skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The tallest building is about 830m high.

Theoretical max height for a building using conventional skyscraper techniques is 11 miles, at which point it's ridiculously expensive. Someone at JPL did a work up of using columns made out of ultra pressurized boron balloon tanks, and found that 100km is actually possible, though also ridiculously expensive.

A rocket would have to undergo some fierce acceleration to gain any useful speed over that distance.

To convert a Falcon 1st stage into a cheat-SSTO, all you need to do is to lighten it a bit and give it a bit of a boost. Such is the nasty nature of the rocket equation. You have to accelerate the fuel you need to accelerate the fuel. So by "cheating" with accelerating the fully loaded rocket, you save a lot of fuel weight for the same final delta-v. Due to the same nasty mathematics, this translates to a tiny payload, of course.

I suspect economics plays a big role here. I suspect it is cheaper to launch multistage rockets than to build a mass driver long / tall enough to be useful.

Yadda yadda. Yes, this comes up in just about every discussion like this. It's just neat to think about what else you could do with a Falcon 1st stage. I mean, would you turn down a single stage vehicle you could take into orbit? It would make an extravagant billionaire's toy.

Actually, this general sort of scheme does have a practical use. Modify a methane-oxygen fueled 1st stage so that it could make it to a somewhat higher orbit, but still have payload for a docking and remote maneuvering system. Then have the empty tanks dock with each other to create a space station with tons of internal space. You couldn't do this with the Falcon 9, as it uses RP-1, but methane and oxygen would just boil off into vacuum.
I'm not convinced that's the entire explanation. Don't things keep being discovered about the bacteria living around the roots in the soil interacting with the plant to provide much of their nutrition? A growing plant is a massively complex system. Tweaking how they grow likely has unintended consequences.
I recently reached alien 3 thinking it doesn't get a fair shake.

It's possible that it's overly maligned. But it's not good.
Okay, so it's simple: first we build a base on Titan as the transportation hub for the Saturn system, and transfer there to get to Enceladus [autocorrect wants to change this to Enchiladas].

Wouldn't it make sense to have a methane mining base on Titan anyway?
I think I agree with you. I'm just trying to empathize with people who would disagree with both of us. :)
Serverless just means "as the user of this service, you don't need to worry-about/think-in-terms-of 'servers'".

It clearly doesn't mean 'no servers involved'.
Some of them didn't speak to Reed and still ended up in the story.
No, that’d be exactly the wrong solution.

Because then displaying color-calibrated content on your display (such as movies, games, photos) is also completely distorted.

Instead, we need a way to specify CSS colors relative to a colorspace and contrast ratio.
More likely it's close to vice versa for driver reasons. Android owns everything, the debian stuff just runs in a chroot and it needs a few custom hacks to make display and input work nicely, which is why it's not the same as just running Termux or Linux Deploy on your phone.
He has done more than just one cool thing:
"Biz Stone: How I Faked My Way Into Google"
https://www.wired.com/2013/04/fakeit/
so sorry to see you go.
Is the vision network learning continuously or it has been trained with many configurations of the blocks and gives a continuous output?

The post says that the imitation network takes the input from the vision network and processes it to infer the intent of the task. Isn't the "intent" always "to stack"? Or can the imitation also be just re-arranging blocks in another configuration?

This part is interesting, if I understood it well..
> "But how does the imitation network know how to generalize?
The network learns this from the distribution of training examples. It is trained on dozens of different tasks with thousands of demonstrations for each task. Each training example is a pair of demonstrations that perform the same task. The network is given the entirety of the first demonstration and a single observation from the second demonstration. We then use supervised learning to predict what action the demonstrator took at that observation. In order to predict the action effectively, the robot must learn how to infer the relevant portion of the task from the first demonstration."

Does this mean that the imitation network has been trained on stacking, un-stacking, throwing...and other such tasks, and then it identifies that "stacking" is what is being done in order to imitate it?

