skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Starters, it takes a hell of a lot more than freight to make a colony.

Starship is wholly inadequate to take more than 17 crew to Mars; that would be if you don't mind some killed on the way there. So, you send 4 or 5 cargo ships, 500 tons of stuff, and two ships swinging on the ends of a cable, so their bones don't melt on the way there. (Which, BTW, takes 9, not 6, months.) Maybe one is a spare, with everything duplicated. The main ship fits 8 crew with just-tolerable comfort, with stuff you will actually need for 9 months unimaginably distant from all possibility of help. Change of underwear, you think? Water, food. Air? Space suits, to go outside when they arrive? Maybe a hand truck.

They get there, and now have to unship and set up 500 tons of crap. It only weighs 170-some tons, which is not much better. Set up a massive solar farm and methane and oxygen factory. Debug it. Assemble vehicles, freight handlers, bulldozer and excavator. Individual pod huts, so crew can sometimes get away from others they have come to detest.

Look around and think, "This place is a dump." Because every last detail is way worse than the worst place on Earth. Cold, dim, featureless, bone dry, dusty. The dust sticks to everything, seemingly leaping up to soil any clean surface.

Enough is enough, but nobody can go home until the launch window opens, and the fuel is banked.
The 'craziest thing' about seizing Russian superyachts is US has to pay for them
We need either Consul or Zookeeper (for leader election). No dependency on Redis!

That part of the blog post refers to ReadySet having a SQL interface, rather than a key-value one.
You have your choice with Linux where you don't get a choice with proprietary OSes. If you build your desktop from parts you get to keep it as long as you like. I used the same desktop, mostly unchanged for 15 years on Linux without problem. It was basic, Openbox, gkrellm (later conky), xbindkeys, etc. Never had to worry about it changing as Openbox was basically done and the other parts were mostly done as well. Only had to mess with it when I wanted to.

Linux (and FLOSS in general) gives you the choice to have it the way you want it.
I don't think anyone is arguing that debt can't be another tool in the toolbox, but when you consider that the debt/equity ratio has risen considerably since the second half of the 20th century, you start to get the sense that this is somewhat "centrally" planned.
You would think so but cars with lots of defects on delivery to the customer have been an issue for years yet Tesla is still able to sell as many cars as it can make.

At some point it may catch up to them & they'll have to do something about it, but by then it may be too late to avoid major damage to the company. The fact that it hasn't hurt them yet might make it even worse: it may mean leadership stays in denial over the problem even longer past the point of keeping it manageable.
Probably the plan is to get Optimus ready to do the service, as obviously AI+cameras +actuators is vastly better than wet brains + eyes + flesh.
If only you had waited until September one of the robots would probably do the service for you, or by the end of this year at the latest.
(Edit: Mandatory /s)
Florence is still a city, what do you mean?
“What were the cult members doing in their work in the department that was clearly wrong?”

reminds me of when rand paul asked about an oil spill, “when did they ever say they weren’t going to pay for it?”

what did OJ do in his work at the NFL that was wrong? he didn’t murder anyone while he was at work, so i don’t see the problem.
We've been using both Mercury and Brex for different purposes, but I guess we'll go Mercury full-time.

I really hope Mercury doesn't pull the same stunt.
That seems great, thank you.
> I'm interested in knowing how you determine what an "absolute level of skill" is though.

They're set by experts in the area, the same as the ones who write our question content.

To give a little more detail: the tests run in a beta state for a while before being fully released. We gather a bunch of data and calibrate parameters for our IRT model based on that. So the ordinal ordering of performance is entirely mathematical and data driven. (When we were still doing in-house human interviews, those were part of the data set as well, and still are for the subjects that overlap them.) But that produces a continuous, hard-to-interpret, and population-dependent score distribution, and SMEs draw the lines with which we bucket those scores. (For those of you familiar with IRT as a framework, they set theta thresholds.)

But yes, there is some chance involved. It's a tradeoff between the standard error in our scores and the length of the quiz, and we try to optimize for a sweet spot there (since most people don't want to take two hours of quizzes). And we are absolutely going to get it wrong sometimes. That's both for in-model reasons (the statistical standard error is enough that we we'll be off by a level either way around 20-25% of the time or something like that) and for out-of-model ones (maybe some of our questions just test the wrong thing in ways that don't show up in the data). Assuming your self-assessment is correct (and I will say that many peoples' are not! confidence correlates with skill, but with a whooooole lot of noise.) then yeah, you probably had a bad roll of the dice on one and not on the other.

As I say a lot (in this thread and elsewhere), we can't reasonably bat 1.000: our goal is to bat better than the next guy. And I think we do do that, messy though the entire space can be in practice.

