skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hey thanks for that! I didn't know that methane has low knock so could be thought of as a high-octane fuel (which allows for higher compression which translates to higher thermodynamic efficiency). That has promising ramifications for a future methane fuel economy, where hydrogen from high-temperature solar thermal electrolysis is combined with a carbon source (perhaps CO2 from the air) to create methane. Propane would be ideal due to its low pressure storage if its conversion from methane can be scaled up. But compressed natural gas (CNG) is fine as well with methane and the gasses have similar properties.

I was thinking about what I said about the Carnot cycle and maybe it wasn't quite accurate. I tend to think about the world through a first-order effects lens. So the easiest way to explain why a turbine is usually more efficient than an internal combustion engine is that the turbine runs at a much higher temperate.

But the gasses in an internal combustion engine can reach a fairly high temperature as long as it's beneath the sag temperature of the metal block (otherwise you get warped valves). There was a lot of nonsense in engines before fuel injection attempting to prevent preignition when the mixture passed by the valves (in order to run as lean as possible, which caused excess heat) that I always thought was pretty silly.

Also there was a lot of work in the 80s and 90s to make ceramic engines in order to run at a higher temperature that never went anywhere as far as I can tell. They would have been lubricated by graphite and basically last forever. I think they were abandoned due to brittleness, but they would be great today with a continuously variable transmission or as a generator running at constant RPM like with locomotives.
That's really clever. Only real downside is underwater maintenance is a PITA.

Although I suspect for the quantities involved, it still may be impractical.
> Or, more likely, did AirVPN decide it was more interesting/important to use these fixes as a competitive advantage / differentiator for their fork ... ?

You mean these fixes that are available in this repo that are available to absolutely anyone?
I reached the same conclusion but luckily before moving there. Pittsburgh just has bad air. It also has the least sunlight of any American city.
If the numbers in the parent post are true, then you'd probably still be better off just pumping the water high up with that energy and letting it fall down when the energy is needed. On the other hand nabla9 quoted numbers that look very good.
Linear types (and affine types, as in Rust) only buy you some memory safety (preventing use-after-frees, and memory leaks although that's not really a safety issue).

The more important part of memory safety is preventing out-of-bounds accesses. Rust, Ada, and (it seems) Beef sacrifice performance for memory safety here by having runtime bounds checking. (Though there is not much performance cost to this and all of those have options to turn off runtime bounds checking anyway.)

The only performance-oriented language I'm aware of that is fully memory-safe at compile time is ATS‚ via a combination of linear types and dependent types, and using ATS is… cumbersome.
Motors efficiency, an generators efficiency, can easily be 0.95, and even 0.98.

So overall the lift approach must be pretty efficient, even when we subtract losses for friction in the rope and of the air.

The energy density isn't great, though, you need really much mass, and large elevations, to store anything interesting.

Pumping large amounts of water uphill is more feasible, even if less efficient, and is actually done.
I'm living in New South Wales, Australia right now, which is currently famous for being on fire. Depending on the winds, some days we have excellent air quality and some days it is terrible. Something similar could be happening here with Pittsburgh.

After a quick google, this article supports the idea that air quality in Pittsburgh is awful. https://www.ehn.org/pittsburghs-air-quality-continues-to-dec...
It means that golang is relegated to simple server side tools, and not suited for a broader range of programs like the JVM is.
In all the times I've been in Pittsburgh and even Chatham University in particular, I haven't smelled what he did. Not to say he didn't, and as he notes the smells come and go so maybe I was fortunate. I just don't want people walking away with the impression things are like the smog-filled skies of decades past. It's really a nice city for where it is.
The only people dealing with RSU handcuffs are people whose companies have gone up significantly in value since they got their grants.

If you leave youre essentially throwing away the time you invested letting those RSUs appreciate, and your next company has no guarantee of doing as well as your current one has.