Is there an ELI5 for what the 2 NNs are actually learning?
oh well, i can wait until there will be other source

anyway it's here for people who don't wanna support Wired
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZoCP4j...

TLDR: clickbait title, there is pretty much zero photos of actual interior of building
I think these kinds of stories play well to governments, the press, and some groups of people as ideas or as cool photo opportunities, but they don't translate into meaningful agricultural production.

I encourage people to scroll around Google Maps (or better yet, drive) through some of America's most productive agricultural regions. The sheer scale of American farmland dwarfs any possible urban farm development.

I know from personal experience growing seedlings in my basement here that new LED grow lights make it much more cost and energy efficient to run a greenhouse than it used to be. But fertile soil is a massive input cost that you can't really get around for most full sized plants. I spent hundreds of dollars recently on garden soil for a small set of raised beds. I have a tiny flock of six chickens supplementing my compost pile.

Anyone can grow bad produce indoors. I think the real problem (having lived in urban, rural, and suburban areas) they're trying to address is the transportation cost of bringing quality produce to the city. Right now many cities are not really set up for affordable freight transportation. Cities like NYC are almost designed to make it pointlessly expensive and complicated to bring freight in from the country to the store. Commercial truck traffic gets redirected to cramped streets while personal car traffic gets access to the expressways and parkways. That's one of the reasons why it costs you 4x to buy a pound of worse quality bacon in NYC what it costs in many other US towns and cities.

So if you are trying to deploy technology to make quality food more available to American cities the solution is probably not just hanging up some grow lights and growing weak plants in trays. It is to attack the largest sources of the added costs. The 'local' label has salience to high end grocery shoppers because they believe that it indicates quality. If 'local' comes to be associated with tray farms using poor inputs, it will stop being associated with quality in the minds of Whole Foods shoppers.

It'd be great if America had the sort of urban freight network that was state of the art in Japan in 1980 instead of trying to come up with pretend-technology patches to much larger cost of living problems.
> 5000£

Umm, that's pretty cheap for a commuting train pass in London! It's usually way more. Double that at least.
Paper.io 2
Frauhofer announcement did not mention expiry of patents.
There are thousands of subreddits, sure, but still you end up with an identifiable overarching "reddit" culture. There are subreddits that don't share this, due to strong moderation, small size, or niche/polarizing subject matter. But in most subreddits, mentioning a broken limb, for example, will inevitably generate a low-effort allusion to a certain gross story that is prominent in the collective memory of the site. A positive reference to feminism will likely spur someone to try to start a flame war. Even if you unsubscribe from the defaults, the site-wide zeitgeist stills filter down and influences conversations across individual sub-communities.
True, however the way this is implemented makes it seem as though the "desktop" and "mobile" states are different computers entirely.
What I would like to do is be able to use desktop versions of android apps when plugged into a display. This would have the advantage of allowing me to use, say MS Office in desktop mode if I have the android app installed.

I realize that some may have a strong preference for OSS software, which a debian desktop would be excellent for.
I disagree. I could reach into that space when I sat down and now I can't.

Think of it this way: my house has 8 foot ceilings. I'm only 6 foot tall, so I could lower my ceilings by almost two feet and not hit my head. But it would certainly impact my comfort level inside my house.
who cares what it smells like.. if you use github, why would you prefer github to "stay pure" as you've put it?
Hey - our frustration with existing solutions like Firebase was the primary reason we started Graphcool. We've written up a detailed breakdown of the main differences: https://www.graph.cool/docs/tutorials/graphql-vs-firebase-ch...

