skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This essay makes a fallacy case, "it is this way, therefore it must be this way". It takes a lot of liberties with evidence to come to a crazy conclusion.

I grew up in a small state in Australia. Business there keeps close with state government: there is a stench of cronyism about much of what goes on. The standard business model there is to wait for a state government grant structure, and then weasel up to it with the right paperwork and hand-shaking to get what you want. Within the bureaucracy you have people lining themselves up to bounce out into firms.

The government maintains high taxes, and then spends those taxes either tying itself to emerging business like this, or propping up failing business like car companies. And it needs a large, skilled public service to keep it all moving. The result is that labour that could be used doing something people want is wasted, and it's harder to operate free business due to the high taxation and bureaucracy. It's not a stalled situation: many good people do still find good, rewarding local jobs creating real value despite this. But a lot of talent drains away, and there's not much innovation despite a healthy university culture.

The way things work in world cities is different and better. For the most part, the more government stays out of business, the more success there is.

Perhaps Apple did receive some benefits in the early years. Where benefits are there for the taking, it is rational to take them. But it is not evidence that such benefits were critical to the success.

Governments don't pick winners - only their mates. For progress, look elsewhere.

As an example of a paragraph that just doesn't work, "Other ways include giving the state bank or agency that invested a stake in the company. A good example is Finland, where the government-backed innovation fund SITRA retained equity when it invested in Nokia. There is also the possibility of keeping a share of the intellectual property rights, which are almost totally given away in the current system."

* Repeatedly we see state investments in companies pursuing political objectives with their shareholding at the expense of development or the company's interest. Look at the way Lower Saxony hampers Volkswagen's development. Or oil companies anywhere they have been nationalised (Venezuela, Mexico, Russia).

* Picking Nokia as an example of innovation?

* Intellectual property is an idea created entirely by government for the purpose of picking winners. It has no philosophical underpinning - it's just arbitrary regulation.

* "which are almost totally given away in the current system" - what does this even mean?

Awful article.
Have any of you discussed this with the new incompetent PM? That seems like a natural first thing to do, before going over his head.
Just added my website. Thank you!
- Welcome as a new addition to our company, btw here you can name your salary

- Oh yeah? Wow!

- Yes, please go ahead, for instance mine is Bob
This article is an example of the worst political commentary. It presents the context for this "observation" as being a decrease in both public debt and the size of the government. No such thing has happened or is likely to happen any time soon. The US federal government is the largest and most powerful state in the history of the world. There is no "cut" that could make that less true coming in the next few years at least.

The core issue is that while it may be true that the state does have initiatives to fund business innovation there is a false choice being presented. The example of Apple suggests that if the government didn't give them a grant they wouldn't exist. The problem is that we can't say that for certain at all. We don't know the outcomes in a world where the taxes or loans taken to pay for those grants didn't happen. It's not possible to say if the outcomes would be better or worse (for the cause of Apple Computer at least) had that grant not existed.

The state is a mixed bag. They currently take 15% of my income to pay for my "retirement" when if I had been able to save that I'd end up far more secure in my retirement than I will with social security. But that said they are using that money to pay for the life support that a lot of people need. Mix that with the constant wars and you can understand why crediting the state for its' light in a world of darkness is misguided.

There are a lot of other odd statements in here too such as describing the state as a risk taker as if the state is ever punished for its' failures. People don't even remember most of the CIA's failures as they line up for war behind its' current allegations in Syria.
Why not put something like this in your .bashrc or your .profile file instead?

function bd () {

OLDPWD=`pwd`
NEWPWD=`echo $OLDPWD | sed 's|\(.*/'$1'[^/]*/\).*|\1|'`
index=`echo $NEWPWD | awk '{ print index($1,"/'$1'"); }'`
if [ $index -eq 0 ] ; then
echo "No such occurrence."
else
echo $NEWPWD
cd "$NEWPWD"
fi

}

That way you don't have to execute a separate shell script and source its output. Also note that the "export OLDPWD" wasn't necessary in your script, either. Why pollute the environment of future processes spawned by your shell?
There is a difference between imparting knowledge and aiding the commission of a crime. Do you think the guy that plans a bank robbery, telling the grunts how to get in and get out, is guilty of a crime? Well that's just knowledge after all...

Again, the knowledge here isn't criminalized. What's criminalized is helping someone commit a crime. That makes you an accomplice. You cross that line from passing knowledge to participating and helping when you give knowledge knowing that the person intends to use it to commit a crime.