If you were granted 200k/y in stock for 4 years, after 4 years you could be making 200k+ above your market rate. If the salary bump from changing gigs doesn't cover the appreciation you've got a case of RSU handcuffs.
> Such energy storage technology could help relieve congested transmission lines in places like Vermont

Normal garbage form Scientific American.

It's either a good battery or it isn't.

What does Vermont have to do with it?

If anything it's an awful test, they obviously will have to update the congested transmission lines, then you have a expensive plant that's useless, if the congested transmission lines don't factor in then why are we talking about them?

CRYOBattery is being sold as a long term payoff battery that has a small footprint. Land is cheap around power stations, creating a dam and turbine is simple tech that works, I can't see why this is better and SA is not helping.
This looks really cool. She described how she takes photos that include her color chart, and I'm wondering if that's actually necessary to calibrate the process, or if that was just done for the purposes of developing it.
Ask HN: Non scam / web-course information on buying online ads for side business
I've recently started a few side projects (non technical) that have started to gain traction. However, both have stopped growing after a handful of word of mouth marketing got them noticed.

I've been meaning to start buying ads on Instagram and AdWords, however all of the available resources seem to be online course scammers (Garry V and the like) or are so surface level they don't seem useful.

If anyone has a blog or other in-depth resource for growth marketing / just how to intelligently buy online ads I'd really appreciate your input. And yes, I do realize there's an entire industry that dedicated itself to finding ways to do this for companies of all kinds.
If you're going to make me work, I'm going to make you think.

There are seven (7) issues I've identified with the graph you provided as evidence. See if you can identify those same issues.

Find and download the study that the graph on the https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ page that you provided says it is based on. It's short, four pages. I downloaded, printed and hand-annotated the study, scanned it in and I will provide a link to the study with my annotations after. I will also answer all of the questions you've asked me, again, after. Promise.

Here's the link to the unannotated study:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06949

or the PDF version, which I prefer:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06949.pdf

Good hunting!

/s.
Can we genetically engineer ourselves to combat climate change?

Increase melanin, estrogen and growth hormones (increasing surface area), decrease testosterone, reshape fat and vessels, slow down blood flow and other desirable features.

Maybe we should just focus on stopping climate change by controlling consumer habits and bad actors, reducing population and migrating to colder places than intergalactic space reflectors/blockers/reducers.

And we do need better sunscreens.
1. Software developer moves to Pittsburgh to save money on cost of living.

2. Software developer realizes there is an air problem.

3. Software developer advises other software developers to avoid the city.

Why, in this process of events isn't he appealing to the local government more - as a member of a workforce that is able to afford moving pretty trivially and can actually reside in crazy locales like SF it's rather depressing to see lines like:

> I credit myself with discouraging at least a dozen contacts in the tech industry from considering Pittsburgh until the situation improves.

Without even a spare moment's thought to the residents in Pittsburgh that are stuck there.
just move to mt. lebo like the rest of the up-and-ups!
How does this jibe with reports like "Pittsburgh Named One Of The Most Livable Cities In The World"[0] or many other liveability rankings?

[0]: https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2015/07/31/pittsburgh-named-...
Coming to London was a real eye opener. Biking to work in London I get a myriad of smells, all petroleum based I am guessing and each distinct... and I am entirely unsure what they are or where they come from.

This is on top of diesel pollution which is much more apparent then gasoline pollution in the states. If enough cars are idling you can taste it!
In practice, these codecs are all going to be decoded in firmware on a DSP anyway - while the hardware is optimized for efficient implementation of algorithms like this, which one doesn't matter so much. Also, LC3 seems to have roughly the same computational complexity on one as Opus based on the figures I've seen, and about the same quality too.

