skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I love this piece. I philosophically agree with most of it (in fact I wrote a previous HN front-pager* called Disrespectful Design).

But a bunch of the advice is just not practical because of, well, human psychology. For example, there's a lot of research showing that in competitive markets, people lazily choose the product with the most visible brand (or that is most accessible, ie in your face at the shelf on the supermarket—you can draw analogies to virtual products).

Or, for products with infrequent use-cases, users won't remember to come back and use your product when the time comes. Zillow is a good example of this. The real value is when you are buying, selling, (or renting) a house, but that happens so infrequently. So they've built other ways to keep their app on your phone and their brand in your mind, like the Zestimate score (where homeowners or potential home buyers will check that score on a more frequent basis).

Also, engagement tracking _is_ kind of critical to developing/understanding your product.

So it's not so much about what you do and don't do, it's more about _how_ you do it. Do you track engagement AND solely optimize it?

In any case, loved the article and agree with most of the discussion... just would encourage people to take a more pragmatic method to avoiding the engagement trap.

*https://somehowmanage.com/2020/09/13/disrespectful-design-us...
This is one of the key ideas behind the book Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss [1]. I found the book quite enlightening if you peek through all the hostage negotiation stories.

1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26156469-never-split-the...
It varies for me. I am a bit over half way through. I think I spend on average 10-20 hours a week doing work for the class. But I typically am the type to burn a weekend doing a project then do not much work for the next week.
They've been that for at least 30 years. When I was a kid a friend of mine had a vintage shop in Portland, OR, and they got first crack at what came into a couple of local thrift stores. This was official - vintage shop people would show up at a specific time while the stuff was still in bins and pick through it before it went into the store.
It’s not that Microsoft became less evil, but the Overton window of what’s acceptable for tech companies has been constantly translating towards evil.

In 1977 Bill Gates wrote a public letter saying that software piracy is wrong and developers should get paid; this was highly controversial at the time and launched the hackers-vs-MSFT dichotomy. A lot of people sincerely believed it’s evil to use copyright law to prevent anyone from making copies of software.

40+ years later, evil in the software industry is pretty much “willingly assists in genocide”. All other evil behaviors have been adopted and rehabilitated into a business growth narrative, helped along by Google’s gaslighting slogan “Don’t do evil” which led a generation to believe that anything Google is doing can’t be evil.
Business models (aka incentives) are often more important than culture or intention.
Just one? Metro-west Boston is filled with angry turkeys.
> Consistently having trouble identifying sarcasm in print—without the "help" of idiotic illiterate marks like "/s"—is one of the signs of autism

Autistic people exist, and read things on the internet. Attempts to help them are neither "idiotic" nor "illiterate".
Why? Because the current system leads to poverty, inequity, homelessness, waste, inefficiency, etc.

And to be clear, I've proposed a system of adjusted incentives followed by but not necessarily required to be followed by a more planned system.
Yes, they use the money in order to maintain the house. Furthermore owner-occupancy is a thing, where the landlord does some maintenance themselves.

However no matter what, no landlord can maintain all aspects of the house alone. You think a single person can be a master of all trades and have all equipment on hand all of the time in an apartment, for instance?

Why does it even matter if someone pays others to maintain the house? Do you think there are people who build modern houses alone with no machinery?
I suffer from a great deal of existential anxiety, dreading the day I cease to exist and lamenting the fact that I have only and will only see a tiny, insignificant slice of history and the future, but it's funny, once we're at the multiverse level it fades away again. Maybe it's too big for my chemical sludge to grasp? Not sure.
Ask HN: Should I quit my CS Masters Program?
I have a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from a top #3 University in Germany. After my Bachelors I switched to a Masters of Science program in Informatics / Computer Science at that same University. For the switch I had to take a lot of foundational CS courses which I did, so I'd say I already have a solid CS grounding, almost a full bachelors. I am still in my 1st year of the masters (about 25% of the way through). Concretely, this means I need at least about 1.5 more years to finish it.

I dread the world of academia, I don't wanna become a researcher and really just wanna go full time into software enginnering at some reputable company and contribute to some interesting project(s).

A bit more about myself: I have gathered 2-3 years of Software Enginnering experience on the side and consider myself a junior software engineer. I think I am a decent developer, always eager to learn, and I feel I am very good at selling my skills to companies as I have a rather high application-to-job-offer-ratio so to say. I guess part of it is that I display a lot of confidence in my abilities outwardly.
Moreover, I'd say I have a pretty entrepreneurial mindset. I wanna create stuff on my own but feel like I never have the money to invest in anything as I currently don't work, being a full time student.