---

For the record, when we talk to companies, here's what we tell them about scores:

2 = knows something in this area, but we can't say with confidence that they know enough to handle things independently. OK for entry-level roles, but lower than you'd like for others. We don't show a 2 on profiles. The only place companies see it is if they're using our screens to screen their own candidates via our Screen product. The idea being that if you have the choice of whether to take an assessment or not in the first place it shouldn't really hurt you to try.

3 ("Proficient") = professional competence in that area, can work independently in it. A score we'd expect of a mid-level engineer within their area of expertise. A recommendation for most roles, maybe not very senior ones (but not a point against even for senior roles). A score of 3 or above counts as certified, meaning it earns a shareable certificate and makes you appear in search results for a particular quiz score.

4 ("Advanced") = significant expertise, something more typical of a senior eng who really knows their way around the subject. A recc for all levels, even very senior ones.

5 ("Expert") = exceptional, above and beyond even by the standards of senior roles
From the article: 'What explains this sudden explosion in relative wealth and technological power? What happens if it slows down, or stagnates? And if so, can we do something about it? These are key questions of "progress studies"... '

I think the pursuit of understanding progress is inspiring, and I have been reading more regarding the idea that we have almost a moral obligation to protect and grow progress as the core concept that drives all poverty alleviation, environmental impact improvements, and quality of life more generally. I think this ties to recent efforts around the idea of effective altruism, where thinkers are looking at new moral and ethical frameworks from which to live and work, for both leaders now, and for future generations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism

Ps. As a side interest, I would like to know of any deeper exploration of the interplay of theology and progress. I've read before about the importance of the "Protestant ethic" motivating change and progress as people felt they had self-determination and free will, compared to what has been described as a fatalist mindset/approach of the Catholic church, where an individual can feel like more of a pawn in another's game.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic
I still don't get why MacroServices isn't getting popular as of today
I'm not sure.

I think people are shocked at the high prices. I saw a Big Mac meal costs $9.99 at McDonalds and think "I can't afford that" and I don't buy it. I think the same about Subway and about the new little Thai restaurant downtown. Prices are even shocking at the supermarket.

The shortages are still acute, quite a bit of the photography equipment I want is still not available. Economists say demand is dropping but if the supply isn't there you might just decide to make do with what I have.

Milton Freedman pushed the idea that inflation is driven by inflation expectations. If I had lived through 10 years of inflation I'd see the higher prices and think nothing of it, or think "I'd better buy it now because it will cost even more in the future" or just carpe diem.

Americans don't really believe in inflation yet so inflation will cause demand to drop which could slow down inflation. The greatest danger is that people get used to it.

If the government raises interest rates to fight inflation they risk contracting the economy, if the supply chain problems and the general post Jan 6, 2022 breakdown in trust (e.g. look at the anti-take-any-action-about-covid fanatics on the "new" page or the blockheads who want to build a "trustless" economy) the inflation may still be ranging.

The megarisk for the next four years is things going south with China fast (say an attack on Taiwan) and the resulting economic decoupling. I just hope the Chinese National Committee remembers why they decided not to give a general secretary a third term: it's a violation of norms comparable to what Trump tried to pull.
> No brand new car should have issues that need fixing.

As much as I'd love this to be true (and it should be), I have yet to buy a newly manufactured vehicle that didn't have to go back to the dealership for something at least once... often more than once.

I don't think it's entirely fair to lay that aspect at Tesla's feet. It is fair, however, to expect better and more timely service in getting those repairs made.
Bay Area, 1960s: "Soon we will have computers the size of a single room"

Bay Area, 2020s: "Soon we will have rooms the size of a single computer"
> What is woke about that company to you in particular?

My main issue is them getting involved in them supporting censorship, deplatforming wrong-thinkers, and more nonsense. Plenty of articles about this here: https://reclaimthenet.org/?s=mozilla

> What do "woke politics" have to do with Mozilla's failure?

1) The more time and effort they spend focusing on non-technical issues is time away from the one thing that matters.

2) Also, the more they appear to be favoring certain political views, the fewer conservatives, libertarians, centrists, etc may want to use them. When a company starts favoring one political side over another and loses its appearance of non-bias, especially when it concerns information flow, it's hard to trust them again. DuckDuckGo made the same fatal flaw of trying to be explicit about bias and though there's some noise in the stats, it looks like their search results have peaked as well. Without as many users, you can't progress nearly as quickly.

> Their political leanings are basically unchanged dating back to before Chrome even existed.

I'm not sure, but I can't remember them supporting the censorship stuff until a bit more recently. Even when they were pretty gay friendly and whatever, they never supported censorship as far as I can remember.
Nobody is forcing you to pay at gunpoint, you are free to leave at any time and no longer pay. Paying taxes is no different than mortgage or rent, either pay it or get out. You don't fully own the property you live on even if it's paid off, it is the soil of the country you live in, if you want your own soil fight for your own sovereign territory and keep it through force without any help, good luck.
Yes, co-founder. You can read our initial announcement below!

https://twitter.com/jonhoo/status/1511401461669720068
https://readyset.io/blog/introducing-readyset
It's practically a game for me at this point to just 'roll with it' when I have a raft of mutually consistent ideas, and 3 of them get upvoted, and the last one gets ignored completely, or once in a while downvoted to oblivion.

