skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I’m not sure how that has anything to do with the difference in performance between running the Windows version on OSX and running the OSX version on OSX.
Water, gas, and electricity have provided no benefit to the consumer from privatisation. The spare capacity in the grid has markedly reduced, safety is no better, leaks are still ignored far too long, and consumers are often price-gouged with some pretty regressive pricing schemes that penalise all except those who supplier hop every single month.

"Competition" appears to have provided benefit for shareholders and no one else in those industries. It has provided opportunity to expand for one or two other nation's nationalised utilities to benefit their consumers.
It's a recurring theme in Snapchat's financial disclosures, in fact.

https://stratechery.com/2018/facebooks-story-problem-and-opp...
Trusting people you don't know personally is just bad practice in general. And never trust anything that comes from the mouth of PR. Facebook was smart by having Zuckerberg act as public relations because he could act like he's one of us(not so much anymore), and people trusted him when he said things like "I just want to make the world more connected."(paraphrasing) Bad move, folks.
I think you have a few options, depending on what you are looking for and what you are already doing.

1) Look for local options (city and state level in the US, or even neighborhood level sometimes), and particularly on focused but not too focused areas. I've come across good local transportation oriented forums and I would guess there are decent local forums for things like education, foster care, environment, and health care. One of the better ways of getting information is via people who are on various advisory committes, so look for forums that those people participate in. I've also heard that it can be fairly easy to get on one of those committes yourself. Maybe twelve years ago or so I found the Pittsburgh Policy Issues Online Forum when I lived in Pittsburgh that was set up by the current mayor (Bill Peduto), who was then a city council member. He didn't participate himself and I wasn't super impressed at the time but in retrospect even having a few people in city government posting occasional responses about details of particular issues was better than almost anything else I've seen. Now almost all traces of its existance have been removed from the web (searchable web at least). I've wondered what the people running it thought of the experience.

2) Forcasting, detailed discussions aimed at predicting what will actually happen rather than what should happen. Look at Good Jugdement Open:

https://www.gjopen.com/

3) Forget online discussion and make friends with a journalist and/or find local groups. I think in general the closer you get to particular current issues (and the people actually making the decisions) the more the discussion is restrained by the current political environment in that particular area, but also the more detail you get. I've heard that it can be shockingly easy to have a direct impact on local politics outside of areas that powerful interests care most about.

4) There might be better discussions hiding behind the key word "ethics" or something similar rather than politics directly. In a way you can split politics into a) the details of things like what is required to make particular policy changes and what are the likely or actual results of such a change and b) what should the goals be. For b, you are likely to get a better discussion if it is mostly removed from current politics.

5) Put less effort into finding discussion opportunities and more effort into finding people writing with more detailed perspectives. Some journalists go into much more detail than others. These days lots of people previously involved in politics have blogs and some write in detail. It is easier to track down a bunch of interesting writers individually than a forum. Sometimes those blogs have comment areas that are decent or you could start your own politics blog. Also, published books can be a great source of information due to the longer write/edit/print cycle and authors being selected more for long term interest and expertise.

Edit: Also, look for multiple perspectives on history. In addition to history being generally important in politics, you can often find detailed discussions of what are now heated political issues.
Is anyone else having GitHub issues with things not updating?
Very odd. Pushed some code but couldn't find the new files or search for them.
Put counteroffer on the table in front of your boss.
Air launch (to orbit)[1] has been a thing for a good while now. As others have stated, fuel savings are enormous; jet engines have orders of magnitude higher efficiency than rocket engines when taking fuel tankage into account. Air resistance is barely an issue, and same for the gravity drag. But most importantly, launch mass is greatly reduced in part thanks to not having to carry oxidizer for the first stage. Another factor, rocket's first stage must have powerful, thus heavy, engines with enough thrust to both counter gravity and impair acceleration; an orbital insertion stage can do with much lower TWR, thus again mass savings for air launch.

Point in case, note the size of the Pegasus orbital rocket [2]. Or the orbital anti-satellite missile, sized like a typical cruise missile, all thanks to air launch [3] from a typical fighter jet.

Now that SpaceX is able to recover the first stages from some launches, the cost of first stage is a bit less of a factor, but still there are other considerations, like ability to launch from any decent runway vs having to maintain a dedicated facility, unusable for any other commercial purposes, far away from humans due to incredible amount of noise rocket engines create.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_launch_to_orbit

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(rocket)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT
The best economic argument I've seen for this is not based on cost so much as positioning it as a "premium product" that can offer a lot of flexibility and (potentially) specific temporal launch reliability (ie,. mission not being scrubbed and hitting one exact date vs simply making it to orbit with a high reliability, though the latter of course is key too). As a flying jet powered mobile launch platform it can take off far away from bad weather, fly above many weather formations, fly directly to an optimal point over the ocean for any desired launch angle, and then launch. Any bonuses that come from not needing to punch through the heaviest parts of the atmosphere and being able to optimize accordingly both in terms of fuel and when it comes to nozzle geometry and such certainly help them but it may well never be enough to hit a lower absolute price/kg at all. However, some possible customers (in particular military/intel) may offer a high premium if a company can offer them a very high assurance that they can hit a specific launch day to any orbit at all from a more flexible origin.

