skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> If we define women as "everyone who defines themselves as a woman", what exactly is a woman then?

I agree. If we open things up so widely, then terms like "man" and "woman" become meaningless. Nevertheless, it also doesn't seem right to be to disregard the experiences of trans people.

My preferred way out of this conundrum is to view gender as multi-dimensional. As such, there are multiple kinds of woman (and man). Three important kinds might be:

1. Biological women. Which we can define in different ways: it might include only people who were born women, or it might include people who have altered their physiology either through surgery or hormones. It might include some intersex people, or it might not.

2. People who "feel like" a woman

3. The political class of women: those are identified by others as women, and treated differently on that basis.

If one wants to define "woman", one then has to be clear about what kind of woman they mean. At which point it becomes relatively straightforward. As a linguistic convention, I would suggest:

- "man"/"woman" can be informally used for any of the above categories

- Where possible, or is asked to clarify, people should be specific about which kind of gender they mean.

- Nobody should claim that "man"/"woman" refer only to one kind of gender.

I would eventually like to get to the point where people have separate identities in each category, which is already how I approach my own gender identity. I identify as biologically male. I don't have feelings of gender, so I identify as non-binary or agender in that category. And I am usually but not always treated like a man, so I mostly identify as male in that category, but not entirely.

I feel like this is a lot more useful (and inclusive!) than a binary "are you a man or a woman".
Dear SaaStr: As a Founder, What Were the Sketchiest Things a VC Asked You to Do?
Let's see, area of california = 423k km2. Check.

Largest solar park in the world = 57 km2, cost 1.3B$. Check.

Total cost of a solar panel the size of california, with the help of the most intricate indian technology = 9.6T$
PDFKit on MacOS, I guess. I built it to add PDF functionality to the Preview app (and I worked on the PDF-side of Preview in order to incorporate it), also used in Safari's built in PDF viewer.
As far as I know (which isnt much) Global warming isn't really about heat released in systems. It's about its inability to leave the earth due to greenhouse effects.

While it is a concern if we produce a lot of extra heat, I think the main issue is being able to expect the heat to leave into space. Which is why most of climate change science focuses on greenhouse gases and not heat produced by machines.
I may be a vaccine proponent, but I do recognize the problem of forcing someone to be "medicated" against their wishes.

That's balanced by the fact that I think virtually all the reasoning against it is specious at best. I don't have a better answer for that problem other than the force and shame be as thoughtful and accommodating as possible.

The shame is valid in the context of the proposition that vaccine efficacy is at its best when a significant portion of the population is vaccinated. By not participating in this particular social contract one is not "doing one's fair share".

Obviously if one doesn't accept that proposition, the shame is unnecessary. C'est la guerre.
> A few paragraphs up, weren't they saying it was a bad thing that different rules apply to different people.

No, the rule is you can’t use reclaimed slurs unless you’re part of the group targeted by them. So yeah, you don’t get to call someone who’s gay a fa__ot unless you are gay yourself. That’s like the whole point of reclaiming them.

The issue is that a dumb keyword filter can’t properly enforce this.
Or to quote Wellington (accused of being irish), being born in a stable doesn’t make you a horse.
Long ago, I worked on a popular dating app (maybe not anymore, but still top 5) and learned how they monetize "love" and "dating". Building features that claim one thing (marketing got it approved by legal) but under the hood work in a ridiculous way.

Worked on an e-commerce site for an extremely well known media company. Again, tech wise it was cool, but the way it worked and how the marketing and other folks talked about the audience and their schemes to extract $ from them was gross and disgusting.

Now I work in boring enterprise SaaS, but at least I know I'm actually helping our users do their jobs better. The job kind is boring af, the tech stack is lame, but that's fine. Every so often I'll be on customer calls and I love hearing them tell us that our fix or some new feature is wonderful.

I will never work for big tech or adjacent companies ever again. I want to be able to sleep at night and not be associated with psychopaths and people who care only about money at any costs.
> Every living thing is defined by their DNA

Sure, but that's not the only thing they're defined by. We might for example like to categorise people by their profession, and doing so is not in conflict with categorising them by their DNA.
I assume they'd have a drilling pipe down which the mm waves would be directed. It would also carry down gas to blow the recondensed rock dust back up. The inner surfaces of the pipe segments would presumably be lined with a smooth, very conductive material.
> I thought trans people being oppressed was clear statistically and unambiguous.

I see this being asserted all the time, but very rarely with any kind of quantifiable evidence attached.
There will be several automakers who do not have world-class driving automation. Google already provides the infotainment and dashboard interfaces for Volvo with Android Automotive. VW made a mess of their in-house software development. Car makers will look to buy-in autonomy systems. Google has it end-to-end, including all the user-facing bits and the cloud backend. I expect they are committed for the long haul.
I've seen this problem pop in randomly; like having three identically configured VMs, two work fine and in third causing trouble. Good luck finding out why.
> gift cards ... accountability built into the technology

It depends on what you mean with that «accountability built into the technology».

