skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Guardian hears you: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/05/tuesday-...
I worked in a team where the behavioral part of the interview was nearly impossible to fail. (Someone managed to, but that's a different story). Basically, they just needed to seem enthusiastic about the position, and not commit any HR-worthy offenses during the onsite interview.

However, we had a very high, quantified technical bar, and the recruiters were extremely good at selecting candidates that had demonstrated success elsewhere (top of class, winning coding competitions, managed teams, shipped stuff, worked with trusted engineers / researchers outside the company, etc, etc.)

The result was the strongest team I've ever worked with. We ended up having to let go about 1-3% of new hires, sometimes due to technical skills, sometimes due to lack of motivation / team fit.

More behavioral questions might have filtered out half of the people that didn't work out. However, we also ended up with some socially awkward, uber-nerd types with performance that was way above that of the stereotypical 10x engineer outliers. (They weren't awkward in a hostile work environment way -- those were not tolerated, and were usually filtered out via interviews! Instead it was more things like not being great at getting credit for their work, or at reading social cue's like "I'm busy", or "I have no idea what branch of discrete warp manifold <-> flux capacitor interconnection techniques you're talking about, but I see you're going to keep talking for 10 minutes")

So, if you're at a giant company with a low bar where organizational stuff matters more than technical contribution (like, say FAANG, where hiring targets are in the 1000-10,000's, not 10-100's), then behavioral questions make sense. (No offense to FAANG, but different stuff matters in larger companies.)

If you're at a smaller place where all-by-all communication still works, then I'd suggest keeping an extremely high technical bar, mostly ignoring the behavioral stuff, and then figuring out how to make sure you retain technologists that are not ladder climbers as the organization grows.
Good on you for putting in effort to make it fun, but I wouldn't. There's nothing wrong with students struggling to understand something they don't find fun. Either they want to learn it, or they don't. What are they even doing there, if not to learn what you're teaching?
Information relevant to oneself, ie to the life and management of one's local and larger communities, are what will ultimately make the difference between a well-informed and enlightened citizenry able to make collective choices that result in positive outcomes, and people that base their choices on flimsy information and passing emotion.

News can be information, usually when it has a scientific and/or investigative component, and provides the person reading or watching it with a better/deeper understanding of an issue afterwards. Not all news are information however as running after readership and ratings often result in sensationalism and clickbaiting with zero or negative value. Information isn't just news either, and books, longform articles, documentaries, etc also provide very valuable inputs that help to understand how the world around us work and make better choices.

What I find disingenuous in the article shared here is that all news are treated as being basically of the empty / sensationalist / inflammatory kind. The author of the article seems also blissfully unaware that journalists provide an essential service in democracies, by scrutinizing public action as well as what is happening with the other parts of society (economic players, scientists, organizations of all kinds..). There can be no informed citizenry without ethical and well-functionning news sources. Trying to say one should seek such quality in news sources and leave aside the sensationalist partisan crap is sadly not the point the author makes, instead advocating for people to just ignore the news altogether.
I was explaining what DACH stood for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_distribution_of_G...

TBH I didn't even consider that anyone might not know where Helvetia was, but you're right, I should have mentioned that.
The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Worth mentioning that the members of Future Crew later founded Remedy, makers of Alan Wake, Max Payne, and Control.
It is usually too late to save your house and your savings when this happens. As experienced by my ancestors who had to flee their homeland and move to America. This is why I am not politically apathetic in America. Things happen very slowly and then very quickly in a governmental collapse. By then, your savings are confiscated or inflated away before you can take action. Travel can become prohibitively expensive or forbidden. It becomes very difficult to get your family and resources out. Usually you leave penniless and arrive on foreign shores as a destitute refugee no matter what your status and expectations were in your former life and country. Engineers become taxi drivers. Scientists become house cleaners. Then you rebuild and you teach your kids that you should always prepare for the worst case and never take civil society for granted.
Heat Pumps – The Well-Tempered Future of A/Cs
Death has its advantages: for the living, it is clarifying and for the future it is clearing.

That said it’s a loonshot that will undoubtedly have spinoff benefits for increased life quality.

If death becomes a choice, then the character of prevailing culture will likely match the characteristics of those who choose not to die. What would that look like? Would that be a culture worth living in?
The article makes a good point: we should prevent “open-washing” and draw a distinction between well-intentioned restrictive licenses like “Open”RAIL and true open source. However, I worry the name “ethical source” is itself a bit question-begging. While outfits like Bloom may believe in good-faith ethical principles, their definition of ethics isn’t necessarily everyone’s. If restricted models are “ethical”, is releasing open weights “unethical”? Conversely, is releasing a model with PII or artist styles in it “ethical” if a few known use cases are forbidden? There’s no one right answer. Labeling any one set of restrictions as “ethical” off the bat makes discussion harder and puts open source on the back foot to justify “not being ethical”. Better to just call them “restricted models” or “guarded models”, and leave it to individuals to decide if these restrictions are beneficial or not.
You're mostly right of course, but keep in mind that "waiting for decades for nuclear to come online" is not a fair comparison.