I have a distinct suspicion that in reality the only relevant feature LC3 has which Opus lacks is that it ensures a nice ongoing stream of licensing money for the Fraunhofer Institute and Ericsson, who designed it and worked to get it into the standard.
I don't think this is necessary. Nature already does that with ocean algae
I would put Japanese as Japanese: $-$$$

Logic being a couple sushi rolls for lunch type thing is about as cheap as it gets and these places are everywhere.
Why would the price tag holding a shopper's attention have something to do with the likelihood of that shopper buying something?
What to Pay JavaScript Developers in 2020
Apples to oranges comparison. Netty is a general purpose event driven networking library. FastHTTP is specialized to HTTP. Even given that, Vertx (which uses Netty) ranks above FastHTTP in the Techempower benchmarks, even though they have to be taken with a grain of salt.
That dude better get another garage for the tape library they're gonna have to send...
Pittsburgh does not have the best air quality, but I was surprised to find it listed as better than SF in this article which is overall negative on Pittsburgh [0]. Neither is in a good place, being in the top 15 most worst cities in the country for air quality.

If you want some charts it looks it really does very by section of the city as well [1].

I know people in the area and they responded by getting a Purple Air quality monitor and indoor air purifiers. The simply staying inside when the it was particularly bad day. Which definitely echos China’s big cities, and not in a good way.

0 - https://www.post-gazette.com/local/2019/04/24/Pittsburgh-reg...

1 - https://www.wesa.fm/post/pittsburghs-air-quality-better-past...
yeah, or the concrete block thing - but water requires valleys you're allowed to flood.

BTW one solution is to use existing hydro dams as partners to wind/solar, add extra generation capacity to the dams, share the transmission infrastructure between the wind/solar/hydro and simply let the dams fill when the wind blows/sun shines. That's more efficient than pumped storage
actual project site with more detailed description and before+after images: https://www.deryaakkaynak.com/sea-thru

paper [pdf]: http://openaccess.thecvf.com/content_CVPR_2019/papers/Akkayn...
Lasagna, Carbonara (often with cream), and Bolognese. Chicken Parmigiana or schnitzel. Probably some very average pizzas.

For contrast, here's Universal's menu, which is a "Lygon Street" Italian restaurant: https://www.universalrestaurant.com.au/menu

Compared to nearby Tipo 00, what I would probably consider to be more authentic Italian (although still not 'expensive'): https://www.tipo00.com.au/food/

There are also significantly better inauthentic-Italian experiences around, like Capitano which takes its cues from Italian-American food culture.
and Litecoin
and Monero
and...Dogecoin? Hey, let's just add ALL the coins!
;P
I (and we should all) act as if this could happen to anyone. Essentially that the state can deputize any company to snitch on the digital ephemera that constitutes our daily lives, but especially those that we are deeply engaged: Google, Facebook, Lyft, Amazon.

As such, we should not self-censor, but instead disengage from these proxy-cops and move to more distributed spaces.
The most common sources of smelly and health-affecting industrial pollution, particularly sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, are included. However, Hydrogen Sulfide is not, and it is a common one found specifically in both petroleum engineering. He mentioned that the smell was similar to the petroleum cracking plants in the north Salt Lake valley, so I'm assuming that is it.

Regardless, AQI measurements are relatively aggregate, and if the pollution is produced very locally, it might be off the charts in that location, but diffuse down to a moderate measurement on a broader scale.
I’m pretty sure it isn’t.

I used to live in Pittsburgh and would wake up with a metallic taste in my mouth if I left the windows open. Going outside almost always smelled like burnt tires or some small hint of coins, even when I’d walk around in parks early in the morning before there was any traffic.

I had friends from Beijing complain about the foulness of Pittsburgh’s air. Visiting Beijing, I realized they weren’t joking. It’s visibly smoggy over there, but in Pittsburgh, clear days will reek worse than even smoggy cities.
If you use `kill -9` to exit vim, you might find your terminal in a weird state, because they are most likely using the `atexit` function to reset your termios settings to normal, but that doesn't happen if you `kill -9` it.
Replacement displays for ebook readers are not that expensive and someone has figured out how to drive them without the proprietary controller: http://essentialscrap.com/eink/
No real benefit, but it's essentially free and simple so you needn't feel bad about doing this.

Energy producers (e.g. a wind farm, or a huge converted coal power station which burns "waste" forests) get credits for producing renewable energy which they can sell. A company like bulb buys those credits, and so long as they buy credits which add up to the amount of power their residential customers use they can say they're 100% green.

