gavman

On the "glass half full" side, even if the price hasn't gone down, tech's managed to offer better products for the same price, which in itself is a positive.

- Streaming is a much better experience than cable. I can watch anything I want whenever I want on whichever device I want. I don't need to rent a cable box. I don't need to schedule a technician to come to my house to start my service.

- Uber / Lyft are a way better experience than taxis. I can call the device from my phone wherever I am. I get price certainty up front instead of the miserable experience of sitting anxiously watching the number on the meter go up. The app handles payment and I don't have to mess with the driver telling me the card reader is broken and he wants cash. The driver's GPS is integrated with my ride and I both don't have to tell the driver where to go and worry about them taking the scenic route to drive the fare up.

Anyone who wants to go back to the world of cable / taxis is looking at the past with rose colored glasses. Tech has absolutely made both of those products better.

MusicGen, which was trained with Meta-owned and specifically licensed music, generates music from text-based user inputs, while AudioGen, which was trained on public sound effects, generates audio from text-based user inputs.

Meta is really clearly trying to differentiate themselves from OpenAI here. Open source + driving home "we don't use data we haven't paid for / don't own".

Not myself, but my brother works for Microsoft on the Azure security team and my mom tells people he's "like a police officer but of the internet".

I don't have a direct answer to your question, but in thinking about these issues here's a quote I heard that has always resonated with me:

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

- Rabbi Israel Salanter (1809-1883)

For a simple, easy to understand overview of git, nothing beats The Git Parable [1]. Every time I talk to someone starting out with Git I recommend they read it first. Once they understand Git through that lens, usually I find the rest falls into place.

[1] https://tom.preston-werner.com/2009/05/19/the-git-parable.ht...

This sort of gaming is rampant on Amazon. My own experience:

A friend of my wife introduced her to a woman who was a representative of a well known brand for home goods/kitchen gadgets. If you bought an item off Amazon of their brand, the woman would Venmo you for the value of the item provided you left a review. It went unsaid but understood anything less than five stars would mean the relationship was over. They also had a few other rules about your Amazon account to "qualify" (had to be personal, you had to review a certain number of other products, etc) to try to bypass any flags getting raised.

“At what point do we take responsibility for enabling hate filled bile to spread across our services?”

As long as there's so much money to be made, Facebook has no incentive to. As long as they know they can give you and other developers the generous salary/options/perks and you will complain at an all hands but not actually leave, they have even less incentive to. Talk is cheap, even from employees, and the executives at Facebook know that.

The article also does not mention the definition of "children". Under 10? Under 18? Under 21? If you count teenagers hanging out and spreading it as children, the number for very young children could still be as low as we thought and there are no new revelations here.

The one question about UBI I haven't seen a satisfactory answer for is what's stopping landlords from raising rents to match the UBI? If everyone suddenly has an extra $1000/month, what's stopping my landlord (together with every other landlord in my city) from raising my rent next year by $1000/month? It's very plausible this would not show up in small scale pilots where only a small percent of a population received income, but would show up at scale when everyone does.

Unless UBI comes with a massive overhaul of zoning restrictions and a shift of the housing supply, I don't see how this doesn't end up as an indirect way of increasing income inequality by routing the UBI from poorer tenants to wealthier landlords.

This was discussed by one of the game's creators in the Ultima Online episode of Ars Techica's War Stories (around the 5:10 mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE

The idea is definitely cool (and important/impactful at this time if successful). That said, in the midst of a global pandemic where human density is inherently dangerous and social distancing is espoused, naming a product "Safe by Density" gives the exact opposite initial reaction you're probably hoping for.

99% Invisible did a great episode on squirrels, covering their history in major American cities (they were introduced, not native) and the havoc the wreak on our infrastructure

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/uptown-squirrel/

For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand.

That's the crux of this entire article in one sentence. This might be an upopular opinion here, but right now the supply of developers overall [across all industries] is much lower than demand. No one is forcing a developer to work for a game studio. It might be your dream job, but if you're not treated well you're a highly talented skilled worker, go work for someone else. Let the supply diminish because of the working conditions and alternatives and suddenly studios won't have the option to treat their employees this way.

edit: typos

Hadn't heard of it, but will definitely keep an eye on it. Thanks!

I've always felt that Reddit would work really well as a non-profit. This would remove the inherent conflict between keeping the focus on communities/shared-interests (what drew me to Reddit in the first place) and the financial incentive pushing towards profiles/gathering personal information for ads. I would definitely donate to Reddit monthly if it went that route.

Textbook case of Goodhart's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

@mods this was posted earlier today, discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18588697

For those who are more traditional, the norm is to not use any electricity, from lights to microwaves to cellphones.

Part of the time is spent with worship (usually about ~45 mins Friday evening, ~2 hours Saturday morning, and ~15 minutes Saturday evening). It is traditional to have a large meal with family/friends for dinner Friday night and Saturday lunch, and often these meals can go on for 3-4 hours (as a side note, meals without phones with everyone fully engaged in the conversation are great, my wife and I instituted a no phones at meals initiative outside of Sabbath as well).

