skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you read Cal Newport's biography, he works in academia, he has never worked a 9-5 industry job, eg. at Meta or any other (software) company. CMIIW.

So, he doesn't really have any personal experience to comment on what works or doesn't work at a large software company like Meta, the same way a SWE at Meta doesn't have any personal experience to comment on what works or doesn't work for a Professor at Georgetown University. Also, to be more specific, he's a Professor of Comp.Sci., not Professor of Psychology or Professor of Workplace Layout Optimization..

I read 2-3 of his books and concluded that he doesn't know what he's talking about. His books are 10 page blog posts tortured to be 300 page books.
that is not a good analogy at all, and explains nothing.
Norfolk Southern hired the firm testing air in East Palestine homes
> yes, it is Good Actually that we are continually questioning and testing received wisdom.

Or you know, alternatively you could understand where the wisdom comes from instead of being clueless about it and think that one can make things better with a snap of fingers.
Self hosting seems like a bad idea if you're a random club for vintage cars or something and don't have IT staff. What happens when someone finds a 0day? Or some browser feature changes and nothing works until you update?
I try to be as simple as possible with my setups and use the defaults wherever possible but I have always bought the highest spec I can afford when purchasing a new machine to make sure they last.

I had the perfect machine 3 machines ago until i upgraded and I've never managed to replicate that level of perfection since so I stopped trying!

I've also been using a lot of services like gitpod and GitHub's codespaces recently they make the need for newer hardware unnecessary!

I'm also increasingly multi platform so I can't commit to setting up all these things!

My next mission is to look into remote desktop offerings or just get better at the command line.
I was thinking of Bash, but it looks like it doesn't work.
That's what brand recognition and brand loyalty (and the money they generate) allows you to do. This is not necessarily a bad thing since it forces other competitors - who like to artificially limit their products - to actually get of their greedy asses and compete.
Ironically, I think the greatest black swan in crypto over the last couple of years is Tether not collapsing. I can't remember a financial entity that has been exposed to such fraudulent behaviour (including very detailed exposes by mainstream media: bloomberg and FT) and yet managed to seemingly thrive and grow in importance in crypto land.

I am very curios to how it managed to go on for so long and remain so dominant, given as someone noted on twitter it is "quilted out of red flags". If I wasn't such a hater I would definitely be making an argument to how it is the true antifragile coin, not bitcoin.
Is 2x really the case? I got a feeling the number is way lower, maybe 10% - 20% space savings for open plans, compared to if you make people share offices.

Also the need for meeting rooms is lower with offices.
Scrcpy 2.0, with Audio
The part to sneer at is Meta's refusal to call it a cubicle, instead trying to brand it as an innovation. They could say "You know what, we were wrong, cubicles aren't so bad after all."
Installing in deserts means you need minimal mechanical support for the panels. Parking lots require raised ones. Individual roofs are small compared to large solar farms. Most farming isn't compatible with panels (think tractors and harvesters).

That it works for some fraction doesn't mean it's sufficient to get us the terawatts we need. And economics matter. If the installation is more expensive then it'll take longer for PV to replace existing plants.
It's interesting because I have had a similar breakthroughs by using Bing to help organize and simplify my thoughts.

I have Pure-O - a mental variant of obsessive compulsive disorder where I ruminate compulsively about things that concern me. But often I can't converge on a solution.

Writing has often helped in the past, but sometimes it can't help. In those times, I just write and write and write and never reach a solution - in the ruminant state I seem to struggle to extract larger insights from the ruminations.

That's where AI can help - not just in boilerplate production, but in editorial input, and in looking up and brainstorming potential solutions.

