people have told me they are "bored" driving sometimes without all of their gadgetry. That shouldn't be the state of normal when driving, it should be "I am operating heavy machinery and should pay attention to what I'm doing because my life does depend on it".

It's interesting to me that our trend with software has been to simplify interfaces over the years and cars just keep adding buttons and integrations and auxiliary ports for devices, and excuse themselves with useless friendly warnings that tell you not to use them while you're using the car.
How to Make Difficult Conversations More Effective
Ask HN: Sensor for detecting whether a door is bolted or not?
I have an idea for an I.O.T project to detect whether or not a door is bolted (not just closed), but I'm struggling to choose an appropriate sensor. Additionally, I'd like it to be wireless (and battery operated) so there wouldn't be any cable management to deal with.

I did a quick prototype with an inductive proximity sensor which didn't work well, and looked into reed sensors. Any recommendations?
I sell this software on the GCP platform: https://3geonames.org/api
The religious channels are not PBS. "support" is not relevant if the goal is propaganda (religious or political).
Thanks for this. Picking the right sounds for your chat application or game is important and not easy at all

For me, it was one of those things that I was clearly taking for granted until I had to do it myself. My first thought? "We need a sound guy"
This joke went over so many heads, it's brilliant.
This is the detail people miss in these conversations. The problem could only have been solved a decade ago. The current worst offenders of spreading misinformation are at retirement age.
> counter programming and to skip the 18 minutes of advertising per hour of TV.

^^^This.

I basically can't tolerate watching anything on ITV, Sky, or other commercial TV in the UK nowadays, nor for well over a decade, due to the frequency and quantity of ads. I also strongly object to what I presume is audio compression applied to ads to make them louder than surrounding scheduled programming.

And counter programming is an obnoxious practice.

Let's face it: lots of people have always wanted to watch what they want when they want to. Lots of people don't want to arrange their lives around the TV schedule. Good riddance to it.
Sounds a lot like the first time I tried to understand quaternions. The explanation in geometric algebra as a scalar and bivector gives it an intuitive geometric sense that words like words like "hypercomplex" fail to. Others here have linked to that material.
This method suggests a possible mechanism for poorer outcomes in the obese, but that does not mean that the mechanism is correct.

The mechanism also involves a way for SARS-CoV-2 to infect lymphocytes in fat tissue that doesn't involve ACE2, which the authors leave completely unexplained, which is whole lot of highly surprising results.

There's also simpler explanations for why the obese are at higher risk, because systemically they're in poorer shape to begin with (metabolic syndrome, etc), and mechanically they have more trouble breathing when they get sick.

The title explanation is so simplistically attractive while the biological mechanism is unexpected and unexplained, which I'd say adds up to requiring a large amount of skepticism, until it gets validated by real experts in the field (not just someone with an MD or PhD on twitter, but someone who is active in exactly this kind of research). It might be an emotionally satisfying result, but it smells like bad science to me.
That suspicion should motivate people to educate themselves before pushing conspiracies. Public debate needs a core set of facts to reason about the world so politicizing BLS numbers is... really bad.
Another automotive 'advancement' is headlight bulbs you can't replace yourself - what used to take a few minutes now requires a trip to the dealer, so they can presumably dismantle the front end

Unlikely both would blow, but I'm a little surprised more fuss hasn't been made about it from a safety standpoint; considering being able to see where you're going tends to be important - I believe in France you can get a ticket for having no washer fluid.
Facts can change minds but, for most, their minds will only be changed if those facts are sanctioned by someone they respect or see as an authority.

This goes back to the theory that 80% or more of any population of humans are going to be followers. You can't have a tribe of nothing but chiefs, because eventually those chiefs are going to pontificate too much and fight over their decisions. Every group needs a majority of its members to follow along no matter what, and as humans are a communal species, we developed as such. Groups don't have time to have every individual understand and debate the facts. To be efficient, most will need to just do what the chief tells them to do.

