skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I work for the NRAO but I am not a radio astronomer, but my sense of it jibes with yours. Planets are mostly so close to their host star from our perspective that to distinguish signal between the two would require extraordinary sensitivity. But that sensitivity also means that you have to point very precisely. A less precise instrument can cover more sky at once but then you can't pick out individual sources as well and brighter sources (like stars) would swamp weaker sources like terrestrial radio/television signals.

I don't think we have enough information to tune the values in the Drake equation to make meaningful predictions. We'd need observations to do that, but the observations are, as you point out, difficult enough that we don't know if they're absent or we just can't see them yet.
For example, I've given the WPA2 password to many people; and that can be used to snoop on it passively (there's no forward security).

Modems are anyways way more insecure due to the default password being admin or 123456, etc. And many are accessible from the public internet.

I think my modem got hacked due to that (I saw some login attempts a little before the DNS got changed causing Youtube to stop working).
No worries, AR glasses coming soon.
People truly are "that dumb" at the community level- at least the sorts of people elected to local educatipn boards. Even at the state level, we've seen disastrous anti-evolution, anti-climate change education agendas attempted to be pushed through, not to mention highly politicized conservative historical revisionism, just within the last 16 years. Common core is a good idea for several reasons, not least that.
You could also try the Getting Things Done approach to todo lists, particularly project-specific lists and only writing items that are the next actionable items.

With both Pomodoro and GTD, ideally you'd learn to switch more quickly between the planning brain and the doing brain. This allows you to decide what to focus on, acquire full confidence that it's the right thing to do now, and act on it. This helps you tie the immediate need to your larger goals, channeling your motivation for big rewards into the task at hand.
I do the same, and I like to think of it as an audit trail.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13450785
One of the (to me) most mind-bending arguments about the absence of alien civilizations is the apparent absence of self-replicating interstellar probes. It wouldn't take much more of a tech civilization than we have to launch such a thing, and it would take only one launch event in all of galactic history to quickly and permanently permeate the galaxy with them. So where are they?
Symantec can threaten larger lawsuits than you can, so we know how that'd come out.

Also, and most critically, it's musical chairs between cloud and security companies. If Symantec came to Google to complain it's likely they'd go straight to VPs who used to work with them and get special treatment.

Hence the call to use notaries. Let's avoid the whole buddy network.
Bitcoin behaves rather badly under global scale network partitions, or if your global network has a latency of over an hour. But on the other hand it is completely immune to collapse of governments
Yeah, a lot of dealers in CA will have you sign the loan paperwork even if you are paying in cash; this causes a hard query on your credit report even if they don't file the lien. If you say "but I'm paying with cash" they say something like "well we have everyone do it." If you get up and walk away you magically no longer need to sign it though.
Wits don't help when the water is all dirty, the food is in cans and the batteries wear out. Especially when other sharp-witted people are in the same situation.
State of Linux on the MacBook Pro 2016
I suppose, but having more precise terms in the first half doesn't seem to really do much for us given that the terms dealing with the probability of life forming can't even really be estimated. This article is basically saying "surely it's more than 1 in 10^22", but I don't see any hint of why that would be, other than 'it's such a small chance that it had to be written in italics'.
I had this problem when i was a PhD student. Towards the end of my time, i started doing something which fixed it, and which i could have been doing all along: make a list of the figures for my paper, and do whatever bit of work moves the next most important one towards being finished.

I should mention that i was working in cell biology; in cell biology, you earn career points by publishing papers telling a new story, where papers comprise a series of figures, each one showing results which demonstrate some point of your story. Papers also have an introduction, description of the results, and discussion, but those are pretty much filler. The smart scientists i know read the title, the figures, and the materials and methods section. Perhaps not every field is like this.

So, to make a good paper, you have to come up with a series of good figures, which means (a) finding a story you want to tell, (b) working out what points you want to make, and (c) getting results which make those points. Having done that, there's the technical work of making up the figures (learn to love Illustrator), and some writing, and you're done.

Finding the story is usually the easy bit. Your supervisor usually has some untold ideas for stories floating about, or there will be some variation on an existing story that people will enjoy hearing. Or you might just need to spend a year or two trying stuff, which can be fun until it suddenly isn't.

