hiram112

I imagine your politics swing left and progressive, right?

Which is why this article is kind of absurd, in my opinion, as it tags the right / Republicans as those who are abandoning the Constitution.

Every poll or social study I've seen shows that progressives - especially the younger generations - have views similar to yours i.e. not much reverence for the Constitution, the founders, etc. They are most likely to believe that freedom of speech is less important than moderating "hate speech." They believe the 2nd amendment right to bear arms is ridiculously out of date in a modern society, etc.

They allocated $150M according to the article.

I can't see that being enough to even break ground on a single mile of track.

If California boondoggle is any indication, it will be enough to staff an army of middle managers, bureaucrats, and environmental impact and DEI staff for a year, and, of course, pay out some political kickbacks.

What refunds will he need to provide?

I paid for the app years ago - it was $5 or so and I don't expect to get anything back. That's just how the game works.

I know he also had some sort of monthly subscription - it seemed quite absurd for whatever additional trivial features it provided, but then again there apparently was some sort of Apollo fanboy group who got a lot of excitement out of new app logos, which seemed to be the main updates in the last few years, even at the expense of serious bugs that lingered for months.

I'd assume those subscriptions would just stop being charged going forward. So again, who is getting $250k in refunds?

Furthermore, if he is refunding that much money, I wonder what kind of revenue and profits he was pulling in? I had kind of assumed he was making a very good living (deservedly - it was a good app) - maybe a few hundred thousand dollars a year, but now I'm wondering if he was making a order of magnitude more than that...

I watched the beginning of the video but it's over an hour and relatively slow going.

I don't know Elixer or frameworks around it.

But I'm guessing you basically just used something like Zookeeper to do distributed locks at the API call level. Only when they got that lock would they then be given DB access, which then ensured the DB itself wouldn't grind to a halt as many calls were all locking tables at the same time.

So what was the solution to returning status to the caller? Did you just give them a ticket which they could then poll status later?

Meanwhile, the individual servers just put the requests on a local queue and spin in a thread till they get the lock from Zookeeper (or similar) and can access the DB?

>Not long ago I was living proof that you could live in Mexico for 5 years, be fluent in reading/writing Spanish, yet be unable to understand native speakers.

Same here. I've spent years in school learning Spanish, a semester in Spain, a decade of passive learning with audio books and reading novels, and dozens of trips to Latin America.

I can read an adult novel in Spanish fine. I can speak well enough to accomplish any basic task. I can understand the news and very slow Spanish e.g. the link above.

But no matter how much I practice, my brain will not process regularly spoken Spanish well enough to understand it with more than 25% accuracy.

I used to think I needed more immersion. Maybe, but not likely as I don't think it's possible as an adult to teach my brain the "rhythm" of Spanish language.

I also lived in Germany for a year. And with no prior German lang. experience, I was able to understand spoken German after that year better than I can Spanish after 20 years of learning. The German language seems to flow in my brain the same as English, but Spanish is just on a different frequency.

I imagine the real reason here is that EU companies want to avoid the 30% fee Apple collects on all online purchases with IOS apps. It's doubtful any savings will be passed on to consumers, anyway.

It's likely Apple will do what Google does and instead tie their app store into various apis and services (e.g. Google Play) so that side-loaded apps have a very difficult if not impossible time integrating with the phone in a way that users expect and desire.

Seems like the EU bureaucracy goes after big entrenched US tech companies again and again, but they never really obtain any W's. They spent years fighting against Microsoft's bundling of IE and Media Player, and all that ever happened was that MS released some Euro-only version of a few Windows releases without the bundling. But both IE and Media Player were displaced within a few years anyway, regardless of any EU rules.

Likewise, all the GPDR rules seemed to have accomplished is that every site now has an annoying-as-hell "click here to accept all cookies" button that everyone has learned to just auto accept. I doubt Europeans have anymore actual privacy compared to the rest of us, especially since their own governments are far more interested in tracking their citizens online behavior with regard to tax avoidance, hate speech, etc - they absolutely require US Big Tech to keep track of all this info for them to quietly subpoena as needed.