Nuclear: pick ten locations -> allocate the money for each -> it goes five times over budget but in the end you have 80% of your energy need taken care of. By the time they're done, the remaining 20% is covered by renewables (we're already almost at that point. If only we had kept nuclear...).

Renewables means fighting with nearly every individual land owner in the country separately. Either they need solar panels on them or they need a wind turbine near them. Have fun and good luck arguing millions of individual cases.

The latter is cheaper per MW, people will argue. Faster to build each individual spot and no huge investments needed. All true. I just hope it's going to happen at the speed that people extrapolate from the low-hanging fruit we got so far...
It's more than just twitter users, a friend sent me this for example:

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2016/04/are-we-the-last-men/

Which is part of Charlemagne Institute

https://charlemagneinstitute.org/intellectual-takeout/

Which is Koch Brothers backed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockford_Institute
That's what I did (~17 years ago). I was registered as MPhil then transferred to PhD after submitting a mini-thesis after about 2 years. In the end the mini-thesis actually contained all the most significant results that formed the PhD thesis and the latter just explored some applications.
Funny how the very first sentence of the talk "i think you all know what a man is" would now be subject of heated discussions.

oh the times they are a changin...
You're both correct. In the context of Julia, where compilation and run time are arbitrarily interleaved, something like re2c can be a library and used at run time.
We cut the sub on Netflix last year when they hiked the price. We've re-subbed a single month since then, during the holidays, and we didn't even fill up the month with enough to watch. I'm not sure if that's a discoverability problem, but my sense is that it is a quality problem.

We've now moved to a carousel of rotating subscriptions between Hulu, Disney, HBO, Peacock, etc. It's much cheaper although annoying to manage.

The only streaming services we haven't cancelled have been Prime and Apple TV+, mostly because they are free as part of bundles.

Apple TV+ has had the highest number of favorite shows for us, and has easily been the best value. (Prehistoric Planet, Tiny World, Severance, Silo, Black Bird, For All Mankind, and many others).
Datacenters and cloud services are commodities. TV shows are not. Anyone that thinks you could apply the same strategy to very different types of products would be successful only by luck.
Now we're seeing decent 13-40B models (within ChatGPT 3.5 level). 4-5bit GPTQ quantizations are working pretty well, so these models are actually fitting on consumer GPUs. So many new models on huggingface coming out everyday, it is hard to keep up with the foundation models. We are in a great time for regular users being able to play with LLMs. People are loading onto their consumer 4090 GPUs things models that would have been state of the art a couple years ago.

We're also plateauing with LLM performance, they aren't scaling past 200B it seems even with 1T+ token training (that's why they "copped out" and did MoE for ChatGPT)

I think LLM AI performance will likely stabilize, but I also think we'll easily get that 3 orders of magnitude in the next 5 years. So, maybe AI won't be super smart but it will be everywhere.
Then it's a derivative work and copyright law covers that too.
AI licensing is extremely complex. Unlike software licensing, AI isn’t as simple as applying current proprietary/open source software licenses. AI has multiple components—the source code, weights, data, etc.—that are licensed differently.

Are you joking? This isn't wrong, per se, but it's worded as though written by someone with only the most casual / cursory interaction and knowledge of this area of law / commerce (e.g., including licensing, copyright, trademark / service mark, patent, etc.) ... until perhaps quite recently.

Yes, the AREA IS complicated. No, so-called "AI" is not introducing all sorts of novel issues, structures, etc. "AI" has some nuances distinct from much of what has come before (happens basically every time more significant tech comes along) and some possibly more unique questions related to economics, ethics, philosophy, and the like, but the relevant areas of law and practice have often been complicated and sort of "bleeding edge", even going back before the industrial revolution.

Big money, powerful tech, large-scale economic forces, etc. = lots of maneuvering, legislation, litigation, etc. = complicated "rules of the game".

Drawing the distinction vs. software in general is reasonable - but, the rather click-baity headline and "I just learned about 'IP' law and bah gawd y'all are doin' it wrong" tone to the start of this article suggest, to me, that this isn't likely to be the best article to use as a reference to learn about these issues.
Supposedly Bezos liked being a part of Hollywood, meeting the celebrities, being at the parties, and potentially meeting women.

I always took the last part to be an exaggeration, but it did sound like he cut the division a lot of slack on spending because he liked the idea of it.
A lot of the comments here come from a place of ignorance...

