skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
While I of course condemn Russia invading, and support the US and NATO funding Ukraine's defense, a very cynical read of the situation would conclude exactly this.

US and NATO diplomats were crystal clear that after the USSR's fall, the former Soviet states should not be invited into NATO. And later that they should not be invited into the EU. Even with USSR gone, they were in Russia's sphere of influence, and making those overtures would be provocative.

The US pushing for a military alliance with Ukraine is what initially set Putin on trying to take control of Ukraine. That is a mighty long border to share with a US ally. Everything went downhill from there.

So a very, very cynical read of this situation would be that the US and NATO goaded this war specifically so that Putin would play his hand, and the entire world would watch as Russia crumbled. That their entire military was a front for crumbling soviet era technology and resources. The problem with building a society where the powerful steal everything not nailed down is that they also do that to the military. US and NATO intelligence likely knew this.

And given how brazenly the US and NATO have supported Ukraine through this, I would also hazard a guess that they know that most if not all of Russia's nukes won't actually fly.

EDIT since multiple responses have asked about a source[1] on the nato comment:

> The present crisis has its roots in a long-brewing contest over Ukraine’s geopolitical alignment. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine became independent but for decades joined neither with Russia nor with the West. The United States, for its part, expanded its NATO alliance but initially sidestepped Ukraine. It recognized that Russia, sharing deep ties and a 1,426-mile land border with Ukraine, might oppose such a move by force. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” William J. Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Russia and current CIA director, cabled from Moscow in 2008. “I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

> Later that year, however, President George W. Bush pressured NATO to pledge that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” Although momentum toward membership stalled for multiple reasons, Ukraine pursued an association agreement with the European Union that moved more quickly. When, in 2014, Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity replaced a Russian-oriented government with a pro-Western one, Russia swiftly annexed Crimea, home to its Black Sea naval base, and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/12/23/ukraine-ta...
https://archive.ph/SQ4kJ
No one wants to drag around *logic* elements visually. I agree.

What if you could just mock up everything and let the AI fill the blanks with an automatically generated backend? I'm not sure it's possible, but I would like that.

If this thing (useful generalist AIs) takes off, there will probably be no single silver bullet that represents its full potential.
> The celebrated “antinatalist” philosopher David Benatar argues that the disappearance of humanity would not deprive the universe of anything unique or valuable.

I say that there is nothing in the universe more unique or valuable than a human mind, and I believe this could be proven rigorously using observable measures of entropy, though I don't have the skill or time right now.

Without humans there is no other intelligence that can attempt to contextualize life within the known universe and _care_ that it exists in the first place, and so no chance of protecting life on Earth from the wider universe.

While humans exist, life on Earth has a chance of spreading and surviving beyond our planet. While climate change is real and catastrophic, so are planet killing asteroids and supervolcanoes, and we know that these things have wiped out far more species that humans can ever hope to.

Humans have destroyed biodiversity on Earth, but while they can still wield their engineering power for good, there is still the (ever so slight) possibility that they can create a future with more biodiversity than otherwise would have existed. And if not, then humans will destroy themselves and their capability to do harm in a way that probably still won't be as cataclysmic as an eventual fire from sky or from below.

The evolution of the universe is toward greater knowledge and understanding of itself and the human mind is the pinnacle of this evolution. David Benatar sounds to me like a toxic sophist who I take comfort in knowing will eventually disappear, though I think he ought to lead by example rather than sticking around to infect other valuable human minds with his useless malware philosophy.
Fe: next generation smart contract language for Ethereum
The whole thread is debating who’s sitting in the BIG4 and all I see is companies trying to belong on musical chairs. What’s strangest to me is we’re not in an early-Schumpeter cycle, seats should be well-established by now, it’s been half a century.
> it is interesting just how much irl pinball physics differ from their virtual counterparts, there really is nothing quite like it.

I think there's probably a couple components.