Related case, as you are also speaking of cards: this friend of mine wanted to buy a foreign book (less available in bookstores, where you pay cash). So he purchased an anonymous pre-paid credit card. He found out that during the mess of the past three years, somebody has made it very difficult to keep those cards anonymous: they now request a telephone number to activate them, and in regions where, "coincidentally", telephone numbers are to be associated to legal identities.

Now: as you should know, you can bet your life that if our transactions were recorded, we would strictly avoid commerce.

(Just like, pretty similarly, we would strictly avoid a non anonymous Internet.)

So: your call for accountability should work within the boundaries of what is acceptable.

> too idealistic

Don't worry, we grow up, and some of us restrain production - exactly in the awareness of what may happen.
The word "black" does not have a gender connotation. "Latino" is a masculine word, the feminine equivalent being "Latina". That's the problem (if you consider that a problem)
You don’t show a fool a job half done. A proverb.
IQ tests are like beauty pageants. Everyone knows what an attractive people looks like and while they might get confused they can certainly pick out 2 different people (if you get the right 2 people) and say one is prettier then the other.

The idea that you can claim a person's beauty quotient is 8.675 is of course insane. That beauty itself isn't tied to a particular moment in time is crazy too. Or that we could determine what degree beauty is heritable. Or even more laughable that some subsets of people are simply more inherently beautiful then others. (Except for woman of mixed Indonesian descent who are in fact inherently attractive.)

You go through all of that and then you hear back "But I know Marilyn Monroe is more attractive then my neighbor," and sure, enough she was but that gets you exactly no where close to what your claiming.
"500 million tweets per day" appears to be a statistic from 2013, so this calculation is almost certainly wrong.
This entire piece is one assumption after another.

> Maybe the puzzle is to escape the program, some sort of an advanced hacking test, a CTF? A competition between billions of species trying to get noticed by God?

The assumption here of course is that the goal is to escape. If there was a goal, it could be entirely different. The goal could be to answer a question, a lot like the earth of Douglas Adams.

> To escape any program you have to break one of its rules.

Not true. If the goal is to escape a program, another viable path is to find the exit condition. Maybe the entire program runs in a try-except, so crashing it isn't even viable. Perhaps the program itself doesn't even have a way of crashing at all. For example, I'm sure a quantum computer could do something unexpected, but I'm not sure it could crash.

> So, should we buffer overflow nature? The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that entropy, the amount of randomness and chaos in a closed system, always increases. This law -like any other law in the universe- is unbreakable, entropy could never be decreased. It could be increased tho.

There is no reason to believe that increasing entropy would cause anything. We can make exceptionally cold things, we can make exceptionally hot things, and in neither case did the Universe show any signs of anything.

I think if I was running a Universe simulation, I would want to set an interesting challenge:

1. We define intelligence loosely as the ability to have some concept of self and others. We can internally model these actors and loosely predict future events. If you were trying to find a super intelligent being, perhaps you would look for a being able to manipulate a hidden physical property that agents cannot otherwise naturally interact with. Searching the simulation for such a case could be relatively easy, you just look for abnormal behaviour in this physical property, maybe high entropy or patterns.

2. Maybe the purpose of our simulation is for the same reason we run simulations of our own universe. It could be a simplified version of their universe, and they are trying to model some future event. Perhaps if we all start nuking each other it might affect some policy decision in an external existence.

3. A lot of the ideas want to add meaning to our existence, but consider the possibility we are running on some computer that got a bit flipped in RAM and accidentally started overwriting it's own code. Some small set of rules were established, which then created everything we currently know. Somebody at some point will realise that the computer is no longer performing the task it is supposed to perform, and reboot it.
> I understand “web scale” in the marketing term Mongo sense

That's the joke.

(And for anyone who hasn't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs)
A presidential term is 4 years. Assuming it holds over 10000 years, that would mean roughly 2500 presidents. In a group of 2500 people, what are the odds of one of them being batshit crazy? That would be a lower bound to overall probability of nuclear annihilation.
I don't know - I think that proves what I said - map keys can be floats.
Which ones can consistently make me money?
I much rather prefer a tourist to be inconvenienced than thousands of elderly people losing their livelihood every year.

Imagine working all your life so that then everything gets taken away by some jerk.
I had this realization in stages.

1. Almost all software can be abused or co-opted for surveillance purposes.

2. Some software comes already designed for surveillance purposes up front.

2a. This includes plenty of well-known mass appeal software; importantly, the customer-facing marketing copy and the investor pitch can present a completely different value proposition.