If most UK residential customers used a green provider there wouldn't be enough credits and that could in theory drive change but in practice most UK residential customers pay their "incumbent" even though that's usually the most expensive and has no benefit whatsoever.

The actual supply of electricity to homes is by a boring but necessary natural monopoly supply company. They're the people who come out if a storm smashes the power lines.
I've really been enjoying FagOS recently - however, I keep getting recommendations for MacOS at my local Bear Bar.
Fast enough for split screen chat in real time, if you were so fortunate as to have a friend with a modem also.
Ask HN: Who's looking for alpha users?
I was thinking about posting a Show HN for my latest project but I'm not sure it's quite ready for that.

If anyone else is also looking for some alpha users, post the project here.

My project is Podaero.com - small discussion groups for tech-minded people - if you want an invite code just email me with the contact in my HN profile - I'm hoping it will be a lot of fun and mutually beneficial for everyone involved.
Forgotten Games: Or, What We Did Before The Internet
Your house would be condemned and you would be civilly and criminally liable for any injuries the officers may have. The joists need to support 40 pounds of pressure per square foot in habitable rooms, 10 in non-habitable rooms (e.g. an attic)
> Look at the main contention within the party right now -- every candidate except one is pushing to prop up a for-profit healthcare system. The idea of the ACA was okay, but ultimately it left in place the systems which were the real problem, and unsurprisingly it's gotten worse since then.

I'd say this is a good example of the (extremely difficult to communicate) point the author is trying to make. The ACA, and health care delivery & funding models in general, are extremely complicated topics. Most people's mental model of the situation is likely comically simplistic compared to the true complexity of the problem. If people were intelligent and highly logical, their proper "stance" on this matter (and others like it) would be something like "undecided, but leaning one way or the other", but from anything I've seen people tend to have extremely confident opinions on any topic regardless of the complexity.
Wow - I should say I'm surprised? But It makes sense for scrum to congregate.
RACE test accuracy of 89.4. The latter appears to be a particularly strong improvement,a jump of +17.4% absolute points over BERT (Devlin et al., 2019), +7.6% over XLNet (Yang et al.,2019), +6.2% over RoBERTa (Liu et al., 2019), and 5.3% over DCMI+ (Zhang et al., 2019), an ensemble of multiple models specifically designed for reading comprehension tasks. Our single model achieves an accuracy of86.5%, which is still2.4%better than the state-of-the-art ensemble model

This is an amazing result.

RACE has a performance ceiling of 94.5% set by inaccuracies in the data. Mechanical Turk performance is 73.3%.

It's a hard, reading comprehension test where you can't just extract spans from the text and match against answers. Section 2 of https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/D17-1082.pdf has a sample.
I agree with you. I wish for a tl;dr summary for most articles on HN (and I'm tired of explaining why "you should always read the full article" is a stupid suggestion).
Yep. Go has a focus.

That's how you get from zero to heavy usage in companies like Uber, Twitter, Cloudflare, BBC, Basecamp, Canonical etc... in less than a decade.
> designed and engineered

No real design or engineering was involved beyond having an idea of what we wanted and trying to select for that trait in breeding and offspring. We've just rolled the genetic dice repeatedly and selected the outcomes we preferred.

> we absolutely should continue doing what we're already doing.

This is very unlike what we have been doing, and it's hardly been an unqualified success - lots of traits we have selected for (eg what defines a particular dog breed) have come with real trade-offs (at least for the animals: arthritis and fits, respiratory conditions, uncontrolled drooling, eye infections, ...)
It’s pressing a button three times to enable, three times to disable (with a passcode).

I would say that’s better because it doesn’t take up more phone real-estate, and it can’t be disabled by a smart kiddo.
FastHTTP is a low allocation HTTP library in golang. Netty is a low level event driven framework for writing networking applications and protocols. It's used in many libraries and frameworks which build on top of it like Vertx, Spring webflux, and more recently Undertow.

