skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The first thing you should do is realize that not every "lost sale" is your fault. There are some people in this world who won't be willing to pay you, even if that ends up costing them more in the long run. As far as what you have to offer that particular business, though? Does the online website builder he used provide customer support that's better than yours? Does it provide copy writing and editing for his basic pages and ongoing support for his blog? How about the e-commerce side, what percentage are they taking (and what would you be taking)? How much are they charging for the kind of long-term support you're offering?

One other major place to focus: How long did it take him to build the site himself? Was it free, aside from time?

Online builders are pretty slick nowadays, but I think that you're not fully automated out of the market just yet. The problem is, you can't beat free for some people. Even if a year down the road, five years down, they end up having laid out more time and lost more money on their "free" website, there are certain people in the world who'll always take the nominally free option.
Stage keyboards aren't really supposed to be innovative. If you try and compete with Mainstage, you end up with a PC in a weird form factor. Stage keyboards are built to be rugged, reliable and intuitive instruments for performing musicians. These users overwhelmingly don't want frequent software updates and innovative new features, they want a tool that does the job with a minimum of hassle.

There's a reason why so many keyboard players adore their Nord keyboard, despite it having relatively old-fashioned technology. Nord instruments are incredibly ergonomic and sound absolutely killer, largely because of their obsessive attention to detail and their deep relationships with working musicians. A trivial example is the music stand - it's rock solid, it fits in the gig bag, it slots in place in two seconds and it's wide enough to hold four pages. It's a really important feature for a lot of Nord users, but it just wouldn't occur to most engineers.

Pressed steel, Neutrik jacks and keybeds aren't subject to Moore's Law. High-end stage keyboards will always be expensive, because they're built to high standards in relatively small quantities. The lack of innovation just isn't particularly relevant, because old technology does the job perfectly well.
> Employees don’t like them. Research proves they’re ineffective. Why is it taking so long for us to get rid of them?

Um, because they're the cheapest option and these decisions are done by some bean counter not by the employees?

As a european dev I used to envy the people working in SV based on their salaries until I saw picture with how the FB office looks like: cramped seating, artificial lighting, no windows for fresh air, only AC vents.

Even though I barely make a 1/5 of a FAANG employee, I feel blessed to work in a 4 man office, where I have a seat by the windows overseeing trees, external blinds so I can control the amount of natural light I get and can open the window to control the amount of fresh air I get. To me, you can't put a price on these things.

Sadly, open plan offices are coming here as well, slowly but surely, marketed as a hip SV import to attract juniors while seniors knows it's just cost cutting BS.
What about.. AI-powered texture compression.

Train the game upscaling AI with high resolution textures, then ship the game with lower res textures. High quality rendering with smaller file sizes, though won't be as good as the original pictures.

Not very useful in reality, but would be a pretty neat proof of concept.

The question is: would the AI data be smaller than shipping the high quality textures in the first place?
Not a bad idea. Nobody seems to have a problem with the coffee bean dispensing bins at the grocery store, so maybe this isn't that far out.
> I don't know directly anyone who is in that situation

Which situation -- do you mean "being harassed"? I'm pretty sure you do, as it is quite safe to assume that any woman you encounter has been harassed at some point in her life. The only question is how severely and how long ago, which still does not take away the effect on her emotions.
Yes, you can easily create a constant rate counter, but no: it wouln't keep time.

To keep time you do care about the position of the sun because that defines the time of day, humanity's base for the experience of time.

If you will never care about what the time is in your application, by all means, count clock cycles, otherwise: UTC is the standard for keeping time.
Ask HN: Any trouble areas inside AWS that I should avoid?
I'm interviewing at AWS at one of those hiring events next week and there isn't yet a position defined. I'm a DevOps / SRE and I was wondering if there are any trouble area inside AWS that would make me immediate regret joining it?

Also, the job positions are quite diverse. What would be a good fit for someone with 20 years of Linux experience and a deep understanding of hardware, networking, kernels, sysadmin in general, etc?
They're cheaper and they look good. The hidden costs of lower employee productivity and happiness are just that, hidden. I've worked at places with completely open offices and with smaller offices for teams of 4-6 people and its much nicer to have some private space, especially when you need to sit down and think through some problems.

One company handed out noise-canceling headphones but that's just a bandaid over the problem.

One extra benefit to fail-fast startups and landlords is also that space can be simply reconfigured by adding and removing desks. No pesky walls to knock down or glass doors to add when your brand new pizza delivery app fails and has to make room for a beauty box startup.
rms refers to this combination as "GNU/kWindows". I wrote about GNU's perspective back in 2016:

https://mikegerwitz.com/2016/04/gnu-kwindows

Please remember that GNU is not just a collection of programs that fall under the umbrella of the GNU Project---GNU is a complete operating system, and it was an explicit decision to use existing free software when it was already available, and write replacements only for non-free components needed replacing. A detailed history of the development of GNU can be found here:

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html

As distro maintainers know, it is a lot of work to come up with the right combination of programs to produce a complete, working operating system using _existing_ free components and being able to draw inspiration from existing GNU/Linux distributions. Imagine how difficult this effort was 30 years ago when nobody had done it yet.
It's going to land and then fly to a new location from time to time.
This needs to be reiterated every time someone claims they made some massive financial success.

