skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of the suggested possibilities is that there was a pre-RNA molecule, such as PNA[1]. PNA is less efficient but it's much more durable, simpler to form, and can self-polymerize above boiling. If you had enough PNA in one place and got it relatively hot, it would spontaneously form "genes" which would be stable for an extremely long time. They would just float around, and any time they came into contact with enough PNA they would be able to replicate. It would be a relatively slow process, but purely random and so would quickly gravitate towards optimization.

RNA can do the same thing. Transcriptase and polymerases are catalysts but they are not strictly necessary. Simple RNA can have a lifespan of hundreds of years and it just needs to replicate more than once to propagate. Over time a primitive polymerase would eventually be made by freak chance and mutation, and then everything would kick off.

Once you have polymerase natural selection would speed up massively and become resource-limited rather than reaction-limited. Thats when a metabolism would evolve, and enzymes that were successful at catalyzing the conversion of material into resources would stimulate local growth. You'd still only have a frothy mess of chemicals, but it would be a frothier mess than the surrounding mess. The first organism to make some kind of container wins- most likely they'd evolve mucus-y proteins that would help keep their resources concentrated. Over time that mucus would give way to a hollow bubble, which would then become a lipid layer, which would then become the first cell.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peptide_nucleic_acid
You're missing Scalajs.
I've been using it for at least 2 or 3 years now :-)
There are sites that let you ask your users questions, and building a mailing list can help you create your list of users.

I think you'll get much more bang for your buck if you talk directly to customers though. With a survey you can only ask the questions you know to ask. The more important questions? They are the ones you don't know yet that you need to ask. You'll find out about those from one-on-one conversations with potential users. Very little beats getting out of the office and talking with potential users face to face.

If you can't do individual user visits then going to a relevant conference and talking to people there can be similar - just be aware that lots of people there are rushed.

Regarding a SWOT how-to... a full thing would be a book, or blog post series, but some tips and URLs follow.

* Strengths and Weaknesses address internal factors.

* Opportunities and Threats address external factors.

* Strengths are things (tangible or intangible) that give you a competitive advantage (e.g., you have an existing business relationship with businesses in the tri-state area).

* Weaknesses are things that might hold you back, hinder your growth, or erode your strengths (e.g., not enough money, not enough technical talent).

* Opportunities are events representing positive shifts in your environment that you could take advantage of (e.g., new technologies, new markets), or areas where your competitors are weak.

* Threats are events representing negative shifts in your environment (e.g., commoditization, a big name like Google entering your niche), or areas where your competitors are strong.

* One technique you can use is to roleplay your competitors. What makes you as them be confident, and what makes you as them be afraid?

* Another technique is to segment your users into personas (fictional user characters that represent with their traits a segment of your user base) and for each use an Ishikawa (aka Fishbone) diagram to do a root cause analysis of what made them choose to buy. Also do the opposite to analyze what could make them pass on buying. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram

http://articles.bplans.co.uk/marketing-a-business/how-to-per...

http://www.leadershipthoughts.com/how-to-use-a-swot-analysis...
> Maltese is another language that has a surprising amount of Arabic influence. The way they say their numbers is almost exactly the same as Arabic.

Not too surprising because Maltese is descendant from Arabic and would probably be considered an Arabic dialect except for cultural factors like religion and alphabet.
What about space artifacts? Out in the vacuum stuff corrodes/degrades much slower - would satellites still be around or would they have had their orbits degraded and burned up in the atmosphere? Also, how detectable would the stuff we've left behind on Moon (the mirror, perhaps? Only thing that can probably destroy evidence of our presence on the moon would be asteroid impacts) be to a civilization that doesn't know it's there?
Since the author likes both F# and structural typing, he might be interested in OCaml. F# took a lot of stuff from OCaml, but avoided both the object system and most of the module system, which both feature different flavor of structural typing.

In both case, as opposed to Go interfaces, they are actually safe (downcasting is forbidden, upcasting is checked at compile time) and
the OCaml language has very good type inference, type annotations are not needed.
Surprising brain change appears to drive alcohol dependence – Science Bulletin
Taking a Look at CLR Thread Pool 'Thread Injection' Algorithm
I've thought about this and my conclusion is that we will likely leave behind a very strange pattern of certain natural resources. "Oh, look, here's a vein of copper! It's getting better, and better, and, that's weird, it's gone now and there's a complete break in the strata for some reason." Over time new mountains may form some new deposits, but it may be noticeable in the older mountains (that are today the younger mountains) for a long time.

