skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of the questions was about an element in the periodic table and I got to study periodic table in 8th or 9th grade.

So, apart from the obvious questions about American history I think getting them right also depends on the country you're from.

That said, a reasonably educated adult should be able to answer most of them excluding the country specific questions like unit conversion, history & constitution.
The difference between HN coders and 5th graders is that we get paid to figure out the shortcuts fast, even if 1/26 times something breaks.
or Mojo :)
Colloquially, it has meant that my entire life. As a fifth grader, I was an ass so I'm sure I told kids I was smarter than them because I did better on a test.

As I aged, "smart" became a nebulous concept.
I stopped after five after seeing this pattern as I assumed this is some kind of experiment.
>> "in many ways"

These words are doing a lot of work.
The Tropic of Capricorn is in the Southern Hemisphere, but, FWiW Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb .. but that's a "correct answer" here.
For a small place there's a lot of sandgropers on HN somehow
Outsourcing was already a thing more than ten years ago though. It may be easier to achieve thanks to all the freelancers available, but bosses still want to hire people to control them, while outsourcing prevents that in some ways.
Note this is from February
Writing the query is only half of the work, and it's the easiest since SQL is perfectly fine as a query language (duh... who would have guessed ?). There's also a M in ORM. Good ORMs will give you nice abstractions for querying but will also let you do the query yourself if you ever need it while still mapping these queries to your objects.
Who's "we"?

Software engineers? The ones who proudly refuse to unionize?
If you mess up in construction, you (or others) might get killed. Less likely in a kitchen.
By what logic? What is the right price?

I find it fascinating and deeply sad how the fundamental position on capital markets seemingly shifts depending on how we feel about our current treatment (as if there were not always people who took a hit)
That's not what copyright infringement is.
You weren’t getting compensated for your commute time even previously. So you were underpaid either way.

Being at the mercy of a cost cutting boss isn’t going to improve your situation - they will always find a way.
Offshoring has always been an option and blaming it on WFH is pointless. Every company goes through the cycle of offshoring, doing it too much, regretting the decision and bringing back some of the jobs eventually. We are in the “doing it too much” phase.

If they don’t realize their mistakes, they eventually end up being like Boeing. Cheaper coders are cheaper for a reason.
> wages for new hires in construction, manufacturing, food and other blue-collar sectors appear to be ebbing too, according to an analysis of millions of jobs posted on ZipRecruiter.com. Job seekers report seeing roles that once offered salaries between $175,000 and $200,000 a year ago now being advertised for tens of thousands of dollars less

You mean, I can quit software engineering and install flooring for $150,000/year!? Count me in
That was at the core of me (CTO) discussing recruiting tests with HR - developers will always jump to the meta level of the test, try to find out what the test is about, then answer accordingly. These "personality" tests annoyed engineering candidates and the results where doctored by the candidates, but HR wouldn't give up.
A vest is bulletproof if you can shoot it and the human inside it keeps working. A laptop case is bulletproof if you can shoot it and... ?
There don't have to be damages?
>On the one hand, this move ensures the quality and consistency of HDMI experience.

Does it though? Does it really?

I don't understand this move from HDMI Forum. They're handing a win to DisplayPort.
Already been happening. This is exactly what's been going on for over a year now at the company I was most recently working for.

When I check in with folks still there, they mainly talk about how the time difference and distance has done nothing but add churn to the entire process both between devs but also between devs and management. Hopefully higher ups will recognize these inefficiences too, but that's wishful thinking.
> If I was a tech worker I would be championing every return to office initiative that exists, for my own self-preservation. "Yep boss, those face-to-face meetings and talks around the coffee pot are VITAL to this company's success." You have to choose your battles.

It's not as if you have any influence on that. It all comes down to dollars. Faking a need for office collaboration will only postpone matters a short while.

To be honest I'd love to get my redundancy package now, I've worked at a major enterprise for 15 years and would get more than a year's wage.