Amazing just how far Amazon has fallen due to counterfeit products and scammy sellers.

It is unfortunate but understandable if you get scammed buying a pair of "certified" Apple earbuds or lightening cables from a Chinese seller at a price 70% less than you'd pay at Apple, Fair enough and buyer beware.

But if you can't even buy a BOOK that's sold by Amazon itself without getting scammed, then it seems we have a serious problem, and it is not surprising that Amazon stock is down over 50%.

> Essentially it was so easy when he was young and handsome, he learned an aversion to trying

I think a lot of women experience the same upon reaching middle age. In their 20s and early 30s, getting a date, sex, long-term relationship, etc. was as easy as firing up the app and letting a dozen men dance like monkeys for the chance to take her out.

By late 30s, this dynamic is gone for most women, and even starts reversing itself where by 40's, many men - and not just the "alphas" or gay men who also had an easy time in their younger years - have a lot more power in the dating market, though mostly because they aren't so beholden to their hormones, and can make decisions based on what benefits a particular women and relationship brings to his life. In most cases, the negatives outweigh the positives, and thus women and gay men now get to experience the same odds that most men dealt with all their life.

> They are group trainings that only last 25 mins.

For a good 20 years - from early teens through mid 30s - I began and eventually quit various workout and gym routines, memberships, etc because I couldn't find the time or because I would dread going so much I'd invent any excuse in my mind to avoid them.

My mistake was assuming I needed to go for an hour or more at a time, and also that I needed to do 20-30 minutes of cardio.

It wasn't until my mid 30s that I realized I wouldn't dread it so much if I limited my workouts to 20-30 minutes max, and that I didn't need cardio (which I despise) and instead could just do some compound free weights exercise - just 4 or 5 simple lifts. Maybe 2-3 sets of 5 every other day.

Since then, I enjoy going and have been consistent about it for years.

> The reality is that Russia is losing the economic war, just as it is losing the war on the battlefield. Real incomes in Russia are already estimated to be 10 per cent lower today than in 2014, when Putin first invaded Ukraine.

I imagine the average American is doing worse than that since then.

In 2014 USA, things for me and my peers were finally stabilizing after 5 years of financial crisis, housing busts, horrible job market, etc.

Inflation was low, I'd finally found a fair employer at a decent salary, had bought a late model car (3 year old Acura) for about $25K, and my investments had recovered and were now growing again in the stock market. Housing was still modestly priced after the bubble crash, interest rates were low for buyers, but rent prices were doable, with plenty of inventory, too, for those not yet ready to buy.

And there were dozens of 2nd and 3rd tier cities in which any standard worker would be able to move to and likely obtain the "American Dream" of home ownership, a couple cars, etc.

Let's compare that to now:

My salary has grown by about 25% in absolute dollars (2-3% corporate raises don't add up so quickly). Meanwhile, I still own my 2010 car, and it would cost about $40K today to replace it with a similarly low-miled used one, or $50K+ if new. That's if I could even get one since it seems there is now a perpetual "chip shortage."

The same apartment I rented in 2014 would cost at least 50% more now, though probably closer to double with all the extra fees. The same starter homes I looked at then are double in absolute dollars, and at current 7%+ interest rates, might be closer to 3x as expensive per monthly payment. And this isn't just in places like NYC or Bay Area or Miami Beach. Once "cheap" cities like Phoenix and Nashville are now just as expensive, relative to salaries, as the over-crowded and desirable coastal areas were last generation.

Everything else is way MORE expensive, especially food. I eat out less. Food quality is generally lower or smaller portioned.

I take less vacations as airfare seems to have doubled in price in the last 5 years. And let's not even get into health insurance, which has also doubled in price since 2014 (I now have a $3K deductible with the same premium costs as before, thanks to Obamacare).

