By BY MARK LANDLER from NYT World https://ift.tt/uyJMYxj
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Tuesday, 31 January 2023
Monday, 30 January 2023
New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
445 by maerF0x0 | 769 comments on Hacker News.
Is anyone else noticing that for several 5 year blocks (pentad) the world just seems to get markedly worse? It's like no body seems to give a shit about anyone except themselves anymore. Whats the cause of this? What's the solution? A bunch of things I've noticed: * Landlords seem extremely greedy and do terrible rent seeking tactics like fees upon fees (250 admin fee to rent here, $75 to apply, $300 non refundable pet deposit, $25 a month pet rent, $12.50 community fee, $15 trash valet, $5 online payment fee, $100 a month community internet (for the $50 a month package), going Month to month after a lease ends is 2x the annual price. And then they use RealPage to collude to make prices higher[1] * People are noisy as fuck and dont seem to give a shit. Seems like every night there's someone with loud as exhaust on "sportish" car ripping around the neihborhood. For months this guy would start up his loud car at 7am and no one care when I complained. * General worker apathy is endemic everywhere I go people seem aggravated I would dare to check my order and point out they didn't put in the ketchup i asked for, or the napkins, or whatever. Or when I dine in the tables are dirty. Or the gym is filthy, the cleaner just drags the mop around looking busy but accomplishing nothing. But in many instances they keep asking for more tips. * Software seems to be overrun by a mentality that any future cost is worth it to save even 1 minute of development time today. And this one I think I've observed the root, it seems that people get promoted away from their problems so they're not the ones to solve them. And those who do write good software (albeit slightly slower) are not promotable beacuse they're "under performing" their peers. Why does it seem management (and many thusly incentivized engineers) have abandoned decades of experience showing how to create reliable, robust, reusable code that is both great the customer, fast to iterate on, and only a tiny tiny bit slower to write. * Seems like everything is subscription model and you have to pay N times to access something thats only worth 1-3x . Eg: I Netflix for a couple hours a month. At the price for 4k access I can almost go out to a theatre. Video games are all trending to subscription models. I just learned the other day that the PS4 games I got with my subcription to PSN all are locked because I stopped subscribing (nearly 50 games) . So I paid them like $125 for access to these games for 24 months, and now I cannot play any of them? At least I still own NES/SNES/N64 Game cartridges that will never lock me out. * Police seem to not give a shit anymore. I've noticed what seems to be total lawlessness going on in my world. Folks stealing shit. People driving absurdly dangerously in cars that are not designed to travel like that. (tailgating, lane switch, accelerating at the fastest I've ever seen a beat up Sentra do...) . I never see cops hit lights and sirens at them. And every year our taxes (their paycheck) and our insurance goes up (a consequence of poor driving habits). And at the same time, we get these cases where a dude like Tyre, at least as I see the body cam, seems to be basically complying and the police freak out on him, he basically complies, and they taze and pepper spay him, no wonder he ran away -- what is someone supposed to think when they say "on the ground" and you get on the ground and then just keep getting more and more aggressive. Like are you gonna just lay on your face while they potentially pull their gun and just shoot you in the back of the head? How do you know what's going on unless you can face and see them? How can you trust they wont, cause even if it's 99.999999% they wont, you only get 1 one chance and if you get it wrong you're dead without any coming back. * Over and over again we keep hearing stories of fake people becoming the top paid, respected, or otherwise status people in society. Elizabeth Holmes, Frank/JP Morgan scam for $175M[2], fraudulent crypto schemes * And there's a ton of little things too like the water is poison, the air is poison, the food system is poison or crashing etc. I'm aware of pinker's general argument that many numbers are getting better. But it seems like people just treat eachother like shit these days. Anyone else have other examples? I am I way off base here? [1]: https://ift.tt/edLoTSZ [2]: https://ift.tt/EMl0GDe
445 by maerF0x0 | 769 comments on Hacker News.