Working out what points you need to make takes time, but once you know the story, is usually not too hard. Crucially, you don't need to know up front that these points are all true. As you work towards them, if you find any that aren't true, you just throw them away, and either replace them, do without them, or change the story a bit.

It's getting the results which is hard. That is the actual work in scientific research. Designing, performing, interpreting, and refining experiments. Finding, preparing, and characterising materials. Learning or inventing techniques. Spotting weaknesses and plugging them with control experiments. Endless, seemingly incessant, tea breaks.

Having a concrete list of the figures you need helps you keep going at getting results, and helps you do the right ones. Before i had a list of figures, i did all sorts of experiments because they seemed interesting, and connected to what i was doing, but which could never have contributed to my paper.
Ask HN: Is it possible to reset an iPhone 6?
My sister got hold of an iphone 6; she has been trying to contact the original owner to no avail.

The iPhone is currently asking the iCloud login (I think she tried the system restore) but it won't show the owner's email.

Is it possible to do a factory reset on this? Otherwise its just a piece of art deco laying around. I dug up some shady sites claiming to unblock via IMEI but I don't know how it works these days - last time I reset a phone was a Nokia 3310...
This is part of the reason I love HN.. I just spent my lunch learning about PID controllers! Thank you!
Hey Joe, I also work from home full time but as a backend systems developer. I was not trying to highlight that it would be impossible for someone with hardware to work from home, simply that in some cases it's not feasible or doesn't make sense ofr the business.
- The detection of gravitational waves has been expected for decades based on the orbital decay of binary neutron star systems

- There have been dozens of 'bumps' in the data that went away over the past several years. The Standard Model still stands and there's no BSM physics that we've found. I'd bet the bump goes away just like the recent 750 GeV bump.

- The magnetic moment of the proton and antiproton being the same is also not BSM physics at all.

The problem is that fundamental elementary physics continues to boringly grind along and validate the standard model and things that we already knew had to be found (Higgs, LIGO).

The result in the popular press, though, is that multiverse mania has taken over, which is a non-solution to the problem. You'll actually find arguments that we stop thinking about alternatives to string theory and just assume it works because its beautiful, but it can never be measured--which is not a scientific argument.

500 years from now if we haven't made any progress we might wind up going "meh, probably string theory, but we'll never know", but its too soon to throw in the towel yet.
So, is this the death of Hangouts and rebirth of Google Voice then? They had previously been transitioning the UX off of GV and onto Hangouts.
> If you currently use Hangouts for your Google Voice communication, there’s no need to change to the new apps, but you might want to try them out as we continue to bring new improvements.

Oh dear. And here I thought that Voice was just abandoned.
I don't think the religious people would blink even if there were a proof that some other civilization lives somewhere (that is, the probability you mention to be provably not 0). "Only God knows why he does what he does." Etc. Edit: other response here hints at the possible reaction.
Yes, it's always a big red flag to assume that you can expect other people to do your work for you.

All the ecosystems you refer to are backed by big corporate players with massive resources and a vested interest in bringing in an audience for apps, keeping the platform alive, and in providing significant support services - particularly in regards to user acquisition and monetization. What would your company be able to do that would be comparably attractive to others?
This isn't a tournament though, it's more like playing a very long cash game where the stacks are reset on each hand. Whoever has the profit at the end of the cash game will be the winner.
>There's the possibility that God created life on Earth but it has evolved naturally elsewhere through the same processes by which our created version of life mutates.

That's a religious argument. It's unprovable and unknowable.
Not an acquisition. If you can show you've built a XaaS from scratch, were able to acquire a good number of paying users, and were able to keep them happy, then chances are you're well worth the hire. You're high-end startup material. Do this a few times in a row and you can be certain investors will like you. Taking it up a notch each time.

People who can do this serially are never out of work.
What a pile of straw man BS. Most objections to working remotely have nothing to do with trust (at least for decent developer or designer jobs) but instead are about quality of collaboration and company culture.

People who write cocky condescending articles like this are almost always just stumping for doing what they want which is to work at home themselves.
Umm, Airbnb interviews are much harder than FB and Google.
I am such a person.

I got a job that requires me to be in the office at 08:30 and I do it. I have no difficulty going to bed at 11:30 and being asleep by 12:30. I have no difficulty getting up at 06:40 and starting my day.

I can do all of these things because I am a responsible adult.