Things should get more interesting once Java gets green threads, which would make it easier to implement high performance concurrent servers without needing to drop down to event driven code unless for specific needs. That, and with value types, should push the performance bar forward.
The air pollution in Pittsburgh isn’t caused by things under the control of the local government or even the state government. It accumulates and blows in from west of there. Only the US federal government can fix it.
This has also been done using SICK coffeepot-style 2D LIDAR units (such rigs tend to be large and heavy, tho).

Yes. Had one of those once. Worse, we had the weatherproof SICK unit, which is even bigger. We prepared for the DARPA Grand Challenge expecting much more off-road. Way too much skid plate stuff, armored cables inside mesh washing machine hoses, sensor cleaning with washer fluid and compressed error, stuff like that. Totally unnecessary, as it turned out.

Something I've often considered is the idea of a "stochastic" scanner

Someone sells one of those. There are two unsynchronized scan axes. More for stationary than for moving applications.
Creative AI: The Storytelling of AI Dungeon
You can recuperate some of these losses by cooling the next portion of the incoming air with the cold of the expanded gas.
Count me as another person who lived in Pittsburgh and did not notice anything close to what he is describing.

That’s not to say he isn’t right, of course. But for me Pittsburgh was an awesome, safe, affordable, and surprisingly culturally rich city that I was sad to have to leave.
I'm not really arguing in favor of doing anything in particular; I was just pointing out that people rely on "security by obscurity" in day to day life, despite the fact that everything is connected to the internet. Perhaps there are some subtleties in exactly what "obscurity" is.

I'm saying the ideas I read about how the world is don't seem to be connected to my view of reality. I don't have to argue with your conclusions to find fault with your premises, and I'm feeling too lazy to do it right now.
Apple's auto layout and visual format language for JavaScript (2016)
So Long to ‘Star Wars’
Before anybody thinks that they need something like this at work, I have seen single node HA Prometheus set ups work at one of the largest CDN's in the country for metrics.

Reddit's own Kubernetes infrastructure team uses single node (pod) Promethei as well. [0]

If you look all of the components that are required to run Thanos [1], the operational complexity is incredibly high. I know its a shiny tool, that is super cool but please make sure you have an actual need for some of these before devoting resources to them.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/kubernetes/comments/ebxrkp/we_are_t...

[1] https://improbable.io/blog/thanos-prometheus-at-scale
Interestingly German revisionists are also riding on the very same 200.000 victims number. For the Dresden bombings. In reality the number 20.000 was reported to Berlin, who decided that a factor 10 sounds much better. And several decades later many are still believing this mythological number.
> But hey, it’s your tax dollars.

Not sure if you're aware, but the US operates on a deficit atop fiat currency that is being spat out by federal reserve repo markets at a rate of 100 billion dollars a night.

Money isn't real. War isn't real. Wake up.
Indie Hackers Buenos Aires
You've got it backwards. From a time-value-of-money perspective RSUs are a dollar now and a regular salary is a dollar in 4 years.

If a company told me they would give me 4 years of salary on my first day of work, as long as I only invest it and dont spend it, that would be obscenely lucrative. That's pretty much what RSUs are.
That's not exactly what I'm saying, it's easier to discuss with an arbitrary example: suppose you get a job offer for $100k in cash and 1000 RSUs at a current stock price of $100. I'm saying that you should value this at slightly more than $200k/yr.

Suppose after some time you start looking for jobs again, get another offer worth $215k/yr, and the stock price has done some movement. If the price is above $115/share, this would be a pay cut, so you decline the offer and state what it would take to get you on board. If it's below $115/share, you accept the job offer and get a pay raise.

This is what I mean by "optionality" here. If your employer's stock does well, you get an automatic raise from staying put. If your employer's stock does poorly, you get a raise with effort from finding alternate employment. You are more exposed to upside than downside in your employer's stock - it's effectively a call option with a strike price equal to the difference between your current cash compensation and your best alternative to negotiated agreement.