skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Supply chains for complex hardware manufacturing logistics?

That would go well with the concept of Seed Factory, which is a factory that could reproduce itself, from raw materials. If we can build a self replicating device, we will reach another kind of singularity. At the moment, the whole human race is such a self replicating system, but if we can take humans out of the loop we could ship it to an undeveloped area (another planet?) and have it create a city and industry for us.

Another application would be to ensure self reliance for humans in the post automation world. A self replicating factory, capable of solving the whole logistics puzzle of building repairing itself, as well as supporting its owners, would ensure that its owners don't depend on UBI or jobs.

Such a factory would initially need some industrial machines and robots, probably at minimum a 3D printer, some raw materials and high end pieces such as CPUs. Then it would gradually print and assemble more equipment.

It would eventually bootstrap like a compiler, being able to "compile" an identical factory from raw materials.

Keeping count of each object, its source parts, construction waste, energy spent in building it, processes and time they could "compile" an ecosystem of devices that carefully work together, recycling everything that is wasted in the process. As the capabilities of the factory increase, the process could be "recompiled" to take advantage of the new capacity.

The place of AI would be to optimize the process. Instead of a hand-made industrial compiler, it could search for a way to combine its resources in more masterful ways. It can keep track of more things than human planners (project managers?) can. It could potentially assess the needs and organize the industrial production for a whole country in a more efficient way than capitalism or communism could.

The beauty of a seed factory is in its initial price - under 5% of the price of a factory built from buying equipment, because it only needs the seed of the factory and raw materials. The factory would grow like an organism, expanding itself. Most of the factory would be self made. Just like a cell, or an animal.

[Wiki Book] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories
To those who desperately want free markets proven inherently unjust, Piketty is a prophet. But he's a false prophet. He's pretty much a hack of a social scientist.

"We find evidence of pervasive errors of historical fact, opaque methodological choices, and the cherry-picking of sources to construct favorable patterns from ambiguous data." [1]

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2543012
As someone who works on both a Windows + Mac environment day to day...I find myself accidentally hitting the option key expecting the spotlight a lot.

I don't know if others feel this, but moving between IntelliJ on MacOS to Windows and back is a nightmare. I stick to the defaults as much as I can and it's still memorization hell.
The only reason I have to use macOS for development is Xcode which I need to make iOS mobile apps. I used to use macOS in a VM with Linux as a host system, but it's just too slow and laggy even on good hardware.
Skilled at what?
But I've found that non-recursive tail calls are great in handling state machines. I wrote a TFTP client and server in Lua [1] and the code was both much cleaner and more reusable between both client and server. Granted, Lua does proper TCO (as long as you properly code the return statement) and the lack of stack trace wasn't much of an issue there.

These rules are mostly geared towards C, which doesn't guarantee TCO at all.

[1] Partly as way to learn Lua and TCO, and as a way to manage Cisco router config files in a version control system.
I'm being pedantic, but should be "human knowledge", not "universe". It is absurdly unlikely that the conditions needed for this substance to exist never occurred in the ~1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 star systems in the known universe. "conditions needed" includes intelligent life creating these substances.
I use ok-google around friends when I want to look up a fact or something to show them. It's a nice way to get some information and still stay involved in the conversation without having to stop, look at my phone, type something in and read the result.
> Enabling web pages to host local servers and providing the ability for the web browser to discover nearby servers opens up a whole new range of use cases for web apps.

That's not all it opens up. "Enabling web pages to host servers"--who thought this was a good idea?

To top it off, later in the page, they tell users how to upgrade Node by running `curl ... | sudo bash -`. Good grief, the anti-patterns!

This FlyWeb site has me seeing red.
e.g. when employers set quota for minority groups (e.g. gender or race) in recruiting and promotions. That means someone somewhere is losing a deserved opportunity solely based on belonging to a majority group. I can't say I've personally experienced anything blatant though.
If systemd devs cared about proper modularity it would be much easier to collaborate.

I believe the first step towards a rewrite is just making an init system+daemon supervisor that (at least partially) understands systemd unit files or a similarly simple solution.

systemd's huge grapple on Linux systems was 95% caused by just by people not wanting to maintain shell scripts (which is understandable).
A CS degree isn't 'comfortably standardised'. Each university has its own curriculum, its own exams, and its own standards.

If I could prove to you that I was awarded a CS degree from a UK university, would that be sufficient for you to agree to employ me?
me too, buddy.
Sounds like dogfooding, to me.
Is it just me or is this mobile site horribly slow? How can a tech blog have such a poorly performing site? Not to mention the bar at the top

I'm running iOS 10 on an iPhone 6 and couldn't even finish reading the thing.
Alphabet’s rebranded Google Capital arm reveals it invested in Snapchat
Font rendering in Linux distros is actually pretty good these days—the problem is that the free fonts don't look right if you're used to the Mac defaults, and the font rendering settings are a little off by default.

