skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's all in that first 0.5 ratio. Basically, that ratio says that if I have a 10 ton aircraft, 5 tons is for the payload, airframe, engines, miscellaneous structure, and takeoff/landing batteries while 5 tons is for the cruise batteries. That 0.5 ratio is probably very optimistic for a real-world vehicle, but not crazily so. Burt Rutan's Voyager and the Virgin Globalflyer got much more ambitious figures, like 0.75 and 0.83, respectively (in this case referring to fuel mass instead of battery mass).

You refer to L/D ratio and lack of wing loading as if it's the same thing but it isn't. High performance gliders are generally ballasted (sometimes about half the weight is ballast) in order to increase the wing loading and increase flight speed. Our aircraft would have a 300km/h cruise speed, and so will similarly have a fairly high wing loading, even if it does need long, high aspect-ratio wings. This is helped by the fact that the sort of high performance lithium-ion batteries that you'd be likely to use (i.e. like Tesla uses) would be a good twice as dense as fuel. This increases your effective wing loading for the same outer mold line, allowing higher speed efficient cruise at the same altitude.

As far as battery and support system being a central failure point:

One interesting thing with electric propulsion is it's fairly easy to split the batteries and subsystems up /as well/ as the motors. So each motor pod could have its own small battery nearby for (possibly emergency) take-off and landing (this could also help reduce cabling mass, especially for the high currents you're likely to need for the vertical takeoff and landing portions). The cruise batteries could remain centralized, since you'll need a lot more of them and mass efficiency will be critical (and you could rely on your very good glide ratio).
It's isn't important. This is what you dwell on and write about when you find yourself living in paradise and all your actual problems are solved.
Apple has hired the guy who 3-D printed his own brain tumor
The'll probably want to switch to the LED lights then. They produce any light pollution compared to the orange sodium lights. The difference is quite startling.
If people aren't exposed to enough languages to a level of competent understanding, if not mastery, a groupthink monoculture will inevitably develop where engineers only understand JS and Python, not C, Tcl, Clojure, Erlang, Brainfuck, Haskell, Coq,
Rust, etc.

The most important thing is for good engineers to understand both near-universal basic concepts and the low-level impact of data structures and algorithms (like branch mis-predictions / deep pipeline stalls, memory usage, latency,
locality.)
My favourite UB-related links:

"These people simply don't understand what C programmers want": https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/boring-crypto/48qa1kWi...

"please don't do this, you're not producing value": http://blog.metaobject.com/2014/04/cc-osmartass.html

"Everyone is fired": http://web.archive.org/web/20160309163927/http://robertoconc... (EDIT: this one just gets better every time I read it...)

I also found a new one thanks to the comments here, which you can find elsewhere in the comments - but I'll add a link to it here anyway, for good measure:

"No sane compiler writer would ever assume it allowed the compiler to 'do
anything' with your code": http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.plan9.general/76989
How about Google? If you discover a big vulnerability, perhaps? Someone ought to have some connection somewhere. Ask your colleagues around.
Poor Vitalik, I don't want him to get waterboarded.
He's targeting the same group of people that keep Gwyneth Paltrow's side projects making her money.

https://theoutline.com/post/1394/the-unbearable-wrongness-of...
I'm curious about how much time and effort was involved in building this environment.

Though I'd love to do it for my app, and I'm hoping and assuming this sort of environment will be available as a simple service in the near future, what was the decision which made it valuable enough to do this sort of engineering task as a start-up?

Netflix runs a similar environment, though they've also got the Simian Army regularly tearing around the joint.

If you're building a document signing service, and you are likely working between Europe and North America, you've got a perfectly acceptable update window, assuming you are able to roll an update out within a few minutes of downtime. You've spent X (hundreds?) of hours to save you those minutes, but will anybody notice?

Pushing a fix while on the phone with a customer may provide a wow factor, but would an update within a few hours not be equally wowable?

