jkeisling/hacker-news-corpus-2007-2022 huggingface dataset:
Pixomatic wasn't just on par with UE1's SW rasterizer it was somewhat explicitly designed to be the SW rasterizer for UE2. The thing was notable by the fact that it had feature parity with HW Direct3D implementations of the time and worked by dynamically compiling D3D shaders into x86 code (which had the interesting feature that it used ESP as general purpose register).

IIRC the idea behing Intel's Larabee at least partly involved running pixomatic on that hardware.
In a past life I worked at a marketing agency. When we'd run random drawings, I'd (properly) randomly select and provide a winner.

It happened more than once that the marketing side would come back and ask for a new winner because of a situation like us doing a drawing for a prize from an ISP, and the winner's email being "@competitorisp.net".

As far as I know (and I've got a reasonable basis for this), the clients never requested this or anything. It was purely our marketing guys not liking the optics of telling the client that a competitor's customer won.

And yeah, for some giveaways and stuff they'd take a list of people and trawl through their social media accounts to figure out who'd have the most impact.

Again, don't think the clients had requested this, it just made the job we're doing look better to show the client "Yeah this person won and look at all the social media buzz it created!" rather than "Yeah we gave it to someone that looks like a troll, has no media presence, and the only people that will probably hear about this are a few people in an IRC chatroom."

If it's not regulated (or small enough that the regulators won't notice), I'd assume any contest/etc like this is probably rigged. Marketing is, generally, an industry full of lies. The contests are no different.
Also remember that popular home computers often went from say ZX Spectrums (Cassette) to Amiga/Atari ST (3.5 floppy) - so there was no intermediate 5.25 floppy stage.
I'm curious why you think folks at gumroad don't "work much" and that most of the work had been done by those no longer at the company. Did you used to work there and have some insider knowledge?

Seems to me the post wasn't even claiming to have >$1M ARR either (there was a graph for the creators ARR which I think is different?) and that everyone does work... they just do it using a non-traditional process.

edit: There's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25675713 which might point to >$1M ARR?

edit 2: I also realized in a business like this ARR just doesn't matter (who cares? You're not trying to raise another round or IPO). https://twitter.com/shl/status/1215673023472140289 shows the net profit and it amounts to 1 senior engineer's salary. That's amazing for a small business with a small number of employees but it's not exactly living high off the hog.
> no known human civilization has ever endured for so long

I have 2 points here. 1) The half life is longer than recorded history so this isn't really fair. We've seen humans continually advance. Sure, there has been setbacks and some regressions but we haven't ever come even close at reverting back to the stone or even bronze age. That is highly unlikely and if that were to happen we'd probably have bigger problems. 2) Not all waste is equal. A good rule of thumb is that high energy waste is short lived and long lived waste is low energy. Why? Because high energy waste is shedding particles much faster than low energy. Simply if you use a bucket to remove the water from your swimming pool you'll finish a lot faster than you would if you used a tea cup.

> no geologic formation of adequate size for a permanent radioactive waste repository has yet been discovered that has been stable for so long a period

This is false and I'm not sure where you got this information from. We chose the location for the Seed Vault (and the GitHub vault) for similar reasons. There's plenty of other locations as well, several within the US. As for the bet, I'm betting on generations of PhD holding geologists to make that decision over really anyone else. As long as what they say doesn't set off any bullshit alarms I don't see why they shouldn't be believed. They are in fact the experts in the subject matter and just rejecting their work with no real evidence is rather arrogant and surprising to see on HN. I believe them for the same reason I believe climate scientists. I've read their work, seems reasonable, I've talked to them and they seem reasonable and passionate and well studied. How arrogant would I need to be to tell them they are wrong. My expertise lies in other fields.

I'd also suggest reading what actual plans are and understanding the scale of the waste problem. I find that many people over estimate the scale by many orders of magnitude. [0]

> It's literally like saying "Fuck other people who are born after me".

I'd say that not taking care of climate is saying "Fuck other people who are born after me." You're letting perfection get in the way of progress. We can say similar things about strip mining and rare earth materials. The things we'd need to develop battery storage to make renewables a feasible path forward. We can't wait for a miracle in battery storage. We needed to act 20 years ago. So now we have to make compromises. And as we drag our feet we are still polluting with coal and oil. To me that is the real "fuck you" to future generations. That we got so caught up in perfection that we let high pollution levels continue right on while we prayed for a miracle.

[0] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
Yes; this. I also have no idea how other people pay any bills without a system like this.
Pinouts ?
You know that you can connect a 5" and 35." drive on the same floppy drive port ?
It's hard to explain just how alien "I prefer not having my health insurance tied to one source of income" sounds to the rest of the world, the idea that those two things are co-dependent is wild and scary.