I don't know if ultimately there is a big enough market but I can at least see theoretical potential there, and just in general it often works better to try to carve out a specialized niche with higher margins then take the 400kg gorillas head-on at their greatest strengths. And if the medium/medium-heavy launchers work then this doesn't have a total joke payload either, 3.4 to 6 tons to LEO isn't just cubesats.

It'll be interesting to see how it goes at any rate whether it pans out or not. It's ambitious and it could offer a niche but new additional mission capability.
We use IoT quite a bit in the public sector, especially for things like traffic, weather and parking data, and we’ve been running much of it on our lorawan setup, using node on the actual devices.

I wouldn’t have thought it at first, but JavaScript is turning out to be our most important language for driving IoT, and while I haven’t heard about Johnny-five before, it looks pretty good.
For an android build to be released with this mitigation included: Six to nine weeks.

For the mitigation to be implemented on your android phone: Six to nine years.
The Best E-Commerce Fulfillment Services of 2018
It does. Install caml-mode or tuared-mode in emacs. Add -annot to ocamlc compilation flags, and type C-c C-t et voilà.
Yeah the iMac Pro is one of the most ridiculous products I've seen in ages, from any company in any market.

I don't mind some "Apple tax", like a few hundred bucks, but the iMac Pro is literally like 3x the cost of its competition.

(Though I'm sure Apple would tell us that there's no direct competitor. That's true, in a way -- I don't know of anybody else selling a Xeon machine with an integrated monitor -- but for the more typical use case of "I just want a really powerful desktop and I don't need/want a Xeon-based system" there are equivalent Windows machines for far under $2K)
>* a vibration sensor combined with a tiny hall sensor on the door of the washer/dryer to notify me when laundry is done (trying to measure power usage on 220v wiring was looking to be more annoyance than it was worth, so i went a different route!)

Your option was likely much less expensive, but aeotec does make a clamp-on energy sensor[0]. It's made for reading your whole-home energy but it should work for your purposes. But like I said, your solution was likely much cheaper (these are about $99).

[0] https://aeotec.com/z-wave-home-energy-measure
So my mom and aunt wont be on it? Sign me up
Air pressure. Google "ISP". Rockets are more efficient at lower air pressures, preferably vacuum. But a rocket (really just the bell/nozzle bit where the fire comes out) must still be designed to operate in a particular air pressure. The problem with the first stage of every rocket is that is must travel between sea level a near-vacuum at high altitude. So you cannot ever reach proper efficiencies. By launching at altitude they can optimize for vacuum operation without worry about sea level performance. We are talking about roughly 10~% margins here, but rocket companies can spend billions on 1-2% improvements.

Also, by launching from an aircraft over an ocean one can avoid many of the ground realities of rocket operations. Land-based sites much deal with shipping notices and noise issues. Stratospheric can fire these things in different directions, to different orbits, without worry. They might also be able to launch multiple rockets on a single flight, a totally new service that might hit an unexplored market.

Lastly, politics. Stratolaunch could travel the world to launch rockets from basically any big airport. So if the Saudis want to launch something without the hassle of US/Russian security checks, they can have Stratospheric show up to handle the launch locally. There are probably enough countries wanting to launch something locally for prestige alone.

Or... someone just wants to have the biggest airplane in the world (paging Dr. Freud) and this is the way to make that happen.
Factorials in pure lambda calculus, compiled to native code and running in non-geological time:

http://www.flownet.com/ron/lambda-calculus.html
I...how? That's the same on most of the numbers, but even more precision on one of them.

Here's my calculator, with exactly three decimal places:

25->rad: .436

sin(.436): .422

cos(.422): .912

tan(.912): 1.292

atan(1.292): .912

acos(.912): .422

asin(.422): .435

.435->deg: 24.924

Where does your calculator start to diverge, that you end up with an answer like 9?

And I got the same result as Aardwolf that the Sinclair emulator returns .434, only a tenth of a degree off.

Edit: Oh wait, you're using a calculator set to degrees. That's a totally different problem, because it makes the 0-1 output from sin and cos become an extremely small fraction of a circle. It works as a type of precision test, but it's not at all the same thing you'd try on the Sinclair that only does radians. It still doesn't explain your original memory.

