skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Vast majority of businesses are extraordinarily inefficient. This is my favorite pass time to identify these inefficiencies. For example, majority of restaurants can eliminate customers waiting on waiters by simple app like toast. There is never any need for greeter who you must wait on to seat at table. You should be able to pay and leave using app like toast. There should be a jar of water at table so customers don’t have to call waiter to get water. The list goes on. But these businesses have no intention to provide meticulously best possible experience and they are not striving hard to improve. Their motto is people will pay them simply because they are there (same as classic Seinfeld line that people will see crappy shows because that’s what’s on TV). The story extends to virtually all businesses I come across day to day from coffee shops to Grocery store to pharmacies to gas stations to car dealers to car manufacturers to theme parks.

I used to wonder why these businesses don’t want to improve. I feel everything comes down to CEO. I imagines many of these CEOs are private jet ferrying creatures who probably never goes through the pain of their customers or don’t have keen eye for improvement. They stay busy in their happy bean counting and other MBA activities. There is no bottom up drive for feedback to these suits. Once the top leader is rich dude, priority of their life becomes different.

The relentless drive to examine, reflect and improve is something of a new phenomenon that likely only started with silicon and Silicon Valley. These cultures are as new as humans popping up among other mammals. This culture is picking up for sure but it will take few generations.
Most games don’t contain what I’m looking for and don’t work for me. The ones that do work for me are very fun and engaging and occasionally actually awe inspiring. So I try to only play those. I’m almost never lacking for something great to play for very long.
True if you would have asked a nerd. If you had asked a person on the street, they would have answered, “Why, of course. Can’t computers do more complicated stuff already today?”
Not at all, my stance is that people on HN should stop being useful idiots for the monopoly by shooting down new ideas and innovations on the grounds that 'BigTech does what I need already'. I don't see how that is at all similar. The world will be fine if people aren't allowed to anonymously pay for things online with US credit cards in order to set up cloud services. There are decentralized networks for that, and I'm sure many centralized ones that will accept payment methods anonymously as well (blackhats, I hope you're not listening).

Please refrain from ad hominem, especially since this was your first ever comment posted to HN.
Unfortunately, even if a company offered this, in today's world the product would likely have a hidden microphone that isn't listed on the featured hardware.

Much like the old physical typewriters had spyware hidden on them without the users knowledge. I would be willing to bet that every keyboard has something similar today.

It's also striking to see how many people believe that they can trust the 'little indicator lights' on their microphone and cameras to actually indicate that their physically cut off from power. Very, very few devices are made in a way that this is true, and I would be hard pressed to believe it even if it was started in a manual unless I physically checked the equipment.

Ultimately, just assume that the entire world can scrutinize everything that happens on or around any electronic device... so everything, all the time.
Except that the "Oh, no, what about" comes later, and repeatedly.
I really like a lot of magic, but mentalism isn't very interesting magic to me because it always boils down to the same thing:

1. They get passed information via some surreptitious source (hidden mic, signals, ode, etc.)
2. They make some kind of swap using sleight of hand
3. They got lucky/had multiple outs/the person was in on it

And the presentation beyond that is really boring, like: "pick a card", then "oh I know what it is". Once you've seen it once it's always the same. Obviously everyone knows you can't actually read minds or predict the future, so it's just a matter of what type of cheating occurs.
I've been using it on a C program for almost one year, added to my Makefile's "make check" and it does work, although like with rustc some times you need to refactor something to express it in a way that it understands.

A few weeks ago after some changes in my program it would complain about something and after figuring out that it was actually fine, I didn't want to rewrite that part just to spell things out for the analyzer. I went to check if they had made improvements. My distro still had only GCC 10 but 11 had been released so I compiled it from source and tried it: the warning disappeared, and I decided to leave the code as it was.

If you give it a try, make sure to do it with GCC 11 at least, it improved a lot since 10.
Absolutely. Too many to number. Apart from the script-level software, most of them are published as open source software (modules, packages, etc.).

The latest example is https://cashier.alensiljak.eu.org/
This is a very poor comparsion. Sure, many companies went bust around then. But many didn't. Plenty of real value was created by companies doing real useful things.
I would be with you if so many corporations didn't already exploit customers with the whole "yeah, tough luck, whatcha gonna do about it? have fun suing us" attitude. You can't blame customers for taking the same approach when that's already corporate America's MO.

