skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I love that they need evidence for "taxation works". It doesn't take a prophet to tell if you charge $10 for a can of soda, sales decline. The question is how much can we tax
What benefits and what costs are you talking about, mainly?
Honestly curious here and not picking on you. If it was super productive and enjoyable, why only do it for a year?
I consider it an evolution. We blindly iterating over many possible variants, we try to mix languages, yes, we throw things on a wall and see what sticks. Some things do stick, other things will be replaced. It's a chaos, but it's getting better.
> The problem with this sort of strategy is that we make laws by voting, and so it assumes that we can determine what is healthy by popular vote. This isn't true and it is very easily corrupted if the option is open.

Well, we don't really know of any better option for taking collective decisions of high impact. The public and their representatives are informed of the science (and for nutrition information, it's really much more "science" than science at this point) and they decide by voting whether they choose to believe the data presented enough to try to impose tax burdens or other regulations.

What alternative is there? Have nutritionists be able to unilaterally decide what stores are allowed to sell and at what prices? That would get much more easily corrupted, as many nutrition studies have been in the past.
I appreciate that explanation. While awkward, I believe "efficiency zone" is a much clearer term to use, or at least it was worthwhile clarifying that that's what you meant.

While I understand what you're saying, I still don't think that ultimately matters when talking about what humans should or shouldn't be doing, what we're supposed to or not supposed to be doing, considering:

1. Human nature is not particularly efficient, and neither is evolution, at least on the surface. Peacocks' feathers are not particularly efficient features for them to develop. Yes, avoiding meat may seem harder than not avoiding meat, but the same could be said for following a religion, or organizing into a governing body, or adhering to some social norm, and yet humans have naturally done those for probably their entire existence. They do so because they at least perceive a benefit for them even if some might disagree on that benefit.

2. The human digestive system is not mono-faceted. It evolved to be multi-use and flexible. You are not using a hammer incorrectly by refraining from using the claw side because you've decided your problem can be solved perfectly fine with the hammer face. You are not using a TV incorrectly if you never visit channel 19 because you don't want to watch whatever is on channel 19.

I stand by my point. The fact that you can efficiently do something doesn't mean you're "supposed to" do that thing. It just gives you the option.
I definitely empathise with the author. The web space is particularly prone to fashion driven development (FDD). Despite that I think he's a bit off the mark. Most consumer facing development isnt and has never been "engineering" outside of safety critical applications. It's more akin to domestic plumbing. You're connecting existing components together and while there's a skill to it, the skill ceiling isn't that high. Programming however (as opposed to development), even where software engineering does take place, is a craft. It's something that you learn by doing and it takes time to learn to do it well.
Modern frameworks and software development techniques are often the equivalent to handing a complete amateur the keys to a fully equipped wood working shop, complete with laser cutters, CNC routers and a load of power tools and letting them have at it with only a few YouTube videos for guidance. Sure they'll be able to make things, and larger and more impressive things than if they could only use hand tools, but the resulting creations will be over engineered, or rickety, or just plain badly designed compared to furniture created by someone who's spent a few years apprenticed to a master craftsman.
And you know what, that's fine. 99% of web development is still teenagers desperate to be the next Elon Musk hawking Tinder for marmosets to VCs, WordPress sites and e-commerce. It doesn't matter if it's a bit shit and is developed by people who learned their craft on Udemy and by watching 10 ways to turn yourself into a l33t programmer videos. The concerning thing is when that philosophy starts to infect areas where actual safety critical software engineering is done. No one wants a l33t programmer with massive scrum skillz designing the control system for a nuclear reactor...
Whistleblower exist. The question is which country got the balls to prosecute. USA Biden? France Macron? Justice can only be served or enforced if there is a court operates it. When the most powerful nation own chief justices cowered to Antifa and BLM back then to even take on the fraud cases, anyone dare to take down dragon of the east. How many leaders scared of critisizing Kim or the Talebans? It is not whether China allow investigate it is no one brave enough to do a Covid Nuremberg...not even US military.
The word is important, because you use it to cast judgement on one kind of evolutionary path. In your comment, it is wrong, because it is not "as originally designed".
> There are ways to speed up compilation. It can be done in parallel, and you can get a lot of cores into a developer desktop these days.

I'd start with the very basics, such as using forward declarations, encapsulation, and the pimpl idiom to not drag unnecessary #includes into your translation units.

Also, the compilation bottleneck sometimes lies in IO, thus moving your build folder to a RAM drive can speed up things significantly with zero effort.
Drinking soda doesn't make you full, though. If you are hungry and drink soda, you will eat something anyway. Probably the same amount, if not more (soda may actually provoke feelings of hunger).
You know what hurt more? The divide that sprouted from the obfuscation of the truth and its pursuit.
> What alternative is there?