My retirement savings have lost over 1/3 of their value in the last year.

So Russians should know that it's not just them suffering. Most of us in the west have taken a 10% hit to standard of living in just the last 3 years, IMO.

This is essentially the Java Servlet specification with JSPs (or if you don't like those, just bolt on Thymeleaf or one of the older templating languages).

Nearly all of these newer frameworks like Spring, Helidon, Quarkus, etc. just reuse the internal Sevrlet spec themselves. Otherwise, they're reinventing a TON of code that would be insane to do in order to deal with the general HTTP request / response cycle.

I can already imagine how these totally neutral "providers" like Google and Twitter would implement this, much like Microsoft abuses their OS monopoly to ensure 90% of non-tech-savvy users will eventually be using Edge.

Sign up for Twitter. Immediately you're greeted with a list of "suggested filters" that will pop up again and again, using dark patterns eventually, until you either give in or are tricked into adding Twitter's highly recommended "safe filter plus package" that uses the exact same shadow bans and biased algorithms used by default today.

Anybody using a current version or older under an Apache license can continue to do so, as far as I can tell.

Nobody using a free version of any software should expect some benelovent 3rd party to continue fixing bugs and making improvements for free, even if you enjoyed that privilege before.

It would be cool if somebody could crowd-source an EBS volume (or some other block storage) template of this that anybody else could easily attach to their cloud instance.

> It will, however, show grime. They haven't let go of Apple White Which Reveals If You're a Slob yet, and I'm dubious they ever will.

Haha, we had an all-hands meeting in-person for the first time since Covid last week. There were about 15 of us sitting around a huge conference table. Many white Macbook chargers and their cables sprawled across the table.

I did get very self conscious when I realized all the rest were pristine white - as if they had just unwrapped them for the first time - while mine was pit-stain yellow with the connector frayed and blue. I had never noticed how gross it was until seeing it right next to the newer, clean chargers.

I blamed it on the cat - he sits on the cord when it's lying on the bed. I'm not sure they were buying it, though.

Apparently, one of the companies actively pursing psilocybin for medicinal purposes has just patented one of the main methods of synthesis. From what I remember from the article that hit HN just last week regarding one of the main chemists for this company, this may be putting off researchers and others from using anything other than the natural mushrooms in their trials, tests, products, etc.

* https://www.vice.com/en/article/93a5x3/judges-deny-challenge...

Interestingly enough, Christianity, the Bible (as anything other than a historical text), etc. were systematically stripped from most schools, libraries, gov't buildings over the past 50 years.

The right obviously wasn't pleased about it. But the lawsuits were made, and the courts established the precedents.

And now I don't think the left is going to be happy when they're on the receiving end, and the same courts force them to take down the rainbow flags, remove all the Kendi books, cut out the BLM activism and pride curriculums.

Because at this point, there is little difference between traditional religions and the newer "woke" ones being pushed. They've both got their dogmas, moral codes, icons, rituals, systems of punishments for heretics, etc.

Lol, it was bound to happen when even mainstream media began casually labelling a good third of the country white supremacists, racists, and the (other) dreaded N-word, simply for demanding IDs to vote or for insisting that borders should probably be enforced.

> Having used to work at Capital One within Shared Tech, I worked with a lot of really brilliant engineers who could easily have been working at FAANG.

I don't doubt this - but my guess is that a lot of these top engineers are working at CapitalOne for relatively low salaries compared to FAANG explicitly because they're tethered to the company by an H1B or L1 or similar visa and can't easily jump ship.

The headquarters of Capital One is smack-dab in the middle of the US defense and IC contracting hub in Tysons Corner in Northern Virginia. They're competing for talent now with hundreds (thousands?) of small software contractors and also the big defense players like Northrop, Lockheed, etc. And on top of that, the big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft have expanded heavily in the area and are now gobbling up all the talent as they pay way more than DOD and gov't contract work.