I've had the unique experience of private tutoring many "elite" students in high school for math and physics for nearly a decade in Los Angeles a while back. Basically both rich kids and less fortunate kids who can only afford my tutoring rate every once in a while vs rich kids who can if they wanted to afford my help every day.

It's not simply "better textbooks" or "better schooling", the difference in education is VERY DRASTIC and being in LA I was able to see kids from drastically different backgrounds. Rich kids with having tutors for every class, maids for every other side chore so parents can actually pay attention to their kids, private high schools and middle schools that cost nearly $30-50k per year can buy you so many advantages most people can't even comprehend.

The biggest advantages I saw was better resources, better textbooks, curriculums that are ACTUALLY made with care and time, and most importantly teachers who were paid very very comfortable (ie, 6 figure salaries) who have the luxury to not be overworked, and can actually attend to their students as needed. Imagine every one of your teachers in middle school and high school, putting top notch effort into providing a great learning experience for you? Most people probably only had one teacher like that in their entire lifetime. And not to mention if the school was lacking in any area, many of the rich parents would hire their own private ex-olympian or ex-superstar specialist of whatever they desire.

People here are DRASTICALLY underestimating what extra educational resources can buy.
I’m arguing that the rate is already artificial and borrowers are paying more than they should. So increasing lender costs would not necessarily increase rates since rates are set by something other than the market.

When I took out student loans in 2013, I got a 6.5% rate for 25 years. It can’t be discharged and any default is guaranteed by US Department of Ed (eg, I die, or use income based repayment for 25 years and discharge the balance). So to the borrower, the “risk” is that the USG defaults.

For comparison, I bought a house that year and got a 4.25% 30-year mortgage that has my house as collateral.

Why would a student loan that can’t be discharged have a higher rate than a mortgage?
Evolution of a Minimal Cell
Recently I only get real value from Sky Showtime, because Star Trek Strange New Worlds is on it.

And considering the way they canceled Prodigy, I do wonder how long SNW will last.
Monzo's Tone of Voice Guide
Plenty of good shows get cancelled even without piracy, though. One wonders what’s the best way to signal to the suits that a show is in hot demand. Maybe by buying it directly or by being a Nielsen viewer.
I think there are two types of properties: intrinsic and extrinsic. Your intelligence is intrinsic. It’s internal to you and is highly correlated with your genetics. Your success in life is extrinsic. It’s based on factors outside of you, like the circumstances of your family, etc.

So, no, I’m not saying success is purely genetic. But, I also think there is a strong genetic component to one’s intrinsic ability and so not everyone can reach the top even if they work really hard.
More companies need to utilize different brand names when launching vastly different products. If there was a service called “Comcast (Stream / Video / Watch / Play),” the numbers would be in the toilet; but they brand their streaming platform as “Peacock” and it’s quite respectable.

Had Amazon named their service something unique, and announced it as some sort of bonus subscription you get as part of Prime (or something you can subscribe to separately), I wonder if more people would watch. It would also help separate the streaming platform from the concept of “Purchase a movie through Amazon.”
The amount of dark patterns on Windows nowadays is insane. If you want to go through the OOTB setup and use a local account, you'd better not connect to a network (which it's very pushy at getting you to do.) It's literally not an option to set up a local account in most cases. I've rarely touched Windows in the last decade and I'm better for it.
Exactly. Don't waste my taxes on a social media site.
But some humans are skeptical and/or critical thinkers and will get this new information verified or disproven through other methods. Also, fake news spreading seems mainly an issue of media/social media. There is no information spreading mechanism set up yet for LLMs. Furthermore, to LLMs all information looks the same. To humans more emotionally charged information is more prominent.
That's news media, not news. The media reports the news, in ways you may dislike, but the actual content they're sharing with you is rooted in literal events that took place.
"Researchers studying these complications also worry about undermining trust in COVID-19 vaccines."

This is why no one trusts "institutions" anymore. The researches finding out if vaccines are dangerous should be focused on that single thing, not worried about how the results might be interpreted. In my opinion, THAT is what undermines trust.
This looks like a very nice guide for writing clearly.

> In 2010, US attorney Sean Flammer ran an experiment. He asked 800 circuit court judges to side with either a traditional ‘legalese' argument, or one in what he called ‘plain English'. The judges overwhelmingly preferred the plain English version (66% to 34%), and that preference held no matter their age or background.

> Put yourself in your reader's shoes when you're writing; what are they going to be most interested in? We're often tempted to explain why we've done something before we tell people what the thing actually is — especially if it's bad news or an uncomfortable message. But if your first question is what does my reader really need to know, then you can't go wrong. Are they more interested in the process we took to decide something, or how that decision affects them? (Hint: it's almost always the latter.) That doesn't mean we shouldn't explain our reasons, it just means we should explain what the impact is first.
Basically, a company is only incentivized to disclose compromises that were intentional and financially motivated. That is, a hacker that intends to extort the company, sell the information or abuse it for financial gains will ultimately cause too much noise to keep it under the rug.