It's an insurance policy, it has nothing to do with my work.
Hey, sorry for not replying in a timely manner. I made the comment above and then was dragged by work for the last 3 days, and completely forgot about this.

I got a lot of good other comments, but the reason I'm replying to you is this: You miss understood what I said. (My bad?)

I was not saying that unions are good, or that unions are bad.

I was just stating how contradictory the opinion on unions is on the US. A large % of people think that unions are bad, but they accept as a matter of fact that police unions exists.
The fact that _they_ exists, means - IMO - that their associates get benefits from that, more often than not, considering how widespread police unions are.

I don't think that unions are inherently bad or good; I think that depends on the culture of the country.

In my country, almost everybody is in a union, and they do a general good job of fighting for salary increases on a yearly basis.

The downside of unions here, is that the truck drivers unions have lobbied extensively over the years against new rail roads, and that goes against the well being of the general population.

I follow a "UK Legal Advice" subreddit [1] (I don't live in the UK, but I work for a company there" and more often than not the advice given there is "Adhere to a union". Basically, unions good / bad depends on the country.
Better/more fine control of the read-write heads leading to more dense information storage. Floppy discs used a stepper motor, Zip drives used something more like a modern hard disc actuator, see https://hddsurgery.com/blog/hdd-actuator
The cascading narcissism is ridiculous, but then the paranoia shows itself...

They will do everything in their power to destroy all my efforts at building a better world

...and it just becomes kind of pathetic.
(Disclaimer: I'm a potential customer) You don't tell me how much it'll cost once the free trial is over, which makes my company extremely unlikely to try it out.
Huh? You use the theory to figure out what to implement in practice.

The idea of just randomly hacking some shit together then backfitting a theory onto it is absurd. That's the same strategy that led to many of the past failures of "AI" -- approaches based too much on intuition that wasn't theoretically well grounded.

Probability theory and statistical models are foundational material for anyone interested in machine learning.
“If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.

I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor." - Nikola Tesla
That makes me want to cry and vomit at the same time. No amount of money is going to fix that. And its just the start.
Can you please suggest alternative university courses / reading material / progression?
Do you know of any better lectures?
I notice this all the time as well. A few well known, VC funded startups have Terms of Service documents that are nearly identical to the Google Analytics TOS.
Have you tried the "All-in-one" layout in Xcode? (Look in the "General" preferences section.) I find it a lot more usable than the default lots-of-windows setting, especially if you have more than one project open.
It's tough to cover every case, and if you're insulted by being called a programmer, this might not be the site for you.
That's not how sovereignty works.

The EU has no jurisdiction whatsoever over a service outside its borders. It can ban various apps and then penalize its citizens for using them (or just block them) but it can't dictate to companies in other countries what they can put on the internet.

In the extreme case, consider that Tencent and other Chinese companies with social media platforms are required by law to collect user information that violates the GDPR. Do you think they'll follow the laws of their own country where the business is based or EU regulations?
When you look at it, Google probably already has. 20% time is practically gone, Reader gone, iGoogle going, etc. All the various little projects that may not have had huge numbers of users, but still indicated that Google was a fast moving, innovative company are disappearing.

It may take a few years for people to realise they are a lumbering giant in decline now, but the seeds are already planted, maybe even full grown...
It's shocking how quickly this got to the top of the front page. People really, really like Tesla :)
Previously, Kim Dotcom had made an allegation that Joe Biden himself was somehow involved.

At the time, it seemed preposterous.

Now,... it's entirely plausible.
As a matter of fact, the development of the Surface software started before the iPad came out...
This is a better overview:

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/04/23/teslas-efforts-texas-...
What did they do exactly? Reading the site was unhelpful.
Its not "opt-in" if you explicitly click "NO" and still get the malware installed all over your machine. Getting rid of it is not as simple as an uninstall..

That is what happened the very last time I tried to download something from SourceForce.. (SourceForge).

Yes, everyone please ban SourceForge.
> The important distinction is that knowing how to read and write is a basic skill everyone needs in order to be an effective human being.

I don't think that's true. Its something people may need to be (or, at least, greatly benefit from in being) effective members of modern society, but all the people that weren't part of the literate minority when literacy was rare (or before writing existed) were not "ineffective human heings".
Growing, yes, but from a much smaller base and probably with a lower ceiling. (I'm a regular Zwift rider in the winter.)

Fundamentally, Zwift is for road cyclists who are training or stuck inside, and Peloton is for spin class fans, and never the twain shall meet. There's a big gulf between the two groups that is larger than it might seem to someone just casually observing that they appear to be doing almost exactly the same thing.
The ribbon itself was the result of confirmation bias, writ large, across the entire organization. Microsoft's PMs and UX experts noticed the new users who struggled with the hierarchical menus and forgot about the "dark matter" majority who found the menu structure adequate to their needs and didn't complain.
I suppose the point is that you should use an url that's content addressable right?
boat windows are a good idea here. Typically they have a welded metal or aluminium frame and an inset of 6mm hardened glass. Some have a sandwich of several layers of lexan glued together. They come in all shapes and sizes, and can be custommade relatively cheaply. You can get ones that open from the inside. They have to be sturdy since at sea they need to be able to withstand a wave of several tons of water coming at them at full speed.