#1 is virtual pinball physics is usually too simple and it plays too deterministically. Real pinball plays differently when the machine clean vs dirty, and it gets (minutely) dirtier as you play, parts wear, etc. Sometimes the ball jumps or otherwise moves in unexpected ways.

#2 is flipper timing variability. In virtual pinball, the controller is usually sampled once a frame, but pinball machines pre-fliptronics had the switches connected to the flippers through a relay, post fliptronics, I'm not sure if there's a sampling delay, but if so, I think the sampling rate is higher than 60Hz. That really increases the possibilities, even if a couple ms here or there doesn't make a big difference.

#3 tilting on virtual pinball is very precise, but I haven't found it nearly as precise in the real world.
Agreed. I often update (in Fedora) which causes Firefox to be restarted - never had any issues clicking the 'restart Firefox' button though which relaunches it and opens the last session, often opening dozens of older tabs without issue. Bizarre thing to complain about.
> What purpose would one serve?

Aside from the hundreds of other cost-and-convenience reasons, eliminating the SSN (and associated fraud) would be easily worth it on its own.

Even if it were true that plenty of people get through life without a federal ID, that doesn’t mean all do. As I have said other places in this thread, the rickety machinery of federal identity replication grinds up plenty of people.
The throwaways are likely shills (or charitably - ignorant employees that don't wish to dive into any claims about their employer?). There are actual cases involving big four and kickbacks/bonuses and corporate sabotage.

One example in the last few years: BCG and NCR Corporation.

"It is undisputed that Mr. Benjamin, as an officer of NCR, owed NCR a fiduciary duty that includes a duty of loyalty. The Counterclaims allege sufficient facts to show that Mr. Benjamin breached that duty by entering into a secret agreement with BCG to promote and expedite his candidacy for CEO. The Counterclaims further allege sufficient facts to show that BCG worked with Mr. Benjamin to negotiate a one-sided contract, and remove and replace employees who opposed adoption of the contract, and that BCG advocated for Mr. Benjamin’s promotion to CEO in hopes that he would award BCG with a discretionary bonus." [1]

[1] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-yor...
Moscow says 3 killed Ukrainian drone attacks on air bases deep inside Russia
Typically true for those from a Leonard Shower.
IIUC, the situation is roughly:

Amazon: We claim that this thing we're (allegedly) doing is technically not illegal.

Court: Fine, you can argue that as a defence, but until you actually win the case, you're ordered to stop doing it anyway, on pain of comtempt of court regardless of whether the thing itself is technically legal.

If Amazon were a person, this would be somewhat unfair for SLAPP reasons, but it's not since it's a corporation, so this is fine and reasonable.
The first article focuses on form-authentic cabinets, but the software that powers those (like the open-source Visual Pinball, the freeware Future Pinball, the commercial Pinball FX3, etc.) work on ordinary laptops/desktops too.
>I've been meaning to look into this with wireguard, but I'm having trouble searching for/finding how to do this. Is "bastion host" what I'd want? Also is there a way to ensure the VPS cannot access the network as well, and just tunnels it essentially?

First, yes a search phrase like that should get you the right terms, though there isn't anything inherently special about it. If multiple systems are connected to one system with wireguard giving them all access to a given subnet is straight forward. As far as the VPS, it can indeed access that subnet too, since it's acting as part of the subnet, but you can use normal firewall rules on the far side internally to control what can talk to what and how. And in this kind of specific instance the WG is more about controller public facing surface area, the Bitwarden/Vaultwarden traffic in flight is itself encrypted.

Second though, having said all that I think if you worried about the VPS bit (or even if not) you should take a look at the Nebula SDN [0, 1] instead. It's built on the Noise encryption framework as well. There, the fixed IP node (the "Lighthouse") primarily acts to let other nodes know their mutual addresses, and they then attempt to form a direct link with no bouncing through a bastion, it's a real mesh. This generally works even if both are NAT'd, and if not it's transparent fallback and still encrypted between them. Depending on distance between nodes this can be a lot lower latency as well. With Nebula you establish an internal CA (super easy built-in tool for it) and that doesn't (and absolutely shouldn't) live on the lighthouse.