Without installing any third-party software, I actually recently found a way to make fonts in a Linux desktop look mostly the same as they do on Mac. This was done on Debian Stretch under GNOME 3.

Step 1: I copied all the TTF font files from my Mac and installed them into Debian, instantly giving me all the awesome (but non-libre) fonts I'm used to.

Step 2: I disabled all font hinting (I think this was in some GNOME config, might have been xorg.something but I honestly don't remember, just google how to disable hinting).

After this, browsing the web in Chrome looked (to my eyes) just like it did on the Mac. If you're wishing for a more Windows-y text rendering experience, you'll want hinting, but the Mac generally stays away from hinting (at the expense of slightly blurrier but prettier fonts on low DPI screens).
Sovereign immunity is a mixed bag. It protects police, judges, prosecutors, etc from having frivolous or retaliatory lawsuits filed against them by persons with a grudge. On the other hand though, it lessens accountability because someone who has been genuinely wronged by a malicious police officer, judge, prosecutor, etc has no real means to hold the individual accountable for their actions. Sure the departments can be sued, but that does little damage, harms innocents, and doesn't not bring the person accountable to justice. My gut tells me there is some acceptable middle ground here, but I have no idea what it is and I'm not sure anyone really does. I do think, if I only had the two options, that having immunity, while far from perfect, is a better option than the opposite because it protects innocents, which is more important than punishing criminals.
Why I am not a Christian – Bertrand Russell 1927
weird:

> Ah snap! There was no error compiling the test kernel or running it, but the numbers don't check out. Please report your browser (+ version) and hardware configuration to us, so we can try to fix this. Deviation was 0.673000000262012.

Latest Chrome on a macbook air. Looks like at least one other person has had this issue, I'll report my experience as well. https://github.com/turbo/js/issues/1
This is not particularly interesting. You can't leave the Mac ecosystem because of vendor lock-in. To me this would make me want to change my tech stack. If you don't care, you are just not the target audience for the article.

You're just as uninsteresting as people not switching to Mac from Windows in 2010 because it doesn't play games.
Trump vs. Clinton, US Election Poll Tracker, All the Latest Polls
The female student who was the focus of the article ("Jackie") spun a very specific story that involved specific acts, places, people, and times. We now know that, to a first approximation, everything she said was an outright lie. There were other stories she could have told about different people, places, times, and events that would have been true, and it's possible one of the versions of the story she told other people was true or mostly true. It's entirely possible that Jackie was, in fact, raped. But the specific story Jackie told Erdely was not true, and the specific rape Erdely wrote about did not occur.

We know this due to the excellent investigative reporting of the Washington Post and others, to the damning report made by the CJR, and now to to this jury verdict which determined that the story was untrue, that Rolling Stone knew (or should have known) that it was untrue, and that Rolling Stone acted with reckless disregard for the truth in publishing the story.

> Lots of truths wouldn't hold up in court, or be printable in a publication of repute.

That's true, but not relevant. Merely publishing something you think is true but couldn't prove in a court of law doesn't put you at risk of losing a libel suit.
But then prosecutors would be much less willing to take acceptable risk when called for because the punishments are so draconian. That being said, letting a dangerous criminal free is much better than having a single innocent incarcerated.
Only certain materials are truly valuable - they're the ones people pay to recycle. Metal-based recycling is incredibly valuable to the population and environment.
Floppy disks weren't replaced by burnable CDs, they were replaced by USB drives which didn't exist in 1994 or 1998. So the question of what was the way of the future wasn't even known when Apple removed the floppy drive.

In fact there is some parallel here; we all know that USB-C is the way of the future. Every phone, every laptop, every desktop will eventually have these ports for everything. It will replace every proprietary DC power plug. But right now, just like it was in 1998, the future isn't quite here yet.
As someone from SE Asia, I find it mind-boggling that just about all of the comments here lump "Asians" and "whites" into the same category.
> "Don't want to go elsewhere is a great thing".

Sounds like the Stockholm syndrome of tech brand loyalty.

The world is full of devices and technology "from elsewhere". Just because you choose to only shop at Apple, doesn't mean never buying any other brand is a good thing for general users of technology in this world, for a healthy industry, for innovation. There will always be other brand. Your Apple-only view of the world is the exception, not the norm.