I hate working there since the pandemic. Our IT top leaders are complete idiots. And the flex desk office is a nightmare to work in, always running around with your bag of stuff trying to find a desk because nobody obeys the booking system (planon, which is admittedly a total piece of shit)

I'd love to go and work for a startup again but I need the redundancy money to make it through.
There is no end to the greed.
> A canny torturer

A canny torturer would read the Smart People on a public forum red-teaming cperciva's mind.
Almost like all the tablets fail around the same time because they're made in the same shoddy way, forcing system replacements every so many years...
That just proves one struggles with a lot of not well thought out assignments, not with all of them. That still means a badly designed book.

I grew up, as most of my friends, using a lot of xeroed exercise books and exercises notebooks. Monochrome copies, of course.

Never saw anyone having issues with that, weather 7 or 19 years old. If a kid struggles with monochrome computer screen, it means his learning materials are designed worse than post-soviet era 25 year old textbook.

BTW. I am eagerly waiting for better availability of eink monitors.
Return to office mandates don't solve this problem, they will still fire you and replace you with someone cheaper and more desperate to move to work. I've seen folks move to work in office only to be immediately laid off.

Frankly, businesses are due for a reckoning because they're coasting on skeleton crews barely managing to survive critical incidents. More businesses than you think are ran like Boeing under the hood.
> why not RustMinix -- and get the benefits of microkernel design?

A person could reasonably argue that this is redox. It's different in that it's a new OS rather than a rust-ified version of an existing thing, but still, it's a microkernel unix-ish OS in rust.
I would say it's still worth reading The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. I'm sure some of the examples are antiquated, but it's a really interesting book.

Programming Pearls too would still be worth reading
When I was in the 5th grade, I learnt useful things like the metric system.
Then history repeats itself and the low cost centre needs higher cost support.

There is no real special secret in the WFH world that changes this pattern.

Tech is special in that there is no real capital barrier to a whole lot of what we do; and yet low cost countries are not outputting products...
I've been writing SQL for something like 25 years and always thought the columns being SELECTed should have come last, not first. Naming your sources before what you're trying to get from them to me at least makes much more logical sense. Calling aliased table names before I have done the aliasing is weird.

Also it would make autocomplete in intelligent IDEs much more helpful when typing a query out from nothing.
Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France
Hmmm - I coded aircraft control, exploration geophysics, and computational algebra systems. I do love a shortcut but triple checking to avoid physical crashes, expensive mistakes and other math people laughing is first nature over speed.

#6 on why I'm an atypical HN coder.
Ranebo, post step by step instructions and full source code. Post full photos of circuit board and interconnects. Go fucking wild.

I’m contemplating writing an end-to-end manual for a set of laser machines I maintain, including missing schematics, gerber/eagle/fusion files and binaries for the MCU, how to flash it etc. Some parts which are required for servicing are only handed to manufacturer-employed technicians (I obtained those too from retired people). It’s been a riot to get everything and to learn how to disassemble, troubleshoot, fix, reassemble these machines.

But am I ever pissed at the manufacturer and the aftermarket for screwing people over. The markups on simple items are insane and they remove tags and IDs so you don’t know what the parts are. At this point I don’t care what’s proprietary information and what isn’t.
Maybe.

Offshoring is not new and I’m not sure work from home has any influence. They certainly had these ideas years ago.

I can say from my experience the output and productivity of offshore devs hasn’t matched local. Not necessarily because of capabilities, but communication and culture.
Only replying because playing same thought in head. Once two points relation exists. Simplest form distance. Either may be considered centre. Infinite points exist along that relation. And more can be imagined. The set of all points having the same distance from A as the distance from A to B etc.
As someone who was very bright, in 5th grade, in the US, in the early 90s, I might have known 12-15 of those. Would have been more like 8th grade. We wouldn't have known capitols of other countries or generals until late middle school. World history didn't start until middle school. Same with chemistry/elements.
the opinions follow class lines
Do you have the same opinion on Jan 6 rioters?
This made me realize that the last time the Tropic of Capricorn's location was relevant to me probably was the 5th grade.
HDMI forum is a corrupt cartel which sole existence is to make sure they can continue fleecing everyone on patent fees.
HVAC systems are usually advertised as lasting at least a decade, but the warranty is usually only a year or two.