When I put my writings together with the help of AI, I can do a number of useful things:

1. Bing can extract and merge key ideas that come up frequently in my rumination

2. Bing can help me identify and describe the values my ideas represent

3. Bing can summarize and help me understand the nature of the conflict

4. Bing can help me brainstorm and organize resolutions

5. Bing can even look up methods for understanding and solving the problem

Once I have the simplified, abstracted, and actionized version of my ruminations, I notice two things:

1. The pressure to ruminate about the conflict evaporates

2. My thoughts on the issue become clear, calm, and reflective

3. The reflection moves to my values and options

4. There is no more hesitation and splitting of hairs

5. I can finally pick a resolution to the conflict

I encourage you to experiment with AI as more than a boilerplate generator.

I encourage you to see whether it can help you:

1. write out complex and painful thoughts

2. engage them in ways you're currently struggling to do

3. refine and simplify them into clear and powerful values and facts

4. brainstorm nuanced solutions to conflicting emotions

I consider this similar to writing with a skilled and caring helper or counselor. Moreover, there is evidence (both scientific and personal) that the AI guidance teaches and renews the skills I need to perform the writing process on my own.

I see it as a powerful extension of the writing technique, not a replacement.
I've worked in cube farms and in open offices.

Cube farms FTW. You can get over-the-wall collaboration on occasion without the visual distraction and the cubicle walls help dampen noise/conversation from further away.

It's not as good as a closed office for heads down work, but it's a 100x improvement over open offices where you see every movement, hear every sound, and perpetually feel like you're on display.

Open offices are there to save money because you can pack more people into them than cubicles. Cubicles are there to save money because you can pack more people into them than offices.

If you like open offices, you'll love when they switch you to hoteling so you have no permanent desk, but still need to come into the office!
TikTok is smarter than you think. It knows what you are interested in, and in your case it is evident that you have a 'thing' for
"political content mixed with funny shorts which is usually pro russian (supportive of putin), xenophobic (supportive of far-right parties) or pro police"

You see on Tik Tok what you choose to see! When I look at people watching Tik Tok on the bus, I mainly see kids watching advertisments disguised as content.

Dig a bit deeper to see how Tik Tok works. You will find that the algorithm is running with you in real time and you choose what you see.
You're joking right? Why would I hand wash dishes if I can have an appliance do it?
Nim Version 1.6.12 Released
Now we're just dunking on people who think the purpose of the economy is (ought to be) to connect idle hands with needed work?

Instead, we're lamenting that a company should "at least be trying" to pump more sewage into the river we all drink from.

What a sad state of affairs :)
This is pretty laughable really I'm sorry. You can't cherry pick a few actions by a few countries and say "oh this is why things are the way they are and therefore ...". China might be a province of Imperial Japan today if it were not for "the west".

I'm personally very pleased to see more western liberal democracies waking up and recognizing China for the brutal totalitarian communist dictatorship that it is. There's still a lot of western politicians and business people corrupted and twisted by all the money that's to be had sadly, but things are changing slowly.
I would expect apples quality control processes to pick this up. They’re so closely involved in the chip design process that it’s hard to imagine Apple’s engineers are debugging wouldn’t notice something was amass.

Not to mention the technical challenge of quickly understanding and editing Apple’s designs from the limited information that is shared with the foundry.
Sometimes. Other times (most times?) it seems like a kind of reactionary contrarian arrogance that people who have done/studied/experienced X surely have no idea what they are talking about and be dismissed by anyone who has experience with computers.
I think an office is 2 open office spaces easily
Some victims wrongly understand that the technicians running these door-to-door tests are EPA agents. In fact they're contractors working for Norfolk Southern, whose undisclosed motive is to sabotage the victims' future litigation (against NS). EPA agents accompany them, for some reason.

- "In since-deleted marketing on its website, CTEH once explained how the data it gathers about toxic chemicals can be used later to shield its clients from liability in cases brought by people who say they were harmed: “A carrier of chemicals may be subjected to legal claims as a result of a real or imagined release. Should this happen, appropriate meteorological and chemical data, recorded and saved … may be presented as powerful evidence to assist in the litigation or potentially preclude litigation.”"