Knowledge isn't treated any differently than other kinds of help. E.g. Selling a gun isn't illegal. Selling a gun to someone who says he's going to murder his wife with it is illegal.
Any developer can care about performance. And should never be mocked for achieving above 200% performance compared to an alternative implementation... Let alone 400% performance compared to the alternatives.
Actually a Samsung smart phone sold in Africa costs less than a goat. In a few countries, there are already more smart phones than people. Yes, the majority of the world's population does or will soon possess the digital devices needed to access the Internet. Last year, the penetration was already more than 34% http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Little known but very interesting programming subreddit /r/dailyprogrammer
You can't convince an adult to work himself to death to enrich someone else. At least, not that easily.

The problem can also be understood as a lack of demand for experience. Noone realistically needs any experience beyond a few side projects to get started. With abundant open source software, many people's roles are reduced to an assembly line worker who knows how to operte the tool in hand.
Don't resign just yet, find a new job first ;). Shouldn't be too hard!
At least one restaurateur who tried a no-tip policy found tips actively harmful:

http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...
The Notorious MSG's Unlikely Formula for Success
Thanks for the feedback! I have other non-business reasons to be in India, but yes 'cheaper developers' is certainly one reason.

You are right that you generally get what you pay for, and I've heard numerous horror stories from foreigners who have tried to hire Indian workers. I have no IT-related connections and would be looking to hire programmers who show initiative and are capable of independent thought. That might sound impossible but I think it's worth a shot - I guess I'm trying to be the Oakland A's of software development [1]. If I couldn't find an excellent programmer in a year I would give up and go home, but even in that case I don't think I'd regret the experience.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/
A message from Edward Snowden
If the gov.uk code covers a lot of the requirements for local administrations in continental EU, that's terrific. Honestly, for now I'm just thinking about this idea, but I don't have the time to study it.

As for the contracts, at least in Italy I've never seen one longer than 3 years, and practically by law the deciding factor is, most of the time, price (which is a big problem on its own).
Informed consumers is one of the assumptions of a free market, and the lawsuit alleges that Uber is lying to consumers.
Clojure and Testing
Your job is not to make the company more profitable. It is to make money for yourself. You're a technician. Do the work, tick the boxes, while finding better employment and building your skillset.

I wouldn't rock the boat under the reasoning that you gain nothing by doing such, except, maybe, a tiny chance at promotion. Moving jobs will likely net you a higher paycheck.
Linus is a bit obsessed with making the software he uses fast. I don't think it'd be as easy to make git as fast as it is if it was written in something other than C.

Subsurface though probably could be written in a different language and not feel any slower.
Here's a restaurant owner that agrees with grandparent:

http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...
Fair enough.

When this situation happened at Semco (Brazil has had a lot of problems with its economy over the last 20 years) management put forward keeping salaries the same, but letting people go. The employees countered with everyone getting salary cuts to see them through the down turn, with the hike back to normal levels agreed on beforehand.

I don't know if it was about wether or not the company the company would turn around, but it seemed a lot more based on loyalty to the company (plus all staff, even assemblyline workers set their own work hours) and no one really wanted to go back to working at a 'traditional' company. I think that in software dev a lot of the jobs are fairly the same work environment-wise, so your take probably could work if you are only at work for the money (and I know, everyone has bills to pay, I have a family so it would be a tough call for me to make as well but I don't think I would just try to hike my salary and hasten the doom of the company if they've treated me awesomely over the years)
Thanks. z is great! If only I had found this before. I actually googled a lot before writing this (last year April) but couldn't find something like z.

Anyways z always changes directory. Using bd within backticks will just print the path without changing the directory. We can use that with other commands like ls, zip etc. Example: "ls `bd <starting letters>`" would only print the contents without changing the directory.
Heh, our only Windows PC in the office is used just for this. We're otherwise a Mac/Linux shop and the last time I tried filling my (personal) taxes with the Mac it failed horribly. At that time their Java applet wouldn't work with every browser and with the most recent JVM on OS X. So I had to switch through browsers, Google around and downgrade my Java VM.

After some tinkering (a lost Saturday) it finally worked but I don't want something like that in my business. That's why we have one PC here :)
Terrence Kealey would disagree:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-economi...
Yep, sounds like an accurate description. Or at least, it wouldn't surprise me at all to have such an experience. But then again, I think I'd never be so foolish and even _try_ to do something like that online: Germany is easily 10 years behind countries like the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc. If there's a possibility to snail mail something, I'd choose that any time. Or show up in person at the office in question.