Honestly, I think something needs to be done so that companies are held liable for expensive products failing and needing expensive repairs after a year or two.
This is all fantastic info. I have included the details and a link to these comments at the bottom of the post. Great work!
I'm a software engineer and you don't speak for me.

There are plenty of software engineers who would unionize, given the chance. It's not easy to do. And sure, with enough effort we could, but that's a pretty big difference from "refusing to".
got all right except for US-specific questions, and a musical instruments one. Perhaps a generalised version would be even more fun; though I think that'd be devoid of history.
sounds like the memory storage is failing on some sort of logging systems for these to be going down at the same time-ish (same number of logs per day written etc over cheap flash).

Shame on this manufacturer.
For those also wondering:

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-West-Australians-called-sandgr...
This is absolutely true. Still, sometimes outsourcing can go horribly wrong. I wrote about a shocking, outrageous case here:

https://respectfulleadership.substack.com/p/when-outsourcing...
A start would be wages matching productivity.

World Economic Forum [1]
"Between 1948-1979, the percent growth in productivity and wages were relatively similar, with an increase of 108 percent and 93 percent, respectively. The growth from 1979-2018, however, has been drastically different. While net productivity has continued to increase by an expected 70 percent, hourly compensation in the country is less than a fifth of that at just 12 percent."

1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforc...
The question is: who holds power in the relationship? If workers join together (unionize) they can demand a greater share of business' profits which are generated by those workers.
When It Comes to Artificial Intelligence, 'Big Data' Isn't Everything
No need to presume: you can read the article. "dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization."

Which is fair enough, I think.
> The only reason anyone had any reason to distrust vaccines is because they "cause autism

With the covid vaccine specifically the reason to distrust appears to be totally different. It was the extreme rush "to production" with a new piece of biotechnology without a long term track record, mandating its administering to the public, and at the same time the total suppression of any discussion of the risk-benefit balance and the side effects. This was precipitated also by the mask communication fiasco (they are "useless" first, then they are suddenly required). I hope you can see that distrust is a very expected outcome in people who tend to think critically.
> Who invented the lightbulb?

> Thomas Edison

> Nikola Tesla

> Alexander Graham Bell

None of the provided answers are correct.
But how would you know what to order if you don’t have a prescription?

Trial and error? I guess that might work if you have a simple correction (no astigmatism).
Diffusion models are real time game engines
> Its purely manual labor, there is not much if anything to innovate or be creative.

So is that cushy-ass PM job with a plethora of fringe benefits. How much do they make?

> We could say raise labor costs but most are already running razor thin margins.

Absolutely true
Discussions

(290 points, 6 months ago, 164 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39559318

(394 points, 6 months ago, 237 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39543291
The Vesuvius Challenge is using AI to virtually unroll Pompeii's ancient scrolls
Sorry, but that sounds an awful lot like c&p from the Trump fan base about the January 6th riots in the US.

Everything lies?

Even the worst campaigns use sprinkles of truth to make them more believable.
Eh, maybe. There's Indian devs from Noida are up to snuff; skilled, fluent in English and hard working, and mesh well with western team members.

But they're not cheap from what I've heard, especially with overhead setting up shop in a foreign country. Similar story for devs from São Paulo as well.
I think the politics of power is unavoidable no matter how well you silo your technical work from your people work.