Yet Capital One still doesn't offer competitive salaries that even match the defense contractors, never-mind AWS and Microsoft. I know half a dozen talented engineers who got tired of the $175K defense industry salary "ceiling" and jump ship to Amazon. I know of zero who've moved to Capital One, though they probably employ more engineers in the area than any other company.

And from what I've seen, it's because their engineering departments are 90% Indians on H1B (again - some very talented). Most US citizens won't want to work there.

Yeah, I saw a lot of bad takes on Twitter related to the "debunking of the serotonin myth" with the insinuation that they'd finally proven that serotonin itself has absolutely no involvement in depression or anxiety, and it was all just a big hoax perpetrated by Big Pharma.

And then you read an article like this:

> The receptor has proven crucial to understanding the neuropharmacology of the psychedelic experience induced by classical hallucinogens. LSD, mescaline, psilocybin—they all interact with 5-HT2A. (In certain circles, the phrase “5-HT2A agonist” has supplanted “psychedelic”...

5-HT2A receptors, of course, bind to serotonin (or at least that's our primitive theory of what's going on).

We've known for 70 years now that monoamines like dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, etc. greatly influence mood. But our model of the brain is primitive, though that doesn't mean our current theories regarding these neurotransmitters like serotonin aren't on the right track.

I don't see how this could be truly secure if it's JS running on the client. There is nothing stopping a user from running a custom version of Chromium or otherwise that ignores CSPs... Maybe I'm not fully understanding what is being restricted here and where the code is being run.

> The elderly are already allowed to defer taxes to when their estate is settled

Is this a Texas-specific thing? If it is, I really think more states ought to roll it out, though it would increase complexity for the state who (I assume) becomes partial owners on the title of the home homeowners begin deferring their taxes.

I get tired of those claiming property taxes are unjust with the claim that one never truly "owns" their own home, but instead just rents it perpetually from the state. Property taxes are a significant share of local and state tax revenue and pay for schools, roads, police, courts, etc.

Similarly, I'm not too sympathetic to those (often elderly) who claim they can no longer pay taxes due to fixed incomes while home prices increase. The amount their taxes have increased are a fraction of the equity they've gained - they should be able to obtain some sort of "reverse mortgage" that pays the taxes in exchange for partial ownership of the home, which would then be settled at time of death by the heirs who'd just not inherit the home 100% clear.

What does bother me about ever increasing property taxes is the entitlement of the localities and states on that increased revenue without justification for the improved services they'll provide to taxpayers in exchange. In a city like Austin where home prices have increased close to 50% in just the last two years, that must mean the city and county's gross tax revenue has also increased by some proportion of that.

I think most states and localities should be forced to run like a typical well run HOA where all costs and planned expenditures are 100% transparent. Taxes should only rise on properties when there is a justified cost increase, and should not automatically go up when values do.

Maybe 10 years ago I would have been impressed with any candidate with a masters from a legit CS department.

However, in the last 5 years I've worked with numerous engineers with masters from both "prestigious" universities and also the typical "cash-cow" degrees that are so common today.

One of my previous devs had a masters from a "public-ivy" in computer science, and he honestly was not qualified for anything more than basic CRUD "enterprise". Hate to say it, but he was obviously pushed through the system due to his race and the need for these schools to fill diversity quotas.

Also, I knew a public school middle school teacher - she was bright but had no formal math or engineering or CS education beyond basic algebra with her teaching degree, no programming experience, etc. But she had been able to obtain a masters in CS from a top 10 program via some "Masters in CS for Public School Teachers" program. I also took a few masters courses from this university, and they were extremely difficult, even for me who has a lot of experience and a solid CS bachelors.

For example, some of the qualifying courses included programming MIPS in assembly language, binary numbering systems, algorithms with assumed knowledge of Big O, data structures, dynamic programming, etc. There is no way anyone without both a good undergrad CS degree and some dev experience could legitimately pass these courses, especially when the program was meant to be done by professionals who were already experienced developers at night / weekends - so I assume she was pushed through with a "wink wink" from the administration.