Not that the latter would be an experience any more pleasant...
I do 20 hours a week, at most. The "work what you like" in the hands of someone who sincerely thinks "fuck work" actually seems to work as intended.
It sounds like you're invested in the company/team and/or the project or this would be a no-brainer (leave). You could try confronting the lousy manager as a group (if you really do all agree), and if that fails go over his/her head. Then you've done the right thing by everyone. Maybe there are even some good ideas in the new design that could be moved to the existing design to help the idiot save face (at least offer a lifeline). Confronting the manager first means he/she can't claim he/she was ambushed, no-one ever said anything, and so forth.
Bootstrap Components for Ember.js
If you're low or mid talent you're competing with fresh graduates and self-learners. It gets harder, because you'll want more pay and work less free overtime.

For high talent or a unique skillset, it's not a problem and you effectively set your own salary. This is where you want to be.
Agree but there are no MCM's in the UK.
While it's obvious that most "forensic techniques" are at best pseudoscience or folk-knowledge[1], badly needed a lesson or ten in statistics[2], "cold reading" can be a surprisingly useful and powerful technique, when used appropriately.

Many "fortune tellers" often admit, when directly asked, that what they do is little more than basic psychology and counseling. Being able to "cold read" what someone is concerned about - and know the perfect "Barnum Statements"[3] to drop early on to get someone to reveal further key details - is something all psychologists tend to do, to various degrees.

Regarding the FBI and their "profilers"... isn't being able to read people very fast pretty much the very definition of the job? You don't wast time "profiling" someone if you have a mountain of obvious evidence you can use directly. You profile when there isn't sufficient evidence, and we need someone to make a guess on which of the various poor-quality leads should be investigated.

I would hope the FBI hires at least _some_ people with that kind of talent, and comparisons to psychics is likely a good thing, for once.

...

That said, this one decent idea by the FBI doesn't do much to offset all those unamerican "plea bargain" games, "asset forfeiture" thefts without a conviction, and countless other abuses of their power we've seen over the last few decades.

[1]: http://www.salon.com/2012/09/23/fingerprints_arent_proof/

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_Paradox
(to name one example of many)

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect
If you take someone's money by force, you're a thug, not an entrepreneur.
I wonder what it would take to do an incrementalist version of this -- basic income either at a state/local government level, or for a certain class of people, or as a purely private thing, as a way to test it and build support before going national and universal.

Alaska's Permanent Fund dividend is like a deci-BI (it is O($1k/yr, BI of $15k would probably work in Alaska?).

Arguably (government) pensions are a form of BI. You can get one with 20 years of military service or 20-30 years of LEO service in a lot of cases, and maybe this could be compressed even more. 10 years of overseas service in a high-risk occupation force could produce lifetime BI before you're 30?

I might be willing to pay BI already in exchange for people having training for EMS/disaster response in certain areas. That's not really BI on paper, but if the training isn't particularly onerous, and the deployment is infrequent, it is approximately the same in effect, and could be used.

A college/university with a huge endowment and few students could potentially do BI for graduates of certain programs, particularly in markets with high unemployment but high external benefits from the graduates.
America is both rich & poor at the same time. We have one of the most productive and efficient workforces on the planet, yet we are $17 trillion in debt. This can only be because we spent our money poorly - making bad decisions about where it should go.

That debt can only be retired if we have a plan to stop increasing it, and to make payments to reduce the principal. The article says that the BIG would do this, but provides no rationale as to how this might happen. Would the BIG replace the myriad existing income programs? I don't see how - $10k is $834 a month, which not much more than the monthly food bill for a family. It would be to their advantage to continue on the old programs, as they'd get more money each month.

The other danger is that the $10k wouldn't stay $10k for very long. Soon, there would be impassioned pleas from the politicians that "We have to help these people" by increasing it to provide a living wage.
I was more posting it for the "cute hack" value, rather than speed. Speed was significant in the post because the author needed their library to be fast.
Secret projects are a recipe for layoffs. Years ago I worked for a manager who wanted a few of us to work on a wildly impractical project. The main business wasn't getting accomplished, and the parent company that was funding the venture dissolved the company. One of the programmers there became a principal at a Silicon Valley VC firm--he doesn't mention his stint at the failed venture.
Without trying to make this sound trivial, have you simply considered ignoring both individuals?

You have a senior in the team that has a fair idea of what needs to be done. You know the problems. You know that working on this side project, in secret, is wrong; so why not agree at every meeting, discussion, etc that you will work on it, and then simply do whatever needs to be done.