The whole point of ecosystem lock-in is about keeping customers buying Apple products, or LG products or whatever brand is playing the lock-in game. What you're doing is trying your best to flip the definition and motivation behind ecosystem lock-in, to make it something that users actually want. Let me guess, you're on the board of directors of a brand doing exactly that?

This discussion started with the Jobs statement: "tie all of our products together, so we further lock customers into our ecosystem"

His choice of words is important. The primary objective in his statement is not "tie products together so they work nicely". The primary objective is "further lock customers in". He has decided that one way to achieve that objective is to tie products together, but obviously there are many other ways already in place to lock customers in, as hinted by the word "further".

>"multiple lightning-enabled SD card readers that you can plug into your iOS devices."

I realize I'm bringing lack of flexibility and openness into this, but I see them as related to lock-in.

These SD devices can only access photos. Let's say I'm browsing the web on my iDevice and want to "Save as" a PDF file, or very large hi-res JPEG, or some other file. You can't do it. There's no file system you can access to save the file, and none you can access to read/copy the file later. I'm talking about expandable storage for whatever purpose I choose, not what Apple decides is best for me. They could have locked down protected OS files while allowing a general file system, but no... it's photos and videos only. Everything else is forbidden.

Wi-Fi direct - I was talking about screen mirroring, not streaming iTunes video. Screen mirroring is useful for things like games and hi-res photo albums, the video camera in real time etc, where HD quality without the bottleneck of an access point is needed. Not possible on an iOS device. It could be, but Apple don't allow it. My Android and Windows laptop allows it but not my iPad. When I visit my nephew, we play soccer on his big screen at 1080p via wi-fi direct from my laptop.

I couldn't care less what Apple does as I will probably sell my iPad soon anyway, even though I've spent hundreds of dollars on apps over the years. What bothers my is that Google and Microsoft see what Apple is doing, and all the money Apple has and think that's what will make them more money - by taking away user control, calling it "protecting user security" and increasing lock-in. I'm not a fan of that, and nor should you be.
If it was "learning about computer internals" that would be one thing. Most of it is closer to "learning which kernel version randomly works with your hardware" and then rewriting your tiling window manager configuration file because the old format isn't supported anymore. You could spend that time studying an EE textbook instead and get more widely applicable knowledge.

Whatever makes you happy is fine, but beware putting yourself on a high horse with statements like "if you don't see value in learning...".
Thank you so much for that link. I didn't know it existed, and it's a lot of fun looking over all of those different designs.

The thing is, Apple took care of my basic laptop needs very well, but at a price. I had to put up with all of their little, annoying decisions (a finder lacking so many obvious file-management features but will NEVER be improved, a ridiculous emphasis on trivia like "flat design" instead of substantial things like RAM & SSD, social media nonsense built into everything, features that are more about Apple's agenda than mine ("this new version gives you more ways than ever before to buy stuff from Apple!"), a pathetic range of preferences because "we know better than you, and we've decided for you", and so on.)

But if they won't make the hardware I want and won't allow anyone else to make it for me (meaning licensing OSX to companies who still care about serious computer users), then the basics are no longer covered, either. I'm really not looking forward to having to fight to get basic stuff working right for myself, but if I give up and conclude that Apple has moved on and I should, too, then I'm going to go all the way with the others stuff as well. I'm getting rid of all the "you'll get used to it eventually" compromises I had to put up with from Apple and doing it the way I want. I'd like to see what other looks are available (the looks aren't a trivial issue if I get to choose them, right?) and it doesn't have to look anything like OSX. In fact, I'm sure I would prefer a design that is very unique to ME over Jony Ive's design that is best for everyone.
Updating our democracy
Elon Musk Says SpaceX Rocket Launches Might Resume Next Month
Never thought of that, that's actually very cool.
I'm looking at a set of areas in which information acquisition is difficult, and in which choices or decisions have very strongly social implications. These are quite frequently areas in which choice is very strongly ruled by fads or fashions -- strong and often rapid shifts in preferences, but without a long-term persistence -- a winner in any one period will be likely to revert to mean in another (though other influences may sway this).

The areas I've identified:

1. Clothing and fashion -- the practical reasons for distinctions are few, and often counter the popular choices. But these have a very high signalling rate for social status and alignment.

2. Management practices. Here, the problem is that determining actual quality is quite expensive, most especially in time (results may take years, and there's a high noise element to measurement). At the same time, adoption signals group allegiance and has strong carry-on effects with in a market (consulting services, training, education, organisational systems, etc.).

3. Programming languages, tools, operating systems, editors. As with management tools, measurement is hard and takes a long time. At the same time, there are network and lock-in effects which can develop, as well as organisational and market-signalling effects.

