skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This. You need to make money to be able to pay for the workers you need for your business to function. To argue against this reality is akin to saying: "I want there to be H1-B visa holders so wages remain low", which is the exact what the top most comment is saying H1-B visas do.

Developers are valuable. We should be paid accordingly. Many of us are employees now. A fraction of us will become founders one day. This approach simply allows companies to actually get the talent they urgently need to succeed. Paying a premium should absolutely not be a problem if you in fact do have a genuine need for talent that doesn't exist in the US at any price (which is the argument being made in this blog post).

I want to be paid a fair wage. I also plan on being a founder (again. failed once). If engineer wages rise making some business models inviable, c'est la vie. I will just have to make sure to start a business that can actually earn money and pay the bills to hire the talent I will need. When I do found my own company, I am more interested in being able to get the talent than paying a premium.

The way things are now, the benefit basically already goes to the Google's and Apple's of the World. How many startups actually go through the whole process of trying to get H1-B visas to get talent. Every startup I know doesn't consider the process viable because it's not expedient. If I need an engineer within 6 months and I have a candidate willing to work for my business from another country, it would be amazing to pay a 1.5x premium to actually be able to have them over here in the US and helping me and my colleagues build a business together ASAP. The H1-B visa process is so drawn out right now that by the time you get your H1-B visa candidate you're already at the end of your runway.

I would love to see AeroFS write a blog post considering the solution I proposed (which many agree with judging by the number of upvotes thus far).
SpaceX says Falcon Heavy will be able to put 14 tons on a mars trajectory, and it's having it's first launch next year. The soviet Energia could (theoretically) already do that almost three decades ago. What is missing from NASA's perspective?
We have some exoplanets 100-500 light years away that seem very earth-like. I think the first step to finding a lifeboat is to start researching on space shuttles speeds (faster than light), wormholes, teleportation etc. As far-fetched as these may seem, its unlikely that with sufficient time and investment neither one of these alternatives will be successful. Something is bound to work. We only need one of these to be able to travel farther in human time. And it is only then that we should even think about sending manned missions to these potential planets.

We are looking at space exploration in the wrong way. All space organizations seem to have entered this sort of competition where manned missions to just about anywhere currently reachable in limited time is the goal. Nobody is pausing to think that maybe we should look into better travelling options to be able to explore far off planets and objects. The probability increases with reachable area.
If Google regularly pays people more than the value they create, they will eventually run out of money.
They will probably try to create other scamcoins like Ripple and Stellar.
Achieve Rapid Iteration in User Experience Through MVPs
David Foster Wallace also has a good essay on this in Consider the Lobster. I think this is the same one:

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-0...
>The global flow of goods is good, but the flow of labor is bad?

But that's just it: this is an attempt to slow the flow and distribution of capital (wages) by importing cheap labor. It allows even more economic power and resources to be concentrated in even fewer hands. It should be pretty self-evident why that's undesirable.
I meant now, not historically.
The industry wants to be able to sell you something "better" and 24/192 is clearly bigger and therefore better than 16/48.

This is the same reason I'm convinced we're going to get 8k phone displays someday.

If the recording industry wants to sell me a "platinum" version of recordings, what I'd really like to have is different mastering of an album: at least one for noisy environments like the car, and one for higher-quality environments like my home theater. If you're familiar with "The Loudness Wars", this is a reaction to that. NiN tried to do this with their "audiophile" mix of Hesitation Marks (although a lot of people think they did not succeed, http://www.metal-fi.com/terrible-lie/ )

On the other hand, I don't need to buy any new equipment to support that, so the equipment guys aren't going to be happy. I don't know if there's any silver bullet for them--if there is a hypothetical advancement that would cause me to upgrade my system, I can't envision it.
What is this, a positive side effect of Cold War II? I'm sort of joking, but not really.
> When you artificially limit the supply of qualified labour, all you can do is shuffle your existing resources - paying more won't increase the supply quickly enough.

Yes, but that is all that needs to happen actually. The problem is not a shortage of talent-- the problem is the proliferation of meaningless projects drowning out the signal in the noise. What we need is a system to get the best engineers working on the most important projects and to let the rest sort itself out. We don't need multitudes of mediocrity-- we need rather the most talented producing moderate amounts of highest quality work toward the right ends.
Agreed. And don't be afraid to hire people in their 40s who might not fit in visually but nevertheless have vast experience building stuff that actually ships.

And don't be afraid to hire remotely. You don't even have to go overseas - there is a vast untapped pool of underpaid talent in North America.
> As to why our universe is one which supports life, nobody really knows.

There's an implicit distinction in this statement, between the universe and life. Really, life is part of the universe too.

