skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why is Google Workspace tech support so bad?
Sorry for the rant, I know "corporate SaaS support isn't built to actually help people, and their staff isn't set up to succeed" isn't super original, I'm just baffled about the obviousness of all.

Working in IT in a mid-sized company that mostly runs on Google Workspace. It seems very clear that due to either size and/or complexity of a Google sheet (some of our Ops people miss Excel too much), we managed to break a document that is fairly important for a business unit. It just doesn't open anymore, stuck in a loop. Can't download, create copies, look at history. So far, so normal - we have off-Google backups and so we can move along on the business side. And from the Google side, it seems like looking at internal logs to fix the error or saying "tough luck, here's an old backup" feels like an easy enough support job.

But for the last 6 weeks I've been stuck in Google Workspace support hell. They've asked me to record an empty tab until the request times out after 12 minutes so many times (including in a live Meet call), asked for HAR files and then dragged their feet on random nonsense so that the 2 weeks lifetime of their logs expire and they need to ask for a new file, and they've decided something must have gone wrong with me granting them access to the file when they cannot access the file themselves (i.e. the error occurs as described). And in between they've seem to have escalated this through three levels of support so that maybe now I'm only one level away from an actual Google engineer with the ability to investigate the actual error?

For some regulatory reasons our legal team even put us on the Workspace Enterprise (the most expensive one Google offers) tier some time ago, no impact here.

Why are things like this?
Remember when the Ukrainian counter offensive failed, in part due to the Russian helicopters coming in and absolutely annihilating the offensive?

I do. The helicopter isn’t dead, neither is the tank.

But their tactics might change, and they might become optionally manned, because why not?

But if you need quick reaction, massive firepower, or troop transport either quickly or in difficult to reach places, good luck doing it with drones or wheeled vehicles.
Discussion (75 points, 6 months ago, 119 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40115751
It's simple. There exists a market for app stores on Android, there doesn't exist such a market on iOS. So, Apple can't be said to have a monopoly position in the iOS app distribution market, because, again, such a market doesn't exist, and there is no general obligation to create one (there is a different discussion about the app market, which Epic was attacking and which failed for now).

But on Android, you do have a market for app stores - there is Google, and then there are various bit players (F-Droid, Samsung Store, Amazon Store, and others). And Google is by far the biggest, and using their position to set the rules for all the others, including actively hostile actions like de-listing some apps if they don't offer exclusivity to Google Play, disallowing Google Play installation if the OEM doesn't ship it by default, etc.
To my eye it looks like either (silk) screen printed or wood block pressed.
Not sure whether it was the removal of best before dates or Brexit, but fresh food and veg in Britain is often already rotting in supermarkets. So now instead of the store throwing out loads of produce past its best, I have to do it when I get home and realise that yet again one in each pack of 3 onions is rotted.
Back in high school, we had a pascal programming class. The teacher had a rule, no video games on the computers unless you write them yourself. I think he was being tongue in cheek, but I wrote a few simple arcade games, and he was true to his word. But students started playing my games instead of working on the assignments. So he said no games until you turn in your assignment for the day.

Not a very dramatic example, but it made me so proud that I decided then and there on the career path I'm still on today.
Which is exactly why the Google case succeeded: Google does have competing app stores, and they are crushing them using anti-competitive practices.
> they are quite optimistic about nuclear power

Centrifuge enrichment and improved extraction techniques (high quality ore in Canada or else in-situ leaching) mean CO2 emissions are very low.

Would you care to provide references for CO2 emissions from already built nuclear power stations (preferably not the infamous StormSmith and Sovacool papers)?

For new-build, Hinkley Point C "not an EPD" make interesting bed-time reading. https://www.edfenergy.com/sites/default/files/hpc_-_life_cyc...
See for yourself

https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&...
The browser should have been the distribution mechanism and user agent sandbox for mobile apps. Unfortunately both OS platforms owned their own browsers and would benefit from controlling app distribution under the guise of protecting app quality.

It is also exceedingly ironic that browsers played such a key role in wrestling control from the dominant windows platform to the benefit of Apple and Google.
We cureently have that on pixel devices, where you can just run windows if you want

https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/02/14/android-13-virtualiz...

We had that with linuxonDex or maruos or motorola or..

People say they want that, but when they actually do, it completely flops.
Cognizant Discriminated Against Non-Indian Workers, US Jury Says
Halfbrick studios made Tank Tactis, a game prototype that they had to ban from their own office. GDC talk from 2013[0] covers it, which is summarized here[1], and also publicized by a 15 minute People Make Games video[2].

[0]: https://www.engadget.com/2013-04-01-tank-tactics-the-prototy...