I'm fortunate enough to have fixed IPs available to me at home and office and have tended to use WG a lot just because it's had more advanced support and performance in constrained environments for me (kernel support in Linux and now BSDs). Nebula has been super slick though and I've been using it more and more. It makes all this really easy.

Anyway, hope this helps a bit. It's really exciting to me how much open source networking power is now available to everyone. It's a bit of a counter decentralization force IMO to the last few decades push towards central service providers.

----

0: https://github.com/slackhq/nebula

1: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/12/how-to-set-up-your-o... (note 3 years old, there are now Android/iOS clients as well and things are further refined)
Stack Overflow Bans ChatGPT for Constantly Giving Wrong Answers
Before Tesla launched model 3, targeted at 35k$, there was another EV launched. Chevrolet bolt launched at the same price range, and at a similar range. It didn't have the sleek look of a Tesla, lacked a supercharger network, and didn't have the lies of self driving, the hype machine and status symbol of a Tesla. As a result, it was a failure. When model 3 was actually launched, and much costlier than originally announced for, it was 50% costlier than the bolt. People still bought the model 3 over the bolt.

So, no, financial scrutiny is not why Tesla sells vehicles. It does because of the hype, the status symbol, the better design, and lies of self driving. And these don't really matter for trucks (except stock market rewarding hype, just like Bitcoin mania). So no, Tesla won't dominate the niche of short haul trucks that EV trucks have opened up.
I use kovac-stahl.at in Austria quite a bit for laser cutting and bending. Good prices, instant quotes, finishing available.
It was easy for me after enough hours playing, IIRC I had a ~100M record... must have the record file anywhere.

Actually I have the game installed in Windows 10, but I no longer play it. I lost the aim in the central targets that give endless extra balls.
Who said anything about REALID solving the national ID problem? We need to replace SSNs with a modern identity system.
One thing is for sure. You can get lot of investments using keywords like AI for next 5 years or so. Lot of "AI Based" startups are going to popup and investors will line up to give them their money.
As a short-time K9 user I disagree. You have to pick between the display name and email of senders. There is no way to show both. This is because of problems with the UI design that risks being misleading with malicious names.

The think there are also lots of UX improvements that would be great. Right now the threading UI is awkward. I'm really glad that swipe actions and swiping between messages have landed as well.

I like K9 but I can definitely see the benefit of better UX.
> car centric here need to focus on whether the critical mass effect is actually a real thing
Anecdotal evidence: in my country in the summer there are less accidents between cars and motorcycles per miles ridden than in early spring or late autumn. Why? Because in the summer car drivers expect some motorcycles to be on the road and pay more attention, while outside the season they are surprised to have motorcycles still on the streets and cause accidents (80% of the car-bike accidents are caused by car drivers).
I liked NeXT and GNUstep in those days too.

I'm not sure they had it literally "better" than everybody else, but they certainly had something unique, well executed, etc.

You can still recognize NeXT patterns in modern Mac GUIs. They're usually not surface level anymore.
I ride a bike daily in Amsterdam, and almost everyone on an E-Bike is cruising at 20-25 km/h.

It's common to see people up that to 32 km/h (20 mph), which you can do by setting the limits to US ones instead of EU ones, and trivial on some bikes.

None of these people are wearing helmets, or close enough to nobody.

I only see people on E-Bikes that can legally reach speeds of 40-50 km/h or so wear helmets.

Those look like bicycles, but are legally classified as light motorcycles. They require license plates, helmets etc.