The most important lessons are the counterintuitive ones - if they were all intuitive, you wouldn't need to be taught them, and the pain and loss of figuring them out organically might be extreme. If someone is earnestly asking, you should hit them with some knowledge, not drop populist nonsense they can find on the front page of Google. But it can often be a case of subtlety - planting enough of an idea that they can chew on it and accept this new reality at their own pace, rather than blurting out the 'answer' that nobody likes to look at. Not unlike how explaining some great movies to people makes them sound unpalatable. Just watch it, you'll like it.
Interesting, what does that leave proprietary?
That's what the article would prefer people to use. Google though is usually already present when I am at a computer, its output is easier to read, and its input is more forgiving.
If you're a small business / startup looking for an alternative for checking, I've had extremely positive experience as a customer of Mercury.[0]

[0] https://mercury.com/
>It would even reduce the gap with Bitwig

What gap? Most producers just use Live.
Cmd+space, "screenshot".
Related trick for changing an image's size, aspect ratio, or combining multiple images:

1. Open Preview.app.

2. Select the whole image and copy it [⌘-a ⌘-c].

3. Menu bar > Tools > Adjust Size then click the lock icon. Set to desired dimensions and save.

4. Paste the image over the distorted image. Do what you will with the extra space.
If you read the actual questions they ask, the truth is a lot less sensational. I'm still fuzzy on "replacement theory" since it jumped into the news after the Buffalo shooting as the latest boogeyman. But the question they asked was, according to the article, whether people believe (I don't know if it's on a scale or true / false)

> There is a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native born Canadians with immigrants who agree with their political view.

The bar here for agreeing looks pretty low to me, much lower than needing to believe in some global conspiracy. And it's certainly a question open to interpretation.

Is believing that some political parties (or even some people in them) court immigrants and which there were more of them because they would get more votes really "racist" and a conspiracy theory?

If they were doing real research, they would have had more probing questions about people's beliefs, not just interpreted the answers to ambiguous question how they want and making sensational claims about how ignorant they think people are. The real prejudice is coming from the people sensationalizing this crap
> they are correct that we are in a dynamic profession that requires constant learning and expanding

Not true. I have met many developers who haven't learned anything new for 15+ years and are still doing just fine developing software. A lot of Java developers come to mind. They have pretty much done the same thing their whole career and have no need or desire to learn anything new.
On the contrary, google employees would be breaking the law by hiring primarily because of religious preference and thus discriminating against competent candidates of other religious (or non) preference
This is the reaction I hope to get from my co-workers.
Are you kidding? I loved working with it.
People are to focused on the mono-part.

IMHO appropriate laws should be applied to any company which directly or indirectly affects some "high" threshold of people. Or another way to think about it would be if it's practically impossible to enter a market even with a decent start capital because of it being dominated by a small number of mega cooperation it's not (much) different then a monopoly.

What does it matter if there are 1 or 5 companies which effectively undermine competition in a harmful way. It's either way harmful.
Is your point "Some very horrible people were nonetheless successful so it's OK for them to be horrible"?
“…they didn't consider it something that needed to be secret… They clearly don't consider themselves to be in any way toxic like the author thinks they are.”

so if a guy says “I’m going to rape you” it means he doesn’t think his behavior is toxic? because he’s open about it? brilliant logic
Why not all at once[0]?

https://rclone.org/union/
Google can fire them and let the lawyers deal with it. Maybe they lose but at least they tried.

Fined billions of dollars? Worth it.
If you can prove the firing reason was this. Which would be rather hard to establish unless he somehow gets his hands on some email from the top management saying "that bastard joined a union?! Fire him on the spot!". I estimate chances of that as fairly low.
DOB should always be a typed input, all numeric. People know exactly what to enter (the number of their month), have done it before many times (DMV etc.), and will knock it out faster than some ridiculous drop down over complicating the process.

For other dates though maybe, since most wouldn't have all month numbers memorized, but I’d still say typed, only with a variation on month name (you should be able to parse both abbreviated and full, so long as you know their locale) is better all the time.
I still recall the first time I worked on a successful project where the manager started talking about writing articles or a book about it. How important it is that we do X.