Possibly some insight into how many documents are signed per minute made this all necessary.

It's impressive, I'm admit, it just seems to fly in the face of all being lean as a start-up.
> (Weirdly, beast and priest sound much the same in French, too.)

Not that weirdly :) "beast" and "priest" are loanwords from the Old French "beste" and "prestre". They then both went through sound changes. English changed the /ɛ/ in both words to a /i/, and in French, the /s/ disappeared.
Perhaps to implement https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/panic/fn.catch_unwind.html

But also just to display traces on asserts/panics, even if not "unwound" per se.
"It is quite antiquated and has a lot of ugly pointer math in the tokenizer/lexer beginning parts."

It's possibly C code written by a guy that mainly does ML with a whole career kicking ass in ML languages and provers. That was my hypothesis when I saw both books available. I got a copy of the ML one instead. Appreciate confirmation it was a good choice. ;)
Current satellite internet has high latency, because it's going thorough geosynchronous satellites about 25,000 miles up.

The SpaceX (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/space...) and other similar proposed satellite internet constellations would be made of lots of low-orbit satellites a couple hundred miles up. Latency wouldn't be much of a concern there.
> It’s a good illustration, though, of what I talk about here of tech in high-assurance security or systems… often CompSci itself… taking 10+ years to reach mainstream.

I think it might be less of "it just takes a long time" and more that it needs a champion, and that champion can't just have that one aspect, it needs to be attractive for other reasons.

Rust is attractive for its safety, but not just for its safety. It also takes performance seriously. It also goes to great effort to provide convenience, where it doesn't interfere with safety. They did the same thing D or Nim did, but instead of just new and modern syntax and some garbage collected STDLIB stuff (which to be honest, you could just get out of a very comprehensive libc replacement), they added something you couldn't really do with a library, and you couldn't completely do with the same language semantics. So, it's not just a more modern and cleaner C/C++, it's also something you can't quite approximate in the C/C++ ecosystem, and that sets it apart.
Good prevention work then. If a person is already in a state where undercover FBI agents are able to set him up with a sting operation, then he could've just as easily been involved in the real thing if they didn't do their job.
Sure. I suppose I should have been clearer that I agreed with you, just was musing on the irrationality and the underlying category error.
a review at http://www.gregegan.net/ESSAYS/ANKOS/Ankos.html
This is amazing. I transitioned from working as a musician to development a few years ago and have recently been thinking of ways to merge the two in interesting/meaningful ways. Often times I feel like a lot of what I enjoy in art is left out of music made primarily with/by computers. This is one of the first examples I have seen that really delivers on medium, message and just plain enjoyment. Really inspiring.
Well, there's always the long-extant Journal of Irreproducible Results[0].

[0] http://www.jir.com/
I am surprised that this post was not downvoted. Several obviously wrong or weakly founded arguments:

> The notion that shoppers will one day buy things simply with the push of a button or saying "Alexa, get me some paper towels" seems extremely far-fetched to me.

This already happens. You probably means that most shoppers. But the problem or the concern is not if Amazon will provide such mechanism; rather, is if Amazon can continue to have strategic dominance over the primary portal to online shopping. If smart home becomes the primary portal, then Amazon is geared to achieve that. If it's some other form, Amazon has demonstrated necessary tech and business prowess to do that too.

If online shopping is doomed, OK, then Amazon is doomed.

> Most shoppers are extremely price-sensitive and won't buy things before researching the price, save possibly for a few low-price staples like toilet paper or soap.

This is simply wrong. In reality, price sensitivity is not that important. Otherwise, Walmart should already become the "everything" store, and Amazon should have not been possible.

> why would Amazon be the sole beneficiary of that development and not every grocery store?

The answer is already here. Why Amazon becomes the single biggest winner of online shopping, while other players did not catch up. Whatever the answer is, it can be applied in the future.