The tragedy of our era is that we've told ourselves that everyone will make better decisions if we all were educated and knew the facts. The result is we've told unremarkable people that they are really intelligent, and we've wasted the time of the intelligent by telling them that humans aren't the programmable species that they really are. Pointing out facts is simply a sport of one-upsmanship that has no accountability for how someone acts upon that information. The chiefs, so to speak, are free to reason themselves into any contorted belief to the point of religious zealotry, and the followers are only more glad than ever to join these new religions.

For facts to not only change our minds, but change enough minds, we may need to move beyond the model of the tribe. At the very least, the chiefs need to be knocked down a peg.
Laws are not ideal and are often used to discriminate against certain groups.

> immagine this situation, Bob does the job, the other party never clicks on "done", Bob doesn't get the money, what Bob can do if there's no intermediary and/or bureaucracy protecting him?

As I said, there is a period of funds lock-up. In the worst case, Bob has to wait some time until the smart contract sends him his payment.
Not generally. Vast majority of people eat well past simple hunger satiation. In regards to non edible goods, a few less sheets per paper towel role would likely not be noticed in the short term but taken over a year would like reflect an extra role or 2 purchased.
TIL that not every imaginary number is just "i" with optional scaling applied. Was taught "the square root of negative one is i".
Latency, god yes, that drives me bananas. Mechanical tuners, push buttons, dials all responded immediately.
The Federal Reserve is not the US Treasury. The Fed buys these mortgage-backed securities with money printed out of thin air. Likewise, the dollars disappear again as the mortgages mature. If the securities default, everyone who owns dollars bears the cost in the form of inflation, not the Fed.
The lower entry barrier for a lot of things.

It allows the community to grow, learn and become more diverse.

On the other hand, I regularly read blog articles about complex topics from people that should rather not write about it. I know "senior software engineers" where I ask myself how they are capable of tying their shoes each morning. I see people get praised for achieving the bare minimum, like putting five pictures on LinkedIn about a topic they hardly understand at all.
Can you expand on this some more?
Well, if you put a lid on a saucepan (and you should, it conserves energy and makes water boil faster) you can detect it clattering when the water starts to boil! So you don't need any optical input, a microphone will suffice ― which is cheaper, too. Filter out the low frequencies of water humming, amplify the rest, and you got a (not-so-nice-sounding, because it rattles, not whistles) boiling point alarm!
hosting/providing code isn't illegal, right?

it's the invocation of it that would be, right?
> Are you suggesting if the dinosaurs had tried harder to "evolve in time", they could have better survived an asteroid hit?

Well, yes. It's not fair to the dinosaurs, I admit. They hardly had a chance to develop language and mathematics. They were still too busy ripping each other's faces off. And not having opposable thumbs, of course, really put a damper on technological development. Maybe in a another million years things would have been different, but the asteroid had a different idea.

We, on the other hand, are at least on the precipice of the capability to divert asteroids. Hopefully we don't get an asteroid visit too soon.
Yes. Games are fairly universally loved, no one really wants to make accounting software or telecom middleware or fintech apps, they ultimately build them for money. If money was covered then reaching the self actualization phase of life is possible and who wouldn't want to make their own game?
I’ve had xsnow start on login every December and January since 1996. However, it did not start last week, but I had not yet investigated why. This explains it; my startup was using the old command line options for version 1.42 of xsnow, not the new version. After some experimentation, my desktop is again covered in snow. All is as it should be.
That’s absolutely amazing. In reading that, I had to ask myself several times if it was real or not. No one seems to make such bold and decisive decisions for good anymore.
What if your phone system is poorly designed and only accepts 500 phone calls a minute or it crashes, should there be legal consequences for getting 600 people to call during the minute? What if your web site is poorly designed so that more than five million requests make it crash, and a DDOS sends ten million requests? Is it okay for the NSA to hack your computer to spy on you because computer software is poorly designed and includes exploits that allow hackers in? What if your automobile is poorly designed in that it can't handle having caltrops thrown in front of it to puncture the tires and cause a crash?