About my performance at university: I am proud to say I never had to repeat a single exam, but I also usually don't pass with "flying colors" - I kind of always aim for a max result with min effort. And I sort of figured it out: I typically study in a very time-efficient manner and focussed on simply passing, and it always worked so far. The rest of my time I use on personal software projects that I'm 10x more excited about. The downside is I don't learn too much practical knowledge anymore at Uni. A lot of the stuff there I consider academic acrobatics that I'm not interested in.

Here is the problem though: I am and want to be a software engineer, but if I drop out now my only degree will be in electrical engineering and NOT computer science. So I fear that I will never be considered a real software engineer based on my academic title.

I have swayed back and forth multiple times and am currently kind of half-heartedly still doing my courses and everything.

Would it be a good idea to drop out? Again, I frankly hate academic life and love creating stuff NOT for university credits but for an actual purpose. What would people experienced in the field advise me to do?

Thanks a lot
I feel like the problem now is the overwhelming number of choices we have. If a new programmer wanted to write a desktop app for windows he would be directed to VB, web app Perl, or games Turbo Pascal. Sure there were plenty of other languages but the zeitgeist of the time made these decisions pretty easy. Even in small town libraries, there were books available on these environments and the book stores had tons of books.
Curious to know whether that checklist is framed in terms of things to do or benefits they would get. I would guess they would perceive it as less daunting if you present them with what they would concretely gain from doing the thing.

No idea what you'd do beyond that though... Maybe I introduce some competitive aspect, like "you're already more involved than 60% of our users. You can get to 90% with this"? Or translate it in terms of real value gained from finishing the onboarding? Idk
Thanks for your opinion. Could you expand on why the op seems entitled given the circumstances where an MS member chastised them?
Why can't I? You haven't provided any evidence, just a shallow low-effort comment.
Am I the only one who notices that for a centanarian, he looks in a good shape. And I'm not talking health-wise but also mental-wise. You could tell from his posture, demeanor and gleam of his eyes that his mental capacity has not been dimmered by old age
Goodwill is (and was in 2010) fairly shrewd about this stuff. They were running pretty successful auctions on their own site last time I checked. I once got caught up in the bidding for a rare board game there that ended up going for hundreds of dollars.
The paradox arises because cost per unit fuel does not decrease because of use-efficiency. Whether your car gets 20 miles to the gallon or 50, you pay the same price per gallon at the pump.

Therefore, in an "all other things being equal" sense, you'd expect more efficient use of the fuel to lower total consumption, since the same desired effect is achievable with less input. Switching from incandescent lights to LED lighting should lower your electricity bill.

The paradox arises because of an income effect or "standard of living" effect, as you note, and it arises as "all other things being equal" gives way to a new equilibrium. It's not guaranteed to happen -- I imagine few people's electricity bills have gone up because they use so much more LED lighting than incandescent lighting -- but it can happen.
Do be careful having your vintage watches serviced.

I was lucky enough to inherit my grandfather's pre-COMEX 5513 in very good condition - one or two tiny specks on the dial and a light scratch on the case. The appraiser gave me the warning that I should never send it to a Rolex repair center for servicing under any circumstance. If I did, I'd likely end up having the original acrylic bubble being replaced with crystal, the case polished high heaven, new tritium applied, and it'd probably be worth $15k less.

Collectors want a watch that shows signs of life; they value a nice patina. Many watch manufacturers service things to "modern spec" and try to make a watch look new. For a watch that old, I'd strongly suggest you find an independent watchmaker or two and get them to give you an estimate before you do anything.
Thanks, I'm sensitive to that, and it's a great point, in the US for sure the 2008 correction was felt for years.

US will likely continue to see rate increases in the next couple years. We'll see if that is going to affect home prices here. Let's check back in 2025 :)
I've personally had more success in salary negotiation with using oddball numbers. I think the presumption on the managers side is either 1) I have a specific offer from another potential employer or 2) I've calculated to the dollar how much I think the job switch is worth. (The latter is usually true, but with large error bounds).

I wonder if the second salesman assumed you had already shopped around and found a car of similar price to your offer.
> At this point, it's all geared toward maximizing ad revenue

Well, you have to make money somehow and users will never pay for social media after having been spoiled for 15+ years by free Facebook , not to mention the 20+ years of free Google.

When I paid for Linkedin Gold I felt scammed and canceled after a month.