> Despite being the runaway leader in cloud service, they make very little money in it

This is plain wrong. Check out their quarterly report. Cloud's margin is very good. Take a look at MSFT, GOOGLE, Oracle, and more. If this market is not going to produce high profit, there is no way everyone is joining in the competition.

> I just think long term that they will settle in as a large American retailer that reshaped the retail landscape for other stores that will eventually catch up.

If you are not impressed by a company reshape the retail industry, then I am not sure there will be anything that would impress you...
man, they are committed to spreading infestation...

"Roaches on Open Water! CockroachDB on DigitalOcean"
https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/roaches-on-open-water-coc...

Next up - Annual cockroachdb conference: roach motel.
Yeah. AFAIK The C version only exists because ML is too niche for mainstream publishing. ML actually works as decent pseudocode(Or at least easier to mentally transpile to other langauges, unlike e.g. Haskell) as well, so the C/Java versions are basically pointless.
Don't know why downvoted.

They can keep thinking the name is not a problem, or they can decide to grow up and change the name.

Only naive engineers who know nothing about branding/marketing will think this is OK. It's fine if they're just doing their own thing, but it's a whole different story if they're operating a business
I think integrity is important and I don't like the idea of attacking journalists for printing stories critical of Silicon Valley.

Overvaluation effects us all, these hundreds of millions drive up my rent, your rent and could be better allocated to other startup ventures.
Effective management requires managers, it just doesn't say how many managers (just one at the top, or many levels). But someone has to set the tone.

Trust is not enough. People need to be guided, synchronized and harmonized. It doesn't happen well in a flat, distributed system. A good employee receives autonomy, a great employee often receives control over other employees. But autonomy is not independence; it still requires a guiding hand, which is management.
It mostly wasn't designed if you're talking about C. It was almost totally the result of terrible hardware and personal preference derived from BCPL which was terrible hardware. The Vimeo link below goes from one paper & computer to another from CPL to BCPL to B to proto C's (IIRC) to C itself. Also shows interplay between C and C++ development. I'm also including my rant that summarizes the video in bullet points with some commentary. I still need to update it, though, with critiques from last time it was on HN.

https://pastebin.com/UAQaWuWG

https://vimeo.com/132192250

Now, for the other languages, who knows. I agree it's always fascinating to learn how they were done. I didn't get that feeling learning C's history. Not like when I studied Wirth's Lilith and Modula-2:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith_(computer)

Note: Full description is in references under "Personal Computer Lilith."
There is a lot of opportunity here especially with neural networks.
Postmortem of Game Programming with Digital Mars’ D Programming Language (2008)
This is reallly neat. But I think you guys are losing a lot of potential customers by not having a clear cut pricing on you site.

I've used similar services like parsehub.com in the past and if they didn't have a pricing page I would have never tried it. Just my 2 cents.
Please continue to tell everyone that Amazon stock is overvalued. Everyone else, please listen to this person.
That's my point, all that is in favor of F#, not static typing in general. I'm not opposed to type systems -- Lisp's is particularly nice, I like Nim's -- but having static types or not isn't enough of a clue that such a language really is suitable for large systems or can catch/prevent worse errors quicker.
How to Change MTV Stranded’s Game So Players Are Heroes, Not Monsters
Reminds me of what my patent attorney friend said about the difference between copyrights and patents as it relates to software. Copyright serves writing, composing, etc very well because it's a difficult low output craft. Patents serves physical technologies because developing solutions to physical problems is as hard as it gets.

With software there very much more tends to be a direct map between requirements and the solution. It's definitely 'work' which should have some protection but not to the extent of copyright or patents.

Point to make. With a software company if you have a half decent marketable idea, money, and competent people to execute, you have a business. Because the engineers can make the software work. Maybe it's profitable, maybe not so much, but the result is real.