I think mandatory helmet laws are dumb, but let's not misrepresent Dutch cycling.
MBAs and lawyers would have prevented the sale of perpetual licenses to begin with. Supporting software is a recurring expense, so selling lifetime support for a flat fee is a timebomb that will inevitably end up as perpetual a financial burden, so the more such licenses you sell, the more you set up the company for future failure.

That’s an excusable mistake for a small company. Not for a big corporation.
> Head injuries are also the most common thing that kills drivers

I wonder what the correlation is with seatbelt usage.

My guess is that most people who die of head injuries due so because they're not wearing a seatbelt, and the head doesn't take kindly to being turned into the tip of a meat missile.
If you just want the expressiveness of Markdown then that's fine, but this is targeted at the same space as AsciiDoc - writing big documents and even books. It's going to be painful doing that without the ability to add footnotes, cross references, figures, notes, etc. etc.

I mean you can do it - look at all the RFCs for example - but they must have been unpleasant to write and they're certainly unpleasant to read.
At those temps I believe many metals will also end up being heat treated. And it sounds like the time will be dependent on how much hydrogel is present, so there will be at least a lower bound on what heat treatment you need apply. I wonder how that works with the shrinking, along with lots of other properties you may want of the end product
I would encourage developers to start thinking a lot harder about AI safety.

We are actively hooking up AI to computers with real world access and training AIs on how to deceive humans (see e.g. Facebook's AI team working on having AIs play Diplomacy). Given how quickly things are moving in this space, I don't find many AI safety concerns all that farfetched now. An AI doesn't have to be conscious or malicious to do a lot of damage.
Butter in produced in north america seems to be mostly pretty bad. I think it has a lot to do with how milk is marketed, low price is everything. So the dairies are dominated by volume-over-quality, a ton of holstiens and whatever cheapest feed can be found. Starting from there doesn't lead anywhere good, for butter or cheese.

A friend who lived there (Montreal, or maybe it was when they were in Ottawa?) told me the import duty on European butter was 300%. So you can get some good imports, but super expensive. And the local "artisinal" stuff is mostly not as good as even KerryGold but also stupid expensive, because they only compete with those imports.
> US and NATO diplomats were crystal clear that after the USSR's fall, the former Soviet states should not be invited into NATO. And later that they should not be invited into the EU.

Can you provide the source for this, please?

> The US pushing for a military alliance with Ukraine is what initially set Putin on trying to take control of Ukraine.

Why do you think so? Can't there be another reason for invasion?
Ways to detect GPT-generated text
We can expect future versions of GPT and other text generators to equal or surpass human writing ability. Maybe in twenty of thirty years an AI will be able to write novels as good or greater than a Pynchon novel, for example.

Even if this were the case I still think that human writers would still write and publish novels, and that a niche audience would still prefer human books to AI books. But how would we tell them apart?

My question is could there be an official way to determine if text is GPT generated or not? For example, a public database which includes a history of all GPT outputs, and anyone can go on the database and search the book or parts of it and see if it's in the database. Otherwise maybe people will record themselves writing in a protected environment proving that they wrote it without AI assistance, this is obviously what is done in Chess and Go and other competitive games which have been "solved" by AI and is likely what keeps these games thriving. If literature is to continue as a human artform will we need to develop something similar.

This also applies to cheating in University, news articles, etc. What do you think?
For every random "expert" who is right there are likely millions of wrong ones.

In tech terms, it's like the "idea" guy. We need to have some level of curation, that yes, will be wrong at singular time points. The point of a process is continual improvement, not being perfect at every singular point in time.

That includes studies too. The process takes time. Unfortunately the government and public have to act ahead of time. And the media of course has to make their $$$.
Founders get the short end regardless, as a rule, with prominent exceptions.

A VC firm is handed a billion dollars they must invest by quarter end, somewhere. They get a zillion proposals, mostly trash. The number of obvious winners is much smaller than needed to absorb the $1B, so they have to fund a lot of less attractive choices.

