skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Am I high right now? I think you're selectively ignoring parts of the comment. It's 13 words: "This seems like a learning opportunity. Or a Darwinian opportunity. Either way, self-solving."

You're turning the comment into 3 words: "Darwinian opportunity ... [which is] self-solving"

Small reminder that on HN you are supposed to steelman comments when you reply, not strawman. Clearly those 3 words refers to the death of the person, but you can't ignore the remaining 10 words and say the entire comment was about eugenics. So which of the 13 words am I ignoring that you aren't?

Also natural selection and killing off dumb people who are already alive is not eugenics. It's either epigenetics or genocide but like I said in a previous comment: eugenics is used to select fitness _before birth_ not after.
It doesn't, of course. But the universe is described as being intentionally created explicitly for Earth and Man, so it wouldn't be hard to go on to think we may be at the center.

The long history of geocentricity would support this being a plausible interpretation.
Wirth could have figured out a better way to do this, or asked around.

You can have a way for a program to declare the version of the language it wants. Then keywords introduced in all newer versions of the language disappear (are treated as ordinary identifiers).

Via a mechanism like Racket's #lang, Component Pascal could support Oberon-2, Oberon, Modula and even Pascal translation units in the same program.

It does seem as if Wirth operated with serious academic blinders on. He had no concept of treating the language as a product, which supports existing users with dogged backward compatibility. The result was a fragmented landscape of languages, which helped eroded the popularity of the languages.

The C preprocessor has been much maligned, and usually rightfully so, but with the preprocessor, I can take C code that uses C++ keywords like class and new, and make it work. We can easily write a macro convert(type, expr) which will expand to static_cast<type>(expr) when the code is compiled as C++, and to (type) (expr) when compiled as C. C itself has been able to bring in new keywords like bool, true and false without breaking old programs which use these, by requiring programs to include a <stdbool.h> header from which you get things like #define bool _Bool.

Speaking of C++, most C programs can be easily converted to C++, often with little or no modification. Or at least that used to be true for a long time back in an era when it was important to be able to do that.
Waiting for the data to be swapped in consumes more energy.
It’s pretty reasonable to share iPads and Macs between people, especially people who can’t afford individual devices for everyone separately. If I bought a VR headset for $3500 anyone being able to use it would be extremely useful
I program in C (HFT) and I love it
I absolutely despise this "every story has two sides" quip. No, every story doesn't have two sides. Yes, every story has multiple versions full of complete bullshit, but when we talk about a "side" we mean a reputable reliable side, and it is not the case that every story has two equally debatable and reputable sides. Sometimes a spade is a spade.
Detailed study of the relationship between measured personality and intelligence
There are new ones being made every day. Web 3 is just getting started.
The definition of "success" is different between a bootstrapping business & a VC funded business. A consultant can define success as "making enough money to live off of". A VC funded business has a different definition.

So how would a study be conducted? A survey asking if the business was "successful"?
Wow, as an investor, I see a lot of misinformation in the article and in the comments.

Investors are experienced business people, and they will help you to know if what you have is ready for prime time. Listen to them.

Investors are business partners: they are not loan officers or casual kickstarters.

And one more thing: the “VC” stereotype being discussed here doesn’t really exist. All investors are unique.
Rupert Murdoch: the internet won't destroy newspapers (2008)

I doubt he ever actually believed that. He was likely just trying to keep his investments alive. Much prior to that he bought Myspace and all the servers/storage and literally the next day there was a big empty space in one of my data-centers. They moved the HP SureStore racks and all the HP-UX servers somewhere else and turned it into a social media site. Prior to that it was the M: or Z: drive on many peoples computers.
I would hope / imagine that the amount of force necessary to move that wheel is well greater than what an average person could exert without being noticed and stopped by one of the crew! (i.e. only genuinely large movements of the 2 very heavy objects involved)
See Molly White's "Web 3 is Going Just Great"[1]

She keeps a tally of all the scams. The total is now over $67 billion.

[1] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
It's just as old and tired as the defense of capitalism: "That's not capitalism, that's corporatism (or cronyism or anything other than capitalism)."
If we're only going to look at the temperature, and ignore why temperature is important to the billions of humans who depend on large-scale agriculture, why stop at 125kya? Looking back even further, the earth's atmosphere was once 230°C https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadean

Non-cherry-picked corollary: It's hotter now than it's ever been since the first Agricultural Revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution

The time between the 130kya maximum and the invention of agriculture was a literal ice age: an outcome that has historically resulted after maxima. Neither extreme is thought to support large human populations.