Biotech? Nope. High high chance that your engineers will hit a wall and not be able to make the idea work. And then you have nothing. It sounds like Theranos built a biotech company like as if it were software company and lied when they hit the wall.
Awesome! I just started building a robotic band with rasberry pies and a bunch of selonoids :)
> It's 10% of their business and yet it makes them the more money than the other 90%. What does that say about the overall business?

It says that Amazon successfully found themselves a cash cow. So, they have a fantastic business sense. They are smart. They executed perfectly (mind you, MSFT and Google and many other companies are doing IT and public computing service long before Amazon).

I am not sure what you want to say here.

Google makes most revenue and profit on Ads. But Google does all kinds of things. Does that make Google stupid? Of cuz not.

Same here. I hope you ditch the thinking that everything should be the same. Diversity is not only useful in culture, it's useful in business too.
@suryabhupa How similar is this work to the Grammatical Inference field? There has been a lot of work over the years in specification inference which feels similar. Many of the studies in specification inference learn automata representations of object interactions. I know there have been other application grammatical inference in Software Engineering as well.
Algebraic geometry and category theory
That's apples and oranges. You would have to set up some Express project or something to do what the Dropwizard archetype is doing.

Also package.json and pom.xml are equally (un)readable. At least Maven project files have a schema to help editors out.
European Space Agency's Terrifying New Film 'Space Debris: A Journey to Earth.'
Again, I didn't say anything about managers.
I think the idea of mixing between an interpreter to a Compiler (either or JIT) is a bit stupid.

The only way to realistically be able to statically define an api boundary, then implement library-dependant static analysis inside the language. This is already possible with today's tools except that most languages can't guarantee compile time evaluation or provide enough static reflection.

I'm assuming that by "scale the strictness", you don't mean optional lazyness?
Simply Crawling with Scrapy
I love that the line number in the embedded basic program is also code.
Poor sleep in anxiety, depression may make it harder to see positive
here is a pocket change dryer that is slightly larger: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Amana-6-5-cu-ft-Electric-Dryer-in... and of course it also has free shipping.
A Midas List VC on the Problem with the Midas List
Have you ever interacted with law enforcement on any professional basis?

They aren't like that at all.
Abu Dhabi massage outcall services +971569052110
The name isn't a problem, it's smart and memorable.
While the contracts may be negotiated months in advance the videos aren't delivered until very close to the release date, the same for Google and amazon. In some cases it may be a few days early but production schedules are tight and even if the post house has it done early contracts and controls forbid them from sending it to Netflix, etc too early.
Where is the Google Maps, Facebook,
or Dropbox for health?

Interesting question. More details of Keatings efforts in this article ~ https://www.vox.com/2015/5/2/8532381/steven-keating
My goal with the term 'population removal' was not to be uncivil or inflammatory. Killing people is wrong, but forecfully moving large groups of people is something practiced by every nation, including democratic liberal ones like the USA. Its a policy, not an evil act in and of itself.

I can respect that HN isn't the place for this sort of discussion, but I do not accept that my comment was uncivil or inflammatory.
I agree, but I have yet to hear any music generated by a neural network that I enjoy beyond the novelty of it. Feel like the focus is on the neural network, not the music, with the neural network as the instrument.
I've been running Jessie without systemd on my laptop for a couple years now. Never had to worry about packages not working, except for vbox not building it's driver. But that's probably some issue with backports, and I don't care enough about vbox to actually look into it. Systemd is installed though and apparently used for udev and logind.

Edits: I should review before posting.
The comment you linked was an (perhaps poor) attempt to prove the absurdity of free market ideology by taking it to the extreme.
It works for Virtual Worlds though. At this very moment I am dancing at a party in InWorldz, and I just tipped the dj with Inworldz dollars that I previously purchased with USD. If she wants to withdraw the money as USD she can.
I have fair amount of mathematical training, including some graduate degrees, and Grothendieck's mathematical contributions (other than his very early stuff) are still an enigma to me. To truly grok his major accomplishments you have to go waaay down the abstract algebra rabbit hole.
Are the Numberbatch vectors aligned in the same vector space? That seems to be the primary innovation here, and it's a pretty important one.
No. The total mass of metal up there is nothing in comparison to natural stuff like dust and atmosphere. And the metal is in very low orbits. Someone far away would see our cities, our atmospheric pollution, long before detecting a hint of orbital debris.
As a game developer having used C# for two large scale projects, I can tell you that the garbage collector was the least of our worries.