Side note: Even in degrees mode, the answer for 6 digits is kind of an outlier. If you use 5 or fewer digits the calculation crashes. 7 digits gets you 24.9. It boils down to just acos(cos( [about half a degree] )), and the other operations don't really matter.
Just what I've always wanted: another use-case to shoehorn javascript into.

:/
Yeah, exactly. Look at the content Facebook wants you to see. Would you rather consume that?
What's really funny about this whole affair is that everything that people accuse China of doing has actually been done by the US. There's some powerful projection at here. We know for a fact that the NSA does intercept telecom devices on their way out of the country and so the US actually does export compromised devices [1]. We know for a fact that US telecom manufacturers export equipment that has been pre-broken by the NSA [2]. We know for a fact that the NSA aggressively penetrates foreign networks at the deepest levels, even for so called allies. [3] All of this is a matter of record, it's been documented and verified by several agencies.

But somehow despite all this we're supposed to be very, very afraid of Huawei and ZTE? The total lack of integrity at work here is a bit breathtaking but it's come to be expected.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/cisco...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Parliamentary_Committee...
Show HN: Virtual Reality VS Augmented Reality – Know the Difference
A simple Infograph illustration, how these major technologies will be in demand till 2020.

https://havethisbeast.com/virtual-reality-vs-augmented-reali...
Well, you see Brian, the chances are one in a million.
It is and it isn't. I imagine your humor implies that technical people are using Mastadon, ie the same type that would be using HN, but the reality is that while that is true, Twitter "rejects" are also using Mastadon. Sometimes this means communities filled with very.. controversial people.
> I'm curious though, is there something you would recommend instead that meets these requirements with a single codebase (~90% shared code): target all major platforms (macOS, Windows, Linux) and target all major browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, IE), (edit: and how could I forget, all major phone browsers) with nearly identical UI/UX?

That is ridiculous comment to start with. You might as well say that something's name has to start with an 'E' ends with 'n' and is 8 letter word and developed by Chrome browser team.

If it were not a software, I think it would right in category of 'blame the victim'. Seems you really believe it is users problem that they do not upgrade their phones and computers every couple of years.
> reminiscing about when it was strictly necessary.

Yes this is what I meant by "a perspective that was both inevitable and necessary at the time when there was basically no text editors." although I should have known that suggesting thompson was wrong in the most understanding way possible will attract downvotes here.
Factorials in pure lambda calculus (2014)
If you're afraid that a planet will have life, then why choose a planet where you are sure there is life?

They were betting their existence on a species they knew already uses MAD as a basis for its' survival not figuring out that it could use MAD to defend themselves.

Their system was interesting, but ultimately not much worse than ours, once you leave the planet. And they have to leave the planet anyway.

Once you have nanomaterials allowing cheap access to space - putting your population in space habitats is cheap and easy. We could do it now, if we had space elevator. The cost of materials and energy is negligible compared to invasion of another star system. Especially with such conveniently storeable population :)

> Tri-Solarians knew far more about Earth than they could reliably determine about most nearby star systems.

There's nothing stopping them from figuring it out. You don't have to invade a system, you can send a stealthy probe. I would assume in their circumstances it would be a wise thing to do if they really don't want to live in space further away from the center of gravity of their star system.

Besides, if the dark forest is so important - why invade Earth at all and play with fire? You can kill everybody on Earth without bothering to show up or sending any warnings. Send a big meteor their way or make a deadly disease that looks like flu, infect everybody, and on set date kill all hosts. Much cheaper, and no risk of ceasing to exist.

What they did in the books was very risky and wasteful for no good reason.
In Serial Rape Case That Stumped Police, Genealogy Database Leads to Arrest
I just saw the Spruce Goose in the Evergreen Aviation Museum near Portland. That has a wing span of 320’ and is already impressive in its own right. This must be better! Bit of trivia: the Goose is made largely of wood, one of the older “composites” :)
he works at formlabs, which doesn't look easy and DEFNLY doesn't look boring!

he also does carpentery and neat plotter art.

pretty impressive guy. very inspirational!
If you find that interesting, in a similar vein, a walk through corn and soybean fields in Canada lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-walk-that-changed-t...
To quote you:

> At some point, you will realise that your job is not to create an idol to the software-engineering gods but rather to have a working product.

> Does this product work? if so, its doing its job.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17824782
>Bell Labs invented Google, Facebook, etc? Wow, did not know that.

Compared to what they invented, Google and Facebook are insignificant in comparison.

We could go back to Altavista and no-Facebook and we'd be more or less fine.

Giving back the Bell Labs technlogy would be a much harder hit...
I want to value 5-star ratings like this: 1 star = -3, 2 star = -1, 3 star = 0, 4 star = +1, 5 star = +3. Works the same for restaurant tipping: $0.02 = you should be fired and this place should be closed, 0% = you suck and I won't ever come back, 10% = you blew it this time, 15% = median performance, 20% = you did better than most, 20% and yes we will also order booze and/or desserts = you're at least 98th percentile.