Is anyone else noticing that for several 5 year blocks (pentad) the world just seems to get markedly worse? It's like no body seems to give a shit about anyone except themselves anymore. Whats the cause of this? What's the solution? A bunch of things I've noticed: * Landlords seem extremely greedy and do terrible rent seeking tactics like fees upon fees (250 admin fee to rent here, $75 to apply, $300 non refundable pet deposit, $25 a month pet rent, $12.50 community fee, $15 trash valet, $5 online payment fee, $100 a month community internet (for the $50 a month package), going Month to month after a lease ends is 2x the annual price. And then they use RealPage to collude to make prices higher[1] * People are noisy as fuck and dont seem to give a shit. Seems like every night there's someone with loud as exhaust on "sportish" car ripping around the neihborhood. For months this guy would start up his loud car at 7am and no one care when I complained. * General worker apathy is endemic everywhere I go people seem aggravated I would dare to check my order and point out they didn't put in the ketchup i asked for, or the napkins, or whatever. Or when I dine in the tables are dirty. Or the gym is filthy, the cleaner just drags the mop around looking busy but accomplishing nothing. But in many instances they keep asking for more tips. * Software seems to be overrun by a mentality that any future cost is worth it to save even 1 minute of development time today. And this one I think I've observed the root, it seems that people get promoted away from their problems so they're not the ones to solve them. And those who do write good software (albeit slightly slower) are not promotable beacuse they're "under performing" their peers. Why does it seem management (and many thusly incentivized engineers) have abandoned decades of experience showing how to create reliable, robust, reusable code that is both great the customer, fast to iterate on, and only a tiny tiny bit slower to write. * Seems like everything is subscription model and you have to pay N times to access something thats only worth 1-3x . Eg: I Netflix for a couple hours a month. At the price for 4k access I can almost go out to a theatre. Video games are all trending to subscription models. I just learned the other day that the PS4 games I got with my subcription to PSN all are locked because I stopped subscribing (nearly 50 games) . So I paid them like $125 for access to these games for 24 months, and now I cannot play any of them? At least I still own NES/SNES/N64 Game cartridges that will never lock me out. * Police seem to not give a shit anymore. I've noticed what seems to be total lawlessness going on in my world. Folks stealing shit. People driving absurdly dangerously in cars that are not designed to travel like that. (tailgating, lane switch, accelerating at the fastest I've ever seen a beat up Sentra do...) . I never see cops hit lights and sirens at them. And every year our taxes (their paycheck) and our insurance goes up (a consequence of poor driving habits). And at the same time, we get these cases where a dude like Tyre, at least as I see the body cam, seems to be basically complying and the police freak out on him, he basically complies, and they taze and pepper spay him, no wonder he ran away -- what is someone supposed to think when they say "on the ground" and you get on the ground and then just keep getting more and more aggressive. Like are you gonna just lay on your face while they potentially pull their gun and just shoot you in the back of the head? How do you know what's going on unless you can face and see them? How can you trust they wont, cause even if it's 99.999999% they wont, you only get 1 one chance and if you get it wrong you're dead without any coming back. * Over and over again we keep hearing stories of fake people becoming the top paid, respected, or otherwise status people in society. Elizabeth Holmes, Frank/JP Morgan scam for $175M[2], fraudulent crypto schemes * And there's a ton of little things too like the water is poison, the air is poison, the food system is poison or crashing etc. I'm aware of pinker's general argument that many numbers are getting better. But it seems like people just treat eachother like shit these days. Anyone else have other examples? I am I way off base here? [1]: https://ift.tt/edLoTSZ [2]: https://ift.tt/EMl0GDe
New top story on Hacker News: The Mathematical Center of the Universe (1807-1933)
The Mathematical Center of the Universe (1807-1933)
19 by jorgenveisdal | 2 comments on Hacker News.
19 by jorgenveisdal | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Sunday, 29 January 2023
Saturday, 28 January 2023
Friday, 27 January 2023
Thursday, 26 January 2023
Wednesday, 25 January 2023
Tuesday, 24 January 2023
New top story on Hacker News: Life and work of the great Visionary, Homi J. Bhabha
Life and work of the great Visionary, Homi J. Bhabha
11 by happy-go-lucky | 0 comments on Hacker News.
11 by happy-go-lucky | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Monday, 23 January 2023
Sunday, 22 January 2023
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Anyone doing some absurd stuff after getting laid off?
Ask HN: Anyone doing some absurd stuff after getting laid off?
47 by x86hacker1010 | 15 comments on Hacker News.
Life is pretty absurd and wonder more and more why we put so much stake into a job when the employer effectively doesn't care about you. Anyone taking some time to do cool stuff?
47 by x86hacker1010 | 15 comments on Hacker News.
Life is pretty absurd and wonder more and more why we put so much stake into a job when the employer effectively doesn't care about you. Anyone taking some time to do cool stuff?