But I don't feel right. I'm not a morning person. I am most productive in the afternoon. Telecommuting from 10:00 to 18:00 would make the most sense for me but I understand that most employers simply do not have the flexibility to come up with custom solutions for everyone.
> Why should my tax dollars get to fund religious schools?

They already do: your public school taxes fund schools which advocate a particular way of life & looking at the world — i.e., a religion.

Far better, I think, to let all parents determine which religion they wish their children to be brought up in, than to only allow that privilege to those wealthy enough to afford it. Coincidentally, school choice & vouchers are likely to lead to improved educational outcomes, because parents will be able to choose schools that (they believe) are better.

One negative outcome would be that schools would be forced to advertise & market themselves, which means that a school which is academically better but markets less will be perceived to be worse than it is. I don't know how to solve that problem, but I think it's less of a problem that the current set of problems.
I think you could build a Scuba-like UI over BigQuery that is simple to use and works great.
For production positions, yes, people start with Aerotek. But that's not the entire workforce. And the closing of one shift was still not half the workforce, nor was everyone who was left Aerotek staffers. There undoubtedly were a great many production employees left who were still Aerotek at the time, but there were many left in the total workforce who were not temp workers. Again, I'm not saying it didn't suck, because it did, and there was a noted impact in people's lives here when it happened. But the facts are still quite different from what you initially stated.
I always feel very conflicted about remote work. It doesn't work for me personally, I never work remotely unless special circumstances force me to for a day or two. But I realize that is a personal preference and many people have the exact opposite preference and I want to respect that.

But I have a couple of teammates that moved to different cities and are now 100% remote, and I find it very frustrating that I can essentially never talk to them in person. They fly in once or twice a year but that doesn't help the situation the entire rest of the year. They report that in their view video calls are working as an adequate replacement for face to face conversations but I completely disagree. I don't know the solution though. They are valuable team members and I'm glad they didn't have to leave the company when they moved, but at the same time I really don't want the trend to expand or for us to hire new people knowing they will be 100% remote.
Talent advisor: help connect developers to the right job
about HackerRank:
We're on a mission to make the world flat by matching every developer to the right job. The most forward-thinking companies today are realizing that skills and ability trump pedigree. By using coding challenges and contests to engage with developer talent, we’re not only speeding up the hiring process but also ensuring companies hire the right developer. We've been growing fast. We’re facing a massive market opportunity with customers across industries: financial services (Bloomberg, Visa), transportation (Uber), eCommerce (Walmart) and more. Our buyers are typically leaders in talent acquisition and engineering verticals.

why is this role exciting?

We have a treasure trove of data on 2M+ developers including their skills, background and where they were hired. On the flip side, we have 1,000+ customers who are hiring developers. With our newly launched Jobs product, developers in our community can now directly connect with companies by solving a challenge. Skills over resumes!

We are looking for a talent advisor to help us accomplish our mission: Match every developer to the right job.

what does this involve?

We need your help:

-- Understanding what developer candidates want for a career and coaching them to be successful in interviews

-- 'Wowing' Developers with our interactions

-- Helping companies and candidates work through hurdles, offering valuable advice

-- Matching developer to the right job even if that means that particular company is not our customer

Throughout your work, you will gather deep insights into how to improve the product and process, and all of your input drives the evolution of our powerful Machine Learning system to help scale your touch.

Experience?

This is a new role / team we are building.Whether you’re a technical recruiter or engineer turned coach, if you have a passion for engineering recruiting, we’d love to talk to you. Email me: vivek@
The advantage of paper is that you can be more creative and use slow thinking[1]. Just take a look at Newton's[2] or DaVinci's[3] notebooks, how would they think so freely on a computer? Sure for a work task list, a computer is fine, but I find a computer too limiting on my creativity for myself. Added bonus: no ads, bugs, or distractions.

People that create apps create them to make money, not because they make you more productive or help you be more creative.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp...

[2]https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/newton

[3]http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=arundel_ms_263_...
> stupid toy problems in minutes.

What sort of toy problems are you talking about?
tl;dr The rough estimates of the number of habitable planets in the universe just went from 20 trillion to 100 trillion based on the fact that it looks like almost all stars have planets.
> To protect his wife and daughter, he said, “I don’t have guns, but I have a lot of other weaponry. I took classes in archery.”