You could let people who think soda is unhealthy avoid it, and people who don't care buy it from the soda makers. Maybe set up some official nutritional advice [0].

There doesn't have to be a centralised determination on whether soda is to be encouraged or discouraged.

[0] https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/the-austral...
Photosynthesis is more limited by water than sunlight in many areas. So it may make sense to cool some subtropical areas.
If you endanger lives every time you get behind the wheel of a car, you shouldn't be driving.

Millions of people are able to drive safely, and do, every minute of every day.
What's the current definition of terrorism ?
That's a cool theory, do you have any data to back it up or is this just an unfounded assertion?
Show HN: Extending SectorLISP to Implement Basic REPLs and Games
not for the price of even large amounts of soda for the same consumed time period
It's not that simple, sadly, if it was my job would be way easier. Yes, your cells (usually) run on glucose but that glucose can be produced from a variety of dietary sources including sugar (sucrose, fructose, etc), other carbohydrates, and fats.

Reduced dietary sugar (particularly the added sugars) is an amazing public health outcome.
Strongly disagree, that fine line will always be stretched beyond your definitions.

Besides, without lobbying groups working against you, the feedback loop of voting them out actually starts working. (no it's not a complete solution so please don't argue against that straw man, it's just the most important first step to unblock others)

Edit: clarity
The Omicron variant is actual prior to Delta variant and prior to all other variants even so named Alpha variant. This article indicates why Omicron could be yet another lab leak.
https://bprice.substack.com/p/lab-leak-20
Regulators responsible for anti trust enforcement only give lip service to the laws they are meant to enforce. The rest of the time their lips are firmly pressed up against the asses of the people they are meant to regulate.
I don't drink sugary "soda" drinks at all, so I don't have a horse in the race, but I think it is a valid question to ask whether the tax really decreased sugar consumption or people just bought bunch of cookies instead.
From a basic perspective: Yes, new space is being created. And, yes, the physical distance between things are changing.

The [Hubble constant](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hubble+constant ) is roughly (2.2 * 10^-18)/s -- often written as, e.g., 68 km/s/Mpc (same thing).

Which basically asserts that, every second, each unit of space is increasing by 2.2*10^-18.

For example, if we suppose that there's a ball 1 meter away from you, then in a second, it'ld be ~1.0000000000000000022 meters away from you. Not that it moved away from you, but rather that ~2.2*10^-18 meters of space was created between you and it.

At least, in basic theory. There're a lot of reasons to not take it too literally. For example, at local-scales, forces may resist expansion, instead pulling things back together. For another, the idea that the value is constant seems dubious. But, it's really simplified/approximate/speculative/etc..

Note that this does imply that things can, in a sense, move faster than the speed of light without violating Einstein's Relativity. Because Einstein's Relativity asserts that things can't move faster than light locally; however, the expansion of space isn't considered to be a factor in that. Which is relevant to the main-article above: when something's so far that space is being created between you and it faster than the speed-of-light, it's theoretically outside of the universe that's relevant to you, and thus outside of one (disfavored) notion of "the observable universe".

For example, say that two aliens are separated by such a distance that the expansion-of-space between them is greater than the speed-of-light. Then, even if both aliens blasted off at nearly the speed-of-light toward each other, they'd still approach each other more slowly than the distance is expanding, such that they wouldn't reach each other. (At least, under a lot of assumptions.)

That distance-of-separation is currently [estimated at about 14-billion light-years](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28speed+of+light%29+%... ), called the [Hubble length](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law#Hubble_length ).
I’ll just sit on the sidelines, taking hackily-written messes of software written under tight deadlines and performance improve the heck out of it and make my money being able to deliver that narrow area of value, thank you :)

Some of us “evolve” by becoming specialists.

Edit: and I’ll take backend code written by a skilled backend engineer and infra code written by a skilled dev ops person over all-of-it written by a “polyglot/front-end-dev-on-assignment” every day of the week. Just keep us away from the front end, we can’t make things pretty or interactive for garbage.
Imagine if they had used a non GC language, could've saved a lot more.
Ok, but can you please not post unsubstantive comments or flamebait to HN? Your comment here is low-information/high-indignation. We're looking for the other way around.

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
How does revisiting approach to regulate public self-driving test translate to dont build things in your opinion? To me if looks like no one has issues with building or testing, its just the public testing that there are concerns about.
The tax is 1.75¢ per ounce? That nearly doubles the price of a 12-pack depending on whatever brand is on sale that week. When I buy soda during my shopping trips, I usually get three 12-packs for $9.99. With this tax, the total would be $17.55.