Saturday, 21 January 2023
Friday, 20 January 2023
Thursday, 19 January 2023
Wednesday, 18 January 2023
Tuesday, 17 January 2023
While Putin praises Russia’s economic and military resilience, Britain calls for bolstering Ukraine now.
By BY IVAN NECHEPURENKO, ANUSHKA PATIL AND STEPHEN CASTLE from NYT World https://ift.tt/THygM7b
via IFTTT
Monday, 16 January 2023
Sunday, 15 January 2023
New top story on Hacker News: How to beat lag when developing a multiplayer RTS game
How to beat lag when developing a multiplayer RTS game
13 by AshleysBrain | 1 comments on Hacker News.
13 by AshleysBrain | 1 comments on Hacker News.
Saturday, 14 January 2023
Friday, 13 January 2023
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?
Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?
60 by throwaway932874 | 103 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN, I work for a small company and we've recently come across a version of our software that's been cracked. Specifically, the crack modifies some of our binaries to circumvent the activation process and allows bogus registration keys. Pretty standard stuff AFAIK. Thankfully, our digital signatures are lost in the process, so that's reassuring. We haven't done the most thorough search of how widespread the issue is, but we've estimated that it's about 1 user per day since the early half of 2022. A license costs a few thousand dollars, but we do regional pricing and bulk licenses for larger firms. We also provide free licenses to academics (with proof). For context, we are a <15 person company where we all wear multiple hats and would like to continue providing great service, training and introducing features. It's clear to us why someone would crack our software, especially in lower income countries. I'm not entirely sure what other information would be helpful to provide, but I was wondering if anyone has run into this into the past, and how it was mitigated. While we'll always have some piracy, we'd like to keep it to a minimum.
60 by throwaway932874 | 103 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN, I work for a small company and we've recently come across a version of our software that's been cracked. Specifically, the crack modifies some of our binaries to circumvent the activation process and allows bogus registration keys. Pretty standard stuff AFAIK. Thankfully, our digital signatures are lost in the process, so that's reassuring. We haven't done the most thorough search of how widespread the issue is, but we've estimated that it's about 1 user per day since the early half of 2022. A license costs a few thousand dollars, but we do regional pricing and bulk licenses for larger firms. We also provide free licenses to academics (with proof). For context, we are a <15 person company where we all wear multiple hats and would like to continue providing great service, training and introducing features. It's clear to us why someone would crack our software, especially in lower income countries. I'm not entirely sure what other information would be helpful to provide, but I was wondering if anyone has run into this into the past, and how it was mitigated. While we'll always have some piracy, we'd like to keep it to a minimum.
Thursday, 12 January 2023
Wednesday, 11 January 2023
Tuesday, 10 January 2023
Monday, 9 January 2023
Sunday, 8 January 2023
Saturday, 7 January 2023
Friday, 6 January 2023
Thursday, 5 January 2023
Wednesday, 4 January 2023
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Semantic search for video
Show HN: Semantic search for video
22 by AlexanderTheGr8 | 9 comments on Hacker News.
Hello HN Over the New Year's break, I created semanticvideosearch.com. This can search any video based on meaning and context. I would love to get your feedback on it. What should I change and what can be improved? The preprocessed videos can be search very quickly, while the youtube video links take some time (yt videos also have a upper duration limit due to compute issues). I intend to add search based on the frames of the video soon. I would love to know your thoughts on the demo and any suggestions for improvements. Thanks! PS: the inspiration to create this was to get the 2 mins of content from youtube videos with 18 other mins of fluff.
22 by AlexanderTheGr8 | 9 comments on Hacker News.
Hello HN Over the New Year's break, I created semanticvideosearch.com. This can search any video based on meaning and context. I would love to get your feedback on it. What should I change and what can be improved? The preprocessed videos can be search very quickly, while the youtube video links take some time (yt videos also have a upper duration limit due to compute issues). I intend to add search based on the frames of the video soon. I would love to know your thoughts on the demo and any suggestions for improvements. Thanks! PS: the inspiration to create this was to get the 2 mins of content from youtube videos with 18 other mins of fluff.
Tuesday, 3 January 2023
Monday, 2 January 2023
New best story on Hacker News: Airbnb removed my negative review
Airbnb removed my negative review
527 by luminaobscura | 300 comments on Hacker News.