And don't forget that on top of exploitative practices, corporations frequently game the legal process too... like forcing customers to sign away their rights to sue in court, and all that.
"We built Beeper on Matrix, the open source federated messaging protocol. All of our 'bridges' which connect Beeper to other chat networks are open source."
Yes, but the vast majority of commuters ride around 20km/h or even slower, as it seems to be a lot of elderly people around my place.
An option I would like is for when you push to a repository that doesn't exist, in which case GL creates a new private one for you. I'd like to be able to set it public.
With Vanilla Minecraft, you have have a port open to the entire planet and have to trust that the built-in security will work. The more ports you want to open to friends, the more services you are relying on to have working security.

With Tailscale, you just need to trust that Tailscale works, which seems like a much better bet given WireGuard's simple-and-auditable code plus the quality of Tailscale's dev team working on top of that.
> The sanctions imposed on South Africa in the 1980s absolutely crippled the country and are widely seen as a successful contribution in the efforts of bringing down Apartheid.

They played a role, but Western institutions are biased to exaggerate it and gloss over the fact that the sanctions regimes were only adopted after the reinvigoration of the armed struggle fueled by stepped up material and training support from the USSR brought into serious doubt the survival of the South African regime even with continued active support.

The West didn't want South Africa to lose, and wouldn't concede to it losing until the alternative was it losing anyway and armed struggle and support of the Communist bloc being the entire narrative for why, which they didn't like for either international or domestic political optics.
I suspect there was some editing involved with the chess example to make it seem more impressive, since it should be obvious to a competent player that this is what you are doing (because of the delay in which you make moves by having to check another board first). Additionally simultaneous exhibitions almost always have you playing the same color on every board, so it would be immediately suspicious.
I'm not a lawyer either and I wonder about the scope of Apache patent grant. Does it give you the right to use any patents the software in question "uses" in any possible context? Or does it simply allow you to modify the software any way you like and not get sued for infringement? But then how much can I modify it and still retain the right to use those patents? I mean if I create a totally unrelated software package which however shares some code with the original work, can I keep on using those patents anyway I want?
How would it not be more like a wall street guy investing his own money into the same funds he recommends to his clients?
In the short term yes, absolutely, but the other technology would be fine for the longer term.
There are multiple feedback loops. When energy is expensive, mining slows. This impacts yields from miners, and supply of new coins to the market. Also, there is a point where it is cheaper to buy the coins at certain energy prices; thus cost to produce the coins is a component in their market price. It is ignoring reality to say they are not linked concepts. One can demonstrate this in the myriad of shitcoins over the years — their value collapsed when mining stopped. When people did not want to pay to protect the network.

Exactly which leads which is probably something that will switch over time in various cycles of its adoption.
That is not peculiar to software development, even the most sophisticated F1 motor or Raptor engine is composed of five or six "simple machines" based on only three principals: wheel (wheel, pulley), lever (lever, screw), inclined plane (inclined plane, wedge).
0% of mentalism is psychology...
I've been wanting to get into hypnosis for a while but I typically find all the classes are aimed (and priced) for a wannabe hypnotherapist. I'm interested in the stage hypnosis side of mentalism. Do you have any tips for what I should be looking for?

Should I start with your "how to be a mentalist" book?
For a second I thought the Error page was intentional
I'm building an airplane. Also have a small machine shop in the garage so stock and occasionally tooling.
Just curious, how did you measure that? Are you constantly scanning?
Not aligned with PG politically, but this is spot on.

And this lock up of the hair dye was pre-COVID (2019), fyi.

First the mom and pops got driven out by the chains, then the chains closed down some by the rampant theft. Soon everything will be bought at big box warehouse and Amazon after I barcode my forehead. I still opt for the smaller neighborhood shops to supplement Costco, though.

Coincidental justice: flagrant dude 'shopping' at Walgreen's last year finally gets a staycation but it took a 'viral video' to get woke to shoplifting being a thing in this town [1]

My lived experience? Non-residents are clueless. Slow recovery from boarded downtown. Small businesses, ouch. Dark humor is normalized watching tourists navigate social norms disjointed by ranting mentally ill homeless, outsized tents, needles and excrement from substance abuse as they enjoy our city sidewalks. [2] And the welcoming tourist sign at the usual tourist traps? "If you love it, don't leave it" because of the rash of car smash and grabs [3]

If you're a local that actually goes Outside, and not just live indoors ordering your life online, you know all this. Personally I think some tough love is in order, throwing more money at green vested street sweepers or loitering grouped community engagement ambassadors may look see-what-we've-done-good politically, but long term I think priorities must be placed; 30 yrs of overflowing 'crisis' needs to be triaged. [4]

[1] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-Walgreens-shoplift...
[2] https://www.city-journal.org/san-francisco-homelessness
[3] https://sfgov.org/park-smart
[4] https://www.youtube.com/c/InvisiblePeople
So I think it's wrong of the author to flame other people publicly. I really denounce that. I shouldn't have gone for the jugular, using a word for a real illness. I apologise for that. That was wrong. The reason I wrote that was to convey my feeling that the author is doing something bad, writing an unstructured misspelled text bullying people with allegations that are also not verifiable. I should have thought about what actually bothered me before I commented.

