skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Stopping climate change is mostly a political problem, not a technical one. An extremely difficult one since it requires collective action from the entire world. Even when it is a technical problem, it's not clear to me that software developers have anything productive to add to the research in this area that isn't already being done (renewable energy R&D, geo-engineering).

PS. The world is not on fire. Most of the 1st world will live through this with some bumps and scratches along the way, because we have sufficient resources to engineer our way out of any problems. It's only "catastrophic" for poor people near the equator. It's not fatalism, it's just being pragmatic about where the incentives are.
Hi HN, my goal with Alphaseek is to make it easy and simple for developers to launch a referral program in their apps and websites as an alternative to other productized offerings in the market that are built for marketers and charging big monthly fees regardless of the referral success of the users.
The SDK consists of REST API that keeps track of a product's users and how they refer other users to sign up, generate unique referral links and "invite" codes for them, and increment scores on both sides of a referral. The back end is reward-agnostic and leaves it to the developer. I'm also working on the TypeScript/JavaScript library that wraps the API and makes it easy to integrate with web and React projects and a CLI tool for admin purposes.

I've spent three months on-and-off working on this project and I'm really excited to share it and get feedback from you. I would love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you may have.
Another "tip" for helping your language grow. I highly recommend you look at how the golang bootstrapped itself and aim to replicate.

Golang provided:

* a tour of go + go playground to allow easy testing of the language + immutable sharing links

* effective go to explain how to use the language beyond the syntax/grammar

* strong opinionated choices on things that dont matter (go fmt)

* a strong opinion about non-breaking changes in the language + stdlib

and a number of other things. IMO a language is only as good as it's community.
I assume you mean "plant" as in manufactory. It's a good question in general though I don't believe it was a major factor in 2019 specifically. That ship sailed decades ago.

If you mean "plant" as in Kingdom plantae it goes the other way as US exports have become increasingly polar (either primary extractive outputs like mining and agriculture or ultra high tech like super-precision bearings and certain software)
My ears are not great so it's really hard for me to speak about audio quality. But in my eyes, they are comparable to some of the more mid-range earbuds in terms of sound quality. I'd love to try the AB2 due to the sound isolation & noise cancellation, but can't justify buying a new set when my current set still work so well.

The reason I bought the original Airpods and will likely buy the newer ones is all about convenience. I wear them on my mountain bike and commuting and being truly wireless is invaluable. Turns out for me the #1 way headphones pop out is due to snagging the cable on something (hands, branches, clothing, etc). Also, being able to quickly connect and switch devices, is fantastic.

If cables truly don't bother you, then there are plenty of great options for wired headsets which offer better quality sound. For me, I can't even sit at my desk and code anymore without getting annoyed now.
> almost immediately abandoned

Source?
I am generally in favour of this idea, though it's a difficult topic. I found this discussion interesting, which brings up several pros and cons: https://www.kialo.com/should-developed-countries-reduce-the-...
Yes, room temperature superconductivity would also be a good solution to the problem. If we have the ability to transmit power around the world without huge losses from where it is being produced to where it can be consumed then a lot of the problems go away.
At it’s most basic it only focuses on the original source with the original encoding.
For consistency, metadata would be stripped before hash, but it’s understood that even “save as” can produce a file with a totally different hash.

It would be up to the creator (or some third party) to keep the original unedited video so that if there was ever a dispute about a fake surfacing that original could be undeniably verified to be the authentic one.
Outsourced to India!
Tiny, soft robo-bug scoots with smarts and survives swats
Lightning is the same as writing a check. Until it's verified on the bitcoin network, it's just like a bank in that regard.
Location Data and Geofencing with Apache Kafka Ft. Guido Schmutz [audio]
In the case of a missile strike, wouldn't the aircraft disintegrate in the air?
Actually, that was once true, but coal is no longer economical. Renewables are approaching the marginal operating cost for coal plants. It's already silly to build a new coal plant, because it costs more than other options. But once costs of renewables drop below the operating cost of coal, then you can save money by replacing existing plants. This is already true for less efficient coal plants and in the most sunny or windy places. Which is why you see coal plants being shut down.

The situation is complicated by lack of practical grid storage, but using gas plants that can spin up and down quickly plus renewables is currently more economical than new coal. Partly because fracked gas is cheap.
Toussaint Louverture
I'd like to just add a +1 to this. I had a tough time finding some good code examples and would love to see a small example of code in the readme. Something beyond a hello world, preferably but that's just me
Why does the case remove the risk of washing machines?
I've been hearing stories of people being detained for refusing to decrypt their drives.

And the author writes:

> I was also asked for my password and if I had any encrypted data on my PC
Specification for the D Programming Language
The questions are already being asked.

> Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences

https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/humans-who-are...
if you're not already aware, swapping the X220 keyboard (and palmrest) onto an X230 is a fairly straightforward swap. That modification plus the FHD mod and accompanying 1920x1080 IPS make the X230 a very nice daily driver.
I'm not surprised this happened, but it is bitter. Glad to see the failure is being pointed out to the public.
This is a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix - the best selling French/Belgian comic, first published in 1959, translated into 111 languages, and adapted into 13 films.

"The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely... One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium"
My password, pin, whatever, is in my head
“Other people are also outsourcing emissions” is an irrelevant point, especially in an article about how the U.S. emissions have fallen in the last year and when the conversation is about why.

That the U.S. started 20 (ish) years ago is a pertinent point, especially as the article points out that the preceding year saw U.S. emissions increase.
See also the open/royalty-free AV1:

* https://caniuse.com/#search=av1

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1

There also seems to be VVC?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versatile_Video_Coding
How to Sell your Products like Steve Jobs (Six Tips)
https://www.asterix.com/en/
For a minute I thought the helicopters on the ground were poorly-photoshopped impact marks...
> With wired headphones, people can keep them for years, decades even.

My wired headphones all broke after about ~2 years (100-150€ models from Sennheiser and Teufel, plus the ones shipped with phones). In my Beats Studio 3, the hinges broke before the battery even degraded. As an extreme example, my 1st-gen iPad still lasts hours, but hasn't seen a software update in many years.

Planned obsolescence ticks me off, but I don't feel it has gotten any worse with non-replaceable batteries. Everything you buy breaks after 2 years, that's just how the incentives work for companies.
It appears to be effectively impossible to even audit the Pentagon. When they tried, it cost $400M and less than 25% if the sub-audits received passing grades.

Here's the friendly spin:

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/11/15/heres-what-t...
I've heard lignite described as "slightly more flammable dirt".

It's an absolutely atrocious energy source.
16-bit floats with an 8-bit exponent and a 7+1 bit mantissa are popular for neural networks, because they have the same range as standard 32-bit floats while taking have the memory and memory bandwidth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bfloat16_floating-point_format
Why would USA defend Finland as Finland is not part of NATO? The same way they defended Ukraine as Russia occupied Crimea and invaded East Ukraine?
I am not opposed to this, but I am curious how a government would arrive at a "price" of carbon emissions. How is the tax rate decided upon? Is it a political game of just enough to make renewable energy more attractive? Or is it as high as we can make it? It just seems like it would have no basis in reality.
Reading this made me realize how little Roman history I know. What's the best source for learning about the major people and events of that era?

EDIT: I guess what I'm really looking for is a hierarchy of topics, starting extremely broad (e.g. Roman Republic vs. Roman Empire) and drilling down into individual people and events. In other words, I want to do a breadth-first traversal, rather than depth-first.
I'm guessing they were asking for some _specific_ features/techniques of Beef that contribute to achieving your design goal. The design goal itself is made very clear.
> Iran has a very modern and capable military

Iran has a very backwards military with almost no air force and no serious navy power at all.

The few planes they have are mostly ancient and their navy consists of speed boats.

They have a thousand tanks that are a mixture of ancient and more modern tanks with medium capability compared to the US.

They have a large standing army that is moderately well trained, with some large elite forces, and they have good ballistic missile capabilities. They have almost zero ability to properly defend their territory from the US when it comes to air strikes. They have almost no ability to keep up a foreign strike outside of their borders, with their ballistic missile stockpile being their sole means. Basically they have almost no ability to sustain foreign strike capability via their military. Outside their borders they have numerous proxy terrorist organizations they fund persistently for asymmetric warfare.

That's all they have. They're an impotent military after decades of sanctions and grinding poverty. In a war context that of course doesn't mean the US would find invading to be easy (it would be a disaster), it means the US strategy would properly be to sit outside of their borders and destroy everything inside of Iran and never invade; acquire air dominance (would take one or two weeks max), and continue wiping out all infrastructure and military capabilities as needed.
Practical guide to feature engineering in Python
The upside of methane is that it's short lived in the atmosphere with a half life in the atmosphere of ~7 years. At the end of the day we do need more nuclear it's the best solution and the newest generation of reactors can consume the 'waste' from our older generation plants, it's a win/win.
Of course, but a nation identity is built on more than just facts.
> I don't think Trump is pro-coal or anti-coal

This is a very peculiar stance to take. Clearly he says that he supports coal [1]. Trump's EPA has "Affordable Clean Energy Rule" [2] to revert Obama's EPA's Clean Power Plan. Economics of coal alternatives get in the way [3] [4].

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/GettyIm...

[2] https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/afforda...

[3] https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-trump-country-a-g...
The noise cancelling changes everything.

It just makes dealing with incessant city noise so much more manageable.

You don't even have to be listening to music.

