skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I find it hard to resist a scratch off from time to time myself.

As long as you aren't doing it to win but instead to enjoy yourself gambling, and you do it with disposable income, this is fine. Don't beat yourself up for enjoying something mathematically suboptimal.

> Even if they think it’s impossible to work themselves out of debt they hope they’ll “win big” one day keeps them going to an extent. It’s really just another version of the “Marshmallow Question”

On the contrary. With the Marshmallow Question, you know you'll be rewarded. In this situation you do not think you will be rewarded. If the Marshmallow Question was "do you want this Marshmallow, or do you want it thrown away", that would be a better example. At least, in the mind of the players

> but to them the math wouldn’t work out.

It's entirely possible the math doesn't work out. A negative EV is significant if we are playing a game where the purpose is to increase my bank balance, but it's entirely possible that for various reasons that doesn't apply IRL.
Either you're being detained, in which case the law says you're allowed to record your own detainment, or you're not being detained, in which case you're allowed to walk away. In no case does this law give the police an extra reason to detain you if you walk away while they walk toward you.

If police are going to make up something bogus like arresting you because you're giving them space, they can do that regardless of this new law. This new law doesn't make it worse.
> few saw a war with Russia coming.

Wilful blindness is a thing in international relations. Churchill plowed a lonely furrow in the 1930s. We were sure the bad old days were over in 1992. Etc. Policymakers and the public /wanted/ to believe that the era of aggression was over (or perhaps, more cynically, that the only permissible aggressor would remain the US).
This sounds like the prompt to a horror story.
Only if you don't believe kids should have significant liberties (even in opposition to their parent's wishes) and also that a fundamental part of liberty is the right to make a bad decision that only harms yourself.

Should kids have the right to "ruin" their future by gaming instead of studying? Yes, and I think the solution should instead be to make it harder for anyone, kid or adult, to "ruin" their future by making it easier to get back on track at any point in life.
> Let me address the researcher bias issue. "pro-education researchers have incentives to find schooling is essential" why?

Because their research is all about the importance of education. It's like asking whether a pharmaceutical company would strive to publish negative results of their drugs; generally, not if they can avoid it! This is why recent pushes for open data and pre-registration are so important.

> If he has mistrust why not attempt to prove one or more of the studies were fake, used inaccurate data, or came to the wrong conclusions based on the data?

Because that's not the goal of the post. The goal here was to develop a general, informed opinion on a topic by performing a broad review of the state of evidence. Misinterpreting or dismissing one study here or there will not change the conclusion much: if there are strong signals in the data then other studies will surely show it, and if there are no strong signals, then you won't know to trust this one study over the others which found no such signal.

> Because by simply mentioning the mistrust and bias, AT BEFORE he even discusses the counter arguments, WHILE ONLY providing potential motive as evidence

He doesn't provide only motive as evidence, the other studies that dispute the "huge effects" that education researchers seem to find are evidence that these huge effects are not real, hence the suspicion. The whole post to the point where he starts discussing this literature consists of a boatload of evidence that should make you skeptical of those studies.

> Why even mention your mistrust at all? How is that useful in this scholarly article when you don't offer proof?

I'm not sure what sort of "scholarly article" you think this is, or what that term means to you. Hopefully my elaboration above cleared this up. This hand-wringing over one study is just an indication that the evidence is simply not that strong.

I think Scott looked into this with an open mind, as he usually does, but the evidence is simply not that convincing. For low income kids public education is a huge win, probably mostly due to the structure and safe environment it provides, but the evidence for its educational value is just poor.
Question is, before states implemented legalized lotteries, where did people spend this money? Bookies, horses, craps, betting pools at work, smokey card houses, gambling parlors?

Do we make all this illegal, put alcohol, tobacco, prostitution, pro sports and weed into that bucket too. All unnecessary and transfer wealth.

On the other hand, yeah, I'm not sure the argument by the state that hey, it's vice, we'll regulate it and hand the profits over to schools (etc.) is an honest one. Often they dip into the fund for unrelated things.
Nobody said anything about profits. If airbags are failing because of inadequate workmanship, people should know.
I am very skeptic of this theory as a lot winners of lottery’s end up in enormous debt after few years due to horrible mismanagement of their funds. Why take this odd route and not just directly implement UBI if that is the goal?
Question 33 is strange? Square feet?
That question/answer should not be in square feet..
The problem becomes one of how spread out the energy is.

Sure the water in that creek might be falling hundreds of meters, or even kilometers, but without a dam the height differential at your generator is only going to he a few metres at best. Enough to power the lighting, fridge, and washing machine in the houses that the creeks happen to run by, but not much else.

With the advent of long lasting perovskites and (hopefully) some less polluting battery technologies you're not even better off cost-wise.