I dislike systems that end up being like this: 1 star = -8, 2 star = -4, 3 star = -2, 4 star = -1, 5 star = 0.

I need to be able to express when things are good as well as when things are bad. When everyone and everything has a 4.5-star average rating, there's no way to tell when anything stands out as being better than similar things. You can only see when things are significantly worse.
I find it practically unusable on my iphone 6+, whilst other apps work fine.
How to extract a data-rich service from a monolith
Gary Vaynerchuk: Voice Will Explode, Drive Companies Big as Facebook/Instagram
“That’s when progress ended”, really? That alone is enough to discredit Thiel on the topic
The Atlantic also had an article in the last issue - I didn't know that Alcott wrote a bunch of "sensationalist stories about murder and opium addiction" and felt that was her sweet spot.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/little-...
The range of the smart hub is what concerns me. I see you can buy the plug-in dimmer switch to extend, but only one is allowed per hub. Otherwise the reliability of Caseta is attractive. Do you also have the hub integrated with other things like a thermostat? I'm curious as to how that's working out.
Just adding on that this is my experience as well.

Objects usually fell into one of two categories: discarded immediately or held for the entire application lifetime. Anything in between was problematic. Most things ended up using object pools. We also used to never really convert anything from binary format and just used wrapper objects to access the byte arrays directly.

Another sort of trick was scheduling GC for times when the application was OK to pause helped considerably, and made behavior more predictable as well.

It'd be tough to compare it to C/C++ given the complexity of the application. But without giving away specifics, we had solid performance afaik. But you're correct that it does end up making for some interesting Java code.
Then, there's this, that I saw today:

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/51/15/1111

So, who knows. I'm glad I went into physics - biology is too complicated.
A simple Infograph illustration, how these major technologies will be in demand till 2020.
Another possibility - if the referring page is a different domain, overriding back is ineffective (the browser just does a “real” back in these cases).
Have you met people on twitter?
I literally memorized this book at one point for a really difficult exam. Glad to see it's open sourced!
Best Time to Post Content on Social Media for Better Exposure and Engagement
Commons Clause – Update
Mike Pence’s Outer-Space Gospel
I found the article funny. My problem has to do with the concept of "mediocre" - which is an insulting way of saying "average". Though the writer also uses the term "boring", which has a lot to do with individual taste.

For instance, imagine a field with only one practitioner. Is that person mediocre or excellent? Both, really. I'll leave the proof as an exercise for the reader.
I've been using Home Assistant for a couple of years now. I won't go too much into what I use it for, there's a bunch of info about that, and the guys on the Discord have entire public repos full of all their cool automations (on Github).

What I would share is that in the couple of years I've been running it, I've been through a dozen Sandisk and Samsung MicroSDs on my Pis _even though_ I was running my time-series database, and my MQTT server on a separate server.

Running on Raspberry Pi it's a nice toy, but when you get serious, install it on a proper box with an SSD/spinning rust.

I bought a NUC-like device which is what most people will recommend to run it on, installed Arch (you can use whatever you like, Debian is probably best supported) and get going.

Briefly though, I log all of the temperatures and light levels in each room of my home using Z-Wave sensors, store them in Influx and graph them in Grafana.

I have my desk lamp turn on when motion is detect at or around my desk, I have my cameras start recording when nobody is home (based on location reporting from our mobiles using Owntracks back to my self-hosted MQTT server).

I have hue lights in every light socket in the home so I can switch them to various moods based on motion, time of day, lux, whether the TV is on, the weather, the temperature, etc etc.

The Home Assistant dashboard shows my server load in my rack , temperature in my rack (via a temperature sensor connected to an ESP8266 talking MQTT back to the server), all info on my UPS, load on various power meter wall plugs (Z-Wave) which can also be controlled on/off via HA, it shows the current temperature and light level and motion in each room via Z-Wave motion sensors.

Most importantly, the community that sit on Discord are a friendly and helpful bunch so it's nice and easy to get started.
What it does have, and it makes me very uncomfortable, is the log of all TV and Radio I listen to online. And with the TV license changes, it's only a short step from actually forcing me to use my real contact details.
It is a money problem obviously.
Uber wants to use AI to guide drivers through the onboarding process
OCaml and Reason are beautiful languages. I actually applied to Jane Street hoping for a chance to use them more, but they weren’t interested in my resume. Is there a list of OCaml/Haskell/etc companies out there for us functional programming enthusiasts?
At this point I just take everything I hear about the valley as gospel - but always assume there's a healthy dose of harassment. So, so happy there's other options for tech.
my money's on him spending an hour or two every morning or evening, when the family are still in bed. I've learned recently how much more productive you can be by spending small time consistently compared to large time inconsistently (ie starting new projects full of excitement).