Ten years ago, Debian saw three well respected members of the Technical Committee resign — including two former project leaders, one of whom designed the .deb packaging system — during what I see as a similarly heated vote/counter-vote power struggle. This Python saga feels similar.
SqlAlchemy was the reason I've stayed with Python all those years developing line-of-business apps. When you are pumping out an app every 2 weeks, you don't have time to manually write SQL. It's comprehensive, it's sane, it's evolving, it's good. It taught me SQL, and how a good ORM should not limit you but empower you.

Since Entity Framework Core matured enough and I've discovered LINQ, I said my goodbyes and switched to C#.

Thanks, Mike Bayer and all maintainers, for helping me earn my living using your software all those years.
US based online contact vendors reject orders without a signed prescription. The doctors intentionally don't sign them. The workaround is to order them from Canada
> Besides Tesla's own words on the matter

Their words don't matter. Musk and Tesla lie routinely. They plainly don't want to be credible and they've lost all credibility.
I think it’s accurate to say that Rust’s syntax and semantics are both simpler than those of modern C++. That isn’t to say that Rust is a simple language (it manifestly isn’t), only that being simpler than C++ is not a hard bar to clear.

(The proxy I use for this is the ratio of years spent programming to insane acronyms known. C++ has given me SFINAE, CTAD, SIOF, etc. so far, while Rust has only given me RPIT.)
I think home EV charging equipment is heading in the same direction as well. Very few have local and open APIs and instead depend on the vendors cloud service for control.
great read.

I have several Daikin split units and
installed Faikins on them. https://github.com/revk/ESP32-Faikin

Having the PCBs made, flashing them, sourcing the connectors,and installing them was a bit involved, but setting them up in home assistant was one of the best things this nerd has ever done.

I wish there was an over-arching collective of hackers who would teach the principles, and help collaborate to decipher these protocols and help build software and microcontrollers to replace proprietary systems like the one Advantage Air has. I bet a simple ESP32 could handle this.
I have one suggestion. The dialog at the end like "you got the following questions wrong: 23" can be easily mistaken for the number of questions answered wrong. I did!

If that be changed to avoid the confusion, it will be great.
There's a rumor that 16 GB will be the minimum for the M4 generation.
Cool! LSL is such an interesting language. Having an explicit state with entry and exit functions is quite unique I think, and seems like it could be useful outside of SL. Given that scripts are isolated and communicate via messaging over channels (IIRC), was there ever any interest in executing it on the BEAM virtual machine?
Why not go work on redox, or write something new?

I don't get this fixation rust proponents have to try and force-jam it into pre-existing projects, instead of writing their own rust software.
Getting a prescription when you don't know what you need makes sense. Getting one just because your last one has expired (1 year) is the off-putting aspect.
I got 3 wrong and it says the same. Also I’m not American so some of those questions were hard haha
I know multiple people who did 15+ years at Google or other big tech cos, and got let go despite having consistently good performance reviews. Those companies figured they could be replaced with younger and much cheaper people (or not replaced at all since the companies overhired during the pandemic).

Fortunately, most of these people managed to find new jobs relatively quickly, albeit with somewhat lower comp packages.
Is there actually a open source good alternative of Adobe Acrobat? I mean one where you can easily 1) merge and extract pages 2) edit content, e.g. change a single line in a simple vector graphics, add text ornother elements 3) place a signature and create a "protected" pdf. AFAIK, there isn't a single good open source program to do all of these things. Why?
Something like the DOT language used in GraphViz

https://graphviz.org/doc/info/lang.html
Be warned, you can't just push an update if you make an error installing the floor.
So they get you back into the office and then can still outsource anyway? What?
That space is being taken up to deal with stricter thermal, dust, moisture, RF, shock, vibration, etc. requirements. It'll run on one battery while you change the low one. I really hope you're kidding trying to draw any comparison to a Surface laptop.
> When I check in with folks still there, they mainly talk about how the time difference and distance has done nothing but add churn to the entire process

I don't buy that. Saudi Arabia and the United States, via Saudi Aramco, have figured out a solution to that long ago. Business "flows" unimpededly between the two for decades.
> Sounds a bit like "new thing scary" unless you show why having select in front actually avoids problems

This isn't really fair. BeefWellington gave a reason why SQL is how it is (and how it has been for ~50 years). It's reasonable to ask for a compelling reason to change the clause order. Simon's post says it "has always been confusing", but doesn't really explain why except by linking to a blog post that says that the SQL engine (sort of but not really) executes the clauses in a different order.