"Then,, KevinDS on DSLReports was just a incredible ass to me. It was epic. I believe he also lied to me in PM when i tried to get him to help. I was already unhappy with the future that I was looking at. He then just said nasty things. I was done. It would be a thankless battle I would wage on my own and I was unwilling because of people like him. So KevinDS take a bow. CableLabs loves you, Intel loves you, Arris loves you.. I was a huge thorn in thier side. The Badmodems.com site gets 700 uniqui IPs a day. 380,000 unique since the start. 16 million hits. So KevinDS, you pushed me enough at the right time to end all this. I will NOT spend the next 5 years in a new battle that is thankless and filled with people like you."

The content above doesn't belong on the front page, simply put. It's very negative, and I'm sorry that I just continued with the negativity.
> evading contractual obligations

If by contractual obligations you mean "clauses that are most probably illegal but the average person will usually just shut up and pay rather that lawyer-up against a multibillion corporation", then yes I can see how many, me included, just opt for one of those cards whenever possible.
100% of mentalism acts use normal magic techniques

They just pretend to use "intuition" or "suggestibility" (not sure why, but it seems to make it more appealing), but those are not real methods...
That’s not remotely what I said. Of course getting a product done is important. Of course specific dates are sometimes important. But that doesn’t mean that due dates aren’t a lazy and inefficient management tool. In fact, I’d say it’s especially true if you have a non movable deadline. That’s when you need the absolute greatest flexibility and communication.

But due dates didn’t get me where I am today - which is a pretty happy place - despite how much I tried. What worked was honest and clear communication with my teams, explicit goal setting, a clear strategy, frequent review, and trust in my team to work hard and do a great job.

Every single time I’ve been forced by so-called managers to spend my time setting arbitrary dates rather than focusing on my goals and managing my teams, the project has failed spectacularly. You wouldn’t believe some of the crap I’ve seen, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

Software development is the reification of the halting problem. It’s quite literally impossible to know how long it will take to build a set of non trivial features without actually building them - yet here we are talking about how we should do that anyway.
There's no standard way for websites to rotate passwords through password managers.
They are usually not, illegal clauses are still illegal even if you clicked an "accept" button.

Edit: one of many examples https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/02/automatic...
Here is someone that likes it, and is usually put down by lack of features in competing products.
Not to be rude, but it seems you have strong opinions about things you know very little about. A good lithmus test: if you think the rest of the world is all stupid/ignorant/incompetent and misses something obvious, it is very very very likely that in fact you miss something obvious.

E.g. an app doesn't solve any problem for a restaurant because someone has to manage the app, manage data entry, show people his to use it, take decisions when to override the app ("they reserved for 20 minutes ago but didn't show up And that's our last table...") etc. This requires skills knowledge and guidance for everyone involved, And still much manual work to manage it. For. Big restaurant you would not be able to drop the greeter. In covid many restaurants have gone this route and many people actively avoid such restaurants.

E.g. jar of water - of course there's none, except for upscale restaurants where everyone orders wine, as the drinks are a major profit factor for most restaurants. Putting free water on the table will mean lower drinks orders.
Yes, thank you, that's the one I was thinking about. Apologies for not naming/linking it in the first place.
I have found that across most of the world (including expensive "first world" countries in Europe) it is perfectly normal for cars to have random dings and bumps from everyday use. I had a tour guide in Italy who "nudged" the cars on either end while getting into a parking spot and no one thought twice about it. In the US it would have caused a mini riot.

Over here for some reason it is socially unacceptable to have a car in less than pristine factory condition even after months or years of use, and people will spend thousands to fix the tiniest of scratches. It's crazy just how much of the average person's paycheck goes towards just getting from one place to another.
Lots! Mostly little scripts. Even a single function is a complete program, like the one I wrote to check for a domain drop, which I then snagged! Of course the dotfiles and dotemacs must be mentioned too.

Currently writing `shite`, the wee static site generator from shell :D https://github.com/adityaathalye/shite

Two days ago I realised it has no if statements! Now that is going to become a design goal ... I need to add 2 or 3 things to make it fit my requirements, but I'm going to keep the if-s out without resorting to weird contortions.
Obviously they don't have psychic powers. They are always "cheating" in some way. There are many different ways to do these kinds of tricks.
Why don't you just FOSS it and publish the code with no promise to maintain?
it s the paradox of globalization and no borders. in a world constrained, people might pay more attention to the local artist, who in turn gets a chance to evolve her art which garners her more local attention in a virtuous loop. In a global world people ignore the local artist for the high-sugar, global-optimum artist who has no incentive to evolve because her audience is already massive so why jinx it. Even if audience churn is fast, the audience is so big, practically endless. The local artists knows she cant win so she just copies the global optimum to sound familiar.
If everyone did this, recruiters would get no advantage over sending an email with the same information, since they wouldn't be able to "persuade" an assistant of anything.