I'm familiar with the anthropic principle, but it doesn't tell us whether life is a necessary outcome of the physical laws of our universe, or whether it's just one of many accidental outcomes that are not forbidden by the laws of our universe. Both of those situations satisfy the anthropic principle, but are very different.

For example, we could speculate about a universe in which the nuclear strong force is stronger than it is here. Based on our theories of quantum mechanics and gravity, we can predict how that would affect, for example, star formation. Isaac Asimov explores this idea in "The Gods Themselves."

But Asimov also predicts what alien life would be like in that universe, and there he's on much shakier ground, because nothing in our theories of quantum mechanics or gravity predicts life. We don't know how chemical systems become alive...there's even not solid agreement on the definitions.
Maybe he means "move to Canada first"?
When Things Get Weird: 13 of the Strangest Sites on the Web
I wouldn't say being a data compression geek makes anyone a master of DSP or of psychoacoustics.

The basic issue with 16-bit is that low level details like reverb tails and hall ambiences or very quiet musical passages get the equivalent of 14-bit (f) 12-bit (mf) to 8-bit (ppp) sampling.

This sounds noticeably grainy and digital.

It's not about total dynamic range or sine waves, it's about the fact that human ears can do really neat source separation tricks. We can hear quiet elements in a mix without too much difficulty.

If those elements are sampled at less than 16 bits - which they will be, if the maximum resolution is only 16-bits - we can hear that too.

So 24-bits gives you effortlessly smooth sound for quiet passages and quiet details. 16-bits doesn't. (Dither helps a lot, but it only takes you so far.)

Why are there still people who pretend this isn't relevant? It's not a difficult point to understand, and it shouldn't be controversial.

Edit - the technical misunderstanding is a lack of appreciation of the different properties of the absolute theoretical noise floor of a converter, and the fact that quantisation noise isn't like analog noise. It's actually more of a hyper-objectionable and nasty sort-of-nonharmonic distortion.

So as the bit resolution goes down, the sound doesn't just get buried in noise it also gets more and more obviously distorted.
This kit lets you collect material by yourself. Some other kits/companies require a doctor/nurse signature that they did take material from someone who matched a photo id.
+1. I store originals (rips and etc.) in FLAC and then encode in Opus (around 140 Kbps) to actually listen to. 140 is an approximation of transparency level, it can be lower according to these tests:
http://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm
"One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a high-throughput distributed messaging system."
You don't think that "we prefer folks to be in the office where they can interact with others with less friction" is stating a requirement of physical proximity to collaborate effectively? That's how I read it.
It was a decent presentation. Popcount has a long history, going back to the very first programming text book. (So says Knuth.) Someone interested in it might also like the chapter in "Beautiful Code".

My own code does a lot of popcounts, of very wide (~1024 bit) values. A run might take several hours, so for me a 1% performance boost is still a couple of minutes of savings, and worth my development time to investigate.

On the other hand, I also use the POPCNT instruction if available, and fall back to the nibble LUT version using the shuffle instruction if available, before using the generic C versions. There are also some techniques that work for very large sets of bits that aren't covered in this talk, which focused only on 32 bit/word popcounts.
The development effort of integrating Bitcoin is nearly zero with payment processors like Bitpay/Coinbase.
Sounds like what Oracle calls a "correlated subquery" is it the same thing?
There is another visa you can use to work legally in the US for 18 months, it's the J visa. It's suppose to be a "training/internship" visa, and is a good way to wait for other chances at an H1B, or a GC lottery (you never know). The US has a 2 year clause that prevent some countries from staying in the US at the end of their 18 months, but I was lucky it didn't apply to me.

I was lucky to get my H1B last year right at the end of my J1 visa, my application arrived on April 1st, and considering the number of applications they received, they flipped a coin to see if I was going to be considered... luckily I won the toss!

There's definitely a need for a change somewhere, increased quota, new immigration laws...

I also agree that it's about talent, every company is looking to hire talent, unless they're cheaping out (fortunately I haven't met any of these companies). Most companies I know (mostly startups) are actually looking at the local markets first, but are willing to consider foreigners if they are worth it. They don't mind the cost.
Composition in this sense is talking specifically about composition of objects. By definition, that's only going to be possible in languages with objects. No other paradigm achieves that (for better or worse).
It is baffling to me that people even talk about 24/192. There are such vast differences in audio quality related to speakers, loudness, amplifier, mastering, and EQ, before you even get to the source format.

For some reason people seem to latch on to the format thing, before being able to make judgements about the more important factors.
Wait until he gets some of'em Shakti Stones! [1]

One reviewer [2] notes: "The effect of the first few Shakti products was not as apparent as when the effect became compounded. Each built on the others' ability to eliminate EMI in the component on or under which it was placed. Music became more relaxed, with greater clarity. Space and ambience increased. The soundfield became considerably more open and defined. At a certain point, the effect became quite startling as another Stone or On-Line was added. Shazaam!"