As for Saturday afternoon, I personally get a lot of reading done and when it's nice I'll go for walks with family/friends or hang out with friends indoors. Lots of my friends get together for board game groups as well. Because those who observe Sabbath don't drive, everyone in the community lives within walking distance of the synagogue and therefore walking distance of each other as well.

This was especially great in middle/high school -- most of my closest friends are still my friends from my neighborhood growing up. We spent so many hours on Sabbath together talking and hanging out without the distractions of phones or movies or video games and grew so close over that time spent together.

Edit to clarify the electricity comment: you can leave stuff such as lights on or use a timer set beforehand, so you're not stuck in the literal dark for a lot of the time :p

As an Orthodox Jew who observes the Sabbath every week, while sometimes finishing up work and preparations beforehand can be stressful at times, there's no feeling like turning off all phones/laptops/etc Friday evening and leaving it all behind. There's a supreme serenity that comes with the knowledge of "I can't do anything about it, so there's no point in worrying". As soon as Sabbath starts I'm totally focused on the now -- I can't do anything to prepare for what comes after, and due to the restrictions of the day I've done all my preparations for Sabbath before it begins. There's a saying in Judaism that Sabbath is "me'ein olam haba", meaning "of the next world", and it rings true every week when I can't wait for it to begin and feel sadness when it ends and I have to return to the mundaneness of work and logistics and emails. It's just the right amount of a great thing.

If a top scientist bullies many other scientists working under them and drives them away from their field, leading to fewer great minds working on important problems (like cancer research), science loses far more in the long term than if one scientist loses a grant (that presumably is now going to another scientist working on cancer research).

Scott Adams wrote about this in the WSJ a while back: https://www.wsj.com/articles/scott-adams8217-secret-of-succe...

He says we see successful passionate people but have the causality backwards: success does not follow passion, but passion follows success.

Reply All did a great episode all about Minitel, for those interested: https://gimletmedia.com/episode/french-connection/

“Rent, groceries—everything is costly,” says Kervin. “You get your paycheque, and you don’t know where it goes.”

This quote really stuck out to me. It wasn't "just poor financial planning" it was absolutely no financial planning.

Was there predatory behavior on the part of the loans? Absolutely. But to me the larger take away here is the importance of budgeting, saving, and being responsible with your financial planning. They were making over $87k/year after-tax, and just a couple months after he lost his job they had liquidated their entire savings.

Came here to post that link. RadioLab also did a good episode on the difference between what doctors vs regular people say they want in terms of end of life care: http://www.radiolab.org/story/262588-bitter-end/

"Comparing hedge funds and the S&P 500 is a little bit like asking which team is better, the Chicago Bulls or the Chicago Bears. Like the Bulls and the Bears in the Windy City, hedge funds and the S&P 500 play different sports."

That, to me, is a CRAZY statement to make. Both ETFs and hedge fund are financial funds that a person considers putting their money in with the intention of maximizing their return. To say that they "play different sports" is at best stretching the truth, at worst a lie.

"The unexpected strength of the S&P 500 was a key contributor to Warren’s victory. Despite trading for a high multiple of earnings and facing an elevated level of risk, the S&P 500 performed in-line with historical averages."

So the "unexpected strength" came from performing "in-line with historical averages"?

The article ignores the fact that while the wealthy may be living longer, they also disproportionately fund social security. They may be receiving benefits for more years, but while I don't know the numbers, I would guess their ROI is much much smaller than the bottom 20% of earners.

There is certainly a very valid separate point to be made about how in the US wealth leads to longer/healthier lives and we definitely need to think about how to fix that, but putting it in terms of receiving more social security feels disingenuous to me.

Thanks for the details regarding the budget, I didn't realize the pension budget shortfall was separate from the state budget.

In that case stupid question: if CalPERS owes much more than it can afford to pay, where is the rest coming from? The LA Times article, in multiple places, talks about how much the shortage will cost the "taxpayers" (see quote below for example), how is this not related to the CA budget which is, well, funded by taxpayers?

"This year, state employee pensions will cost taxpayers $5.4 billion, according to the Department of Finance. That’s more than the state will spend on environmental protection, fighting wildfires and the emergency response to the drought combined."

That makes it seem like it's related to the budget...

Vermont tried this a few years ago, they had to cancel it since in the end it wasn't financially feasible [1]. CA is already dealing with severe budget issues [2][3], so while it sounds nice in theory I'm hesitant to believe the finances actually work out.

[1] http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/single-payer-vermont-1...

[2] http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-crisis-davis-d...

[3] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/26/californias-revenue-picture-d...

Hardly identity thief material.

True, but potentially very dangerous material in other ways. It's not hard to image kidnappers piecing together stolen audio clips to create fake messages as part of a ransom attempt. Or scammers creating audio clips to scare parents and extract money. A large bank of audio clips from a child could be used against that child's family in all sorts of ways, especially if the parents don't know the clips were stolen to begin with.

Recent grad here (technically ECE not CS, but obviously lots of overlap)--still very much a thing people take very seriously.