So using assistants would be one way to make using assistants unnecessary.
The question contains a false premise.

> Paging back through history, there have been very few opportunities for near-zero marginal cost goods.

The only way that capitalism allows for the production of non-rival use values is by turning them into "club goods" and excluding access to them by state-enforced monopoly (intellectual property laws in this case). There's no shortage of examples of club goods.

The three "downsides" the author lists as unique to club goods aren't unique to club goods at all. (1) All commodity production requires capital ("up front time"); (2) All new commodity categories are risky and only tested when they hit the market; (3) Breaking into any commodity category is next to impossible without sufficient capital.
For 1. 2. see @trueadm's answer here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31022152

3. Lexical is not strictly tied to collaboration but its plugin system was built to be extensible enough to cater all developers needs. Collaboration is just another plugin (@lexical/yjs) and does listen and perform the conversion every time there's changes in the EditorState.

This model of independent plugins that can be plugged-and-played without further ado also simplifies devX as collaboration can be added later when the application is mature without the need to rethink any of the plugins that were originally created for non-collab plain/rich text.

4. Lexical Web is just the first of many. We want to port the API and fundamentals to various others platforms, including iOS for which we are already performing the initial set of testing. Cross-platform means the API, including Node's will look alike and EditorState and node's properties will be compatible even if behind the scenes the reconciler is constrained by the toolkit available on each platform (and doesn't render or behave 100% like Web's).
> GCP, on the other hand, won’t even accept debit card - only credit

That's not true in my experience: I've been paying my GCP bill with debit cards from three different banks for years. (They were branded as VISA or Mastercard, mind you, but still debit cards.)
"Journalist" might be a bit strong? He is clearly pretending to have a much deeper understanding of the subject than he does, meanwhile throwing around accusations of design flaws...
Right - I think this is part of the "scaling" of the internet. Those of us (relatively small set of earlier heavy internet users) are forced to change as the product is built for the wider audience.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15781788

> The Intel Puma 6 and Puma 7 chipsets have a performance issue in a part of the packet processing that is specific to TCP/IP, which went undetected for awhile because "ping" packets are not TCP/IP. [...]

(And/or because just running "ping" a few times might not catch the issue if it doesn't happen at the same time as the lag spike.)
Due dates are not a lazy an inefficient management tool, lazy and inefficient due dates are.

Due dates are tools, they are not moralizations. Your bad experience with a tool does not mean the tool is broken, just that you used it incorrectly.

You honestly seem to have a beef with the term "due dates", which is completely irrational. They can be good, they can be bad, but they are not inherently lazy or inefficient, they're a reflection of the undeniable reality that your work must produce value, and sometimes that value is time sensitive.

You can strawman the concept all day, your definition of "due dates" does not reflect the reality of what they are.
OMG yes. I am so triggered by this thread that I need to take a chill pill.
they're not that much heavier than we thought, like 0.01% or something. heavier enough it means either the measurement or the physics is wrong, far too light to be dark matter. they're also extremely short-lived and also carry electric charge, so they're not even dark.
> This is a lot of gizmosity to solve a problem that can be solved with a couple hours of practice on a quiet street.

Or you can just live in a less crowded place so you don't need to parallel park :P
Your still losing money buying this vs getting the above laptop I mentioned and installing Ubuntu on it.

I'm not going to get into an argument about OSs. All 3 major desktop OSes do somethings well, and somethings poorly.
Only if you think the price is going to go up enough to recoup your investment, which is by no means certain. It’s a medium of exchange. Smart investors don’t invest in currency for its own sake; they invest in things that have untapped value beyond themselves. I just don’t know how much dark money remains out there to make bitcoin in particular continue to appreciate. And if it depreciates so much that it falls below the production cost, then I think people might be discouraged from producing it because they might conclude that it’s an irreversible trend. It’d be the end of the line.
I'm running into a weird paradox when it comes to marketing - providing a service more cheaply than your competitors doesn't make it easier to reach customers, it makes it harder. It is a meritocracy of sorts, but one optimizing the value extracted FROM customers, not the value provided TO customers. By having thinner margins, you are also able to pay less to have others promote your product, and that's what the digital ad market is optimizing for.
Support one of the BOINC projects: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php
You're right, it's proven beyond doubt that it's corruption