I would love to hear from other developers who have used both GraphQL and Firebase to see if there is any way we can make GraphQL an even better choice.
> There are hundreds of thousands of people already living there, they've been living there for decades

Detroit was a city of 2m at its peak. The budget crisis started when Detroit lost a bunch of Federal money when the 2004 census put the city population under 1m (~800k IIRC). No one thinks that it's a desolate wasteland (at least not that I've talked to). On the other hand, it's a city that was built to accommodate more then twice the current population (677k per Wikipedia). This is why there are a lot of open areas and abandoned neighbourhoods / buildings.
2025 sounds a little ambitious to me, pretty much everything would have to go right for that to happen, but the regulatory gears are turning pretty hard now, and they were set in motion years ago, first by Google beginning in 2012, but now by every major automaker and they've been lobbying pretty hard.

https://www.enotrans.org/article/washington-preparing-action...

Personally, I think if anything delays the adoption of electric robotaxis to anywhere near the degree Tony Seba is anticipating, it will be battery production capacity. Tesla, with their gigafactory is the only company that's really serious about anticipating that kind of demand, and western manufacturers be in competition with China for all the raw materials needed to mass produce batteries at that scale. That's where I'm anticipating the biggest hangups.
It's a mashup of both, actually. Go take a look at the Zealot concept art in the original Starcraft 1 manual and compare to a Predator.
If taxes were 100% what would happen? Businesses would turn into non-profit slaves. It may not be linear but suggesting higher taxes have no impact on hiring or wage growth is naive.

I personally have a guarantee for 400k on a line of credit, 20+ employees and when we have low profit years I ask if its even worth it. I can make close to the same as an independent consultant and have a lot less to worry about. Yes, taxes are on profits, but you simply don't hire when profits are low. You try to extract more from what you have and utilize contractors to fill in.

> either an employee creates more profit than they cost or they do not

Some employees are necessary to run the business and are not on the revenue side. When profit is low you try not to hire non-revenue employees and you might let some go. Business owners are in it to make money. If the government takes more of the profits - there's both less cash available in the bank to reinvest after you cover your liability and there's less incentive to run a business. Nobody gets any salary bumps when profit is low. Our problem is not employment but lack of any wage growth, esp. as debt and expenses like housing and education have skyrocketed.

> Millions of those 23M business tax returns do not represent a "business" in the sense of an entity that would or could support hiring of an employee - it's not that type of business nor trying to be

But millions do. Also - "not trying to hire" is also partially based in the unfriendliness that comes along with running small business with employees.

> 80% of businesses are one person businesses? Feels high, no? What percentage of people living around you are in this group?

That 80% is of small businesses, not all businesses. But no it doesn't feel high. And it doesn't say one person businesses. An LLC can have several members but no employees. That number doesn't feel off to me. We're talking about real estate agents, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, hairdressers, barbers, interior designers, independent software engineers and other technical consultants, etc. Each occupation has 200-600k people.

You're downplaying the 23M, but can you agree there's millions to activate? We also don't need to activate them to hire full-time. If they hire part-time that's a huge win too. Many of these businesses have a lot of apprenticeship to offer and are jobs that are rewarding because you accomplish something every day.

I know countless people and small partnerships making 150k-1M that have no employees. This includes blue and white collar occupations. When I talk with them about expanding their business and hiring - they're mostly just scared of making that commitment because they think it will be too much of a headache. And it is a headache and a lot of risk. Some states are worse than others.
LOL. I'm guessing you're sarcastically jabbing at Slack for the known issue that their desktop app uses a lot of memory.
I am honestly puzzled at why you believe this to be the case. I'm not even sure it has ever been the case. Consider, for example, how chemical weapons have never been used in WW2, despite all sides having stockpiles. Consider the fact that MAD deterrent absolutely requires both parties to be in perfect agreement about what level of conflict will trigger MAD. Also a shooting war does not have to ever touch anyone's homeland (not to mention that in a war there is usually a disagreement about what exactly a "homeland" is).
ops is a great place for Python. How about backups? Backup monitoring?