If I still drank sugary soda, I'd go out of my way to avoid this tax.

I find the idea people alter their shopping habits to avoid it totally believable. probably not enough to offset the reduced consumption (or else it'd show up in lower gross receipts at stores within city limits), but it wouldn't be surprising to see increased sales in neighboring towns.
Neither OP nor a sugar industry shill, but it may well be possible that we need to cut down on zero calorie soda as well.

Even though zero calorie soda does not directly contain any energy, it may mess up our feelings of hunger and make us more hungry. [0] So far, scientific studies indicate that people who switch from sugary soda to zero calorie drinks do not lose weight [1].

Feelings of hunger and satiety are complicated, driven by hormones and only somewhat correlated with total energy intake.

[0] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/medical-myths-all-...

[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/zero-weight-loss-from-ze...

Edit: downvoted for what? Linking to Harvard health blog? If zero calorie soda had a slimming effect, we would have seen it a long ago, it is not exactly a new invention.
1. It does not.

2. SKYKING is a group callsign for any aircraft operating under the SIOP (if you don't have the action word on your list, the message isn't for you). I saw a talk from a former U2 spy plane pilot that mentioned receiving a SKYKING message to alert them they had been detected by hostile forces.
I understand, I am not obligated that my blog work on Safari, I could make it Firefox and Linux only. I also understand that Google and Apple are rich and are always chasing more profits and I don't defend this evil giants. I also understand that are exceptions like you are not building a simple webpage but a very complex image/video/code/graph editor or video game and you need a very specific feature.

What I am saying is if you put a webpage that targets everyone (not a limited subset like say our internal team that all run latest Apple shit) then since "is is just software" it is easier to transpile the code then ask the world to throw away their devices and buy new stuff.

I am sure you are not OK if all websites will use a new JS feature in the exact day it is released and the updates did not had time to propagate to all users, so the question is how many percent of an users should is small enough so a average webdev can stop using the transpiler and break stuff?
1.75 cents/oz.
All I can say is that - yes, this sounds like an ADHD trait, but not necessarily something that you'd want to correct. Is time spent your only concern? If so, work with your brain, not against it.

If this is ADHD, it's something people consider to be an upside - the ability to get into the idea generation/brainstorm mode and dive deeply. Yes, it gets tricky with all the things that should be done, but there's is value in what you actually do.

The other links I've posted up the thread can shine more light on what you experience; see if you find other traits relatable as well.
Why on earth is it supposed to be a percentage of all cars on the road?

If I say I just ate a lot of rice, do I define how much rice I ate by the percentage of global rice consumption I accounted for?

-

Please, 2,000 cars is mass testing.
Or what are the effects of artificial sweeteners...
Some people in the thread said they preferred running Slack in a browser tab instead of the Electron app, perhaps to avoid the memory overhead of a separate browser instance.

The comment I replied to described a preference for the app because of OS navigation, e.g. Alt+Tab, a separate taskbar icon, etc.

This Chrome shortcut or Edge app trick lets you combine these approaches, running the website in your browser but giving the site its own main window that you can pin to the taskbar, set to auto-run, and navigate to like a native app.
Such web solutions are cheaper because the software market is really sick. There is almost no point in competing on quality and performance for consumer software, because some start-up with hundreds of millions of VC funding or some SW megacorp will enter the market and give their mediocre product away for free while paying engineers N times more than what you can offer. Bonus points if the software is at least partly open source or integrates with some standard (which will get nixed once they have enough market share).

And those VCs and that CEO won't be particularly concerned with technical excellence, they'll focus on their metrics regarding user acquisitions, market share, etc.

Since technical excellence is of at best secondary importance, it makes sense to commoditise the technology and make it as easy as possible to build such applications. Build some framework, give it away for free, ideally open source. Brag about how you're enriching the world through your open source contributions. Optionally snicker at the fact that you're in fact controlling how things get built on the so-called open web.

