skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That is a nice theory. But if someone is doing 10x more work, they get 10x more emails, and 10x more mentoring. They are not rude, just very very tired!

10x devs do not do mentoring and "social skills", because it does not scale. They write readme, maybe record a video, and move on to next task. If you have a question, send email and you get response latter! Sitting all day on meetings kills productivity very fast!

Buttering someone up, just because they are lazy to study documentation, and somehow they have power over you, is not a team work!!!
And interestingly Iranians are mostly not the descendants of the so-called Indo-Iranian steppe nomads (genetically). But they speak various Iranian languages.
Thoughts on the Future of "AI"
Fair enough but it's still wild that the template for AI and robots in science fiction has (usually) been to portray them as hyper-rational, competent and logical even to a fault, but the most accurate prediction of what AI and robots turn out to be is probably Star Wars, not anything by Asimov.
If you're not making someone with a lot more money than you even richer you're probably not earning much yourself.

This is about how capitalism is structured it's not at all a matter of personal choice.
> To further assess the societal implications of our work, we collaborate with experts in our Responsible Development and Innovation team and as well as our Responsibility and Safety Council, an internal review group committed to ensure we develop AI applications responsibly.

"We consulted with ourselves and decided that we're a-okay!"
> I think at this stage Russia will keep going until it achieves its objectives, main ones being replace Ukrainian govt with a Russian friendly government,

They made this goal impossible when they attacked Ukraine in 2014. A government that's pro Russia is no longer electable. Zelenskyy could resign and however would replace him would be more anti Russia as well as whoever gets elected next time.

Anyone sucking up to Russia would get impeached and could not win re-election in any case. If Russia succeed in making Ukraine a dictatorship with a pet dictator its likely he would be overthrown very quickly. Even if they were able to conquer Ukraine they'd have to occupy it militarily indefinitely at great cost

> annex the Russia speaking regions,

This seems to pretend that those regions are any more happy to be joining Russia then the rest of Ukraine. Also it ignores that many people are changing to speaking Ukrainian even among people who immigrated from russia and people whose Ukrainian was not great until recently.

> demilitarize Ukraine.

Ukraine would never agree to this after what Russia has pulled.

> Whether the current US strategy makes things worse or not is an entirely different question, because you have to take into consideration things like the ability of the US to support Ukraine,

The US can keep supporting Ukraine as long as it wants to. The only reason it wouldn't is if a crazy guy was in charge and he decides to backstab our allies and undermine/destroy our government and national interests.

> the likelihood of Ukraine winning with the support,

Winning is hard but at least with US support Russian victory is practically impossible

> how much the support can hurt Russia in the long term

The main reason US wants to damage Russia is to prevent it from conquering Ukraine or from attacking other countries after that.

>the number of people dying from this, the risk of nuclear war, etc

Compare with risk of giving into nuclear bullying which encourages more bullying and makes nuclear weapon use much more likely in the medium term. The safer move is to call their bluff
My memory is grey, my eyes are bent, my back is dim ...

My C64 now sports a USB interface and a vast amount of storage. Dad bought it from the NAAFI in Rheindahlen. It came with a "datasette" and also had a cartridge slot, which you seem to have forgotten about.

Carts loaded in a few seconds, games on tape took 5-15 minutes. I cannot remember the price disparity between games on cartridge and tape but it must have been significant.

A few years later we bagged a floppy drive and whilst quick, it was huge. The lead time to load being 3s or 15m is almost immaterial in a two hour session. You pop in the tape, tell the machine to load and go off and grab a drink or whatever.

You note issues with Speccies but it was widely known at the time that you copied to chromium tapes instead of iron if you wanted a game to last. I think model names were C90 and D90 for 90 minutes tapes with those technologies. You never used double speed recording mode with games either.

When me and my brother returned home to West Germany from school in the UK, Dad carefully plugged the power lead into the video out. The next school hols we got to play on the now repaired unit ... and over 40 years later, I still have it.
> Why would I pay to improve the land if next year someone can simply outbid me and take the land off me?

You wouldn't pay. The building would be financed by debt and the debt would be attached to the land. You'd only pay the interest on that debt for as long as you maintain the lease on the land.

> Why wouldn't this world's Blackrock swoop in the instant a profitable lease comes up for auction?