People are not willing to pay for marginal improvements, they are only willing to pay for very important and vital stuff which matters a lot to them. For example...getting laid, that's why Tinder pay feature brings in revenues.

Getting laid is the dictionary definition of "important and vital" and the difference between chatting on Tinder and actually getting laid using Tinder is enormous, it's not just a marginal improvement and thus prompts people to pay out of pocket to have their profile shown to a much higher number of users
Ellevest | Remote - USA only | Full Time | Senior Engineers

As a Senior Software Engineer at Ellevest, you will work to design, build, and support many of the core systems powering Ellevest’s software and user experience. From our web and mobile applications to our financial computation engine, our Engineering team is at the heart of our organization, ensuring a best-in-class experience for our clients. We follow agile methodologies and on a day-to-day basis, leverage Ruby on Rails, React, and React Native. Our systems run on a modern AWS stack, and our entire team works in a highly collaborative, flexible structure to build towards high-impact client facing outcomes. We're hiring for multiple positions on multiple teams, that range from heavy frontend/UX work to backend financial integrations.

We’re looking for:

- At least 5 years professional software engineering experience.
- Solid understanding of Ruby on Rails or Javascript fundamentals, and good command of object-oriented and functional programming.
- Experience supporting and scaling consumer-facing web and mobile applications and familiarity working with third party APIs.
- Good command of SQL and knowledge of proper database design and performance optimization.
- Strong attention to detail and a passion for learning and sharing knowledge.
- Familiarity working with third party APIs.
- Interest in working in a fast-paced, dynamic, and cross-functional work environment. This includes working independently and on a team.

About Ellevest:

Ellevest is a fast-growing, venture-backed financial services start-up built by women, for women. Our mission is to get more money in the hands of women, no matter where they’re starting or how far they’ve come. We started by building the only gender-aware online investing platform that takes totally un-ignorable realities (like pay gaps, different salary curves, and women’s longer lifespans) into account. Then we added banking, learning, and money and career coaching services for Ellevest members, plus a full-service private wealth management service that helps high net worth people, families, and institutions align their financial power with their values.

Ellevest was co-founded by Wall Street veteran Sallie Krawcheck after she realized that the financial services industry was built by men, for men, systemically leaving women behind. During her Wall Street days, she served as CEO of Smith Barney, CEO of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, and CFO of Citi. Ellevest has raised $145 million from investors including Rethink Impact, Pivotal Ventures, Valerie Jarrett, Salesforce Ventures, PayPal Ventures, MasterCard, Khosla Ventures, Morningstar, and Venus Williams.
I like Amazon SES.
While Penrose's specific theory is probably not correct, it does provide a conceptual framework to imagine how such clues might be possible.
> Also knowing that the thing will last forever, take care of it and it will probably outlive you. Can't say that about an Apple Watch.

I don’t know how many mechanical watches really will last a lifetime, but they will easily last longer than a so-called ‘smart’ watch.

Six years ago I seriously considered purchasing a ‘smart’ watch. Eventually I realised that they were just another money sink and attention leash, and put the money into a couple of automatic watches instead. I still have them, and wear them regularly. Had I bought an Apple or Android watch, I would have replaced it multiple times by now.

That’s the plus side. The minus side is that I don’t wear one of those two every single day because … I gotten bitten by the watch bug, and now I have a pile of other watches, and I wear those too! I still think that I am ahead of the game, though.

BTW, I write ‘smart’ watch because I don’t think they are really that smart; if anything, they should be called unwise watches, because they are an unwise expenditure of resources, money and attention. Also they just don’t look good. I predict that in thirty years we’ll look back on them much as we do digital watches: as a fad.
Are they using a single zone though? Only a single zone seems to be down.
When I talked to my parents they told me most of their peers would pay off their mortgage within 20 years but maybe times changed, I don't know the data on that. I am 30 now and I have trouble imagining being in debt for a time equivalent to my entire lifetime so far - just to live in a house. 15 years sounds so much more bearable emotionally but it's probably never gonna happen.
You are obviously right about 2042 payment levels probably being different but that also hinges on inflation being positive - but I would agree that that's more probable than deflation.
None of this is good, all of this is new to me. And none of it has anything to do with why I have ever used Perl.
> overwhelming console spam

The article says to use logging and not actual printf debugging, which solves this. If your logging framework is even somewhat capable and modern it understands all of:

- named priorities: I want that FATAL log highlighted, but I probably don't want the DEBUG log shown at all unless I am currently debugging this

- automatic categories: os.mutex.internal and account.forex.hack can be automatically distinguished in most modern languages by the fact they live in different objects / source code files / even in C we know what the name of the current function is and can at least annotate that in logs.