3. Software doesn't become used for surveillance or abuse by accident; there are actual human beings who make a decision to use it in this fashion, or commission it for this purpose.

3a. The "misguided programmers harming people by trying to solve social problems with technology" meme is dumb for many reasons, but it's also distracting (possibly purposefully so) from the fact that it's not software, or people who coded up the software, that are the primary culprits. The coders that were too naive or too self-interested to refuse work or blow the whistle may have some responsibility, but we should start talking about the people who made the decisions to commission or repurpose technology for bad purposes.
Peter Alert
Bringing further scrutiny to similar practices there and elsewhere.
Have you considered WASM?
You also don't need to drill so deep if all you're interested in is lower grade heat. For example, at Cornell in Ithaca, NY they've just drilled a 3 km deep hole to evaluate getting heat (at ~90 C) to make hot water for heating the campus.
Ah, I misunderstood that, sorry.

I think the GP was wrong there. JS maps absolutely do support float keys, it's just generally a bad idea to use them if you don't restrict yourself to integers.
Bizarre response. It reads like you're implying that an ally of "Germany/Sweden/etc" did it.
Semi-related question, but on Linux how does one get to sane font handling like on MacOS where you can basically completely forget that fonts exist? I've had so many problems getting fonts looking good on Linux that I practically gave up on the problem as it seems completely intractable.
> followed HN over the last few weeks

Holmes has not really been in the _news_ (the "N" of "HN") in the last few weeks, until this event which has attracted hundreds of posts.

Musk, by contrast, has done lots of newsworthy things in the last few weeks.

Such an attitude is like being surprised that people talk about Joe Biden more than George W Bush at the moment - the fact is there is simply more to talk about with the former than the latter.
Ask HN: Solo Developers, what tools do you use to keep track of features/tasks?
I'm working on a few different software projects, mostly for fun, but I think they could benefit others one day once I get them squared away.

I was using Trello to keep track of the different features, and tasks required to get the app to the next level.

I'm finding that Trello is too limited in what I can do to keep track of all the different breakdowns of tasks, and that gets in the way of being productive or keeping good notes on them.

On the other end of the spectrum, JIRA is way too intense. Everything can be configured, and when I used it previously, the UX was hostile and unhelpful for quickly jotting down tasks, ideas, and other needs to go from nothing to a feature.

What software do you use to keep track of these things?

Is there a goldilocks software that is neither too basic, nor to byzantinely configurable, but rather hits that sweet spot for productivity?
A lot of those children were left to die. The numbers have been doctored for a while, there is not a big generation of under 10s coming.
If you can't take care of your kid then you shouldn't have a kid. I myself fall in this category. It's sad, but the world is not a fair place.
> DNA can express with both genders organs in the same being.

Again, those are edge cases of the category, which does not mean the category does not exist.

> But I don't think it's asking too much to address an individual in the way they prefer.

That is only a part of what is being asked. The real ask is to actually believe in this whole theory of self-identification, and if ANY objections are raised it's punished with shame.
I'm 30. I have been unmedicated for 22 years, and finally went back to address it just a month ago. I had many fears as you with regards to medication. Is needing it a weakness? Is it going to change who I am? The first time I took one way scary.

And you know what? I figured out, it's just not a big deal. You get a slightly increased heart rate, so you'll feel a little warm the first couple days. Other than that, though, the effect is that you are able to ignore distractions and adjust your focus at will a bit better. It doesn't turn you into someone else, and it doesn't turn you into what you imagine a neurotypical person abusing stimulants is like.

If you're struggling in any way, and think it could help, it's worth a try. They're non-addictive (I don't have any particular desire to take them).
My first job at Microsoft was to build IronRuby, which was an implementation of Ruby on top of the Common Language Runtime. I got the job because I had built a bridge that connected MRI (Matz's Ruby Interpreter) to the CLR before I joined the company. This project ultimately failed because of a principle that we learned from the school of hard knocks: respect developers' existing code investments. Developers couldn't use it because many of Ruby's existing libraries were thin wrappers over native code, and we couldn't get them to work for many reasons.

It turns out that the project was more of a demonstration of our ability to get dynamic languages to run efficiently on the CLR. To that end, I think we were successful. But once we achieved that there was not much of a path forward so the project was eventually shuttered.
Let's just suck out the energy that powers the internal convection that powers the magnetic field that prevents the solar wind from stripping the atmosphere of water, what could go wrong? On a small scale, no problem, but "powering the Earth" with the dynamo that prevents us from becoming Mars/Venus? It'll be great until we suck too much energy out. CO2 will seem like a cakewalk by comparison. At least we know the planet is livable with high levels of CO2, and we know that the rocks and trees soak up CO2 and that the ocean precipitates it out as limestone, so if worst comes to worst we can just wait a while. Once the dynamo stops, it's not restarting, and we've got maybe 50 million years until things are unlivable. Forever.