But, regardless: making of a note of "the last time we saw this statistic is X years ago" is not at all cherry-picking. Because if we blow past that 130kya spike, the last time will have been millions of years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#...
If Britain ever decided that Cambridge was in Britain (presumably a constituent of a decision that Cambridge should be in Britain, not Europe), it would have done so by one of the Acts of Union.
A quick look back at when Microsoft made an interactive Barney toy
So an improvement?
You're right that in numbers of survivors there bootstrapped ones are going to outnumber the VC ones. But in terms of total # of employees, total $ of turnover and profits I would expect it to be the reverse.

But for any individual founder, if you want to aim for 'successful enough to be relatively wealthy and worry free' then 'bootstrapped' is the way to go. If you aim for an outsize success, wealth for the next N generations and massive impact on the world (for good or for bad) it's going to be very hard to avoid the VC track.

I wrote about this long ago, but it is still quite relevant:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mo...
My interpretation of this article: Don't take VC funding! It's the definition of failure! It will have you doing the wrong things for building a business with strong fundamentals! (Except this VC-powered kind of "failure" is a more likely way for the founders to become very wealthy.)

I'm open to criticisms of VC models, but I don't see how this argument is going to dissuade many founders, who are the ostensible audience.
These plasma mobile apps were built with the Kirigami framework (https://develop.kde.org/frameworks/kirigami/). I've been looking for a way to build an Android app with Common Lisp and this looks intriguing. Has anyone here looked into/tried it?

Also interested in general impressions of Kirigami, too.
There was a company I can't recall its name, but they took VC funding for one round, retained voting control, built successfull business and then refused to go for another VC round. VC still owns company, but can't exit and founders are happy with the way things are.
One perspective that's missing here is that of the users that are presumably benefitting from the company's product(s). The users would probably prefer that the company keep slogging than that it get acquihired and the "failed" product get killed. I recently read _The One Device_ by Brian Merchant, and I'm reminded of the story, told in that book, about how FingerWorks sold out to Apple. The FingerWorks users got screwed when Apple discontinued FingerWorks product development and put the team to work on developing multitouch for the iPhone instead. Now, the iPhone has several assistive technologies of its own (FingerWorks developed products for people with RSI), but the death of the FingerWorks products was still definitely a loss.

So in my own company, as long as I have the power to do so (I have a cofounder, so it's not entirely my decision), I'll keep slogging rather than shut down a product that is benefitting users.
The photo has the look of some hydraulics in the support legs failing and allowing the end of the bridge to fall.
If it was 100/1, no VC would stay afloat, right? The math here isn't that hard to work out; it tracks the portfolio logic of the funds themselves.
That's a good way to put it!

Town squares sound great, but every city square I've been in is full of yelling and pickpockets.
Looks to me the issue is with the author's mindset rather than the market.

He wants to build startups to compete on global scale, when half of his country doesn't have a bank account...maybe he is solving the wrong problems..
I also still get seemingly pointless pitches about crypto … businesses(?) looking for engineers. Not one have I read and thought hey that sounds like a real business plan
Only few people a year die from shark attacks, imagine writing about that type of low stats. ? Ridiculous.

On the other hand dozens die everyday from car crashes in USA alone. Nobody even mentions that much to relative to that.
> some reviewers have the need to demonstrate their superior intellect/knowledge/whatever by insisting on minutia.

> Few senior engineers are humble, and consider code reviews as a collaborative effort to deliver the best possible solution.

The difference between these two only that in first case author didn't agree with reviewer and agreed in the second.

The really worst type of review that approve without looking or IDC.
The number of times I've been bitten by an orm and the n+1 problem...

Which, I guess is fine for some internal thing that needs to handle 8 requests a day.

I've kinda stopped using orms at this point. The sql is usually clearer than whatever dsl has been shoved into the orm. If you ever change databases, it requires slightly more work (assuming you haven't gone too crazy with db specific functionality), but burning a day or two to update the sql in your project is usually still quicker than orchestrating the migration.
Great article. Easy to read for a layman yet comprehensive.
Can you show me the exact link where the reference can be found?
Nothing to add, just: yep, all of this.
Wait ... it's not a stab at rationality? It had me LOLing at the ridiculousness. I thought it was in the same vain as the OP.
What's the difference in appearance between these?
You can sell or give away the right to develop the land.

Similar to HoAs you can restrict the usage of your land and as long as someone else holds the keys to unlocking that usage it will survive bankruptcy. The title would retain the restrictions.

It needs to be an entity due to no rules from private entities lasting forever, by making some entity control the release it isn't you deciding to persist but them.

It isn't foolproof of course but avoids the simplest failure modes.
Scholarships also just possibly dried up after the great recession. My wife and I both graduated from same state with similar GPA, though I was 2010, she 2012. We qualified for the exact same scholarship. Mine covered 100% of my tuition, hers 75%.
Well, that's illogical. Lots of serious things have ads. Youtube, the Wall Street Journal, Highway 1. Take your pick.
There should probably be some indication that you posted a link to your own blog.