If you're worse off than an S&P index fund then you're not a genius - you're an idiot.
Yeah, a more accurate description would be "Seattle won't notice the freeway destruction, because they've been living in constant Carmaggedon for the past 20+ years anyway"

Seattle folks are so anti-infrastructure, the commutes people have to endure there insane. Especially given how short a distance they cover.
I use gitlab's issue board. I have a short term task list and a long term task list.
Making a better WiFi piano
This partisan op-ed is barely tangentially related to the OP. So tired of seeing worn out sensationalist divisive news where it obviously doesn't belong.
In fairness, Roland founded the MMA and wrote most of the MIDI spec. The odds are fairly good that Roland did invent SysEx.
The article is fun and well written, and it showcases how the marketed tools/services can actually be used to accomplish something interesting.
As long as the content is useful, should I care if it was written as a way to advertise a product or not?
This is so much better than doorslaming ads in one's face.
Governments, universities, school systems, etc.

When it's other people's money, or if you're swimming in so much cash flow that the occasional six-figure-surprise licensing visit is a rounding error, Oracle is a fantastic choice!
> Agency work is less profitable and higher hassle.

I agree with the first part, but disagree with the second. Rather, partially disagree. Most agencies are inept. There are some out there that run a very tight ship and it is a pleasure to work for them. They tend to be larger and have a system for handling contractors.

That said, since it's always less profitable, you're always better off having your own clients.
Do I, as a customer, need to carefully scrutinize the employment relationship used for every service I use?

Let’s say I call a plumbing company to fix a sink and the plumber floods my house. The company tells me, “That plumber is an independent contractor not employed by us. You’ll have to get restitution directly from him. Good luck, bye!”

I certainly wouldn’t accept this. I didn’t sign up to have some unknown third party do the work and be responsible for the outcome, I signed up to have the company I’m paying do it.

Imagine if your car is defective and the manufacturer tells you to get restitution from the subcontractors that made the part. Or if you bought a sandwich full of arsenic and they told you to talk to some random farmer who happened to grow the affected vegetable.

These companies want to have it both ways. They want to completely own the relationship with the customer... until something goes wrong. Then it’s all, “we’re just a broker for independent contractors, they’re responsible for everything, don’t talk to us.”

There’s nothing wrong with just being a broker, but you have to be consistent.
Flag colors by latitude
This 1993 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra R was the 11th of just 107 units made. It features a 5.0-liter V-8 engine paired to a five-speed manual transmission. The Cobra R variants were tuned to produce 235 hp, and were only offered to licensed racers. This one features various upgrades, including a revised camshaft and GT40 cylinder heads from Ford Racing.
Pretty sure I don't want cumbersome and amazingly terrible MIDI cables anymore in 2019. Give me an updated MIDI protocol, and then talk/listen to my device over USB. There is no reason to use incredibly bad MIDI cables for this. And before we all go "but USB cables are more fragile", don't use a standard consumer or studio cable during a live performance, and done. Let these dumb MIDI ports die with MIDI 2, they are not of this time.
Symmetry gets really interesting when it is broken
Being on a paleo diet for a while, I'm quite convenience that high carb diets in the USA is causing all the metabolic diseases here. I've lost 25 lbs and my stomach is much better, I'm now close to a "normal" BMI.
Old and not a particularly interesting rebuttal. Searle later stressed how the Chinese room argument demonstrates how programs, in and of themselves, cannot generate consciousness. This important aspect is not addressed in the rebuttal.

For an updated overview of the argument and replies, see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/
Realistically cognitive decline, especially that sort, isn't the reason developers in their 40's and 50's are more frequently worth laying off. I'd rather hire the me of my 40's and 50's than the me of my 20's. (I'm in my 30's.)

I wonder how much of it is that bad younger developers are more likely to attrition themselves, but older ones stay. So you get these old guys who, after five to ten years, it's really obvious they've got to go.
No competent team makes decisions based solely on the Combine. It's a data point that gets combined with college game tape, private workouts, and some other special events like the Senior Bowl. Also, a significant number of players who end up getting drafted or signed as Undrafted Free Agents don't go to the Combine.
The CEO himself sent texts to the article's author, and visited her several times. How many people get a visit or a text from Uber's CEO when there's an accident, when a disabled person is refused service because of their assistance dog, etc? Not many, because they're not journalists. If a company lays on everything they've got when they know the subject of an accident is a prominent journalist, but that person ends up thinking they should be doing more regardless... that makes it pretty clear these companies can do better.
In my experience they typically ask you questions about the experience you've listed on your CV. If you say you have experience working with AWS, then they might ask you something like "explain what a VPC is and why is it useful?". Other more general questions are usually along the lines of "tell me about a solution to a problem you solved and how you designed the solution to that problem".