Relax on your yacht while drinking a good champagne. Don't explain to the poor sods still worrying their brains about technology why "the economics" prevent building quality software, because you don't give a fuck anyway. One of your employees or the employee of some other web company will surely set aside some time to clarify this, like the good little employee that they are.
I can’t help but find this situation incredibly ironic. How much tax money do we spend propping up corn and the corn syrup used to make these sodas only to tax and try to discourage their sale? I wholeheartedly support this tax, but it’s an incredibly bizarre contradiction.
hahaha. Now everyone will get a piece of my existential ennui. Welcome to the club!
I don't know and I don't assume anything. I was only talking about my own curiosity on the origins of the covid. Though I haven't seriously looked into any particular thing about this recently, including today.
Phytoplankton is what makes oxygen from CO2. Trees actually do not add much. IMO we should bioengineer phytoplankton to allow it to grow faster, so our oceans will just turn more CO2 into O2 and solve that issue.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. It just leads to hell. Also really tedious and repetitive threads, and we want the opposite.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> The data set itself—gathered by marketing insight firm Nielsen—was huge, representing 45 percent of all food store sales in the city

This means that in the 5 households Nielsen used as a "representative sample of Seattle's population" one person got so overweight that he can't leave his flat any more and therefore he started buying his daily dose of soda online instead of buying it in his favourite store. Soda consumption drops by 20%. At least this is what Nielsen says. But hey, who am I to judge decades of financially successful quackery...
No you don’t. Otherwise human artists would have to list out hundreds of attributions for every bit of art they saw that influenced their style.
I visited somewhere which I think was BNFL labs, or a like company in Scotland in the 70s on a schools science visit. They demonstrated some very cool tech, including electronically triggered anti flash glasses. They were still in trial, and flashed white not black but triggered incredibly rapidly. I remember them doing a demo with an SLR camera flashgun. Nice to see the real McCoy

They also showed us NMR machines and talked about getting permission to dredge up iron from the German fleet in scapa flow (orkneys) to make low background radiation measurement chambers. The entire smelting path had to be based on old metal and like to avoid contamination.
> Is that the actual word for word text of the redacted email or is that just the congressional staffer's summary of a longer paragraph that refutes the point they are trying to make?

I think your suspicion is correct, there are omissions in the "unredacted" version too. They kinda do allude to this by saying "excerpts of those transcriptions are reproduced below", which I had not noticed. Probably all the dot dot dots denote omission.

The omissions might be malicious, or merely because of privacy reasons. But either way, I think there isn't much new substantive content in what they have released.

> I guess it probably isn't classified in that case, but then begs the question why it didn't pass FOIA

The exemptions to FOIA are a bit broader than that, and the exemptions are often abused. The redacted version has a "code" after each redaction which is supposedly the reason for it. You can find the meaning of the codes here [1]. I think the all the ones in the released PDF have one of these two codes:

(b)(5) Inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters that would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.

(b)(6) Personnel and medical files and similar files, the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

[1]: https://www.fbi.gov/services/information-management/foipa/fo...
Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. We want thoughtful, curious conversation here.
Yes, and sometimes fools say the sky is blue. That doesn’t make it red.
Curious what kind of code you have. Sure, we don't have anywhere close to our C++ codebase in Rust, but we did integrate with a library that's on the bigger side, and compile times of the Rust part have been negligible compared to the C++ parts.
You know people go to Oregon to avoid sales takes on various purchases, right? That’s 2-4 hours from Seattle depending on traffic.
Multiple generations also slept on the same bed, I'm surprised the theory is two sleeps and not multiple sleeps. Not that humans haven't habituated to group sleeps in tight quarters, but one bed feels qualitatively different than a bunch of tired submariners cramped in individual bunks or some similar arrangement.
> And that’s exactly what happened in Washington shortly after Seattle passed its soda tax: In November of that same year, soda companies campaigned successfully for the passage of a ballot initiative banning all future fees on sugary drinks across the state.

Wow, this is nakedly self interested and a law purely for the industry at the expense of democracy, how on earth can that be allowed to happen?
Best of seven: why Acorn built the BBC Micro – BBC Micro at 40
I've had C++ job where regular build took 30 minutes and full rebuild over 1 hour. And it wasn't even a very big project. We moved the code to Java and the compile time there was under 10 minutes WITH tests (C++ version had none). Without tests it was less than a minute. It's not a perfectly fair comparison (we changed some things and not everything was moved to Java), but still.
I disagree, back then people were smiling to strangers and not to camera, now people smile in both situations, he was greeting these people so obviously if he greeted them with smile people smiled back, I doubt you would have any different result nowadays from most likely good looking well dressed 19yo kid.
I wouldn't be surprised if the alternatives that the citizens of Seattle are choosing are juices, fruit punches, iced teas, and other non-water beverages that are hardly better for you than soda.
Or if the sin tax is gradually expanded to cover almost everything in the grocery store.
It’s not. The entire point of math papers is to get the idea across to other mathematicians. Unlike code, which can be useful even if others don’t understand it, a paper that can’t be understood is entirely useless. You are just not in the target audience, that’s all.
> Not allowing foreign scientists in, destroying evidence, arresting journalists, etc.

That is par for the course. The Chinese government would have acted this way regardless of if it was a lab leak, natural event, or space aliens.