Surprised the green/blue split that happened in a lot of languages didn't make it in there with the mention of 'Orange'.
Not to derail, but this reminds me of a cave in Southern Arizona. Graffiti is banned and it’s heavily enforced, but there is ‘historic’ graffiti from the 1920-40s that is preserved. I always found this case very interesting.
What you are asking for is a fantasy. I have found the explanations and observations of Anders Nielsen to be very insightful.

This one especially explains my position. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pJ4JIoGnzc
This is a very good article, makes sense of the current organization.
In excel I click on a block of data and click on the graph I want and it appears. I use Python (Pandas) and Matplotlib pretty proficiently and I haven’t found a need to sub those for an excel graph. No picky data types. No installing and teaching someone Jupiter or Pandas or an IDE. The anti tech sales guy can just change the data in the cell, or pull the little box down. Or double click in the graph where he wants to insert a title.
You’re fighting a losing battle here. I have need for Python in what I do, but none of my Finance partners do. Coding has to get much much simpler before it will ever replace excel.

I’d bet money you are also the person who wonders why the world uses Windows over Linux for many tasks. When you can answer why regular people choose Excel over code and why regular people choose Windows over Linux, you’ll get it, and you can make a positive change in code to bring Linux and Code more mainstream.
> But in terms of total # of employees, total $ of turnover and profits I would expect it to be the reverse.

In general, the less money that startups raise, the better their returns:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/15/overdosing-on-vc-lessons-f...

There are a number of reasons for this, a big one being that marginal revenue is always the least profitable:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/26/toxic-vc-and-the-marginal-...
At least applications built upon the “we call the OpenAI api” product strategy are less scammy than Web3 felt.
You know they’ll turn the genetic code “ownership” into NFTs so some cryptobro can brag they own the Greater Borobudur Howling Monkey after they’re long gone…
What's Threads like? Is it all influencers etc. trying to gain as much space and influence as possible while it's new? Is the UI janky? Are load times poor?

Or is it a relatively smooth transition into Twitter 2.0?
Swift and WebAssembly
The cog can be an outcome that is almost as bad the slog. You are overestimating the amount and range of learning that is possible under the vc path outside of the slog (eg the cog).

Indeed, you may feel like you are learning quite a bit. But that will generally be lessons that the vc investors want you to learn.

Your statements imply that there are lessons to be learned that can only be facilitated by the kind of money that vc investors offer. But your own company (Cloudflare) makes cloud technology more affordable and partially weakens the rationale for getting vc investments.

When you have a soft money bed to land on, you will be less incentivized to search for a broad range of knowledge. Arguably, you will be learning less as a result of this money safety net.

You will be operating under the vc cog thinking that you are learning significantly both quantitatively and qualitatively. As the vc cog wheel continues to churn, you have the illusion of epistemic progress.
My brute force Rubik's cube solving algorithm is to find someone who knows how to solve them and threaten them with brute force until they solve it
> there is more or less a guarantee that your data won't be sucked up by a corp

Not true. "The HIPAA Privacy Rule establishes the conditions under which protected health information may be used or disclosed by covered entities for research purposes" [1]. Your de-identified data can be sucked up by a corp for research purposes. You are protected because your identity will be removed before data is used for research.

https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/special-topics/r...
Ask HN: Where to find an old software component
Hi,

I'm looking for a very old software component.
I checked already the usual common places without success.

Any idea where to look for?

Thanks
It is not illegal to ask for a photo. “Should not ask” is not the same as “cannot ask”.

Asking for a photo opens an employer to claims of discrimination, but it would still have to be proven, so the government is advising against it. But it may well be that in practice, the government will not be spending resources on trying to or be able to prove discrimination, even if a photo is required.
> The system is made up of people, some of them may abuse their access. Other laws, in theory, will hold them to account.

In theory. The crux of the matter is whether there is significant abuse or not, and how well it is handled once uncovered. Based on history (PRISM, Five Eyes, etc.), I'm not at all optimistic.
Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.
I'm in The Slog and coming up in 10 years Bootstrapped. Not sure what to do.
True for some universities. My university (Top 30 overall, public) does not consider intended majors as part of undergrad admissions, supposedly. Now, it would be practically challenging for a physics major to start at algebra and get up to calculus soon enough to start the physics classes, but no one would stop you. A few majors require an application in the second year, but those are specialities like journalism, business, library science, not regular STEM majors (except CS as of recently).
According to the same source, 2022 was the second-most VC deals since 2006, and ca the 4th worst for IPOs according to stockanalysis.com. There's clearly a massive upward trend in VC deals, while IPOs are much more stationary. Eyeballing those charts, the average number of VC deals, especially in the relevant period for today's IPOs (10+ years ago), is probably closer to 5-6k, and the average number of IPOs to 250, ie ~5%. Combining this with the folk wisdom that 90% of all startups fail, this seems to suggest that half of the successful startups go public, actually. Lots of things that we'd need to account for (not all IPOs are probably startups, # VC deals != # of startups,...), but speaking about tendencies, the data doesn't seem to support such a strong statement.
It's hilarious to read things like:

”[Threads] is not a free speech platform."