- how to send the log messages somewhere useful, hopefully at least files and some primitive syslog type protocol, maybe a lot more

In a nice shiny modern logging framework I'd expect to be provided with default annotations so that e.g. when I error.log("Can't enrol students on a module that doesn't exist") the framework annotates the log entry with: The HTTP request that got us here, including e.g. query parameters and date-time stamp, and the Module we were trying to call a method on when it blew up.
This strategy works because people are irrational. The round number vs. not round number are not that different, but they are perceived differently b/c we're all a bit irrational.

Pricing is a tricky process of course, but you also shouldn't be over paying or under charging if selling. It's perfectly ok to get cut out of the process in those cases.
The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe Is the Smartest, Silliest Game of the Year
Can you describe the vue 3 part more? As an outsider it just looks for me they just added another api with a different style, so people can choose what they like.
I went back for a mid career masters and it was a great choice. It allowed me to reenter the "fresh grad" hiring pipeline and allowed me to get a job at a more prestigious and research focused company than I think I would have been able to get otherwise
The idea of keeping religion out of law is not "one political platform".

If the law is working against the society - like in this case - then it needs to be fixed, not blindly obeyed.
> No marketing team. $0 marketing spend.

Blogging is marketing too, so this statement in particular is not accurate.

In fact, I would say that this very post was quite convincing and a good marketing — and branding — example.

It made me want to know more about this company and “engage” more with it.
A bunch of people are a bit confused by large white search bars at the top of the screen, often mistaking them for the address bar.

Hypothesis: this phenomena has been exacerbated by browsers, which have trained people that URLs and search are the same thing by having them search using the address bar. Also explains people searching for website names on Google.
When you’re not used to processing sound and figuring out what is happening, translating that into the more familiar visual domain can be useful. You see the sharp points on a sawtooth wave, and realize that’s why it’s buzzy. Then you close the filter and watch the sharp points get rounded out and hear the buzzyness fade. In my experience, after I got better at mentally processing sound I started to want spectrum analysis more than a scope, because my brain was able to do a lot of what the scope was doing for me earlier - but I was still missing the birds-eye view of a spectrum analyzer.
Depends on what you mean by "without an Internet connection". If you mean that the machine that you use to develop isn't connected to the Internet, then totally. I've been doing that for the past 4 years. If you mean never touching the Internet while programming, even on a different machine, then I'd be a lot less effective. I could probably still do it, but I'd need searchable docs for everything.
Celebrating the End of the Good Times
Fixed link is http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/
Hmm I wonder.. does that count as electioneering?
What do you think of Svelte? I haven’t used Vue since I discovered Svelte but I’m always curious about peoples perspectives and try to keep my finger on the pulse. The new Nuxt looks pretty awesome! Love the api design. I’m hoping Sveltekit steals a few ideas from it before 1.0.
I really loved seeing that, this is probably one of the cooler parts of this project IMO.
Truth. I tell my children that 90% of the fights I've gotten into with my friends (not enemies) have been on-line and not in-person.
Seems like a misleading title to me.
All of those are existing software products, the sunk cost into those is so high that overcoming is monumental. Firefox continues its journey. The better question is what should they do with new software.

The analogy I see is an industry similar to the auto industry as it decides what to do with their ICE based platforms as consumers are going after all electric.
To be fair, the GitHub commenter in question had made this statement:

> It really seems like most of the code in the parser/renderer part of the terminal is unnecessary and just slows things down. What this code needs to do is extremely simple and it seems like it has been massively overcomplicated.

I think they deserved a better response from Microsoft, but I also probably would not have responded favorably to that wording – irrespective of if they were correct.
There are two situations that I encounter that make step through debugging difficult or impossible, and for a lot of my work both apply.

A) When developing for a microcontroller (however large or small). Stepping debuggers are limited, and sometimes unavailable at all. Most are clunky. ARM is the best here.

B) Running real time things. E.g. you can't step through a Bluetooth comms process because the moment you hit a breakpoint you aren't servicing a link and everything falls over.

There are some good tools like reverse time debuggers (e.g. https://undo.io/) that deal with the real time thing, but nothing deals with the combination. Plus a well maintained set of log outputs often tells you exactly what went wrong with just a cursory glance through the logs.
In the US I see a lot of people getting 2 years masters of engineering degrees that are intended for people to raise their level and go back to industry. Is it different in Germany?