Good luck getting through that.
Does the iPhone have a really good cooling system?
> You see them at conferences, or with articles promoted, or with other types of media, sometimes playing the diversity card,

This is unrelated to the general thesis and cleaves the audience for this post in half.
So basically you're complaining about pricing? Unlike other cloud providers, AWS has never had a price increase for a service. Just decreases.

I guess 'customer obsession' would be giving away everything for free?
How to create a safe space for work online
Under what circumstances would an employer get access to that information?

My employer should never look at my personal phone, for any reason.
I'm sure if Firefox was rammed down people's throats the way Microsoft promoted Edge on W10 updates, then it would have a much higher ranking.
I started to learn BlitzJS[0], as the promise is it allows you to quickly create apps without worrying about the DB or API, which should make it easy to create an MVP.

[0]: https://blitzjs.com/
That is, superhuman ability to turn transcripts into text and a man behind the curtain makes a speech UI as good as the man behind the curtain.

The man behind the curtain can stop you when you get it wrong and ask questions, thus the man is a usable "front-end" if it gets words right 92% of the time. A transcription bot might get 95% of the words right, but a 1 in 20 word error rate would mean a 50% or so chance to handle a 10 word sentence.
I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect users to read the ToS to find out whether their text editor will phone home. This also doesn't excuse the editor sending analytics for users who opt out of analytics.
I'm giving away $300,000 USD to whoever solves a math puzzle first. The most efficient way to solve it is through random guessing.

Oh, and the game resets every 10 minutes, where I'll give away the same prize again. For 4 years total, then I half the prize.

Go.
Some clicking on google scholar shows academic literature supports the claim at least with regard to height. Maybe someone can find similar articles with weight (I couldn't find anything)

https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2004-95165-004

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00288309
Requiring "means testing", i.e. excluding people who are not in need, is often shown to cost more money than it saves.

(and allows some people who don't technically qualify to fall through the gaps)

If you receive an extra $10,000 that you say you don't need, you could receive it and be in a tax band which gets taxed an extra $10,000. That's more straightforward.
If it's just the syntax and muscle memory you are quibbling about, you can use python to write code and then transpile it to Julia. Link to github in my other comment in this article.
Not sure I agree. A "short fat" could theoretically be replaced by a group of "short skinny", whereas a "tall skinny" could only be replaced by another "tall skinny".

As value is largely determined by scarcity (supply and demand), this would cause "short fat" to be of lower value.
Class is defined by wealth and leverage, not by greed. I don't think I've ever seen that definition before.

> they have greater opportunity to be greedy assholes

That is the definition of a different class of people.
Is it really true?

A lot of companies are focusing on hiring "short fat" engineers. Especially companies having "dev ops" engineering model, where engineers must be able to work on all stages of the product lifecycle - from design, development, testing, to deployment and operations.
I agree with you that the second is less readable and less pythonic (feels more JS/Node-ish).
The uncomfortable truth is that restraining China's ambition does directly benefit the United States. Especially the part of the United States that's in the middle of the country that was basically sold out for a quick buck by the ruling elite over the past 3 decades.
Was hoping to find some interesting links to levels:

I'll start
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.6395308,-71.3158648,18z/data...
A lot are consultants, at least at HP and IBM. (Microsoft and DEC are much more engineering-heavy; I've heard that Microsoft has the structure of 1 engineer, 1 PM, and 1 tester per team.) Remember that out of Google's headcount, only about 20,000 are engineers. When I was on Search, Bing had more engineers working on it than Google Search.
That really only applies to staff not already living in the Bay area (who can presumably afford wherever it is they live), and staff willing to live in whatever kinds of apartments they're providing. That way lies the army of H1B mediocrity.
Yes, my grandmother received approximately 100x the dose she was supposed to receive due to operator error which resulted in her intestines being fried and gave her digestive problems for the rest of her life. (Did kill the cancer though)
I do think the real issue is not whether the NSA can fill cubes, but whether they can stay ahead of the threat curve. NSA competes with, but not for, the employees of foreign intelligence services; likewise, they used to compete for the same talent pool as top tech companies, but not against those companies.

Then they decided to turn the Big Ear inwards and go to war with US tech companies. Now firms like Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. are building active defenses against the NSA, which means that they're hiring for the same problem domain, with better salaries and benefits, no security checks or polys, and no stigma (and a lot of prestige) attached to the position. As a result, NSA is threatened with losing precisely those talents necessary to keep ahead of foreign adversaries.