The few times that I've been asked very specific technical questions they have always been related to the job I was applying for. Example: a ruby on rails job interview I was shown a few ActiveRecord models and asked what is wrong with them and how I would improve them - the answer was that they were all really polymorphic models but that was not how they were implemented in the code. Or for a frontend role, they might ask you "explain the javascript prototype chain to me".

Again, in my experience, its always seemed like the interview was more of a personal test rather than a technical one. Will the person be easy to work with? Will they be communicative or will they bottle up their issues and resent the team for it. Are they willing to learn? Will they be able to hande occasional pressure and stress? I think its generally accepted that its extremely difficult to accurately gauge a person's technical abilities in an interview. Also employees always start on a probationary contract in which they can be fired with 1-2 weeks notice, this usually lasts between 3-6 months, so if it turns out the employee was blagging it in the interview then it will become apparent pretty quickly and they will likely not make it past the probation period.
I would argue instead that the current state of the ride-sharing industry is merely a natural progression due to technological advancement (smartphones, Internet, etc.) and strong economies

Not to mention complacency by entrenched industries -- before the Uber days, San Francisco had a half dozen competing cab companies, you'd call for one cab (talking to a human dispatcher), he'd tell you a cab was on the way, then you'd wait and hope your cab showed up, meanwhile you might see several cars from other companies drive by... and as you wait, you consider whether to ditch the cab you called and flag down one of the others.

If they'd pooled their resources, come up with a central dispatch system for all companies and some sort of app that tells you when your cab is going to arrive (even an SMS saying "Driver XXX is .5 miles away and should be there in XX minutes" would let you know that there really is a driver on the way), I wonder if Uber would have taken over there.
That's all stuff we can try out on Earth first. Maybe build a rover that explores the whole of Antarctica or the Sahara autonomously. There is this idea of sending a submarine to Europa, melt it through the ice, explore the ocean and then come back up. It would be really cool but first we need to do this on Earth.
Audiophoolery, this website also sells 200 euro volume knob, says it all.

Nonetheless I will elaborate, 100ps jitter you are being warned about in the description of this must have clock module will be detectable to any human with hearing reaching 10 GHz range.

I recommend https://xiph.org/video/
Then you're not being creative enough. Digital turntables are extremely precise. I once hooked up my ns7 (1) to an old windows laptop, spun the turntable, and crashed the computer. I think that highly precise applications like this could find valid uses for 32 bit control
History of the GNU Project
Not overly surprising, these media outlets aren't trying to make it easy to tell the difference. Rather they are doing the bare minimum so they can claim they're trying, to stave off regulation.
To nitpick the point a bit, there are valid and smart reasons for seeing below S&P returns. Bonds lower your returns; over the past decade, especially, foreign markets have under-performed the S&P500. You should have some idea why you're under-performing the S&P500 :-).
I think it’s very dangerous to tell people not to go around claiming the internet is doomed.

People doing that appears to have been the very thing that built the consensus to stop the legislation.
This.
I used to do a lot of web site development. Certainly for larger organizations there is still a need. But for small commercial or retail concerns, there's little reason to not rely on social media for all of your web marketing. It used to bother me when I found a company by Googling and found that Google directed me to Facebook and there was not other web site. It doesn't bother me any more - I get it.
So he didn’t increase the value of the company that much, he just increased his stake. Right?
Raytracing, not textures.
Yeah but then we also fall in the "and we throw the old one away" category. Sure, if we find the perfect one, we'll be sticking with it for a while, but if the new thing is actually better: stage pianos are tools, they're not precious instruments lovingly hand crafted by instrument makers. I will happily throw a Roland RD800 out the window if you give me an RD2000 instead. Same for a Nord Stage3 vs an old Nord Stage. Maybe if they were vintage, as pointed out somewhere else, but they're just not. There isn't a single modern stage piano that isn't just an excellent sampler with ideally a rock solid hardware UI. Zero reason to care about replacing those if the new model has better samples, or better hardware UI, or both.
Matthias Noback "Style Guide for Object Design"
Helen Keller's Life Story (project Gutenberg Free PDF)
Larger enterprise level organizations. It's especialy used in ERP software. In the Higher Education sector two of the most popular ERP solutions are Banner Student and a Peoplesoft application customized for higher ed. Banner runs on Oracle, and Peoplesoft is an Oracle-owned solution.
> vapid

I'm not sure that is the right word, at least for me.