Don't roll your own monitoring solution, but tie Python scripts into Nagios, etc..
Red Delicious apples are horrible. Pink Ladies if you can find them, Honeycrisp if you can't.
BTW would you mind telling me some recent purchases and their prices so i can compare it and let you know

because when i checked tablets, mobiles and pretty much anything, everything was more expensive than in local eshops, if it's Chinese phone or some noname stuff then AliExpress is the king
Yup, but cost is relative to the problem you're trying to solve.

When your app needs horizontal scaling DB with multiple regions, and you don't have to come up with your own sharding solution, suddenly $8000 a year sounds like a great price.
I agree, and I would also like to see something from the Shadow World rpg realm. I think movie technology has progressed to the point where a really cool adaptation could be done.
Introducing GitHub Desktop Beta
Nobody lives forever. Assassination isn't the only possibility for untimely death when you are around rockets. If Elon passes away, is it possible the successor will "milk the cow" without funding R&D? Yes. Putting all eggs in one basket is unwise.
Netscan – A fast TCP port scanner
not exactly, the story is really complicated.
Default passwords on things that are on by default is "full stop" bad. This is on the same level as passwords in clear text e-mail.
Quickly navigate and search your emacs org trees
Yeah the support for gutting net neutrality has been bipartisan by politicians, and the opposition has been bipartisan by the people. Anyone who supports gutting net neutrality is either a sucker or bought.
What's that supposed to mean? Binary only, closed source kernel module?

>>> Drivers for both cards will be available ... as well as varieties of Linux (3.10, 3.12, 3.2, 4.2 and 4.4).
Not a really good choice for that word if you ask me.
Those are not even close to Cloud Spanner, what make Spanner great is all the Google backend reliability that you don't have to manage.
2) I completely agree; it's 100% not consent. The third-party testimony about the subject, however, was consented. Whether or not it is responsible and/or respectful to share that about the main subject is what I'm pondering in my remarks. It seems ethical from a purely journalistic view, in my opinion.
The problem with mutually assured destruction is the “assured” part. There is nothing assured about it. Cyber, space, and other weapons could dismantle the assurance and we could be in a totally different warfare environment. Certainly this doesn’t seem to be the case yet, but I wouldn’t make assumptions about the future.
They released it to customers with WinXP support contracts in March, parallel to the patches for other versions.
THE SECRET TO POPULARITY
> So is everything else, apparently

Yes. Sorry (not snarky) that it sounds like you work in a lousy place, but if your "security people" aren't cutting it, you are the line of defense for your users. You need to understand this stuff to be able to do the right thing. Being at least competent--and we're not talking A-plus or best-in-the-business, we're talking a solid C-plus to B, able to consistently make things better rather than leave them static or regress--in these things is your responsibility when you take a job working on stuff that touches these fields, because somebody has to and you're a somebody. "Security people" (and I'm not one, I'm a software developer--though, somehow, [this part is snarky] none of databases, algorithms, operating systems, cloud infrastructure, front end design, business logic features, or application security are beyond me; weird, that) are there to help you, not excuse you from your responsibilities.

There's a lot of stuff to understand! This is why you are paid the medium bucks. Remove "not your job" from your vocabulary and you'll be better at not just these things, but the things you think are your job, too. Because each bit informs the rest.
That was my first response as well, encouraged me to reenable uBlock.
Programmers bootstrapping an apparel business. Documenting every step
Hey there,

Few months ago my co-founder had a crazy idea about starting an apparel business, with our first product being a dress shirt from performance fabrics.

We are currently in the prototyping phase, with our first batch of samples already handed out to the first group of testers.

We have been documenting every step of the way from day 1 in written/blog, video/vlog and image form.

For the readers - https://medium.com/the-needle
For the viewers - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnk0wNZj1D5HnzvAwIAGuEw
Our main hub is Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/weardulo/, also @weardulo on all major platforms(Instagram, SnapChat).

We'd love to get some questions and start a discussion around building an actual business, with no previous experience in the industry. Learning as we go along.