[1]: https://www.engadget.com/2013-04-01-tank-tactics-the-prototy...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOYbR-Q_4Hs
What about the GPD Pocket?
The last smart TV I had flashed an annoying light if there were no wifi connection.

Cover the light, I thought!

...the annoying light is adjacent to the IR receiver.

Cover the light, no remote.

Is this intentional?
https://archive.is/5Gj6C

Cognizant = Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp
How much would it cost to slap some plywood on an old/scrapped heli engine and make a remote-controlled decoy that just looks and sounds a bit like an attack chopper?

Drones don't need to be small, and big doesn't always mean expensive.
Yes, I created a leaderboard for programmers and recently found some people using it as motivation to sleep less, spending 18 hour energy drink fueled days coding for up to a month at a time. [0]

> How do you feel about its impact

Even though it's not healthy, I let it happen to a point. I reach out by email about the health impacts. Some people say, "I plan to stop at the end of the month".

> have you taken steps, like focus groups or educational initiatives, to address the issue?

I set limits to how long they can be on the leaderboard, and I reach out personally to those who overdo it.

My next project is wonderful.dev [1], where I promise to never email any dev users (we don't even store your email) and have a focus on usability even if it means slower growth. This is in contrast to most apps these days trying to hook users with addictive patterns, always competing for your attention.

[0] https://wakatime.com/leaders

[1] https://wonderful.dev
> With enough around you could run a low-power mesh network in an emergency to keep communication open between folks that are separated.

And it plays videogames. Sounds like a win-win to me.
we like it this way

but thanks
Yes, but the book also has enough inaccuracies as to make it... I don't know what. For example, in the first chapter the author says "no one knows what a session is," which is patently false. I myself implemented control logic in telco equipment to respond to X.225 compliant messages to change the state of an abstract state machine used on either side of the connection. And while I'm sure it's possible to use CONS or CLNP to communicate with a CEEFAX terminal, that is far from the only use to which the various OSI compliant protocols were put.

Just because you don't understand something, that doesn't mean it's bad.
Linearizability in Distributed Systems
you just like your assumptions to go unchallenged. goodbye!
Children in a large group that's unsupervised is about as close to infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters as you can get. If you present them with a challenge that has some tangible reward at the other end (free games), you are guaranteed a solution at some point.

The universe's RNG just happened to roll favourably in Sydney in the 90s and the rest is history.
I just learned quite a bit about retries. I really liked this tour of one area of the domain in the form of a narrative. When written by someone who clearly knows the area and also has skill at writing it, that's a great way to learn more techniques.

Would love to read more things like this in different areas.
Sure, but then it isn't related to the CA system anymore and any action from them wouldn't be under the radar anymore.

Also this problem would apply to any key like gpg. Well, as long as it's not in a Hardware security module. Of course they could also seize that but at some point it becomes logistically impractical, at least for mass surveillance.
The overarching question is: why should the County have thought the hedge funds are overpaying for the claim and to take the money and run?

Usually when you have several suitors that purely have profit in mind, you're the mark. Doubly so when their cost of capital is higher than your own.

> to allocate expensive legal resources in chase of speculative claims

On a claim this big, the bankruptcy trustee takes care of that for you. They're literally a fiduciary. The cost would be reading whatever gets mailed to you, but at the end of the day, there isn't much control you have over the ultimate outcome.

And uhhh, in terms of credit worthiness, Kaseya has an interesting history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaseya_VSA_ransomware_attack .
I hope not! Because systems like PS/2, COM/Serial ports, etc are really simple and well-understood (compared to USB) which does make them more reliable or dependable in situations where it matters. Additionally, PS/2 is very much still used today: every laptop I've ever owned, including my brand-new 2024 ThinkPad P1, has a touchpad ostensibly using a PS/2 connection internally - and we get all this functionality essentially for free (yay lithography): it's all baked into a single "Super I/O" unit[1] which today is part of some larger IC on your mobo.

...that said, Microsoft and some hardware partners tried this when Windows XP came out; they were called "Legacy-free PCs", which in-practice just meant (excepting video and audio) all periphial ports were USB 1.1, with zero (exposed) ports for PS/2, parallel, serial, ISA, and gameport/MIDI; no floppy drive either; it was also a convenient excuse to omit a 56K modem too. (Anyone remember the iPAQ Desktop[2]?).

...but it was more style than substance: those computers were still x86 machines using the same mobo chipsets as a traditional box, so the hardware support for PS/2 and the like was still there in the chips, just without the traces connected to anything and the functionality disabled via BIOS settings or maybe something like an e-fuse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_I/O

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPAQ_(desktop_computer)
Those FPV drones (either of the bombing or suicide variant) seem to be precise enough - there's plenty of footage of them hitting moving vehicles in weak spots like engines/hatches, individual soldiers etc.