[1]: http://www.shakti-innovations.com/audiovideo.htm

[2]: http://www.audaud.com/audaud/DEC01/EQUIP/equip3DEC01.html

PS: Sorry for bringing these up. They're quite the recurring joke in audiophile discussion.
Well, I have actually been considering a move, not just because of Immigration, but because of all of Canada's natural beauty. I also kinda like snow and cold weather and maple syrup.

Here is one important question though: is it a city that you would recommend for young people (in their twenties)? Or is it nicer once you have a family and are looking to settle down etc.? And besides Amazon, is there any demand for tech workers over there?
Automated and encrypted backups with duplicity
How to start a startup quotes
The Analysis of Knowledge (2001)
The highest priority rule is the in-line which specifies white-space: nowrap; which doesn't preserve multiple whitespace. Firefox and Safari does what he says. I'm not quite sure why Chrome is displaying it differently..
'You're the bomb' Are you at risk from the anti-terrorism algorithms?
I know I'm philosophizing, but let me challenge the views you express with the following: people opposed to government and taxes always assume that taxes are "taken" or "extracted" from private property. Historically, though, the opposite is true: private property was extracted from common property and given to private individuals. Shared property predates private property by more than a few millennia. In fact, private property had to be invented when the agricultural revolution came about. That an individual (as opposed to a tribe) could own something was a big revolution in human thinking, and an artificial cultural construct. This doesn't change much in how people think about distribution of wealth, but it seems like people, especially in the US, seem to believe that private property is the natural state of things and government infringes on that, even though the opposite is true. Society decided to let individuals own some things -- not the other way around.
I definitely agree. Having previously been an early employee at a company that was run similarly to what you've described, it can really suck. You're getting taken advantage of at every turn when the founders aren't interested in the team, just lining their own pockets.

Now, being a co-founder, I try to bring my past experiences as an early employee into how I manage and lead. Hopefully it's paying off and they feel more like the employees in this post, instead of like you and I felt when we were being screwed.
this is very wrong: No, it is quite correct. It is slightly more convenient to have the source code, But then again, it can be misleading, as you don't know if that source code is actually corresponding to the binary that is actually executing.
> (Using a throwaway since it seems most people think more people and skyscrapers and traffic and higher taxes to compensate for the dwindling resources is wonderful.)

Are you sure that's a throwaway? Take a look at my username. That's a throwaway!
That would be a bummer for those personally involved wouldn't it? From astronaut to subsistence farmer.

At least somebody would make lots of money from the reality TV show that ensued.
Is-a and has-a, and more to the point, naming things, is just an outgrowth of our natural linguistic capabilities. The alternative is anonymous immutable values with structural comparisons (aka functional programming), which we've only been studing as math for a couple of thousand years or so (vs. Around 100k years for language).
The private investment market is warm right now, but I think we all know things will cool off eventually. It's better to raise money when you can (if you can use it), then wait and watch the market go cold. Especially when your valuations are rising the way theirs is.

I'm not aware of their financials, but I would imagine a good portion of that 80M is still left from their last round. So with this additional 70M they buy themselves some time with their current burn rate, and more cash on hand for things like acquisitions.
At the same time, I think it would be awesome to start a petition to draw attention to such an idea so that it does become part of the agenda somehow. If such an idea did become part of the national discussion regarding H1-B visas, it would be extremely difficult for those trying to get these visas to depress wages to argue against this.

I for one would sign such a petition and I know a lot of people who would (American workers and existing H1-B holders). It's important that the opinion of both groups is represented in the debate. Is there a PAC or other organization that would lobby on behalf of such a solution?
You can also use google to find "evidence" that vaccines cause autism. Just because information is indexed by google doesn't make it true.
Until phones are 600dpi like paper, I'm fine with display resolution continuing to increase, thanks.
If the candidate is so supremely talented they can get an O-1 pretty easily. Kind of ends this "H1B is for talent" argument quickly.
Is life an accident, or a predictable outcome of physical laws? That's a pretty fundamental question, and one we should be able to answer scientifically. But we can't right now.
(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and all that jazz ;-) But I do know more about VAT than I probably should for my health..)

True, but if I want to take VAT numbers I have to be registered for VAT anyway and then do UK quarterly filings.

I don't believe that's true. You have, I assume, been doing both B2B and B2C sales so far, and the law has solely changed in regard to B2C sales on digitally supplied services.

The only new requirement for you to avoid needing to charge VAT should be that you'd need evidence to prove a sale isn't B2C on non-UK EU sales only. For that, all you need is a VAT number in the valid format (HMRC notice 741A section 2.7).