The savage irony of this is that both the NSA and tech companies are at a Nash equilibrium that is non-Pareto optimal; NSA loses top-tier candidates, and tech companies have to expend resources to protect themselves from NSA and other threats. An ideal scenario would be for a trusted NSA to work with tech companies to support strong crypto and security, but that's a nonstarter in the political and bureaucratic climate.

Personally, I'd like to see the defensive aspects of the NSA broken out into a separate agency, preferably either cabinet-level or independent, with the singular mission of protecting the security and privacy of all Americans, covering everything from crypto to vulnerability discovery to privacy recommendations and (where applicable) rulemaking. You would assume that NSA would still be in competition with a hypothetical Information Security Assurance Agency for discovering vulnerabilities, but the ISAA would not have the balancing test of "does this vulnerability threaten Americans more than it helps us listen on our adversaries?" Think of it as a FEMA for the cybersecurity age.
I love it, but it would be awesome if there was some way to persist the corkboard. As a minimum save the url in a long term cookie or something.

But definitely useful.
This is both the most useful and engaging introduction to AWK that I've read and the most intense deprecation signal by showing how to (almost drop-in) replace it with Ruby or Perl, which creates a terrible conflict in me.

"print $1" was the most I ever used AWK. So when I read the first part (whose examples made great sense to me) I shouted "AWK is awesome! I should learn it now!". Then the last part came in and showed me how I could use a language I already know to precisely replace it. I both feel compelled that I can leverage my current knowledge right now to solve another class of problems, and sad not to learn a completely new thing.
Great app. Very simple, with one focus. Elegant design too. Hope this takes off!
Great idea, often have this problem also especially with more people linking video on twitter, Techcrunch TV etc. Will check it out but will it cache the video on my iPhone and allow me to watch it without an internet connection? I.e. what Instapaper does for me for reading.
> That's BS. TDI diesels (edit: burning ULSD) are, today, every bit as clean as gasoline cars and significantly more fuel efficient, while operating in a wide range of climates.

That is simply untrue. Even modern diesel engines today produce a ton of extremely fine particulates (PM0.1 or <= 100nm) which are exceptionally carcinogenic.

PM0.1 will happily lodge deeply into your lungs, pass through cell membranes, and lodge into your organs and brain. They've been shown to trigger heart attacks, cause asthma, lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, birth defects and more.

Then there is the huge amount of NOx produced by diesel which causes smog and ground level ozone. Neither is particularly good to breathe. There is a reason why many cities in Europe like Paris are in the process of or thinking about banning diesel cars from their roads.

This does not happen with petrol.
Thanks for the pointer to cockroachdb. The last I'd checked (over a year ago), FoundationDB was the only reasonable option for distributed ACID transactions, so it's good to see something else with the same goals.
To belabor the obvious: Time Machine saves old versions for you even if you don't have a separate backup disk, subject to available disk space.
To be fair, that would look a little better with ClearType off.
But Java is only 20 years old. Modula-3 was/is good but it couldn't displace C++. Yes, it would be wonderful to be in the alternate universe where we were using GCd provably correct functional languages back on our 128k home machines.

We live in that alternate universe right now! Unsafe, crappy native code is going the way of the _____. Rust, Dlang, Golang, Haskell, Nimrod all native, all safe. You can compile ClojureScript down to native using Gambit Scheme. Probably can AoT compile Clojure using RoboVM.
I interpreted "hackable" in this context to mean "personally customizable". Even if it's closed-source, that doesn't preclude an extension/library ecosystem from forming around the core Atom app, does it?
If you are interested in learning a LISP, then Racket makes a lot of sense. It is actively being developed and extended and because of its roots in academia extensions tend to be address interesting problems- many arise out of computer science research by professors and grad students.

On the other hand, if you want to learn Scheme by working through SICP, then I would recommend MIT Scheme to avoid impedance. There's not much benefit from using the Racket ecosystem for that. Likewise, if the goal is to work through On LISP then a common Lisp implementation makes sense.

Of course there's no reason not to have all those languages installed..or at least that's what I tell myself.

My last advice is that Racket is an ecosystem. It provides many languages including Algol and Datalog and Scribble and Typed Racket. This makes for a lot of documentation and it is uneven. The guide will be too shallow and the reference will be more boilerplate rather than providing deeper explanation and further examples.
A non-optimizing C compiler

Is there a C programmer on the planet that does production builds with a non-optimizing compiler? How is your comparison even remotely relevant to the GP?
Indeed - if you ever come to any HN Kansai event you'll probably see me there :)
Yeah, and not only extremely expensive but because of things like misuse, what if the addition of seatbelts actually results in more deaths?