As for AI features when the comms are jammed, Russian lancet drones, which have some autonomous capability, seem to be running on Nvidia Jetson boards, and those things cost like $200.
The refund policy page is hilarious [1]
What are they selling that requires return shipping?

1. https://okbookmarks.com/refunds
WASM instead of React? That does not even make sense.
>No! I actually do take personal responsibility by:

None of these are taking responsibility. This is just a normal nihilistic life style being spun as meaningful behavior. You not having kids isn't making a sacrifice because there is no world in which you have kids.
what's so hard about providing the object code? you already generate it. how does providing the object code hinder your ability to sell your product or keep it secure?
Yes netwrck AI chat platform.

Had to takedown some stuff
That guy has been very active on twitter since the start of the development of the game. I don't have his account anymore since I stopped caring about twitter but ... he's probably still there journaling!

--
edit: I don't like half assed comments so I went and dig him up
https://x.com/HiddenAsbestos
In Android development, Java is basically deprecated at this point and Scala never really worked well.
> Google also can’t: Offer developers money or perks to launch their apps on the Play Store exclusively or first or Offer developers money or perks not to launch their apps on rival stores.

Very funny, that's Epic's bread and butter on PC.
Skynet was an ISP in Belgium (now Proximus).
> Wait, so the Google Play Store, which you can install alternatives to (F-Droid, Aurora, Amazon,...), and where you can easily install apps through other means (such as downloading an APK through your browser and running it from the file manager)

Easily ? No. But yes, you still can do it. Though Google restricted for example Total Commander from installing software and automatically updated it to the latest version even though it was prohibited in settings.
There was once a lovely project by Ishac Bertran called code {poems}[1]

The project involved collecting code as poems and publishing a collection of poems in hardcover. The final result is wonderful book of poems in the form of executable code.

Slightly off topic, but that’s my connection between poetry and programming.

[1] http://ishback.com/codepoems/index.html
Setfit
Novel stuff is AI, old stuff is statistics. Decision trees used to be called AI :)
Ok - I was hoping to get you to engage with the actual content of the article, but I'll just get to the point:

* Mentioning that a belief exists is not the same thing as endorsing it. And arguing that they are the same is an affront to open and rational discourse.

* A major point of the article is that many historical claims are fiction that are based more on speculation, and political, cultural, or national agendas than hard evidence. So it goes double that mentioning a historical claim in this context is not an endorsement of its accuracy.

* The fact that people are so hung up that they would call the author a weasel based on the mere mention that "a black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago" - regardless of the context in which it is used - says a whole lot more about their own beliefs and biases than the author's. They are basically reinforcing the whole point of the article.

Or, to quote the article one last time:

> To hear Americus in the name; to hear the Amerrique Mountains and their perpetual wind; to hear the African in the Mayan iq' amaq'el; to hear the Scandinavian Ommerike, as well as Amteric, and the Algonquin Em-erika; to hear Saint Emeric of Hungary; to hear Amalrich, the Gothic lord of the work ethic; to hear Armorica, the ancient Gaulish name meaning place by the sea; and to hear the English official, Amerike — to hear such echoes in the name of our hemisphere is to hear ourselves.
True, but I can easily see that the same role - short range airstrikes - could be played by drone teams in the future. They also have the capability to observe and strike targets over the treelines. And in top of that, they are cheaper, easier to scale and maintain, and do not require vulnerable airfields to operate.

Of course Russians will use their helis, they already built them, but nobody will probably seriously think about developing and building new helis in the future.
Great idea and implementation, thank you, I’ll definitely use it for my side project. Coincidentally, I just watched a talk by Mandy Michael [1] about HTML performance and accessibility, and was wondering if there is a tool nicer than browser’s built in accessibility tree viewer.

1. https://youtu.be/cghb0VpCJqM?si=5pWNrkPOyUsohyGJ
Boot into linux, rename defender folders.
I think I read this sort of "Fusiwe" tribesman story before but can't remember where. Anyway, the level of retardness is unbelievable. I dunno if anyone gave these guys an IQ test or if it's at all possible to conceive one for them but they are definitely not in the "average 100" range. More like 70-60, way smarter than any animal but too stupid to foresee consequences.

>> Fusiwe located the Pishaanseteri and promised to kill the first man he encountered. That man turned out to be an old friend of his, a young man who had brought Fusiwe's family a lot of game in the hope of marrying some daughter that any of the wives would give birth to. The young man had parted with Fusiwe in grief when the group split. Nonetheless, Fusiwe chose to kill his former friend, because he happened to be the first Pishaanseteri he saw.