Two reasons: Firstly, Blackrock could hypothetically do this in real life but they don't because they don't have the money. And secondly, from an ideological perspective they would have no motivation to. You are still thinking in terms of "owning land" and the idea that it's better to own more land. Under the new system, you can't own land, only rent it. Hence you want to minimise the amount of land you are leasing. If Blackrock gets the lease, they will lose money on the down payment, then lose money on the rent unless they can find something productive to do with the land. Any business they set up won't be competitive as they'll be paying more in rent than the surrounding businesses. Overpaying on rent is a strictly money-losing affair.
“The Venetian Patent Statute of 19 March 1474, established by the Republic of Venice, is usually considered to be the earliest codified patent system in the world.[11][12] It states that patents might be granted for "any new and ingenious device, not previously made", provided it was useful. By and large, these principles still remain the basic principles of current patent laws.“

What are you talking about.
> You mean...made a copy? Do you really not see the problem?

In precisely the same way as a robot scanning a physical book is.

If this is turned into a PDF and distributed, it's exactly the legal problem Google had[0] and that Facebook is currently fighting due to torrenting some of their training material[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43125840

If the tokens go directly into training an AI and no copies are retained, that's like how you as a human learn — except current AI models are not even remotely as able to absorb that information as you, and they only make up for being as thick as a plank by being stupid very very quickly.

> It's that robots are allowed to violate copyright law to read the books, and us humans are not.

More that the copyright laws are not suited to what's going on. Under the copyright laws, statute and case law, that existed at the time GPT-3.5 was created, bots were understood as the kind of thing Google had and used to make web indexes — essentially legal, with some caveats about quoting too much verbatim from news articles.

(Google PageRank being a big pile of linear algebra and all, and the Transformer architecture from which ChatGPT get's the "T" being originally a Google effort to improve Google Translate).

Society is currently arguing amongst itself if this is still OK when the bot is a conversational entity, or perhaps even something that can be given agency.

You get to set those rules via your government representative, make it illegal for AI crawlers to read the internet like that — but it's hard to change the laws if you mistake what you want the law to be, with what the law currently is.
Just searched for this - the demo video is hilarious!
Did you see the article references [1][2] from 2006 and 2017 that already argue that recursion is a security problem? It's not new just not well-known.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220477862_The_Power...

[2] https://www.qualys.com/2017/06/19/stack-clash/stack-clash.tx...
Whenever I see a test suite do 9 steps of setup to assert one thing and then (mostly) the same 9 steps again to assert some other thing, I die a little inside. Especially when the setup takes multiple seconds for each case.

The lesser evil is to just ”do what you need and test everything once you are arranged”.

You won’t get hundreds of neatly separated well-named test cases which fail for a single reason. But for slow tests that isn’t as important as keeping the redundant setup away.

I like the tree idea but once we have simple pure/immutable we don’t really have the problem of redundant setup being slow, just ugly.
Apparently Canada made an agreement with the U.S. a while back to place a 100% tariff on a line of affordable EVs made by Chinese manufacturers (I don't remember the name right now).

I suspect a reversal of that decision may be in the works.
> AI has the ability for convincing deepfakes, attacking the essence of information and communication in itself. This needs regulation, accountability, at least a discussion.

We're going to eventually have to have a serious discussion about, and to generate a legal and moral framework covering, identity rights. I'm going to guess that people will be able to locally generate high-quality pornography of celebrities and people they know that will be indistinguishable from the real thing imminently; at most it's 5 years away.

Getting hung up on the sex is a distraction. This is no different than anybody collecting a identifiable dossier on you, packaging it, and selling it. This has been a problem for everyone for the entire period of advertising on the internet, and before that with credit agencies and blacklists, and no progress has been made because it has been profitable for everybody for a long time.

Websites got a few decisions about scraping, saying that they were protected to some extent from people scraping to duplicate a particular compilation of otherwise legally copyable information. Individuals are compilations of legally copyable information. We're going to need publication rights to our own selves.

But like you say, we're not discussing any of this. Rich people are just doing what they want, and paying the appropriate politicians to pretend not to understand what's going on. Any pushback? Just Say China A Lot.
Portugal Drops Plans for F-35 Citing U.S. Political Uncertainty
Once you’re paid some minimum threshold you stop caring about money and start caring about your legacy.
> I like this article particularly because I think the trope that there's something unique and different about software engineering is pretty toxic

The ratio of software engineers working in novel design spaces compared to plumbing style work is best guess ~1:5.