Julian
Why wouldn't they wait until it's in the non-beta version. I will probably forget about this by the time it's there.
I like these ones - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Transparent
Unfortunately they are hard to come by even locally in ex-USSR because they are extremely fragile and no market want to handle their transportation or storage.

If you'll ever visit ex-USSR in late summer or early autumn ask for "byeliy naliv" apples (meaning something like "white shine"). They are green to white in color (more white as they are more ripe) and not very hard when ripe.
The Flash viewer and ridiculous TOS doesn't give me much confidence in their data.
The reason you are suffering is because you aren't living your life based on an understanding of your predicament.

Fool me once shame on you and fool me twice shame on me. So don't get fooled again. And don't forget to remind yourself it's all just a stupid game. Just like musical chairs.
Dear #WannaCry developer, please read my thesis [pdf]
Working at Netflix 2017
On second thought, no. I was thinking the patterns themselves. No, I have not posted the latest docs stuff. I shall immediately.
A Defense of the Reality of Time
Redwood City has Starship Technologies robots doing Doordash deliveries in the downtown area. Those look more like a finished product. They're mostly autonomous but can be controlled over a cell phone link if necessary.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y3-AmqVg5E
You really should know what the Andrew File System is
[video] Blind Learn to See with Tongue
I am well aware of their brilliance.

That doesn't change that I think there is a bunch of things they didn't imagined and I think they would both agree. (Minsky unfortunately can't anymore)

And sure they can probably see things I can't it's not a competition.
When Google Fiber came into my area, the speed went up by 6 fold, I'm still switching the moment I'm physically able even if it were slower and more expensive.
As someone who loves textures of foods, I empathize with the 'crunch' comment - though I will note that the only commendation you made about the flavor was expressing the Red Delicious's lack of flavor...

I liked Red Delicious back in the early 80s, but I noticed by the late 80s that they were becoming less flavorful, and tougher skinned. Now, the crunch and the visual is about all the red delicious has going for it.

I haven't seen Jonagold mentioned, but it's another one I like (though it doesn't store particularly well).
Top Tips for Managing Your Carrier Pigeons
Whooosh
I totally agree that things got pretty uncomfortable at times during the show, and the Brian Reed covered some perhaps excessively personal things, but I'm curious if you can go into detail on the bisexual erasure you mention. Are you referring to the perspectives on John's sexuality, or were there other instances I missed?
Create Server-Rendered Universal React Apps with No Configuration
The real value of this is the algorithm of "one-shot imitation learning" (the paper is here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.07326.pdf ). The title about robots it is only to catch the attention of the media. The domain is simple to show the idea, but it can be applied to more complex domains once you know how to define it (which it is usually really complex). The blocksworld domain is used because it has been used in automatic planning for decades, and it is well know in research. It feels trivial to use only 6 blocks, but when you want to create an automatic plan of the steps to reach the final position it is not that simple for the computers.
That was basically the entire point of Screen Hero. So I hope this is only the first step in integration with Slack.
> "Herbert: grab my car keys." "Herbert: set the dinner table." "Herbert: put the mail in the mailbox."

Doing that requires far more than simply being able to pick things up and put things down and walk around. To do that requires nearly human level AI that can "understand".
increase of 0.5% for one person offices compared to cubicles sound highly unlikely, i don't think you can replace 2*2m cubicle with same size closed office for 0.5% increase in cost
Maybe I'm misremembering: Who didn't speak to him and ended up in the story?
Can someone define net neutrality? I've yet to see a definition. Well if I understand the definition then there's no debate. Net neutrality ended long ago. Anyone ever heard of akamai?
Where do I find up to date hard yield and input data on fully artificially lit hydroponic or aeroponic systems for various crops?
but stopped working maybe 20 years ago.
lawyers are apple employees, no?
ParlAI
warming to others - 2 actual photos of building, you are better off with Google image search
Yes... not the only one though. Not a very obvious joke. Also, just checked slack on my Mac: 38MB memory usage, 4 open groups and many channels. So, not a good joke either?