If we make it for another few hundred years, not only will there be a mass extinction, but there will also probably be a traceable sudden explosion in a novel form of gene transfer and creation that can't be explained by any other theory. The modern fashionable self-loathing idea that we are a uniquely biodiversity-destroying organism may be merely a consequence of our current point of view; rather than "extinction" this could in fact be an inexplicable explosion in diversity if you could see 1000 years into the future. But of course the mass extinction will still be there. I haven't done an analysis but it may also be the case that the extinction has a very characteristic pattern; again, rather than the fashionable self-loathing model of "humans just destroy everything" it may be noticeable that fauna died out in favor of things that are clearly domesticated even just from their skeletons, and that human predators were preferentially extincted, etc.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/2LUVU10...

Now, my sister actually makes moves at Disney so I am well aware they do make new content. But, their model is very much based on milking old content and then waiting for new content to be fond childhood movies.

Snow white is from 1937 so they put out Maleficent which was somewhat original. But they also just remade Beauty and the Beast from 1991.
But it's not too expensive to buy from the original creator - I think this is the point the parent made.

I'm not sure the majority of people would pay Nintendo 50 bucks for this certain Amiibo, but I'd bet it would be quite a few more than those who will pay a reseller.
Great question. Following not apply exactly to OP, but for female or HNers or anyone who writes job descriptions and values diversity... We recently discovered this is one of those subtle things that can trip-up diverse hiring. Came up as one of the biggest revelations in a recent diversity and inclusion workshop at my company. A senior-level man was explaining how we would _never_ apply to a job where he had all the qualifications, because to him that "would just be a lateral move" what would he gain or learn from this new role? At which point several women were astonished to hear this as it had apparently never something they would have considered to apply for a job they weren't fully confident they had 100% of the qualifications.
> I'm kinda curious if there's any evidence that would support or rule out intelligent life having existed on earth before.

How intelligent is intelligent?

Homo Neanderthalensis predated Homo Sapiens by about 100,000 years. They were intelligent enough to build tools and have communities.

Oldest corvid fossils are 25 million years old[1]. They are known to be very intelligent and modern crows can solve 8-step puzzles, build tools, teach their young etc. etc.

I mean, intelligence has evolved independently many times in animals on earth. It's hard to say which species was first to become intelligent, but I'm pretty sure humans weren't the first.

[1] http://www.reed.edu/biology/professors/srenn/pages/teaching/...
Why are you bringing up DU?
"According to another theory, the term could derive from the Old Spanish Calit Fornay, an alteration of the Latin Calida Fornax, meaning hot furnace" This is the one I've always heard, the Khalif origin is new to me - and very interesting.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_California#Altera...
Spoke with him in the early days of his company about an order. Very chill guy and Pragmatic Programmer has had as much effect on me as I work day by day as any book.

I look at the book as a benchmark on how far along you are in the programming journey. I'm fond of saying young coders will agree with 50% of the book and reject the rest. But the more experience they get the more they agree with it.

I've re-read it a few times and still disagree with 2% of it so I guess that is good as it means I still have room to grow;<).
Nintendo's hardware had never failed to be slightly disappointing to anybody expecting something anywhere near the cutting edge.

The Ninty magic has always been in their playful treatment of their handful of IPs, with their bizarre ability to randomly drop something truly genre defining.

Nintendo stopped being a hardware company when they knocked the playing cards on the head.
Who says you can't use containers on the desktop?

https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/docker-containers-on-the-desk...

She gives some good reasons why it can be a good thing; it sounds interesting - I've thought of trying it myself, and might with a new future system. It's downsides (though this may have changed since I last saw this and looked into it) would be difficulty setting it up, and that some applications might need some tweaking to get them to play nice (?). It still seems like something fun to play around with.

Container'd (?) apps would make for an easier system to admin overall, I think. Oh - yeah, SNAPS are kinda a refining of the idea of running individual apps in their own containers, from what I understand (plus making it easier to package apps so that they will run anywhere properly - at least, that's the way I understand it; I haven't done a lot of research on it).

Anyhow - I was a bit confused by this release, too - it does seem server focused, but the mention of SNAPS makes me wonder if they aren't trying to move in that direction, that is, a more unified system that isn't differentiated between desktop or server (or whatever), and is just a container ecosystem of apps for whatever you want to use the system for?
What Uber did, in a nutshell: create fake passengers on Lyft tiled around a city (they found each passenger could 'see' an 8 mile radius) to get an omniscient view of all Lyft drivers' real time locations. They could identify their own drivers who also had Lyft's app open and then blackball* those drivers.

* Joking. Actually they would incentivize those drivers with additional passengers and bonus offers if the hit certain metrics. Making it harder for Lyft to retain drivers and standards of service, presumably.

So Uber was paying its drivers more if they also drove for Lyft.

Article says they stopped the practice after expanding so much it would have been too expensive to continue. I'm skeptical of this claim and would be more likely to attribute it to driver's figuring it out and "gaming" the system, thus making it more expensive but, more importantly, just less effective.