- "The EPA said its representatives have, indeed, accompanied CTEH to residents’ homes, overseen the company’s indoor air tests and performed side-by-side testing with their own equipment."
Pretty much, it is computing a centre of gravity for the plane.

The CG needs to be in certain limits otherwise the stability of the plane is compromised.

You take the moment-arms of weights and sum them together and come up with mostly front-aft balance. You could have left-right imbalance as well obviously but this is mostly a function of fuel imbalance.
It’s sad that the videos are unavailable if you prevent tracking cookies.

Over each video I get “This content is hosted by a third party provider that does not allow video views without acceptance of Targeting Cookies. Please set your cookie preferences for Targeting Cookies to yes if you wish to view videos from these providers.”
That's only for those that life far from the office.

Which, if I'm to believe "Not Just Bikes" YouTube channel¹ is common in the US due to broken city planning.

But really not in most of Europe. My cycle to an office is 20 minutes. And in the Netherlands that is considered a long cycling journey.
Europe has it's car infested traffic jams too, don't get me wrong. But many of those stuck in those jams could choose to work close to home, or live close to offices. Houses and offices most often are intermixed in European (and often asian) cities.

¹https://youtube.com/@NotJustBikes
I still find cubicles super depressing. I don't understand how anyone would want them back.
I like my Pro-Ject Debut I picked up a decade or so ago. At the time it was at the low-end of the audiophile-grade stuff.
I'm pretty sure it's not about privacy but productivity. Cubicles are probably there to isolate sound and visual distractions. Line of sight emulates body doubling and accountability buddies.

I don't have strong opinion on the lack of privacy. I've been body doubling full-time in work for the last few years and I never felt need for more privacy. I can always go somewhere else if I need to take a break. However, ymmv.
The number of times I have seen this:

#!/usr/bin/bash
some-other-program -c -x $1
But when is it going to make regex obsolete? :)
It's also science. In which something becomes solidified only by "reinventing" it over and over and over.
Ask HN: How Does Mercury Work?
Mercury is not a bank. Can someone describe in plain language the relationship between our entity, mercury and their partner banks; compared to having a direct relationship with a bank?
It's not the "question received wisdom", it's the utterly vapid and self-assuredness of their own damn smarts that is irritating.

Next up: "Should we bother wiping our asses? Hot startup DirtyButt claims to save you 30-45 seconds per day. 'If you think about it, going #2 is one of the grossest experiences people go through in their daily lives,' says Teyron Flanders, founder of DirtyButt. 'I bet I've spent more than several hours of my life putting my hands dangerously close to human waste. That's something I'd rather never do.' Now an A-list unicorn valued at more than seven hundred billion dollars, the startup offers no-wipe bootcamps, a double-thick underwear prototype, and organic options. 'What we're really giving people is freedom. Remember the run on toilet paper from pandemic times? We're going to relegate that dark chapter to the ash heap of history.'"

Stupid idea after stupid idea.
That's their paychecks, not their savings. There's a big difference between the two and the attitudes around them.

The paychecks always come eventually...or else.
You can get pretty far with an interactive Figma clickdummy. When you want to build a prototype, your main motivation might be to get feedback from users. A clickdummy might give you exactly that and save you a lot of time.
1. They play even while fairly damaged

2. Super cheap to get decent equipment from a thrift store. Took me two visits to get a really nice dual cassette deck

3. Recording your own cassettes is easy and fun. My wife and I have been dubbing podcasts onto them for her and my BIL, for the fun of it

4. Super cheap to get cassettes. Last yard sale we wanted to a get a few blank tapes out of a box someone was selling and they wouldn't let us leave without taking the whole box
>If you like open offices, you'll love when they switch you to hoteling so you have no permanent desk, but still need to come into the office!

One does not imply the other. I also prefer open office over cubicle. But not having a permanent desk could be done in a cubicle farm as well. It's an orthogonal dimension of corporate hell.