If this is what the company anticipates they will have to investigate and disclose.

It the breach is a foreign government or hush-hush data hoarder or the result of plain incompetence, the company can absolutely ignore the problem.
If this is real, $50,000 USD is a laughably small sum for the database. It reminds me of Dr. Evil's demand for 'one million dollars', you have to jack up the number to be taken seriously.
Wait? He’s just asking now?
Show HN: Figma Workshop Templates for Startups
Hey HN community. I'm a product designer by trade and often I run workshops with product teams. I decided to turn my workshops into templates and let everybody buy them.

https://www.onecollab.co/
+1 for The Victorian Internet. A fascinating book.

His descriptions of how the telegraph disrupted people's existing understanding of distance and time/simultaneity are very interesting.

People thinking that the physical telegraph form was transmitted, rather than just its content, and demanding to telegraph other physical objects.

Also the use of commercially published word-books to shorten and obfuscate long telegraph messages is reminiscent of data compression and cryptography today.
That's just what Tesla calls it.
I doubt documents and websites will go away. Laying out information in text and tables is an extremely efficient way to communicate information quickly. Even the most poorly designed storefront is densely packed with information.

In contrast, a conversation with an AI via text, voice, AR, or VR just isn't as dense. It's a very inefficient way to communicate mundane things.

If I want to buy some socks, I can hop on Amazon, search for "socks", and find literally tens of thousands of items for sale. I can quickly refine that search with filters or just browse to find what looks good to me. I can find pretty much exactly what I want in less than 30 seconds.

Now imagine that same task (buy some socks) through an AI 'virtual assistant' interface.

"Hi Alexa, I'd like some socks."

"I have over 60,000 socks available to purchase. I recommend 'Dickies Men's Dri-tech Moisture Control Socks Multipack' for $12.99 with free Prime same-day delivery."

"Tell me about the socks you recommended."

"These socks are currently available in 4 different sizes, which fit as expected, and 60 different colors. They're made of 64% cotton, 33% polyester, 2% spandex, and 1% nylon. They feature soft breathable moisture control fibers, ventilation channels to enhance air flow, arch compression support, and durable reinforced heels and toes."

"Are they low cut?"

"No, these socks are only available in crew cut. Would you like to search for low cut socks instead?"

And so on...

You could certainly get to what you want faster than this example, but communicating all of the mundane product information through a conversational interface is a bottleneck.

We'll certainly see Ai-driven avatars for some things. They'll be salespeople on car websites and customer service reps on other sites, but regardless of the role they play, they'll supplement the document based interfaces that we already have rather than completely replace them.

A good interface is one that makes the user comfortable and enables them to get things done quickly. In terms of getting things done quickly, AI avatars can't really compete with just dumping information on the user. I can look at a list of socks and filter out the ones I don't want much faster than I can communicate to a salesperson what kind of socks I'm looking for. And that's fine. Let the avatar do what it's good at and let the document do what it's good at so you get the best from both.
Indeed: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/05/tuesday-... For your next trick can you give us tomorrow's lottery numbers?
>His German compatriots referred to his ‘delirious ravings’ while experts in the United States accused him of peddling pseudoscience.

Many such cases!
> You're missing the core. He wants Twitter to be a functional and inclusive town square for public, and world wide, discussion.

Well, aside from people he doesn't like, and content he doesn't like. Let's face it: he wants Twitter to be a town square with topics he likes and with people who support him.
I'm also often an advocate of what you're saying there, "language changes..."

But this I think is one of those cases where there is a difference, because it's also descriptive of a community, and it matters how that community sees itself. With whatever definition of open source you have, the most high traction stuff that we all rely on (I originally wrote, "most", but I think e.g. the Linux kernel matters more than a random abandoned repo on Github) is produced by people that use that older definition of open source, and mostly by people who identify with that social movement. (I for a long time was one of those people.) In this case I do believe that in that all of us now rely on open source software, that redefining it in opposition to the group of people who produce that thing is less than respectful.
Should we flag paywalled content posted on HN?
Gnome is great for this usecase. I only use emacs and libewolf, and gnome is the best desktop experience I've had.

I used i3/bspwm/etc for years before, and was convinced it was better until I had to use Gnome at work for a bit. Now I use Gnome everywhere.

The UI polish is nice. Stuff like wifi and bluetooth just work well without having to dig into wpa_supplicant or w/e. I can plug in external monitors and easily rearrange displays.

Sure you can set all this up in a bespoke custom environment, but you have to set it all up, and predict future needs. Its nice not having to dig into or install something whenever I realize I need to do something I didn't account for. I use my PC for getting stuff done, not to get on the top of r/unixporn.