Now maybe we don't think we'll actually make it as a species for that long. But we should think about the risk, this time around.
You can't simultaneously claim that timing the market is bad, but in the same breath claim "it's a good time to buy".
> “Digging 10 miles underground” is like “building a solar panel the size of California” — really useful if you can find a feasible way to do it

Kola already reached 76% of the way there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
Former exploration geologist here.

Drilling that deep is not easy. Directional drilling equipment is very expensive, and heat + pressure take a toll very quickly on such equipment. Directionality is important as boreholes are rarely straight an it is entirely possible to drill a borehole in a U shape accidentally. Drilling requires high pressure pumps to clear the face of the drill bit, and the cut material must be returned out of hole. That's one hell of a compressor or mud pump. Below a certain depth rock behaviour changes from brittle deformation toward more plastic (and explosive) deformation, to eventually plastic deformation entirely. Groundwater pressures can collapse holes. Deformation can collapse holes. The rock grinds back at drilling gear. Equipment can become stuck and difficult to dislodge. Holes eventually collapse and partially close on their own, requiring casing of the hole. To case, drill a section, retrieve gear from down hole, slide casing in, replace Drilling gear, repeat for each length of casing. It can be quite different per hole, and per rig setup. Some rig setups permit casing in place (this is more a drillers specialist area than my own).

Then, there's the issue of keeping the hole open long term. Hydrothermal activity tends to dissolve minerals in water. Minerals tend to crystallise out inside boreholes and pipes over time, like hard water in water pipes in rural areas, constricting flow.

What is being proposed is difficult and requires an extreme amount of maintenance through its life cycle.
Feasibility is kind of what the article is about. Also, this quote seems salient:

>> Finally, Houde said, geothermal is “the perfect energy source to take advantage of the largest workforce in the world, the oil and gas industry.” That industry has “11 million jobs in the US alone, and a skill set that is exactly what’s needed for geothermal to rapidly scale.”
Got me curious how often firms will purposefully disguise a military project as an innocent challenge solving their problem they'll repurpose later on.
> 2) Many people aren't aware that what they've experienced lines up with trans identity or gender dysphoria until they encounter someone else who's experienced the same thing (whether in person or in the media).

This is probably true. But I rather suspect that the reverse is also true. Many trans people don't realise that their feelings and experiences line up with lots of people who are happily cis-identifying (but were perhaps raised in an environment that was more accepting of gender-nonconformity).
That won't help you when you go to have those printed and they need to select inks. Or you want matching clothing items and need corresponding dyes.
There is no visual component to sexuality. Given that GitHub profiles are mostly just a name and profile pic, you can’t tell someone’s sexuality while you can easily tell if someone is trans.
Actually, I want to think more about the theory of change here. It's conceivable that a ProPublica article could actually make the situation worse, e.g. by advertising the existence of the helmet to other abusive employers, or causing abusive employers to rework their labor practices in a way that looks better to the press but is actually worse.

If the company that makes the helmet is based in a country with good government, maybe a reasonable regulation would be to score workers on productivity, but place limitations on the scoring somehow. E.g. the helmet stops showing the worker's location when they've spent too much time in the heat. Or the helmet estimates the fraction of the workday that the worker spent offsite, but all workers who spend 20% or less of their time offsite are given a score of 20%, so the employer can't force the worker to spend more than 80% of their time onsite. I don't think productivity scoring has to be dystopian in principle; generally speaking it seems reasonable to pay people according to how productive they are.

You could also argue for regulating the helmet out of existence, but I assume in that case it would just be built somewhere else with lax regulations. So the trick is to put in regulation that creates a humane experience for workers, but not so much that Qatar is incentivized to contract the development of a new, more draconian helmet in a different locale. I don't think this should be too hard, because creating a humane experience for workers should also help productivity to a degree.

There's also a security dimension here -- you don't want abusive employers to be able to circumvent these limitations. So you could make it so the helmet only runs code which has been signed with the company's private key, or have a lot of the functionality server-side.
8 billion people and they're worried about the population? Yeah, they might be able to reproduce and take over, but they might also be victims of a crime, natural disaster or even a war. Bit selfish, eh?

EDIT: 2nd or 3rd generation "special" people often lose their drive/purpose. This would defeat their purpose.
The physicists weren't excited. They pointed out that if Pons and Fleischman had been making enough DD fusion to boil water, they'd have been killed by the neutrons.
I'm so glad I don't have to worry about these things as a PyO3 user