Just be a good citizen and don't trash like crazy and the GC will never block in the action phase.

Also, don't use the default mono GC, that one is terrible.
Lol, my production with nom de nom came in last place against this one...

At one point while coding our music player, I wondered if something simpler and more algorithmic might be more effective :)

So yeah I was both spanked and I learned a lot. I always watched these cracktros as a kid and now get the chance to write them with the benefit of hindsight, a career in micro controllers and 20 years of music playing experience...

I'm glad the scene is still going and there are great tools out there to accelerate the process.
297.
"The already exists an agency with this mission: the NSA."

It's a myth far as I know. I've studied them a long time seeing much conflicting info about this. A declassified, historical document I found at one point about them said their job was SIGINT and COMSEC (just communications security!) for U.S. government. A later provision extended this to protecting COMSEC of defense contractors. The IAD seems to have policy-driven stuff about helping protect INFOSEC in general. There could've been a COTS mandate of some sort at some point but it was clearly toothless.

The NSA is mandated to protect communication security of defense sector. That's it. Even then, the defense sector keeps asking them to downgrade the security to let in more quick-moving products from commercial sector that are hacker fodder. They've since started on a program that lets them in after a 90-day evaluation against the lowest standards from Common Criteria. The NSA is the last group that should be responsible for INFOSEC given all this w/ market an utter failure, too.

The groups that have done the most are probably NSF and DARPA for funding strong security with NIST and DISA (esp STIGS) at least trying to do something with hardening guides and crypto recommendations. I prefer reputation-driven nonprofits that are funded with combo of donations, licensing of quality software, and consulting fees. They can't get acquired or be destroyed by changes in government policy.
thanks for this feedback. if you don't mind replying with an email address I have some more questions along the same lines, since it sounds like you know what you're doing. (if not you can ignore this reply.) thanks again.
Clojure is fine language, but it's not substitute for Common Lisp. They are different languages with different philosophies.
Well if you care about space efficiency, char is smaller than int.
Agreed, I find Lenovo's site very frustrating.

I'm not sure if the link[1] will work, but there is a version of the XPS 13 Developer Edition with Ubuntu and 16 GB of memory for $1,949.99. I find the slightly largest display of the X1 Carbon appealing (seems like a good mid-point between 13" and 15") but it would be hard to justify the price difference, especially since it's lower resolution.

(The X1 Carbon 4th Gen had an option for a high-DPI display; seems weird that the 5th Gen apparently doesn't.)

[1]: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?3x_n...
Yoga practice
I mean it should be the instrument... or at least an approximation of one!
well it's a parody site i made in two hours so i dont care
It's not important per se––it's just that the orangeness of the night light is very iconic for anyone who's lived in or spent any time in Chicago. I went to college there, and late-night walks home in a completely ORANGE world are one of my most vivid visual memories.

It gets even stronger on cloudy nights in the winter, when all that orange is just bouncing back and forth between the (reflective) snow and clouds.
The outage in SF shutdown the company I work at for most of the day. I work remote so was unaffected but everyone else ended up being unable to work.

This was an outage of one substation for less than 12 hours. Now imagine an 8.0+ earthquake anywhere in the bay area. The whole city could be shutdown for prolonged periods.

You don't put all your servers in one datacenter so why would you put all of your employees in one building? I am not sure why companies don't encourage at least 50% of their employees to be remote. Seems like basic DR planning to me.