Add being a psychopath in addition to severely mentally challenged and you got the perfect combination.
This is the reason I stopped contributing eventually. Can't download the db, API limits so low you can exhaust them with a couple exploratory queries, and a small group of people getting overly defensive when asked about it. I don't mind working for free, but this sucked the fun out of it.
To be fair I appreciate your post. I'm recently starting to dive into how to send emails for registration and it turns out sending emails is oddly hard.
Google does not care. They don't have to. They're a rich monopoly. Beyond that, they've always been bad at offering support and any kind of connection to users. It might be because they grew up serving free users of search and email. But that culture is how they run their services for businesses too.

Your other choice is to pay the other monopoly, Microsoft, who just recently revived their 90s strategy of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, except with Teams and Office. They may have slightly better support than Google but it is built on products that get more expensive over time. Office does have offline clients that don't have these types of issues as often though.

I hope there is some kind of push towards alternatives from others but who could those even be? Proton? OnlyOffice? Libre Office? No one seems like a serious challenger in this space, because it would be so hard to compete against Office. There is little investment interest here and so there is little competition.
If Google had tried to make an iPhone style ecosystem, all evidence is clear that they would have utterly failed, like almost every other consumer device that Google has tried to promote, and we would have had at least a few more iOS competitors (maybe Windows would have lived? Maybe Samsung would have finished Tizen?). The reason Android succeeded was precisely because it was open and available to multiple OEMs. But that also opens Google up more to anti-competitive scrutiny.
> This is paying people who are already registered to vote?

Others already pointed out that both are a crime.
Me too! And in retrospect, it's amazing what they managed to pull off with the C64's limited hardware.
Ah yes, the "source?" argument. The classic cry of people who want to disagree but have nothing productive to add to the discussion.

I could point you to literally dozens of books on the Pax Americana and its decline (google is your friend) and America's de facto empire, as well as historical studies of the Pax Brittanica and the Pax Romana. Or Chinese histories that discuss the waves of peace and prosperity following the growth of major dynasties which end exactly the same way. I suspect you won't read any of them though, since nobody who asks for a source in an online discussion really wants a source (nobody ever asks for a source when they agree with you). They just want to claim that their counterpart is uninformed.
The original iPhone was sold exclusively with an AT&T bundled plan in the US
> You can reliably disable it with Group Policy Editor.

It does not work.
You can disable _some things_ , but not the whole.
Like many services, credit cards, banks, etc, I’m sure Twilio use anti-abuse signals in their signup flow.

Things that can affect this:
- whether you’re on a VPN, big one, often results in high risk signal
- email domain and TLD, using an older domain can help, using a disposable address will be very high risk
- selected country not matching IP country

While it is annoying, I think it’s understandable for companies providing shared compute services. A spammer on a free account could easily burn valuable sending IP addresses for example.
That’s not what it says here:

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...

> By default, we use the manufacturer barcode to track eligible inventory throughout the fulfillment process, unless you change your barcode setting or your product is not eligible. When more than one seller has inventory with the same manufacturer barcode, we may fulfill orders with the inventory that’s closest to the buyer, to facilitate faster delivery
It's a demographics kind of thing. People simply got older. I'm too old for it, actually. Java was being hyped before Ruby caught on (which is around the time Rails became a thing). So that's what I was focusing on at the time.

Both languages emerged in the early to mid nineties (together with Python and a few other things). But Rails was much later than that. Now the demographic of the typical Ruby/Rails developer that got into Ruby about 20 years ago straight out of college is a forty something. Still relevant but a clear minority relative to the mass of developers that came after that grew up on things like Go, Rust, Node.js, etc. And of course Python made a comeback because of AI. So, you now see a lot of relatively young people doing a lot of stuff in Python that wouldn't typically be exposed to any Ruby.

I always looked at python and ruby as similarly capable scripting languages. With python a bit more oriented towards people who were simply looking to get shit done perhaps and ruby more geared towards computer science types obsessing about things like meta programming. A lot of that crowd moved on to other languages.

Ruby so far hasn't had a comeback movement like Python. Lots of people still use it of course but it's not an obvious choice to people that haven't used it before. All the AI stuff sort of flew by it. People do a lot of stuff client side these days which makes view oriented frameworks like Rails less relevant. Though with the server side rendering come back there is still some relevance of course. But that's more of a performance optimization that came out of the node.js community. And of course Rails inspired a lot of other frameworks for different languages so its unique selling point kind of went away.
Bitmap Scan sounds a lot like Rushmore technology in Foxpro[1]. Are they the same?

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoxPro

It is difficult to find a complete explanation for Rushmore nowadays, from what I remember, it would create a bitmap where each bit represented the nth record of the table you wanted to search, then with a single, fast sequential scan it would set the nth bit to 1 if the record satisfied all clauses of your search, 0 otherwise.

Try to see if this makes any sense to you: http://www.foxpert.com/docs/howfoxproworks.en.htm
It takes two to think