The ratio in more mature fields like civil engineering is closer to ~1:500.

There are lots of similarities between software engineers and the few folk in civil etc doing actual novel design work.

> Nothing that we do is so unique that another competent engineer shouldn't be able to fill in for you when you are having an off day.

In novel design spaces people are not fungible.
I really need to learn Prolog. It looks interesting and powerful, but it's different enough form most languages that I'd need to actually sit down and learn it and how to write useful stuff with it.

At a superficial level, it looks a bit like Z3, which I do have some experience with, but I suspect that there's a lot of intricacies to Prolog that don't apply to Z3.
He emphasizes the need to present a positive alternative vision rather than simply opposing the current leadership or reverting to "yesterday's inadequate status quo."
One of These Will Be Your Favorite Chunking Technique for Rags
It's open source. If necessary, uv can be forked and maintained entirely as OSS.
but you keep saying to read the books. there is no copyright violation to read a book. making copies starts to get into murky grounds, but does not immediately mean breaking the law.
It reads like they are not using cross compilation and instead running compilers inside QEMU? It's surprising to me, as Chimera being an LLVM + musl distro shouldn't be impossible to cross-compile most userland packages.
> Curious to hear someone in favor of this

We have lots of natural gas, it burns cleaner than coal, and we're strongly embracing LNG exports. Europe doesn't have much natural gas, which would make nuclear a good counterpart to solar, but Greenpeace doesn't like that, so they'll wind up buying our gas.

(The best I can come up with for these specific rule changes is trashing the market for carbon credits neuters a significant cash stream for Tesla.)
Taking pride in your craft would mean having enough self-respect to both not burn your soul out for the sake of a corporation that wants to make you redundant and using it in a direction that directly benefits you.

I've been in the industry long enough now to see those 10x engineers having pride in their work get their mindset shattered because John from financials thinks they can juice the next quarter by laying them off.

If you want to have pride in your work as a supposed 10x engineer, work at 2x or 3x and save the remaining for yourself.
Have you read Stanislas Dehaene's book Th Code Of Consciousness? I'm super curious about your opinion.
no, story you mention is about internal USA matters, while this is about pulling levers of rule base world order, in attempt to keep world dominance and gain advantage in free market with anti-competitive practices.
maybe someone with real knowledge can add, but it appears : Coal power plants generate electricity to a grid connection in the common case; alternative sources of electrical generation have changed the economics in most North America markets in pure monetary terms, away from coal; coal plants are classic industrial infrastructure, they cost a lot of build but then operate in a steady way for a very long time, they sit in one location and never move. If all of that is true, then loosening the Coal Power Plant restrictions now seems like, not economic sense but literally a political gift to the incumbent, wealthy ownership. In some US coal states, the ownership of the coal plant is associated with long term political ties. It almost seems like loosening coal restrictions is a sort of political fiefdom guarantee, not an economic move.
All right! I cannot count to any fractional number, even conceivable ones, so using the counting time to assess conceivability fails for all fractions.

For small numbers, groping for any experience in the macro world fails once you get below the Planck scale.

I'm afraid you might have broken the fabric of the universe by even typing such a small number.
If this were true then software engineering jobs would have all already been offshored.

Software is much closer to a competitive race where small improvements in ability give completely outsized returns.
Tesla's upcoming cheaper electric car is basically a stripped-down Model Y
> something unique and different about software engineering

how much does the strength/weight ratio of building materials improve every year? how much does the price/quality ratio of building materials fall every year?

software engineering is working with technology where compute capacity was doubling and price/performance was halving every two years for decades. this rate of change has slowed, but in a world where the price of everything else inflates, software is a rare field that works with a continually deflating capital base.

the uniqueness of software development is real and based on underlying physical/economic factors that exist in very few industries.

software developers are not unique. they are still human. but the profession is unique and the financial incentives are unique.

consistent, careful, workmanlike effort over time wins on average, but because the incentives are large, many people will take the risk to get exceptional rewards.