I recently had a bad airbnb experience. During check in the host requested a cash deposit. this wasn't explained in the listing or prior to arrival. i couldn't check in and went elsewhere. Then i posted a review* giving these details. Airbnb removed my below review because "The review didn’t have enough relevant information to help the Airbnb community make informed booking or hosting decisions." The rating of the place went back up after removal. The host still have "superhost" status. Needless to say, i no longer trust airbnb reviews. *my full review was: I wasn't able to check in because [Host] requested 300 USD security deposit during check in. I told her - I don't have that much cash on me. - That is against AirBnB rules. - This should have been explained in airbnb listing. She can't just surprise guests with this at the last minute. She didn't listen. She said: "my house my rules", "you can't tell me how to run my business", "if you don't like it, you can cancel". I told her if i cancel, i don't get full refund so she should cancel. she said she won't cancel and me not getting refund is not her problem. I think she counts on the fact that guests typically wouldn't want to cancel in the last minute. you can see in some other reviews people had to agree to paying her this deposit. But i didn't want to cave in and called AirBnB. Thankfully, airbnb fully refunded the payment and i was able to find another accomodation in the last minute. I don't recommend this host unless you want a stressful start for your vacation.
527 by luminaobscura | 300 comments on Hacker News.
I recently had a bad airbnb experience. During check in the host requested a cash deposit. this wasn't explained in the listing or prior to arrival. i couldn't check in and went elsewhere. Then i posted a review* giving these details. Airbnb removed my below review because "The review didn’t have enough relevant information to help the Airbnb community make informed booking or hosting decisions." The rating of the place went back up after removal. The host still have "superhost" status. Needless to say, i no longer trust airbnb reviews. *my full review was: I wasn't able to check in because [Host] requested 300 USD security deposit during check in. I told her - I don't have that much cash on me. - That is against AirBnB rules. - This should have been explained in airbnb listing. She can't just surprise guests with this at the last minute. She didn't listen. She said: "my house my rules", "you can't tell me how to run my business", "if you don't like it, you can cancel". I told her if i cancel, i don't get full refund so she should cancel. she said she won't cancel and me not getting refund is not her problem. I think she counts on the fact that guests typically wouldn't want to cancel in the last minute. you can see in some other reviews people had to agree to paying her this deposit. But i didn't want to cave in and called AirBnB. Thankfully, airbnb fully refunded the payment and i was able to find another accomodation in the last minute. I don't recommend this host unless you want a stressful start for your vacation.
Sunday, 1 January 2023
New top story on Hacker News: Tell HN: Did you know that you can help restore a person’s eyesight for $50?
Tell HN: Did you know that you can help restore a person’s eyesight for $50?
72 by munchhausen | 7 comments on Hacker News.
Dear HN, Is there a better way to start a year than with acts of generosity? Recently, I learned about the Seva Foundation, which counts Larry Brilliant, Ram Dass and Steve Jobs among its founders. The foundation's mission is to "build sustainable eye care systems worldwide by creating equitable access to eye care, building capacity of new and existing eye hospitals and systems, and collecting and learning from evidence." I perused their website, and was taken aback by how common it is in many parts of the world for scores of people to suffer from vision impairment due to cataracts - a condition that can be easily cured with a simple surgery that costs 50$ to carry out. It is a powerful reminder of the stark inequalities that exist in the world. I feel grateful that there are people like the Seva Foundation, who are doing something about it. You can learn more about the foundation and donate to the cause at: https://www.seva.org/ P.S. I am not affiliated with the Seva Foundation, I just found them to be a genuinely great organization and wanted to spread the word.
72 by munchhausen | 7 comments on Hacker News.
Dear HN, Is there a better way to start a year than with acts of generosity? Recently, I learned about the Seva Foundation, which counts Larry Brilliant, Ram Dass and Steve Jobs among its founders. The foundation's mission is to "build sustainable eye care systems worldwide by creating equitable access to eye care, building capacity of new and existing eye hospitals and systems, and collecting and learning from evidence." I perused their website, and was taken aback by how common it is in many parts of the world for scores of people to suffer from vision impairment due to cataracts - a condition that can be easily cured with a simple surgery that costs 50$ to carry out. It is a powerful reminder of the stark inequalities that exist in the world. I feel grateful that there are people like the Seva Foundation, who are doing something about it. You can learn more about the foundation and donate to the cause at: https://www.seva.org/ P.S. I am not affiliated with the Seva Foundation, I just found them to be a genuinely great organization and wanted to spread the word.