But if you are listening to music, you hear it so much more clearly and can use a lower volume.

From a quality of life perspective, if you commute by foot/subway/bus, they're so so worth it.

(Yes there were noise-cancelling headphones before, but always bulky or with wires. With AirPods, they're just effortless to bring+wear.)
2020 Reading Challenge Tips
I thought all US satellite companies had a strict set of rules regard where they could and could not point their satellites. E.g., Dick Cheny's house was off limits to Google Earth in the 2000's.
Great question - I've thought a lot about backward compatibility but I don't have a good answer yet. The whole Python 2 vs 3 nightmare has given me a couple sleepless nights though.
From Browser to Django · Matt Layman
Lockheed makes a mobile system called THAAD. I doubt there were any deployed in Iraq, and the effectiveness of these are dubious. The Russians put the S400 in Syria and it has performed well enough. These act more like a deterrent than an actual viable defensive grid.
As far as I understand, the NPR article needs to be under CC-BY-SA as well.
Adrian Cockcroft at QCon SF
Versatile Video Coding (H.266)
Natural gas is not at all "roughly as bad as coal for climate". There is a lot of research indicating this, so I will just point to one article:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/natural-gas-re...

Natural gas isn't the ultimate solution, of course, but it's a mistake to treat it the same as coal.
What would you do instead?

It takes good, motivated staff to run an effective government department. Those same people have a lot of options, so the government has to compete for them somehow.

We’re unwilling to pay them high salaries (take a look at the federal pay scales: GS-12, which is usually a scientist with a grad degree, starts at $66k). Benefits seem a little more politically palatable, so the government competes on those instead: we won’t pay you a lot, but you can earn a (slightly) better retirement instead.

Without either, who’s going to work for the government? Do you really want a government full of people who can’t land any other job?
Isn't he subsidizing coal now? How is that pro capitalism? He's not even pro-economy if you take a long term view and believe climate change is going to cost trillions to deal with.
Specifically, the promise of VLIWs (scalar parallelism) was overhyped--the Multiflow compiler couldn't find enough scalar parallelism in practice to keep all 28 ALUs busy (in the widest model we built), or even all 7 ALUs (in the narrowest).

(I ended up running the OS group at Multiflow before bailing right before they hit the wall.)
That's still not the same as affine/linear types, which other languages offer.

Also, testing helps detect bugs, but cannot guarantee security.
I don't think transmission is a huge issue; plenty of opportunity to generate in situ. e.g. going back to Ontario exporting low-carbon energy, of its sustained generation ~60% is nuclear, 15% wind (largely on-land). There's no reason you couldn't generate both of those in the midwest where coal usage is highest. All that is needed is for coal to cost what it should actually cost.
"To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."
Maybe if I have a heart attack or seizure during those activities...

I have 0 past history of slipping. Also, can't avoid walking.

I can avoid flying on something I know could be fucked.
> Depends where you live.

True. Local stores are nearly non-existent in Sweden. Even the smallest ones belong to a supermarket chain.
This sort of poll is perennial but never says anything interesting, imo.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
The previous probably-Iranian strike on Aramco also had no casualties. There is some suggestion that this is deliberate.
The price of AI art: Has the bubble burst?
Fiancée.
My guess is that it's not just any old "Runway 27", but it's runways where the coordinates of the endpoints of the runways have precisely the same latitude down to whatever precision is in the database. It's probably quite rare to have a runway that's this perfectly east-west.
By adding a new file, it piques curiosity, or triggers communication to the person in the photo to let them know that they're on to them.
Its common to use Word macros to install malware.
Ask HN: Spark (Ada) for General Programming?
Has anyone used SPARK or Ada for general programming, like JSON parsing, writing a web API, etc?

The language is intriguing to me because of its safety guarantees. I believe it could compete with languages like Haskell and Rust in that area.

It's on my list to learn. But one issue is that (I think) there's a preferred (and only one?) IDE for developing in it.

See:

https://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse814/Lectures/09_spark_intro.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language)
Unlike CO2 Methane has a half life of ~7 years in the atmosphere, thus front loading warming before breaking down into CO2 and water. So, in terms of climate impact in 2040+, natural gas burned today is significantly better than coal.
indeed those would get thrown under the bus. it's a trade-off and depends on how paranoid you want to be.
I dunno about best, but History of Rome podcast is excellent if you like podcasts as a format. Covers 750bc up to 450ad.

The coverage of punic wars, late republic, early empire, crisis of the third century are my favorite arcs.
If you try to read the article, including the linked projects, it helps a lot rather than broadcasting every nascent thought that pops up in the head to the internet.