I need my mise en place.
Servlets without Spring, just add Apache commons dbcp. Jetty + Postgres + HAProxy.
Elasticsearch Indexing Strategy in Netflix's Asset Management Platform
Normally if I have contract with somebody of borrowing money, and I don't pay, the other side lost money. Because it was my responsibility who I do business with. So we both get to play until we reach zero. That's fair game.

Now we're saying, actually, banks effectively don't impose counterparty risk on their clients. So the government is actually who's taking the counterparty risk.

If that's the government and not the customers, why did they get that privilege? Why is the government only there when the risk is fulfilled?

Limited liability is fine. It's not fine when who's really liable is the government, while the original deal was between the bank and its customer. Student loans are also not fine either, since you don't get to set them to zero.

Revoke Banks privilege of handling money. Let them play the game like the rest. Even the government itself needs to raise money using Treasury bonds. I want a fair game. This game is rigged. One player has the privilege of effectively using the government as an insurer for it's counterparty risk. It has repeatedly blown and abused that privilege. Revoke it.

Let me hold my account at the Fed if I have positive balance, just like the rest of the banks. Call it CDBC or whatever. Let me get the Fed interest rates just like banks do. The banks are free to do business as they have always done, to loan money. They are free to deal with the trench of people who need loans. Not with my money. My money is only there because they forced me to. That's not a fair system. I don't approve their usage of it for their margins but I literally don't have a choice. Which is why they also get to give me zero interest rates while the Fed gives them much higher rates.
...portfolio companies which need to make payroll payments to normal people
Progress in science as I understand is only on the shoulders of giants (previous research), not starting over from first principles with every generation. If we did that we'd get nowhere, each generation would get to the wheel or so and then the next one would start over.

I don't think gp is talking about continuous refinement of ideas, which I get the sense is more what you meant. Spending time and energy reinventing cubicles again and again every 10 or so years seems best to avoid, in my opinion.
Is it worth buying GPT credits form openAi for personal use rather than just using ChatGPT, if so why? I'm wondering if having access to the system role could make it more helpful and useful?

Trying to feed ChatGPT info, but it still eventually ignore it or it becomes too much for it and then it just reverts to being generic.
Not to be confused with the “slightly” less expensive Dragé Egg

https://www.godt.no/aktuelt/i/vAnvo4/hvor-ble-det-av-drage-e...
If it's a big club, it's hard to justify the vast and ongoing federal support to the institutions through the grants, loan programs, and tax advantaged status.
FWIW, this is what they now sometimes use at esports events: https://www.acezone.io/ They need to be able to block speech so the players don't hear the commentators. I saw a video where they claimed that before there where specialized gaming noise canceling headphones they used headphones for helicopter pilots because anything else didn't have strong enough noise cancelling.
I worked in open offices for years. Recently I got a room for just myself. It is so much better than I ever could imagine. My last place in the open office was really bad, just next to coffee machine. It was the worst place to work ever. Every 5 Minutes somebody started to talk to me. Now in my own room, nobody distract me. This is really day and night.
High Throughput vs. Low Latency in Data Writing
The Women Falling in Love with Their AI Boyfriends
Come on now. Many people in the Netherlands live in one city and work in another. Cost of living prohibits most people from living right next to where they work.

I do that 10 minute bike ride.. to the train station.. then I take the train 1h in each direction three times a week and consider myself lucky for not having to do it every day. The trains are packed.
Their use & application can be made accountable.
You will work in the Meta Cube(TM), and you'll be happy! /s

I hope that this is the first step on the road to allowing more people to have a private office. This seems to be a temporary fix to work within the constraints of buildings that were designed to be open offices.
I had to remind myself that John DeLorean is dead.
Not really, no, but that's not to say that LLMs couldn't be a useful shell through which an AGI could interact with the rest of the world. But to herald LLMs as the coming of AGI would be to put the cart before the horse.