All systems are "poorly designed" if by that you mean they'll fail under pressure but this could have been prevented. It would, after all, be possible to design a car that is more resilient to running over a row of caltrops, it would just be expensive and unrewarding most of the time.

Of course, the person disrupting the system is a biased party. He shouldn't get to decide what counts as poorly designed in order to excuse his disruption; if you allow that, he's always going to claim that whatever vulnerability he found is just poor design. We don't think this is a good excuse for the NSA; it shouldn't be a good excuse for anyone trying to overwhelm a phone system.
I have an advanced degree in economics, but okay :)

How would you explain the increase in ads then? If there is a clearly understood equilibrium ad time, why has ad time increased? Have audiences become more accepting of ads? Have ads become more entertaining?

I'd say the more likely explanation is that there is a lag between audience loss and advertiser realisation of audience loss. TV stations manage to meet market growth expectations by exploiting this and pumping out overvalued ads to non-existent people. Over time, they've become increasingly reliant on this strategy to keep their heads above water as advertisers catch up to reality.

It can't go on forever, so they've now belatedly started their own streaming services to try and keep up.
TV did not lose (just the opposite). We live in a Golden Era of an incredible abundance of great TV (including a large selection of foreign shows which was never possible before). Moreover it is a better business model and content is higher quality (in general). Also, I still enjoy antenna TV because of high def broadcasts which involve less image compression.
> They never forgave him for exposing the Clinton emails

The issue there was precisely how he was emphatically not acting as a journalist.

Journalists do not coordinate news releases with their preferred candidates.

Political operatives do.
“ experienced a rent cut since everyone fled to Miami and Austin ”

Obviously not in a California metro where the state decided to subsidize rents to compensate for preventing evictions resulting in a windfall for landlords and massive rent increases throughout the state.
The Liar’s Club: Looking Back on Princeton
Maybe you might want to read this book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz
Since the dollar is an entirely Fiat currency, its supply is dictated purely at the whim of the U.S. Government.

This means that they can turn on the presses (or these days, make some keystrokes) and instantly have as much money as they want. Because of this, if there are outstanding debts that are denominated in USD, the government will always be able to have that money on hand, or create it.

The problem is that this puts more dollars out in the world. And if there are more dollars in circulation, everyone (on average) has a little bit more they can "bid" on consumer goods. Because of the law of supply and demand, things inflate in price.
I agree 100%, and should have said so in my OP, there are some who have conditions that are difficult to treat. However, there are a significant number that are legitimately preventable. Rare is rhe case where a doctor's prescription is "consume more sugar." The science, which we're all in favor of, is pretty clear on this.

It's not logical that we (in the USA) continue to side step a serious discussion about the value of prevention (and how that relates to the level of unhealthines we are on average.)
This is harsh. GP's theory doesn't clash with traditional economics.

One reasonable answer to your question: TV companies didn't increase the number of ads because consumers would switch to a channel with fewer ads. In fact, they showed just enough ads to break even, as the marginal ad revenue per hour tended towards the cost of producing an hour of television (because of the perfectly competitive TV market you posit). Now the cost has stayed the same, but the number of eyeballs has dropped, so TV networks need to show more ads or go out of business.
Journalism involves synthesis and above all _vetting_ of source material, not hosting a glorified ftp server for whatever your sources send you.
Wikipedia has some information about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland#The_1990s:_Rise_and_ch...
I'm guessing you haven't talked to many adjuncts. The academic life is far from easy for most these days. See here for an example.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/adjunc...
> Most products today are less durable and are generally worse than "yesterday", in my opinion.

Planned obsolescence is pervasive - it's hard to have endless growth when you've reached market saturation. It's also incredibly hard to go against the grain here, as it's really difficult to judge how long something will last without intimate knowledge of the product.