You might be able to do something with a long pipe parallel to the creek to get more head, but then you're going to spend a lot of your energy on wall friction unless it's very wide.
How does Linen.dev make money? This is a simple feature that Slack/Discord could launch any day.
It would not have been a good use of your time, either.
I really like this idea(not for UBI, but for a better lottery that more evenly distributes winnings), couple it with X amount of free tickets per week/month for low income earners too!
Don't forget those broccoli stalks!
But I think you make the point though, it's a lot of veg if you are going to be getting half of your calories or more from veg alone. Which also means you are going to feel pretty satiated and full from eating all that low calorie density food.

I was a bit curious about the actual answer here. 1 oz steak has about 70 calories, 1 cup broccoli has about 30 calories. Seemingly you then need about a 3:1 ratio of servings veg to steak to hit that majority threshold.

A whole potato has about 110 calories (about 150g), and broccoli by the same weight has about 50 calories, so about 2:1.

Lettuce is known for having almost no calories in it, similar to tomatoes and cucumbers... There are lots of veg's out there, so don't just compare lettuce calories to the steak calories. "fibrous" greens include asparagus, brussel sprouts, bok choy, peppers, etc.. etc..

So.. to get that majority calories, two servings asparagus, one serving broccoli, a large salad, a small potato, and a tiny steak every third day or so or even less often would do it. There are also beans, lentils, whole-grains, plenty of sources so it's not just meat-potatos and leaves alone.

On another front, that majority calories from veg means you are getting a ton of nutrients and are actually eating quite a lot.

The idea of 'low calorie density' comes from this video by "Dylan Thomas" a professional cyclist and coach that produces a lot of data-based videos (and in the video, he goes into the studies and the science): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPVHGt3Nf9U (minute 9:00 is where he talks about having a majority veg diet)
I'm sure the author means well, but...

> Every time I looked closely at their text I could peer into their minds, and inside lay a thought process oblivious to what writing really means.

This is the literal exact basis of what we all tend to see with folk online when it comes to projecting their own thoughts and assumptions onto the text of others...

> Let’s change that. I used to misunderstand writing too, and my style suffered severely as a result. Now not only is it miles better, but I’m also a smarter human thanks to realizing the true meaning of writing. To get there, I had to spot the misconceptions I’ve been fed about writing. Reading this piece, I’m sure you’ll at least identify a couple you can build on to change your writing mindset.

Yeah... like not assuming you know everything going on in a persons head just because you read some words they wrote as a rough copy of their work...

Jeezus...

Anyways. He's right about people having that misconception about writing being easy... but I can't be bothered to read anything further due to the blowhard nature of his words he chose.
The commercials I see here for the DC/VA lottery are quite disgusting.

I'm "kind of" fine with the state running it. But they should not be advertising on TV.
If playing the lottery becomes worthwhile, arbitrageurs will immediately step in until it isn't.

Got a lottery ticket with a 10% chance of being worth $100? I'll give you and each of your friends $8.50 for them, guaranteed, today.

Lotteries penalize people who are bad at math. It really is that simple.
I share screenshots of HTML pages on Twitter and I often struggle while taking the screenshot which can also suit to twitter’s resolution requirement. Any idea how to do it better? Can this tool help me?
Georgia's lottery[1] is overall a pretty decent system, all things considered.

> the lottery takes in over US$1 billion yearly. By law, half of the money goes to prizes, one-third to education, and the remainder to operating and marketing the lottery

It pours massive amounts of money into Georgia's education system. It's not perfect but it has put hundreds of thousands of students through school. If we must transfer wealth out of needy communities I can thing of worse places to put it than into education.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Lottery
And once word of that gets out, just what exactly do you think happens then?
I would encourage you not to visit her site directly, she is suffering from scale. It's got something like 1000 full size ~1MB images.
They should know what's going on, but they need the full story, not just what they perceive to be happening because they don't know the suspect is on drugs, or just robbed a store, or is a violent felon. I don't know how we do that. Body cams on the police sounds good, but even that doesn't capture the full picture I think. Maybe also rotate cops partners occasionally so they don't form bad habits.

Maybe a bad example, but I don't expect non-programmers to be able to review my code. I don't know how we can expect non-police to properly review police behavior unless it's outrageously wrong.
This is true, except for dark matter and dark energy debates :)
> Over the past years, European governments (not just the German one) have been busy closing down any energy source that was not renewable or relied on imports from other countries.

In Germany, coal was pushed by the conservatives.
I think you shouldn't be too deflated about this. For many decisions, a sync session is necessary (whether it's a group review or a team call). The biggest benefit of a good writing culture is to turn five open-ended time-consuming group calls into a couple of well-written emails, and a final decision call with a clear agenda.
It's a conversion of gasoline to battery capacity.