Dumping all that money on losing propositions is fine with the investors, but the VCs hate to waste it. So, they have ways to milk the losers. In the old days they would make them buy Oracle or other licenses, for kickbacks from sales people. They have a stable of people owed favors they may appoint to C-suites of startups, at inflated salaries. HR departments are good for bleeding; startups rarely have an HR VP in mind.

The experience with VCs will vary enormously depending on whether yours is one of the few picked to succeed, instead of being milked.
On the one hand, it's written on the home page.
https://lichess.org/

On the other hand, there is a lot of chesscom-style clutter there no one wants (animations of random other games)
>I wouldn't be surprised if there was some light brigading going on from rivals. There's also some really lazy frontend devs out there that get indignant about testing on Firefox.

The vitriol comes from people who want Firefox to return to being "just a browser", and to be honest more often than not are the Linux crowd. It's seemingly got nothing to do with rivalry (all the browser vendors are actually fairly chummy with each other) and frontend devs are more likely to just ignore Firefox than to complain about it (IME).

HN has also just become far more vitriol-filled as of late. That's devolving into meta commentary and outside the purposes of this thread, though - just can't leave it uncommented on here.
For starters - 'McKinsey' actually doesn't do implementations. So you're not going to hire them to build something. Second, it's hard to fathom their value because it's very secretive. There's nary any real objective data.
I’ve worked for .gov, but not Federal. The appeal is:

- Sense of purpose. You’re working to perform some function with integrity and to the best of your ability. There’s no profit driven pressure.

- Career / Long Game. Typically you earn 50th percentile salary, but if you stay that doesn’t tell the story. In some places benefits are 50% of salary. That usually means best in class health benefits and often a defined benefit pension.

- PTO - the place where I was at I received 7 weeks of vacation and 3 weeks of sick time annually.

Government is a good place to start. McKinsey is a good landing zone for apprentice MBA types.
Less and less, as we switch to other resources or other sources of them.
I've used both Lulu and BookBaby with good results. You can see a sample at apollo11flightplan.com
In all seriousness, environment as you describe it is a component of talent.
I don't feel qualified to say there is no "memory", if I make claims any stronger than I've made already I'll be out of my depth, but see the information below for instance:

> Most volcanic systems that have a supereruption do not have them multiple times. When supereruptions do occur more than once in a volcanic system, they are not evenly spaced in time.

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/yellowstone-overdue-eruption-when-...

I think these are just very complex systems with many different factors, like the kind of rock they're under, what's going on with the continental plate at that time, etc. We don't have a good understanding of what's happening in the mantle, which is especially relevant for hotspot volcanoes like Yellowstone that are fed from the mantle (note that this is not how all supervolcanoes work).

Allow me to leave you with an awesome animation of the formation of a very different supervolcano: https://youtu.be/sx3_WJHAERc
> I also don't think the author is genuinely claiming there's a conspiracy here.

So the author calls it a "cover up." A "Great" cover-up. But he's not really saying it's a cover-up? Either outcome is bad: it's either clickbait (hence loses my trust), or he's claiming a cover-up when there isn't one.

> In theory, the scientific method should resolve that. But in practice, scientists (including the medical community) are just as apt as anyone to want to confirm their biases and dismiss difficult evidence.

Over time the scientific method works. People change. Facts don't. Evidence accumulates, and opinions are changed.
They become even more extraordinarily great lakes!

Some believe this has already happened.

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2019/12/great-lakes-meteorites...
That's Big 3 like McKinsey, and yes, notes sent to India, India turns them into powerpoints, team on the engagement has the powerpoints by the next morning (apparently execs don't even read something that's not in a powerpoint—they'll do this with stuff that's only ever going to be emailed, never presented)
I'd argue that engagement algorithms have done irreparable damage already. I don't think it's a manner of power or access, but the scale to which they affect humans.
It's a Jarvis that can't do math and doesn't really understand anything. Still impressive.
I read all 54 Animorphs books in five days and it almost killed me