Handily, you do not even need to do any further validation of the VAT number if the VAT that would be ordinarily charged to that customer is cumulatively less than £500 over 3 months (741A section 19.2). (So if you were providing a service of £100/mo, you shouldn't even need to check their VAT number out! :-))

There's definitely stuff & concepts to get your head around with this, but in theory, still accepting B2B sales within Europe could be as simple as collecting, validating the format of, and storing VAT numbers.

If your B2B intra-EU sales are too low to make this worthwhile, of course, then yeah, it makes sense to block them (and in my research, it appears this is legal), but if you're doing several grand's worth, say.. it might be worth considering the above. Good luck whichever way you go! :-)
The UK was a model of privatisation of public enterprise.

Only it turns out that a hell of a lot of the companies that bought stuff like the utilities and railways are actually the public enterprises of other countries.

So 20 of the UK rail lines are still publicly owned and run, just by another countries public sector, while our own is banned by law from bidding.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/revealed-how...
Rand Paul Opposes Net Neutrality: “Don't Want to See Regulation of the Internet”
The problem with object-oriented programing is that it makes objects the most important abstraction, which it's not. I'd say states are the most important abstraction of a program.

I think I've grown so much as a programmer since I started thinking more about states and less about objects.
That's not true. Anything you can do with LATERAL you can also do with correlated scalar subqueries in the SELECT list. LATERAL simply makes writing these kinds of queries easier and more intuitive.
A Day in the Life of NYC's Professional Pizza Expert
Yes, personal experience and watching other people around me as well. Mostly, hard is boring, i.e. when you don't have enough interest to pursue it. As for math - it is not just about being good, but also the process itself - of becoming good, i.e. learning. When this process seems interesting and fun, I doubt someone will say it is hard.

E.g. for many people, literature classes or some other humanities stuff is hard.
> The difference is that the government agency's source of revenue is not dependent on its performance, so government agencies and projects almost never get closed down or cancelled because they did a bad job, wasted money, or were plain incompetent.

This cuts both ways - that's exactly why the government can and does shove money into things like infrastructure, basic research and, well, space exploration, while the private sector doesn't. There is no direct short-term profit motive for private sector in such endeavours. I emphasize "short-term", because the private sector is structured to care mostly about that. It takes a company to grow really big to invest in stuff like basic research - but at this point the internal structure of such company is more like that of a government than a free market.
Just the ticket: the joy of England's railway stations
As a suggestion to the authors: don't center the map on the US by default. It alienates your international audience.
Then society benefits because those products are produced more efficiently.
Entity component systems are just another form of OO that rely heavily on ontology and named object instances. Unless you mean OOP must be Java, then of course, it's not.
It's one I wrote myself to test this very thing after reading the memmove manpage. I was wondering why you would ever use memcpy unless it had a big performance advantage, so I wrote a micro-benchmark to see. If you are really interested, I can put my benchmark program up somewhere.

Additional findings: Unsurprisingly using clang instead of gcc does not affect performance on FreeBSD or Linux.
I would guess if the capital and talent marshaled to send a man the the moon had been tasked to build a global mobile communications network we would now have a better Internet and would have had cell phones a decade earlier.
Apple HeadphoneJack Gate
Uhhh, 16/44.1 can't be "upconverted" to 24/192. Once you lose that information is gone it is gone forever.
Wow, this is cool. One video was able to exceed a 32 bit integer thus requiring a change to a 64 bit integer, all caused by one man and one video.
This guy vs Shingy, AOL's "Digital Prophet".
But at this point, where the company is clearly heading in the direction of an IPO, the relevance of all that stuff falls quite a bit?
> Where I live, many government offices get all-new furniture at the end of every fiscal year

Government offices I've visited are no comparison to lush corporate settings; in fact they tend to be old buildings with old equipment and furniture. Consider what Silicon Valley corporations provide to their employees.

I've heard this story before and I believe it's a myth. I am aware of what goes on in many government offices, local and federal, and never heard of such a thing.
>if you sell your digital products through Amazon or another online marketplace //

Can you explain this further?

Amazon marketplace put the suppliers name on the page you purchase from, the seller is in control of whether items are sold, the seller is in control of the vital element _the price_. Amazon have T&C but they're not really the terms of sale per se, they're the terms for controlling the marketplace (the seller sets terms for example about non-redistribution or other copyright considerations). The seller appears to be responsible for 2 out of 3 of the main elements of the sale ignoring the point on T&Cs.

If Amazon hold the goods, or purchase them up front then I think they'd be liable but if the seller holds them I can't see how the arguments work.

Yes Amazon could enable the handling as part of their marketplace but I don't see them as liable for any non-compliance.