I think the onus of proof that SQL clauses are in the wrong order is on the people who claim they're in the wrong order.
> I agree that employees could collectively extract more of the value they help create, I don't think every article ok the topic is the right place for that discussion

You don't agree with anything reasonable at all. The way you just said that blames workers, as if it's workers' fault.

Frankly, until people like you stop refusing to listen, every article on the topic is the right place for this discussion, because it's arguably the largest problem facing most people today and people who don't think it's important are a big part of the problem. Whatever ivory tower economics you want to talk about instead just isn't as important.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/41-20-0002/2023004/m-c/m...

In 1970 Detroit, the city was 30% black. What comparable city does Canada have?
Timezone effect, I think. Just us and the whole of East Asia online now. The Poms and Europeans are just about to wake up, and the Americans have logged off for the night.
The best of both worlds is something like sqlc. You write plain SQL queries and it will generate the "ORM" code for you using the queries you wrote.
Is it easier to be poor when everyone is poorer?
I used it for years on FreeBSD and hacked around its many parts. So much nostalgia!
Between patents, trade secrets, and DMCA, the government is the source of the problem here. Arguably the FTC could step in here but I think they have bigger problems to tackle.
https://prql-lang.org/ has a bunch of good examples on its home page.

If you engage the syntax with your System 2 thinking (prefrontal cortex, slow, the part of thinking we're naturally lazy to engage) rather than System 1 (automated, instinctual, optimized brain path to things we're used to) you'll most likely find that it is simpler, makes more logical sense so that you're filtering down things naturally like a sieve and composes far better than SQL as complexity grows.

After you've internalized that, imagine the kind of developer tooling we can build on top of that logical structure.
I couldn't find a Canadian (or any foreign) retailer that would ship to the US, but I found tons of US retailers that allow self-entry (as an alternative to uploading a signed prescription) as I described.
Is GitHub Down?
Unable to access GitHub starting a couple minutes ago, but all green checkmarks on https://status.github.com/. Is it just me?
...the human behind it keeps working.
It looks like it's fixed.

'We believe we have resolved the issue, and are currently monitoring the results. No email has been lost.'
Yes, which is very sad. Nearly all things go into this direction. I still remember the old days of jail breaking the iPhone, and the cat and mouse chase with Apple.
That's just absurd.

An IDE or a browser have a huge number of failure points.

Just starting up initiates large numbers of complex operations, file I/O, processing, database, graphics, platform specific operations, what not. They are in a way OS of their own.

Comparing a CLI application, that's scope is tiny compared to a full-blown IDE or a browser, is absurd!
There actually is - see the various revolutions over the past few hundred years. But, as always, there’s a “but”: things would need to get much worse for that to be possible, and they would deteriorate by another order of magnitude after it happens. I’m not aware of any exceptions.
So you want to decentralize your website with IPFS (2017)

https://macwright.com/2017/08/09/decentralize-ipfs

IPFS, Again (2019)

https://macwright.com/2019/06/08/ipfs-again

How IPFS is broken (2020)

https://fiatjaf.com/d5031e5b.html

Why I Moved My Blog from IPFS to a Server

https://neimanslab.org/2024-01-31/why-i-moved-my-blog-ipfs-t...

These articles have HN submissions too, also see this relatively recent thread: Is IPFS working these days?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37750529
The Case for Hypochondria
Frankly much less clearer/less readability than the Kotlin code.