I teach, and every once in a while a person asks a question that I just do not understand. It is a bad feeling; I am left standing in front of everyone saying "Could you repeat it in other words? Could you give another example?"

I have that same feeling on reading Searle's paper, and on hearing him talk about it on In Our Time. He says a number of things that I agree with. Then he says, "Therefore obviously computers cannot understand Chinese." I'm left slackjawed, wondering whether some kind of type error happened or am I just too dumb? (Entirely possible, no doubt.)

I don't have the `vapid' sense that I understand the argument and it is incorrect, rather I'm left with a sense of "What just happened?"
This is assuming the goal is just “make money”, that’s always the sole objective function relentlessly pursued.

In the last year I have met 4 billionaires - and what I have observed was that above a certain level of extreme wealth it’s not about just making more money, it’s about forfilling autonomy, mastery and purpose, which might mean a non-optimal financial strategy, but is rewarding in other ways.
Show HN: C++ Editor for Teaching How to Code
Four months for a crime that affects the lifetime earnings of hundreds of people to the tune of hundreds of thousands? That's not nearly enough.
Most people are nowhere near as fortunate as you are, to have all of that. That might be why the complaints sound so "alien".

Even if I somehow perfectly engineered my life, so that my shops and housing and employment and recreation were all right nearby each other -- there would be no way to do the same for my spouse or child or the rest of my family. And that also assumes I never ever change jobs even once (which in this economy, is effectively like taking a 10% yearly paycut).

This is why cities depend on reliable public transportation infrastructure (including freeways). It's a critical component of quality of life, as well as a requirement to make financial ends meet.
Weaponization of Artificial Intelligence
>If you're worse off than an S&P index fund then you're not a genius - you're an idiot.

You aren't an entrepreneur, are you?
ENIW: Embracing Neatly Inverted WINE
Metabase can eat into your innodb buffer pool
Curiosity's top speed across flat ground is just 0.09 mph (0.14 km/h).
You're right on #2.

To clarify, any clients I have that behave that way are firmly out of the SMB segment (or have grown to that point as we have worked together), seem to be in cash-flow heavy industries like manufacturing or construction, and we've been working together for several years.

I think you made the point I was going for - it may be more hassle than it's worth to do work for a client that makes a fuss over $2200 vs $2000.
Practical Ethics: What should I do when what I do makes no difference?
Sure it's the USA, but the problem is not unique to the USA.

I’m listening, but it would help if you could make a list that isn’t exclusively American. It really does imply that yeah, it’s very much a problem with the form of crony capitalism found in the US.
Well to be fair, someone has to actually run those 500 companies in the index.
Show HN: Generate Pi using elastic collisions in Rust
What does this post have to do with flag football? It mentions it in the first sentence then it's just a generic post against professional sports.

Why would flag football be in any way different?
Understanding React Hooks
“You’re an idiot” - wow, what a short sighted comment.

One can invest, take risks, and fail. Doesn’t make you an idiot. Majority of startups fail. Doesn’t mean the founders are idiots.
But during this time company also invested money and paid salaries to their employees, so the figure is higher. That is certainly better than just parking the money somewhere, no?
There's this "intent" bias when people consider threats. Hacking a military drone seems a huge threat. Hacking a car seems a minor threat because cars aren't intended to kill people.

Yet terrorist attacks with trucks driving into a crowd are very deadly, with one truck there are often dozens of dead. Cars are as effective at killing as weapons. Arguably more effective, because they can kill lots of people at once, and can move around without causing panic till the last moment.

We're just used to them.
With Xorg's GLAMOR driver, all 2d graphics use OpenGL.

God knows if Xwayland will incorporate GLAMOR. Since almost all compositors except for Weston assume the presence of a GPU, you'd think it would, but I have not been delighted with Wayland development thus far...
Hello,

I was thinking at a solution to teach code easier for the beginners. C++ is the only available language for computer science classes in my country.

The project is aimed to teach coding for students as the next step after Scratch.

The language implementation is just a subset of C++, it relies on JSCPP interpreter.

I am looking for feedback and suggestions.

Thanks!
Wait until you start applying pitch shifting/note bending. You'll want that 32-bit resolution.
What Do Historians Think of Joseph Tainter's Book Collapse of Complex Societies?
What's the cost to team morale when the team members have to put in extra time to meet deadlines because the team is shorthanded? What's the cost to the company when the team doesn't have the bandwidth to take on work and projects start slipping? How does team culture fare when someone on the team always finds some reason to reject every candidate they see, and this continues for weeks or months on end? What is the loss of productivity from having to conduct all these extra interviews until just the right person walks through the door?

The answers to both sets of questions are very situational, yet some people treat them as if they have universal answers.
Linux ABI for Windows.