But my point was that it's not a real world comparison, since they're comparing a full-size pickup truck against a compact pickup EV. The proper comparison would be to a compact pickup truck like the GMC Canyon. The ICE vehicle would still win, but but not by as much.
Well said. I sympathize with their drivers for wanting to get paid more and get better treatment - I think they deserve to be treated better. But I just can’t understand the backlash and controversy in public perception surrounding Uber breaking laws - as though laws dictated morality.
Yep. They use dark patterns and FOMO to push people.
I think you may be labouring under the burden of prejudice.
I saw someone suggest better odds and smaller jackpots. That isn’t a solution, win $1000 and $1000 is going to buy crack or similar.
Washington State Lottery has a slogan, "It's good to play!"

It really should be, "Playing the lottery is a pretty terrible idea and we're going to, on average, take your money. If you still want to play, fine, but cheeseburgers really are better than lottery tickets. Wealthy people got wealthy by putting their money into index funds and savings accounts."
Genetic engineering is a tool. I'd be happier if E.G. the crops were engineered to have high flavor, nutrient content, and maybe even lower sugar / starch concentration / etc.

It's that they were engineered to survive things harmful to those eating the crops, that's the evil part.
I wonder why supply-side unions and cooperatives are heavily political while consumer cooperatives never make the news.
Well, they're ranked 26th in education, so at best it's just not the worst it could be
Supposedly they use the revenues to help the needy groups. That's their reasoning anyways.
Generally when lotteries "fund education", it can enable legislatures to allocate tax money that had previously gone to education to other priorities. This shift can turn lotteries into a de facto tax on being bad at math.
Someone's job is to increase the numbers.

I think they should spend the lottery money to hire someone who's job is to decrease the numbers.
So tiring to get those responses. My old company was forced to go remote when the pandemic hit and the anxiety that the founder had about remote resulted in meetings about meetings to prepare everyone for the meetings.

Everyone has different learning styles, some conversations are definitely better in real-time and in-person but the default behavior being refusing to read an email longer than 3 sentences is rough.
That's a serious issue, but I think it's mostly caused by the long-term impact of poverty both socially and neurologically. If you grow up worrying about money you often learn instincts that screw you over if you luck out.

My uninformed guess underlying this is that making the payouts smaller and more frequent would solve this. First off, people would grow up in better communities. Second, I think if the payout wasn't advertised as "retire for life and be a rich person" people would face less social pressure to shower friends and family in gifts.

I think given no constraints giving everyone $1,000/month is best, but I think there's a fair argument giving 1/1000 people $1000/month (and alternating) is better than giving everyone $100/month.
If you are truly addicted, I think you need to treat it like an addiction. What to do is simple. I'm sure you already know what you need to do, but find it very hard to actually carry out.

Throw out your smartphone, replace it with a dumb phone. If that's not possible, the next best thing is to delete all the social apps from your phone and resist the urge to install them back and don't replace the habit of checking them on your phone with checking them on your laptop/desktop.

Lastly, it's crucial to replace the time you spent on social media with something else useful.. read, draw, make music, study something, go outside, sports, gym etc
All your food is genetically engineered through selective breeding.
You don't have to transfer anything, though - just get rid of the marketing, take a couple percent to cover administrative expenses, and spend the rest on payouts. If you need money for education, tax people in a fairer way.
Right, so as politely as I can say this...

Tell me you have never lived on a farm, without telling me you have never lived on a farm. I say this, because if you had lived on a farm; you would know it's really, really fucking difficult to spray a chemical on a bunch of weeds separately when they are infesting your entire crop...

Though I do agree with the premise that we should only be using it on the weeds, if at all. I personally don't think we should be using it at all though, because we can easily deal with all the weeds and such; by hiring laborers.

Congratulations, we just created a new job market out of an old profession that should have NEVER gone away.

P.S. Just as an FYI for anyone who figures this would be silly to do...

We already do it to some degree with crops that are better off hand picked... And there are A LOT of people who could use that job... and would have no problem doing it either.
Ask HN: How am I suppose to master software engineering?
Hello all,

Curious how, as a junior engineer, I should be growing and building my skills. I have always been pretty committed to what I do, but lately I feel a weird struggle with not really knowing the right path forward.

With my job, I feel like I am doing new things every day and a lot of random busy work with internal tools. What I do and what I need to learn seems to change often.

When you train for say sports, you go to practice and you do the same drills or lift weights, and over time your skills get better and you get bigger. But that's because you are doing those specific things over and over. You wouldn't get bigger if you lifted weights 3 times a week in March, then stopped for 6 months, then did once every week in August, then stopped again.