The question I'm left with is to what extent, if it all, is this morally ok -- i.e. as a dev would I object if asked to work on such a project? Let's forget the terms of service and assume that the impact on Lyft's servers was negligible (neither of which should be ignored and could be the basis for significant damages).
I think CydeWays quoted the word "weird" so as to make it clear that they did not think that those people were weird (but that society at large does).
Food, music, and making memories is the main thing I hear about. None have to be super expensive, just memorable.
The two most important things are:

#1: BE HONEST. This analysis is for you (individual or team) to use for yourselves. It's not a sales tool. Think deeply and honestly: is this truly a strength or something you like? Are you discounting the risk of competitor X?

For example I have benefited from the fact that competitor X was hung up on an existing, legacy market. I have also (at a different company) been screwed by competitor Y recognising that my "product" was really a feature and simply integrating it into their offering.

#2: be clear what you're doing the analysis on: your company or your product. They seem the same when you're a startup but they aren't.

And surveying people adds to the analysis, it is not the primary input.
Like you said, it was a one-time project that wasn't incredibly complex and just needed a one time deployment. And they had UI guys who generally knew what they wanted to and how to do it. I think it would probably have taken them more time to research suitable engines they could rely on than to build the functionality themselves (or use whatever libraries they were already very familiar with.) All engines/libraries end up having quirks that you really only learn through experience.
Sharing a side project, even a simple one, is hardly showing off. It would be showing off if he claimed it was some amazing earth-shattering new thing that's going to blow everyone's minds. On the other hand, being dismissive about its mundanity is clearly an attempt to show off.
How is this different from Algoloa instant search?
Show HN: Agon.i – a different perspective on news
Agon, Greek root of the word agony, means contest or fight. The ancient Greeks considered agon to be one of the fundamental building blocks of life. Agon could occur internally, such as fighting against your responsibilities by playing a game on your phone, or externally. The personification of contests such as the ancient Olympic games was called Agon. In more general terms agon represents a contest of wills, be it in debate, art or physical exertion.

With our app agon.i we hope to revive the spirit of Agon with regard to our consumption of news. We host and publish previews of news articles from around the world. Unlike other news aggregation services, we make no attempts to monitor you or discover what you want to see. We believe that such an approach creates an echo chamber environment.

Instead agon.i draws content from GDELT updates (Global Database of Events Language and Tone), a dataset designed for scientific analysis of news published online. This data feed provides approximately 3000 articles every 15 minutes. We collect the feed and filter it to English articles we can cleanly parse for a title and photo, then submit each of them to IBM’s Watson for topic identification.

Along with each article agon.i presents the option to concur with the articles sentiment or to contest it, the only requirement being you either post your reasoning or agree with reasoning someone else has posted. Once you have staked out your position you are then able to discuss your position or that of others through threaded replies.

All of this communication is completely anonymous, you are assigned a persona when you make your first response on an article and it will remain with you throughout any interactions you have there.

Check out our beta test and let me know what you think!
I don't get it.

Please explain.
Sure, but just as with customers, the dissatisfied (ex-)employees are going to be most vocal.

Do you really think Amazon could build things like AWS, Alexa, the Go Store, etc, if it was a sweatshop where everybody but Jeff was in hell? I don't.
You have a point. A company's "process" to me has always represented the message passing system in a multicore processor. The process is the method by which each core is updated with pertinent information (consumables or just new rules for their task). Bad process looks like a lot of overhead where everyone spends more time "communicating" than working.

Ultimately, as long as you can quickly and effectively communicate the impact of a gut feeling, there is no problem, but they would seem especially hard to translate into a more formalized process for communicating thought out decisions.
Setting Up a Shiny Development Environment Within Linux on Windows 10
I can share some of the pain Egyptian Arabic speakers seem to have. My mother tongue is Tamil but owing to constant moves I was never able to read/write the language decently, though I can/could speak it. The main reason being that written tamil is very different from spoken tamil. Only after growing up did I realize that this is known as diglossia.
Typically it's not the downloading that gets people in trouble, but the fact that if you are downloading a torrent with default settings you are also uploading said torrent.
The Next Phase of Community
I wonder about satellites. How far above the earth's surface would a satellite have to be to keep atmospheric drag low enough to keep an artificial satellite in orbit for a long long time. And how big would it need to be for it to be naked eye visible at that distance. And what could be done to make it unlikely to be mistaken for a natural phenomena? Have clusters of satellites in geometric patterns? 65 Million years is a long time. That sounds like a more interesting project than the "Long Now" effort.
A Discussion on National Security with CIA Director Mike Pompeo [video]
The mention of containers and Snaps in this release makes me wonder if Ubuntu isn't moving in the direction of general containerization of the system - server or desktop. It's certainly possible to run containers on the desktop, as this experiment shows:

https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/docker-containers-on-the-desk...