Where the implication is that Twitter is, somehow, more free-speech oriented. A company which since the acquisition:

- suspended journalists without violation of any Twitter rule

- complied with foreign government requests to remove tweets (something which Elon had been critical of the previous execs)

- banned ElonJet

- declared cis and cisgender to be a slur and a bannable offense (free speech absolutism for misgendering and dead naming but not this, interesting)

- banning users who posted about #BlockTheBlue

- prevented people from posting, seeing, liking, replying to, or retweeting tweets with Substack links

- threatened to suspend accounts with Mastodon or Instagram links in their profile or in tweets, additionally marking links to Mastodon as malware

- is currently preventing Threads from trending (supposedly)

Twitter is not a free speech platform and that's okay, the owner can do whatever he wants with it. To say it is when the actual track record says otherwise is ridiculous. Elon's posturing and virtue signaling about this has been the most annoying part; just say it's yours and you'll do what you want!

This is no different from Threads by the way. Zuck has his own goals, biases, and whims that he'll bend Threads to. Again, that's okay, we just need to acknowledge that!
Yes, using an adblocker would be a way for me to not see ads.

But I'm not using one because I usually don't mind seeing ads as it's the main income for most sites.

In this case the ad to content ratio is just too much for my taste. Too many ads and not enough distinction between ads and content.

BTW I tried to add more constructive criticism in another reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36653500 as the parent is flagged dead by now it might not be easily visible
Yes the same brilliant Excel modeller, and criminally convicted pharma-bro
Maybe 405 or 406 then? I mean, sure it's not right either, but better than 418? (I'd say go with 404.)
How do you do this? Does the controller then not know what the receiver is or wants in any way? Surely the controller needs to put something on the channel in the correct format?
I hear about job applications and interviews these days and they sound so daunting.

My first job as a developer in 2006 I sat with the lead developer, had a very comfortable chat about things I had built, things I was interested in both related to programming and otherwise. Conversation turned to math and algorithms a little bit. He stepped out and came back with an offer. Whole thing took maybe 45 minutes.

I honestly feel as far as interviews have gone, it did the best of honestly sizing me up as a person.
What a great linting concept! Wow, just imagine a world where semver violation scanning was used by PyPi in all of its hosted pip packages.
I assumed that was implicit in my reply.
Elsewhere you state a preference for "least restrictive free speech laws". However, you do seem to suggest that there should be some limits? Hate speech laws are seen by some as an unnecessary intrusion on freedom of speech.

Part of the town square is actually being accountable for what you say, which the on-line troll world avoids. How to align free speech with unaccountability?
This is my exact take on the whole "town square" concept. It's just fucking stupid. For one a town doesn't have a hundred thousand people let alone a million or hundred million. So a "town square" with even a hundred thousand people is already a broken concept. A real town also doesn't have a hundred cardboard cutouts controlled by marketers, spammers, and spy agencies brigading around purporting to be real people.

If Twitter or anyone else wanted to even start pretending to be a "town square" there would be no algorithmic feeds and you'd only ever see posts from your friend list. No one goes to the "town square" to be bombarded with street preachers and guys with trench coats trying to sell you cheap watches. Twitter uses "town square" to evoke images of Mayberry when it more resembles 1970s Times Square.
I'm not following this bit from box 1.

> Objective tests of Opponent-Colors Theory became possible when the theory was formulated as a hypothesis about how cone signals are transmitted to perception. The formal exposition spells out the mathematical transformation of cone responses to opponent-color pairs; baked into the math is the linearity of Opponent-Colors Theory implied by the description of color appearances as simple (mathematical) combinations of red-versus-green, yellow-versus-blue, and black-versus-white

Why does the fact that colour appearance can be described in terms of the unique hues imply that the representation must be linear?
They've released an "OpenAI Cookbook" with examples of several common tasks.

https://github.com/openai/openai-cookbook
Beelink also offers barebone version if you live close enough to them. I'd prefer minisforum though, according to STH and other user reviews it's way quieter and cooler, and doesn't have the troublesome magnetically attached power cable.

The only reason I didn't return my Beelink GTR7 is there was a deal and I got it for only ~$370 (barebones).
I was doing a lot of contract work a little over a year ago for about 3-4 different web3 clients. I’m back to working FT at a regular startup. The money isn’t there any more and that’s all that anyone who actually saw what was happening really cared about.
Never fear, we’ll get there
Yup, that’s one big reason people keep up The Slog. It’s even an honorable one. But, knowing people who are 10+ years into that journey, it can be extremely painful.