This whole article reads like some surreal parody of what eccentric SV mil/billionaires would do.

Although I suppose there is probably some truth that in a post apocalyptic / post rule of law world... the person in the big house with the expensive stuff to loot probably has a huge target on them.
There has always been a lot of uncertainty over the future of Google Voice, given the lack of updates. While this does give reassurance that the project is still alive, it puts another nail in the Hangouts coffin. It was widely assumed Hangouts would subsume Google Voice, but now that looks very unlikely.
That's quite insightful. I know next to nothing about that industry and/or battery (modern) tech. I know people have always said Saft was a reputable battery company (around motorised speciality vehicles/grip for film industry). I have no idea why, considering what you've just said.
Ha, "completely immune". Good luck accessing your wallet without power plants...
Solve the book Elements of Programming Interviews and you'll get a job at any of the Big 5.
For me the context is important here : we're talking about "people who can competently cut code". These people are so rare within the general population that I'm willing to accept all sorts of hygiene factors such as working strange hours, having poor communication skills, being obsessed with specific programming languages or operating systems, and on and on.

If I had 10 solid candidates show up for every job opening, I'd probably pick one that was willing to keep regular office hours. But that's not the situation, typically. Ability to write decent code trumps the other factors.
Your responsibility is not to tell people what to do. Your responsibility is to help them communicate with the rest of the company (in both directions); to coach them to become better engineers (including developing their soft skills); and to guide them to make better decisions based on the information and big-picture priorities you share with them.
Yeah, Bracewell/Von Neuman probes[0]. You create an AI in a probe that can communicate in a variety of ways and replicate itself and send it off into space. IIRC it would conservatively take about a million years for a civilization to blanket the galaxy in them.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe
Negotiation techniques illustrated
Watching The Crown recently got me thinking about the current massive production of Western media content.

You know how a tree over produces seeds in the final phase of it's life? One last push to spread it's genes?

What if the decline of global western hegemony is producing art in much the same way?
Also destructive to productivity.

Things I'd happily pay for right now:

- for people to stop "collaborating" in the office I sit in; even over-the-ear headphones and loud music aren't enough to cancel that out

- for people to stop standing behind me and having (work-related) conversations

- for the guy working next to me to actually sit on his damn ass and not move around the office every 10 minutes

In general, I absolutely hate feeling presence and attention of other people when I'm trying to focus. With each new day I spend in a modern workplace, I more and more understand why cubicles are a fucking awesome idea.

One day I swear I'll build myself one out of pizza boxes.
I have one big objection to this idea about potential contributors not seeing people who "look like them":

We're talking about open-source/Free software here, not working in a corporation. Volunteer FOSS work is all done remotely. If you asked me what the contributors to, say, The GIMP looked like, what sex they were, and what their ethnicities were, I could not tell you other than to merely make a wild guess. I suppose I could go look up their names and then make very good guesses based on those, but that's a lot of work; it's not like the contributor list pops up every time you start the application. FOSS volunteers frequently never see each other in person, and simply send in code contributions. They're not interviewed in-person, and they don't have to show up in-person to an office full of other people. If anything, it should be the most egalitarian form of work worldwide!

For most users, FOSS software is made by people who are utterly nameless and faceless. So I really don't see why this should be a factor to potential contributors. It should be the one place where they can feel safest about not being singled out and treated unfairly for their sex/age/ethnicity/other factor. There's not even a requirement that they use their real name! No one's stopping them from making a new email address at fake.name@gmail.com and contributing with that if they're really paranoid about being treated unfairly.
reddit may be valued at 600 million (orl?) but steve huffman's net worth is in the millions/tens of millions at most. you wouldn't call him super rich when he can barely afford a nice house in Palo Alto :)
NativeScript is pretty neat, for sure. I'm guessing the reason it does not get nearly as much exposure on HN is because it's quite a bit less mature with a community at best an order of magnitude smaller than React Native. Or it could be that everyone here is working at Facebook...

For those interested, NativeScript is Telerik's answer to React Native and tends to leverage Angular JS as the front end framework. One of the fundamental differences between the two are in how they give you access to device/platform functionality. React Native forces you to drop down to native code when you need access to device or platform functionality not exposed through their framework API. Conversely, NativeScript attempts to expose the device and platform APIs to your JS code. This difference has a very real convenience/performance trade-off.