4. Food and diets. "Fad diet" is a well-developed concept, going back to the 1960s. The concept of food as a social identifier is much, much older, and can be an element in keeping social groups separate or allowing for their integration. The segregation of Chinese and Muslim populations in Indonesia, for example, derives in part from the affinity for pork by the first and absolute aversion by the second group. That's contrasted to the situation in Thailand, where the Buddhist indigenous population doesn't have a pork aversion and mixes far more freely with the Chinese immigrant elite (from Amy Chua, Harvard scholar and author).

5. Pop music. Beyond a certain base musicality, hit tunes in the 1940s - 2000s were largely a result of both highly focused marketing and some degree of organic development. Experiments with "artificial" hits (within selected group populations) has seen different choices evolve within different groups, from the same base set of songs. Again, music is very highly associated with social identity.

6. Wine. Fads emerge here because it seems so difficult to objectively identify and communicate distinguishing characteristics among different wines. The market offerings are huge, and quite confusing, with information aquisition by individuals difficult and expensive. Choices are very strongly influenced by advertising, marketing, and chance exposure.

There are numerous other goods or behaviours which could be treated similarly. Sports choices, physical fitness training modalities, books (like wine: expensive to judge), etc., etc.
Counterexample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs
It's actually "genetic cleansing", if I understood the exposition right. Same like with "Shut up and dance", this twist a provides believable reason why some think what's going on is actually justifiable.
Democracy is interesting because it requires you to step outside your own head, understand that there are people who hold different values and different experiences from you, and then mentally engage with them, holding your own doubt and revulsion at bay, until you can come to a consensus that's acceptable to everyone. It's a thoroughly unnatural and uncomfortable experience that can be both fatiguing and time-consuming. No wonder everybody predicts that it will fail - by definition, a democracy requires occasional subjugation to points of view that are alien to your way of life, and which point of view is often unpredictable and changeable.

But I'd much rather have it than any system of forced social roles, where there is one person or small cabal of people who make the decisions and everyone else knows their job is simply to obey.
It is hard to say, because the grandparent says that Homebrew barely works without providing any examples of the problems they have ran into.
Yeah. I'm totally smelling Commie plot right there.
:P
I believe that democracy in theory is excellent, but in practice is a failure, not because of democracy per-se, but because a gut-feeling vote and a properly-researched vote count the same.

I'm in no way suggesting that one vote should be valued more than another one, but that people should be doing their homework and researching properly the benefits and consequences of their decisions...

Having a majority of the population voting with the gut can lead us to disastrous results...
The bond holders seem to like it, so it'll probably stick around.
Top Pros and Cons in Creating an App for Your Hotel
So said the Hittites when the Sea Peoples swept in from the seas in the West and the Kaskians surged down from the mountains in the East.

So said the Romans when the Teutons migrated their men, women, and children into Italy and took town after town.

So said the Sasanians when the Mohamaddans swept up from their deserts with swords and zealotry.

So said the Native Americans when the white man brought more and more of his kin to North America.

The Romans averted demographic destruction because they acted before the migrants achieved a sure enough foothold. The Hittites were the mightiest people on Earth at the time (they were the first to work iron). The migrants they took in, first thinking they would prove useful as mercenaries to fight their enemies, destroyed them. The Sasanians ruled the powerful Persian empire. A bunch of fanatical desert nomads relying on brutal Assyrian war strategies wiped them out. Native Americans controlled an entire hemisphere, but ended up all but wiped out of the upper half of that. They had centuries to get rid of their migrants, but instead remained fractured, with parts of them allied with the migrants and others against them.

The most racially diverse nations do go to war with outsiders less; yet, they are also the ones with the most internal crime, distrust, suffering, and injustice. India's Untouchables, South Africa's Apartheid (followed by South Africa's through-the-roof black-on-white rapes and murders after the ending of Apartheid), Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Germans and Jews in Germany.

If you'd prefer science over history, here are 24 studies in Europe, America, and other places on the effects of ethnic and cultural diversity on group cohesion, trust, strife, civility, and harmony:

http://www.truthjustice.net/politics/diversity-proximity-war...

It would be nice if we could all just join hands and get along. Unfortunately, humans compete for resources, and cooperate with each other for those resources against other groups. One of the primary ways we divide ourselves is by relatedness (the selfish gene). The more homogeneous the society, the more it trusts and cooperates; the less homogeneous the society, the more it distrusts and divides.
I'm presuming that should read "that they were as...". My first interpretation was that you were Amish yourself.
+1

As a kindle user I'd love to see a kindle edition.
Really cool. If embraced by other browsers this can have good impact in iot space.