It is risky, as the manager will then likely try to fire you; but that's going to be difficult to sell:

- At every point you've followed directions given in verbal conversations
- If there's stuff in email, you simply agree to that as well - said manager is then documenting their own failure
- You are delivering what the strategic parts of the business believe are the right thing
- He'll justify trying to fire you... by revealing his secret project
- All hell will break loose, and at the end of the day if you were demonstrably protecting revenue and following the overall strategic intent of the organistion, you'll just be treated as a dilligent cog in the machine.

Directly raising it or confronting the issue is likely to make you appear argumentative or a "trouble maker". It doesn't matter if you are right, once it gets past a certain point, non-experts have no clue what's going on and rely on relationships, tone of conversation, and the amount of trust they feel.

However, if you look harmless - nay, even too stupid to have done the wrong thing(!), you can likely let it wash over you and the team.

Alternatively, just all take your sick leave at one time, due to "stress caused by long hours working on SECRET PROJECT NAME", cc HR. :P
Don't forget an exciting multi-page analysis of a mysterious JS snippet.
>the scenarios that result in errors are totally different from the error scenarios in linux.

Not really. It's more like the Windows problems are a superset of the Linux problems. Most kernel panics are a result of bugs in drivers which happens just the same on Windows. Then you have all the ones based on Microsoft laziness, like getting the INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD instead of the OS trying to load some more drivers if your disk controller died and you replaced it with a different model. And then you have the fallout of Microsoft's attempts to fix legacy software rampaging through kernel memory, which means all the legacy code that used to do that (including the ones that did something useful instead of causing a BSOD) will now just crash the application and break the legacy software, because Microsoft couldn't be bothered to get it right the first time.

> most of the crashes in windows systems are the results of non-MSFT developers who wanted to insert code into the kernel.

The difference is that Unix-like operating systems have always discouraged that behavior so it happens a lot less often (and is a lot more suspicious), and if you have something that legitimately needs to go into the Linux kernel then it generally gets merged into the main tree. But not until you fix what problems the kernel maintainers identify, and then it gets maintained by the people who know what they're doing.

> the "compatibility layer" is actually far more nuanced than this

Sounds unnecessarily complicated and undesirable.

> NT was designed by the team that did VMS in a 3-month retreat to Hawaii.

NT was never the problem. That's like saying ReactOS will be good because it's designed by smart people. The "design" is already cribbed by what came before it and the box it now has to live in, which was set out by DOS and Windows 95. Microsoft now has to live with that legacy, why should the rest of us?
You might like the Python Infrequently Answered Questions: http://norvig.com/python-iaq.html (Even if it's a bit old.)
Poverty in the US is nothing like poverty in other countries. Poor people in the US mostly still have tvs, etc. Poor people in true Third world countries wash themselves in puddle water, and poor children play in garbage dumps. I've seen both with my own eyes.

I don't agree that Americans need a basic income guarantee whatsoever. The idea might work in other countries, but certainly not in the US.
Didn't know about the function approach.

Removed the 'export'. I wrote out of habit. Thanks a lot for pointing that out.
Original discussion (as far as I can tell):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=693269
Thanks for the pointer! I remember seeing this, but I forgot about it. Glad to have it back.
Even so, in OOM situations, sysrq invocation is still an order of magnitude faster than killall invoked from a graphical terminal emulator.

As for hinting to oom_killer: I have a script which searches for chrome and flash processes every minute, and sets their oom_score_adj in the high hundreds. This makes reasonably sure that oom killer will go after these processes first.
Short but I doubt this will be faster as noted.
Of course. Imagine, during the assembly process, someone eats his sandwich while hanging over the mirror of some space telescope.
Do you think the all those dots you're seeing on the NASA images are stars? And once they discover the peanut butter nebula, they have to update parts of the astronomy books.
Why are people telling you to leave? If you confront the situation the worst is you'll get fired, get workers comp and what not. If you leave you get nothing.
Stop Making Me Configure Shit
Healthy obesity?
Huh? What stops anybody from registering a company at the Handelsregister and start working? Who needs a certificate and a proof of experience?

Or do you mean society enforces it?
>it's pretty accurate for specific questions (e.g. did you beat your wife)

Funny that you would use that gender-specific example. As if women didn't beat their husbands/boyfriends.
Arguments like this assume you can change one thing and society won't change around it. With a basic guarantee many people who are marginally employed would stop working. You'd have two classes of citizens: the workers and those who are effectively parasites off of the workers. I don't like people being poor but society is just not wealthy for poverty to disappear. The said a person living in poverty is probably better off than all the but the richest people at any time in human history. Part of the issue is that we lack an understanding of poverty and what actually causes people to not be in poverty. Considering that in human history poverty has always been the norm it makes sense to look at what causes poverty to not be the norm first before moving onto just "fixing" it.