Finally, the hordes of foreign students getting degrees from cash-cow programs in order to remain in the US or obtain OPT visas ensure that nobody respects a Masters in CS anymore. Now that most of these are online, they're even less legit as you know these programs are plagued with cheating, fraud, etc.

> Low code can deliver some features 4x faster but sometimes a stupid feature can take 20x the time just because the low code platform wont support that. Or sometimes the solution is so ugly that the whole project becomes a mess.

This is why I'm not too excited about some of these solutions. Seems like I've been here, done that several times in my career: CMS software like Wordpress and Joomla, "Portals", repository and workflow solutions like Alfresco and Appian, etc.

They all save tons of time for a small prototype or very basic use cases, but the minute users want some special feature, you'll spend hours, days or longer fighting against the tool, driving yourself nuts because you know you could implement it in 30 minutes in a custom app. Or you're forced to become an "expert" in these tools, which turns out to be a really bad career move as years of experience with a specific framework will instantly become worthless as industry moves on to the next Big Thing.

As far as I can tell, Lucene is the library that powers the main search-related features of Elastic Search i.e. inverted indices, stemming, tokenization, etc.

Elastic Search, Amazon Open Search, Solr, etc. just wrapped Lucene up in a much easier to use HTTP / Rest API and then added bells and whistles like a coherent DSL, scripting, authentication and authorization, jobs, bulk API, etc. Then they built additional tools like Logstah and Kibana, which integrate using these APIs.

This really isn't how it works. You might pay a premium price for specialty goods and foods imported from the US, but, based on a quick Google search, there doesn't appear to be many consumer items - our top 5 exports are aircraft, machinery, pharma, mineral oils, and medical instruments.

In developed countries, the majority of the costs for goods and services (and taxes) come from labor, which means they're not affected by currency fluctuations too much.

Not a good time to vacation to the US, nor is it a good deal for Americans working in the EU and paid in Euros who need to pay past bills back in the US

Can't speak for other countries, but in the US there is a point where being poorer would almost certainly make it easier to have and raise children than being middle class. Most social benefits in the US (besides entitlements for older people which are, by far, the most costly) are distributed primarily to women with kid(s) and low income. Though it greatly depends on the state, a single mother with low income could expect:

* full health insurance through Medicaid

* Food subsidies i.e. SNAP, WIC, etc.

* Section 8 housing (which can often times be very nice housing in extremely desirable neighborhoods of large cities like DC, NYC, SF).

* TANF a.k.a. welfare cash

* free tuition / grants / job training through dozens of federal, state, and private programs

* free daycare (again through dozens of fed, state, and private programs, often included with job training grants)

* public transportation vouchers

* down payment and first-home buyer programs.

Compare that to the same-aged single or married woman living in the exact same city making $75K. She may literally live next door to the theoretical subsidized woman described above, yet be paying 60% or more of her take-home pay in rent alone. She will be paying hundreds of dollars / month for health insurance and have a $2K deductible to boot. No food or any other subsidies. Add a few hundred dollars / month for her tuition loans, and she has $0 left at the end of the month which means she will (correctly) feel unable to afford a child, especially when child-care will cost her up to $2K / month.

But at least her corporate employer will pay for her abortion!

Thank you. Same situation occuring with the exagerated outrage over the 2020 election shenanigans and resulting riot at the capitol.

Not a great look for the US by any means, but the whole chapter is a joke compared to past election turmoil, especially during reconstruction era post Civil War. In those years, you often had large armed militias battling it out with occupying federal troops over which election results.

This is a little disingenuous. Twitter itself is the means of "speech." I don't think Musk or anyone else has stated that your Tweets should exempt you from consequences off the platform. Similarly, the ability for everyone to speak their mind on the world's modern town square doesn't give Twitter employees carte blanche within the corporate hierarchy.