A rudimentary intelligence capable of basic object-recognition and permanence* would be an actual step towards AGI over LLMs, in my professional (but still fallible) opinion.

Something as basic as an insect, or hell, even protozoa, is all we would need to say that we're on the way. Once we have that, tying it with an LLM to give it denotative capabilities would be the boom we're all hoping for/terrified of.

[*] this is key, but we don't need to codify this so much as find a way for the object-recognition to build up to it. Even children take a while to develop object permanence (hence peek-a-boo being fun for them - you really are disappearing.)
Judging from a lot of the commentary on this subject, it appears to me that a surprising number of people think that reality is little more than a quaint idea.
> human thinking is not simply predicting the next word based on a past model

Some evidence is emerging which indicates that the activations of a predictive system like GPT-2 can be mapped to human brain states (from fMRI) during language processing[1]. We seem to have at least _something_ in common with LLMs.

The same seems to be true for visual processing. Human brain states from fMRI can be mapped to latent space of systems like Stable Diffusion, effectively reading images from minds.[2]

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01516-2

[2] https://the-decoder.com/stable-diffusion-can-visualize-human...
I think it would be “sphericles”.
I would be very surprised if anyone at these companies go to their desk to just do nothing. Less productive than should be, sure, but doing nothing would cause general revolts from people that do something (of course there are people that do something, innovative or not new features come and general uptime is held). It's basically impossible to both have an entitled tech elite but also members that don't work among them unless 100% are not working.
NTS: Reliable Device Testing at Scale
Sabine Hossenfelder: “I believe chatbots understand part of what they say”
I wish Gentoo in particular had more of its history still saved. You can download day-by-day snapshots of the "Portage" tree for the package manager to know what packages to build, but actually building software requires googling for ancient tarballs and piecing together a "distfiles" directory one by one, typically without Gentoo's own patches(!)

There was an attempt a while back to try and get it recovered, but the developer "Robbat" who claimed to have old tape backups never replied https://bugs.gentoo.org/834712#c4
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to send this!

I really like the idea and is something I guess I just hadn't thought of yet. But you are right, I get a lot of traffic but naturally not everyone signs up for an account which is a waste really

Whereas the product can sell itself and convince people to sign up for an account as they start enjoying and using it

I will try and implement something like this today/this week and am excited.

Thank you and hopefully if you made an account you can follow the journey! ;)
You must have some very sophisticated models to be able to distinguish between a risk of 4-5% and 12%. Impressive !
Looks cool. Noticed it says “Build In router” which am assuming meant “built-in” fyi
I remember in the 90s, when I was a teenager, my Dad's work at Allergan (in Irvine, Orange County, California, not far from Blizzard's office) had a cubicle layout. Sometimes he took me inside, and it was just terrible. This was also one of the themes of Office Space, an excellent movie making fun of workplace culture (starring Jennifer Aniston and Ron Livingston). In one memorable scene of the movie, after Livingston's character has had enough of the toxic workplace culture and stops giving a fuck, he unscrews the cubicle walls so he can see out the window from his desk.

I would definitely prefer to work in an open-office environment vs cubicles. I also don't want an office, because I don't even want to go to work regularly anymore.

The best option for me would be: (i) go to work 2-3 times a week to get out of the house (ii) hot desk open office layout with (iii) lots of meeting rooms.
I work in a shared office with 3 other people (described by my boss at the time as a "bullpen". Lots of chatter, people coming in and out, other employees coming in for whatever...it is definitely distracting.

My solution to this was to listen to "brown noise" on my over-ear headphones while I was in there trying to work. Then I remembered my ancient Gear Iconx Samsung bluetooth earbuds had built-in storage. I loaded a 20 loop of brown noise in there so I don't have to tether it to my phone all the time and I started using that.

It really does make a difference in terms of focusing and getting things done. Even random mumblings from my office mates, hallways conversations etc. don't distract me.