All the ingredients have been a long time in the making. To summarise, it builds upon coreboot, heads, nitrokey, and me_cleaner, all of which are open source and have been developed by various people in this domain who also know what they are doing. It uses a thinkpad x230 as it is an ivy bridge processor, the last generation of intel processors whose initialisation is open source and well understood. If you would like to read more about this specific combination, you can also read at https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/certified-hardware/#qubes-certi... .
> The lowest airfield in North America, for the record, is Furnace Creek Airport, Death Valley at minus 210 feet below sea level.

So, then I guess it's 210 ft _above_ sea level? (SCNR)
Nukes are just glorified EMPs these days.
I bicycled across Kansas as part of a larger bike trip. The scenery in most of the state is a different kind of stunning, especially in the fall. Imagine being halfway between two towns that are 20 miles from each other, and being able to see the grain elevator in each. In the fall, the ground is golden and the skies are blue, and it's magnificent, and it looks like it'll never end.

Eastern/Southeastern Kansas, on the other hand, looks nothing like that, and if you've just put a couple hundred miles in crossing the western and central parts of the state, it'll blow your mind that it's that different (and work your legs for the first time since the Rockies).
To add to the list of state-specific complaints: there is no chance that the best hike in PA is in Delaware Water Gap. Maybe that should win the category of "best hike within 2 hours of NYC", but all the nicer parts of the state are further west.

"IMAX-sized views of New Jersey"? Pass.

I bet the most common choice would be the Falls Trail in Ricketts Glen, but I'd rather be on the Black Forest trail or somewhere on the Midstate.
I get the impression from the map of responses that many respondents were taking the piss. Who really thinks Iran is Greenland?
Awesome, I love seeing new languages (and I hope to share mine in good time). I didn't see it, but a good tutorial introducing new ideas would be good.
> So after Fukushima shrewd politicians moved to shutter nuclear plants and return to coal.

That's not true. The phasing out of nuclear energy was decided in the late 90s after the Social Democrats and Greens had taken over the government. This was part of a larger green energy package. This had been a major issue for the Greens since at least the 80s when the party was founded.

The Merkel government attempted to roll some of that back in 2010, but was blindsided by the Fukushima accident that caused public opinion to become much more polarised again w.r.t. nuclear energy.

Please stop spreading this misinformation that the end of nuclear energy in Germany was caused by Fukushima.
You should probably do some perf analysis to show how Beef performs vs C / C++ for game related tasks.

Also it would be awesome for you to make a few code samples / tutorials on how to get started with game development with Beef. I'm sure it would attract a lot of people to your language if you show some "proof" it is a nice language for gamedev!
Okay, so who is brave enough to click that link?
Do we? I feel like memory-managed languages are far more common, and there's not a ton of choice when it comes to manual memory management.
Jaguar Land Rover Buys Off-Road Racing Truck Specialist Bowler
> value performance over total memory safety

Is there any evidence this is a tradeoff? What of linear types?
Another comment mentioned it, but I like the Historia Civilis YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv_vLHiWVBh_FR9vbeuiY-A

After watching a video, you can then research further but generally I've found his videos have sufficient detail and are accurate.
Probably means power/performance?
You could make a case that making a cheat is copyright infringement as Blizzard did [0] so yes, it can be illegal.

[0] https://torrentfreak.com/blizzard-sues-overwatch-cheat-maker...
It’s akin to asking Iranians, can you point out Missouri [or Texas or Calif] on a map?
streaming is a thing on YT
Yellow Aster Butte is a reasonably accessible day hike that can be completed by just about anyone who's fit enough to hike. Yes, the last pitch to the butte is a bitch, but just about anyone can do it. The Enchantments, on the other hand, is a permit only area (for overnight trips), that is not easily completed in a day long thru-hike - which from the Stuart trailhead is 18 miles with 4500ft of elevation gain. Even experienced hikers struggle with the Aasgard Pass scramble. This list strikes me as not just best in terms of views and landscape, but also accessibility.

I totally agree the Enchantments are more spectacular, but they require some serious commitment and are not likely to be enjoyed by the vast majority casual hikers.
There were a worrying amount of people clicking on the water.
It’s possessive, but represents a grey zone in how apostrophes work in modern English.

A trailing apostrophe is for a possessive following a plural “s”. But “Sonos” is just a made up name, meant to evoke the Latin “sonus” I’d guess. Regardless, it’s a singular name, the fact that it has a trailing “s” doesn’t mean it’s plural.

So in this argument, a possessive should be spelled “Sonos’s”.

BUT! There’s a longstanding (but eroding) tradition that there’s a specific exception for classical or biblical names that end in an s. Is Sonos a classical or biblical name? I don’t think so, but I suppose people could decide it ought to be treated like one.

Finally, recent advice on this is to let pronunciation guide the presence of a final “s”. So if you pronounce Sonos’ as “soh-nohs” and not “soh-noh-ses”, the APA thinks Sonos’ is reasonable [0].

[0] https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/06/forming-possessiv...