Even outside of work I have tried to improve my programming, but I feel like there is so much to do. I want to learn how say certain applications work, then how to write good code when making those apps, then the larger system design decisions, then how other apps work that are not like it. I could spend time learning system design for a while, but then my other skills will get rusty.

I just feel overloaded and I don't feel like I can master engineering or programmer if my skills and time are spread among so many things.

What even is a master software engineer? What should my long-term goal be as a software engineer? My goal was always to get a good job, now I am here and I am not sure what the next milestone is.
It's true of gambling in general. A case study is the state of New South Wales in Australia: the state with the most poker (slot) machines per capita [1], in the country with he most poker machines per capita [2] (excluding gambling specific destinations such as Macau and Monaco). One poker machine in NSW for every 82 people, with an average loss of AU$1000 per adult per year. The losses (called profit for the hotels and clubs) are heavily skewed toward lower income local government areas [3]: a loss of about $AU2500 per adult per year. Considering that not everyone gambles the losses are even bigger for those who do gamble.

Granted an unknown amount of these losses are "business costs" for money launderers [4], but the damage to the community is still there from the associated crime.

[1] https://theconversation.com/three-charts-on-australias-addic...

[2] https://www.australianethical.com.au/blog/australia-needs-to...

[3] https://chetre.org/2020/10/barriers-enablers-policy-gambling...

[4] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-10/nsw-crime-commission-...
I remember when I was applying for colleges and the only reason I applied to Harvard was because they didn't require any specific essay, which was unlike any other school. If they did, I probably would have just passed on them. At the time, I thought it was nice because I was tired of writing essays, but now I realize that it's probably just a way to boost their selectivity.
Money is fungible. In the state where I grew up, when the lottery was proposed, it was promised that the money would go to "education." Within a few years, the education budget remained neutral, as the contribution from the general fund was reduced by roughly the same amount as the lottery contributed.

In other words, we got took.
It's a tool used by people who are happy to cover up health and environmental effects, and are most definitely not using that tool for the common good.
Ask HN: How to build effective website to attract early adopters
Hi HN, I started my side project 6 months ago. After developing for 6 months, I feel confident it is ready for some beta users. I would very much appreciate any contributing critics on my WIP website: www.superusapp.com

A bit intro to my project: I started with the idea of connecting all web-based apps and content in a canvas app. Two core features of my app: 1. you can put a browser tab on a canvas; 2. you can move data really easily cross-app.

The primary and secondary titles of the website:
Primary: Get Your Work Flowing
Secondary: Streamline your cross-app workflow in a visual space.
This will be interesting here in Australia. We've had quite a lot of major flood events on the east coast in the past year. Thousands of people should move as it is predictable that it will happen again in the next 20 years.

So completely within our own country we will have climate change related movements of people.

We also have a lot of landspace for our population size and quite a few neighbouring pacific island nations that may need a place to go.

And to offset China's assertions in the Pacific, Australia is doing all it can right now to be seen as the "helpful neighbour"...

I expect to see more in this space over the next 40 years.
This reminded me of a presentation of progress meeting that I once attended.

I left wondering if I was the only one that noticed they'd said and shown nothing at all.
Yes. Let's make a lottery based economy. That would boost the productivity and make the nation prosperous. This is like fixing a pothole by creating a supermassive black hole.
> A Spellchecker Used to Be a Major Feat of Software Engineering

> Fast forward to today. A program to load /usr/share/dict/words into a hash table is 3-5 lines of Perl or Python, depending on how terse you mind being. Looking up a word in this hash table dictionary is a trivial expression, one built into the language. And that's it. Sure, you could come up with some ways to decrease the load time or reduce the memory footprint, but that's icing and likely won't be needed.

https://prog21.dadgum.com/29.html

5MB here. 5MB there. No one notices ;)
Ruby language evolution on a large scale (as observed from Ukraine)
From https://www.ready.gov/nuclear-explosion

> Continue to practice social distancing by wearing a mask and by keeping a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who not part of your household.

Somehow I think that if you are in the immediate area of a nuclear explosion, COVID-19 precautions aren't going to be on the top of the list of stuff to worry about.
I agree. I do wonder and was speaking a bit to other factors that I do not know but suspect, notably:
- Do a high glycemic index food have a higher propensity to be stored on the body vs actually used?
- Is the caloric absorption rate of high fructose corn sryup higher than say honey?

Speaking to this, the body makes different choices on whether a food passes through you, is absorbed and used, or whether it is stored. It makes different choices in where and how to store that energy, all in all which makes me think that not all carbohydrates (or calories, or foods) are equal when actually consumed. That is not even getting started with on gut fauna and the effects of different foods on the microbial environments in our guts.
Came here to say exactly this. People will play numbers games organized by the mob, so it does make sense to give them an honest game and keep the money from crooks. But the state take should be small. And absolutely no advertising.