Her system was an early experiment, though, and seems like it had a more than a bit of admin needs - in other words, it was meant for general users. But she made some good points on why containers on the desktop could be useful, and from what I understand, Snaps is a part of this kind of idea.

Maybe I'm wrong - but if I'm right, this could be a big deal, though hopefully it's so transparent as to be something you don't really notice.
Original, less clickbaity article: http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/robotics/artificial-intel... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14110807
Yeah. As soon as a digital good becomes artificially limited solely by physical 'keys,' it's kind of game over as far as my ethics are concerned. This stuff is absolutely fair game, especially after a year or two when the original stock is run down and the retailer no longer financially benefits.

And these kinds of problems are great opportunities for learning, anyways; bonus points if you look at how other people do it and solder up your own amiibo spoofer with your new understanding.
I don't know, they had several well defined constraints and you don't know what a library is doing under the covers without spending some time with it. A proof of concept engine exploration is different than an app with 100,000 simultaneous users. I wonder how many business days they spent on this thing.
Agreed. I opened the page expecting to see a lot of different ideas, and instead found a topic I had little interest in repeated 6 times over. Not great for a first issue at the very least.
Wow, I did not know that California is derived from Khalif, even though I am familiar with the term.
A History of Removable Computer Storage
> just because something is good for the average student doesn't mean it's good for all students.

Holy pi, if only the education system could understand this simple thing... >.<
You're saying that USA fails many as if it's a problem. Which implies that in your opinion, no one in a state should fail. Why?
How do we know that 65 million years is long enough for a species with a human-like intelligence to evolve? What if our evolution was merely a biological fluke that took much less time than usual?
It's a thing...some people can't fit.

Average seat pitch is 31 inches these days, but the room you would have from buttocks to your knee would be smaller than that. 22 inches isn't uncommon: http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-BY155A_MIDSE_16...

"Buttock to Knee length" seems to range from about 21 to 25 inches: http://ergotmc.gtri.gatech.edu/dgt/images/hbfg0713.gif

It's not hard to imagine someone with 24 inch+ b-to-k having trouble fitting them into a 22 inch space.

My son is 6'3", and has real issues with this.
It's market segmentation. Most of the traveling public is cheapskates who will buy the lowest fare they see, no matter the consequences. This is an option for those who aren't purely driven by budget to pay for a better experience. I guarantee you that if United increased fares to hire enough staff to provide the same level of service you get in the lounge (with almost no line to talk to someone even in event of a major disruption), most people would switch to another airline.
Releasing it or discontinuing it?

Discontinuation makes sense, because that console was a dead end, you couldn't add more games etc, so IMO it was more of a novelty.

As for releasing, it would be better if they make it not a dead end product.

Someone mentioned here that many chips using there were already EOL when it was released, so maybe this was a creative way to get rid of some components and make money out of them that otherwise they would throw away?
>What's the difference between the type system of TypeScript and Flow?

This presentation [1] was posted to HN recently and gave a pretty good overview of the differences between TypeScript and Flow.

[1] https://djcordhose.github.io/flow-vs-typescript/flow-typescr...
Before 9/11 there was no perception of that necessity though.
i've been using rabbitmq heavily (as in, the whole infrastructure is based on two rabbitmq servers) for a long time and i've never seen it fail.

tbh, i never used clustering (because it's one of the shittiest clustering implementations i've ever seen) but we do use two servers (publishers connect to one randomly and consumers connect to both) and it seems to handle millions of messages without any issues.

of all servers i've ever used, rabbitmq is by far the most stable (together with ejabberd).
A Programmer's Guide to Practical Hats (2016)
The truth about engine stop start systems [video]
I'm currently working at a startup (5 people full time) doing IoT devices. I am by no means a security expert; but as the primary software engineer (and being rather afraid of the internet), I've assumed the role of "security guy."

While I've certainly spent time on getting everything to a point that's "secure enough" to let me sleep at night, that amount of effort has in no way jeopardized our business.

And it's really simple things that cover the vast majority of problems:
- Encrypt everything.
- Use unique certificates/keys for every device, no master keys.
- Have (and use) automatic update capabilities.
- Don't use default credentials anywhere for anything.
- Disable unused protocols/close unused ports.

After the initial setup work, we incur a (very) minor additional cost of manufacturing to provision unique keys instead of flashing identical images. That's it.

What this regulation would really do is extinguish a lot of the bullshit cheap/knockoff products coming out of China.
same. reddit was really bad some good years ago, but it's quite stable now.