i approach software development like a professional athlete. i work on optimizing every aspect of my performance (physical, mental, social, technical) to be the very best i can be. anyone who applies this level of dedication in any field will be highly successful, but it requires dedication, sacrifice, and risk, which many people are not willing to accept.

the world is full of exceptional software and algorithms designed by unique individuals who developed things nobody else could or would. there is a reason why mathematical discoveries are named after the people who discovered them.

building software for large corporations necessarily revolves around median-level teams, because mean-reversion always happens at scale, but that is also why a great deal of technical innovation takes place outside of large corporations.
And 2001, and I Robot and the Matrix and Star Trek. I should have let that comment percolate a bit.
> I think this should be front and center. To that end I propose "magnitude notation"[0] (and I don't think we should use the word logarithm, which sounds like advanced math and turns people away from the basic concept, which does make math easier and more fun).

The only reason that "logarithm" sounds like advanced math is because it was so useful that mathematicians, well, used it. Since this terminology is just logarithms without saying the word, if it is more useful it, too, will probably be used by mathematicians, and then it will similarly come to sound like advanced math. So what's the point of running away from a name for what we're doing that fits with what it's actually called, if eventually we'll just have to make up a new, even less threatening name for it?

(I'd argue that "logarithm" is frightening less because it sounds like advanced math than because it's an unfamiliar and old-fashioned-sounding word. I'm not completely sure that "magnitude" avoids both these issues, but it's at least arguable that it suffers less from them.)
I wonder to what extent the economics of coal will render the relaxed rules for coal power plants moot.
Do not disagree here. As long as it is on the CEO and head on eng. No some poor intern.
Microsoft announced Scareware blocker for MS Edge
Or just take the limit as an argument so developers can adjust it based on the platform. Python also has a recursion limit but you can change it if you need to.
Ah yes, my legacy: UserOAuthLoginProfileAPIService
Doesn't Strauss like centaurs?
Ah bummer. Some phones struggle because the bubbles are pre-generated bitmaps drawn each frame.
So far this year there's about the same number of General Aviation crashes you'd expect they're making the news more because there's more eyes on the situation because of the major commercial aviation crashes (which are decidedly not normal).

General Aviation is quite a bit less safe than commercial aviation for a lot of reasons; fewer engines means more risk of failure, lack of maintenance due to cost or understanding, pilots are less well trained (generally speaking of course), GA often flies at lower altitudes giving less time for recovery, etc.

You can scroll back through the FAA's release archive for a look at just how many incidents happen that never make the wider news you've likely never heard of unless you live in the area it happened (and maybe not even then given the state of local news).

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/accident_incidents
Your concept of designed is very different from mine. The iPad is capable of providing a shell interface, but it is clearly not designed to. It is designed to provide a secure media consumption experience. There is nothing arbitrary (from a mass consumer security perspective) about not providing a shell. Providing a shell makes it much easier for bad actors to dupe unsophisticated users.
> the president of a country advertising the products of a private company

I think you're inventing new norms. It has never been unusual or interesting for the president of a country to do PR for some company in their country that has hit a rough patch (as long as this isn't a legal rough patch.)

Most of what our diplomats do is sell US products to other countries. They certainly have always played favorites.

> How can this ever be acceptable?

The horror. What if he says that he's going to Burger King?
Sometimes I feel useless compared to other people - usually while I'm struggling with something and seem to be achieving nothing. This talk of xN programmers absolutely hits on all my insecurities.

Then other days I solve 3 problems for other people which are easy for me because I have bashed my head against those particular kinds of walls before. I suddenly feel worthy again.

I'm productive when I know exactly what I'm going to do but getting to that point is hard and looks like I'm doing nothing. I find that people who are more productive than me often just don't hesitate and take all the easy exits that I waste time worrying about. I can't give up on my style because I always feel happier with the result.

Sometimes they're just faster because they're repeating a successful pattern they've used before.

I have often had to fix code written by "reputedly" very productive people and it's not a rule but more than a few times it has been very brittle and unmaintainable.

What I'm saying is that speed is usually NOT magic. It's achieved in a particular way and that is sometimes not good....but you tend to find out later.
> Local network access

In what production scenarios do MySQL, Postgres, DB2, Oracle, et. al., live on the same machine as the application that uses them?

I am pretty sure most of these vendors would offer strict guidance to not do that.