Yes, X is important, but what's really saving our bacon is all of the people doing Y. The more you focus on X, the more the Y-focussed people are going to start wonder why they're here, since you don't appreciate their efforts. I mean you didn't even mention it in any of your articles... Let's see what happens when nobody does Y anymore, smart guy.
I remember years ago, Citus offered people a free pair of socks as a bribe for signing up for their newsletter. I loved my database socks and gave them some free advertising during college.
You can always try.
> The web has been progressing too fast

How many Apple engineers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: None, they just declare darkness to be an innovative new feature.

I joke, but they did recently reveal that they're adding a toggle for Dark Mode in Safari:

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/03/01/safari-feature-light-da...
> Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions. Users should vote and comment when they run across something they personally find interesting—not for promotion.

Probably applies
> The point of vim (or Emacs) is that those keystrokes simply become internalised. I don't think through actions, they simply happen

I'm not sure, emacs by default runs in a graphical terminal and has features that are often easier to use with a mouse, like tab bars or mode line buttons. It feels more at home to me there than in a text terminal, even if the mouse can work with either.
> Because he may be the face most associated with Tesla but he doesn't provide strategy for the company, and doesn't really have a ton of input on operations, and 110,000 other people work there.

Mr. Musk is the largest individual shareholder.
CEO of Mercury here.

If you are looking for an alternative, we are 100% committed to businesses of all sizes:

A) the smallest businesses can be the next big startup

B) We maintain strong unit economics at all sizes.

We setup a landing page to get these customers onboarded quickly: https://mercury.com/partner/brex
This is like the person who moves next to an airport, paying less than they would otherwise, and then complains incessantly and wants the airport to stop operating, it's called "coming to the nuisance". SpaceX is well known for not being "money/a job", it's extremely intense. If you join it without realizing that, despite how infamous it is for that, then that's totally on you. You kinda have to want to do really hard things that have never been done before to make it worth it.

If you just like rockets, and want some work-life balance, you can always apply for the SLS team, or Boeing Starliner.
Sad as it may sound, your upbringing is the key to most things, while the opportunities given to you (mostly by your parents' financial ability) complete this picture.

When I took EE in University, everybody's parents were engineers or another form of STEM. Which also means they are not doing too bad in money and assets.

The best, most accomplished researchers I know all had a parent coming from a similar background, giving them extra lessons from a young age, so they were always a couple of years ahead of their class.

This stuff doesn't come from nowhere. Today I firmly believe that even a mildly talented person would go much further ahead with the right upbringing and opportunity than a potentially much more talented person who had to learn everything the hard way.
> many people don't like being advised of facts that do not reconcile to their world-view

Facts like Trudeau Plans Record Number of Immigrants to Canada Through 2024 - Canada, a country that relies heavily on immigration to grow its labor force, has set an ambitious plan to bring in more than 1.3 million newcomers over the next three years to support its post-pandemic growth.?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-14/trudeau-p...
Which is hilarious, because this has been part of basically every fictional dystopian sci fi universe ever. What other warnings has Musk confused with good ideas?
> No brand new car should have issues that need fixing

“Price, quality, manufacturing at scale. Pick two.”

Ok, that’s a little flippant. But the underlying truth is that quality for software and manufactured goods is one of many variables that can be dialled up or down at the expense of other variables.
There’s a Norwegian joke here.
Europe, in Panic over Energy, Is Suddenly Cozying Up to Israel
Not the main topic of the article but I was surprised the author is unemployed after 15 months. Is it that hard to find any job as a video producer? There must be some other companies doing the same as Google... I have no idea what that job market looks like, just sounded surprising to me.
Ask HN: Art Blog Static Site Generator That Exists?
I'm an artist and webmaster of a html/css based site with two separate "logs". These logs are currently on wordpress, but are non-dynamic blogs that could be effectively turned into static sites/flat file blogs; in fact, I'd really like the change given wordpress being bloated.

And yet, somehow. Despite searching high and low around the gazilions of "flat file CMSs" and "Static Site Generators", I have not found a single one that remotely caters to artists/illustrators who might want to simply post their art on an open-source, local, and truly free site with a RSS feed. No title, optional date label, nothing else around. "Image-centric" rather than text-centric if you will.

Command-line SSG's like Jekyll are right out; I'm a professional designer, not a professional coder. I want to click two buttons to upload an image (on my site). Publii with their GUI and .deb package was much closer but bug-ridden as of now (I will retry in the future). Grav's installation was way beyond me. etc.

On the flip side, if anyone wants a hobby project with tons of potential users, consider this a free idea. :)
I use auto-editor for this https://github.com/WyattBlue/auto-editor

I'd like to be able to use komposition, which offered a bunch more nice features for screencast editing... https://github.com/owickstrom/komposition ...but it's bitrotted and isn't maintained any more.
You are right if you work in an organization that is overly bureaucratic and incompetent. For the rest of us not so much.
That'd be essentially a group legal insurance plan - something many employers offer anyway - and you don't really need a union to join one (or offer one, if you wanted to).