skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Part Two: Execution – Hatclone.com: A Study in Hybrid Physical/Digital Virality
Read Part One here -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22286527

How I built this. I needed a mobile-friendly and good-looking static page with a stripe checkout link. I decided to incorporate QR-codes as a design element as you can see. This took a few hours of documentation reading, css tweaking, testing and api integrations. Ultimately the website is just a single button.

Next came sourcing and pricing. I had to order some preliminary hats from suppliers to assess the quality before selling to end customers. Quality assurance of the customized merchandise has been the single largest expenditure involved thus far. Hopefully it is one that I can amortize over the course of multiple projects.

Onto Marketing. There were the simple channels like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. But I wanted a channel more targeted to the qr-code concept. The strategy I chose was physical ads that incorporated qr-codes directly. This had the additional benefit of priming the audience to scan qr-codes.

The next question was which physical ads to use, and how to design them? The scenario had to be a stationary person scanning a stationary target.

The next task was to figure out the simplest possible copy and design. I basically just wanted a qr-code, and a bit of explanatory text. This didn't require glossy print, and could be done on cheap wheatpaste posters and stickers. This meant that an inexpensive guerilla marketing campaign would be possible.

So at this point I had figured out the engineering, the product, the pricing, and the marketing.
I'll talk about launch next.

TLDR: I made hatclone.com. Buy QR code hats, your friends scan the code, they buy hats, cycle repeats.
Clear Linux on a $199 Wal-Mart Laptop
You can't even copy the title of a song in the desktop client.
I can't imagine my favorite podcasts taking spotify revenue seriously unless spotify also moves in on patreon.
The reported problems with fans/temps seem widespread, but I've personally experienced none of that. I have the i9 with the mid-range GPU option and I'm using four external monitors. I run it exclusively in clamshell mode, and perhaps that's less prone to problems. All I can say is I've had zero problems with it, and whatever noise the fans might make I haven't heard them above the sound of my desktop tower's fans (which admittedly are set to "hurricane wind tunnel testing" level).

Bottom line, my experience with the new MacBook is its really damn fast and rock solid.
That's all well and good, but begin is pretty basic? Like, that's how you do transactions in SQL, right? We're not talking about a codepath that's working in testing and falling over in production. The person I responded to was suggesting a codepath that's not even tested in testing, and I was hoping to understand why begin would be such a codepath.
>A CIFS root mount currently requires the use of SMB1+UNIX Extensions
which is only supported by the Samba server. SMB1 is the older
deprecated version of the protocol but it has been extended to support
POSIX features (See [1]). The equivalent extensions for the newer
recommended version of the protocol (SMB3) have not been fully
implemented yet which means SMB3 doesn't support some required POSIX
file system objects (e.g. block devices, pipes, sockets).

As a result, a CIFS root will default to SMB1 for now but the version
to use can nonetheless be changed via the 'vers=' mount option. This
default will change once the SMB3 POSIX extensions are fully
implemented.

Who thought re-enabling uses of SMB1 was a good idea?
1 revolution per 30 seconds maybe?
The public has no appetite for dead astronauts. It's simply not workable to be so cavalier with astronaut lives, even if the astronauts themselves are willing.
He sounds like he’s got some sort of physical problem with his shoulder and tendon in his forearm.

In the video he complains about the smallness of the keyboard causing his shoulders to be in a bad position. He also talks about the “bounce back“ of the keys.

https://www.cnet.com/news/taika-waititi-demands-apple-fix-th...

Would be great if Apple just ran with this and reinvented the keyboard. That might mean nothing more than an external split keyboard that tents, for example.
Comedy is only funny if it contains truth in some form, otherwise it’s just random nonsense. Either it contains true statements that are funny in the current context, or statements that the audience either want to be true or is afraid could be.
My ex-boss use to say... "Don't you like your weekends ?" whenever somebody wanted to deploy something on a Friday :D
It's an interesting way of thinking. How far do you take it?

I think it's relatively common to believe that weapon manufacturers are blameless and it's the owners that should keep them under lock and key.

Would you go so far as to say individual consumers are responsible for climate change because we use oil products?

If a drug company pushed doctors to prescribe more oxy, do they bear any responsibility for an increase in addiction rates?

I'm not saying I have the answers here, it just seems interesting to see where it applies.
Any guide on this? I would love MacOS and Windows side by side.
From the very first paragraph,

> For example, for an event with two possible outcomes, where each outcome is likely to happen 50% of the time, the probability of the same outcome occurring six times in a row is less than 3 in 1000

This is wrong. The probability of, e.g. getting heads 6 times in a row is 1/2^6 which is 1/64. The probability of getting 6 heads in a row or six tails in a row is 1/2^5, which is 1/32.
As someone on the other side of the game: this is incredibly effective and can be near-impossible for me to figure out you're feeding me BS data.

I have also done this as an anti-botting tactic myself though and it can get pretty complicated to setup properly unless you're doing the low-tech "feed these networks BS data" list.
I hope you're joking about the domain name part. When I see your domain name I know to expect some really great tech content, and I'm pretty sure tons of other people are the same way.

HN is always very critical, you'll see it on every article.
I get Alexa or an overseas rep that is unable to do anything other than a preset list of choices.
It is still surprise to me the switch to woman based Jewish identity and the importance of oral tradition in your culture. Also shocked when Dead Sea Scroll come out, I only knew then the Jewish bible oldest is only 1000 years old.
How to Build a Media Company
I have a friend who ordered the mechanical drawings for a P-51, intending to make P-51 assemblies. In investigating this, he talked to some P-51 experts who told him that the drawings were nearly useless.

The real specification of the airplane was the tools and jigs created to make and assemble the parts. Those are long gone. The mechanical drawings were made after the fact to satisfy some DoD requirement.
I'd love to hear more about your experiences. I too am not a writing-inclined person (and prefer to do most of my notetaking digitally for that reason), and would love anything that makes the process more frictionless. Most of my writing tends to be of a mathematical nature, other than the more mundane tasks of signing legal documents.
It's fantastic. I loosely followed it for a few years to get better at interviewing (Note: For interviews, you generally need data structures and algorithms knowledge).

Now I'm following it pretty closely while selecting classes for my software engineering master's degree.
Since corps allow Microsoft to force upgrades now, they allow all kinds of shenanigans.
I feel like failed state symptoms due to pandemic is pretty far removed from failed state that should be operating "normally".
Organisation memory perhaps is a better word though not tribal / cultural memory.

You can’t write everything done and for an ongoing concern you always have people around.

In fact one of the problem is these Organization memory is sometimes in the way and you do not know why or even that exist.

But here is about the absence, as it is not an on-going concern.
Tidal, the one that was having financial troubles right?

And who buys albums nowadays? I made some digital download purchases, but now they don't make much sense.

Smaller artists get paid less on Spotify but bigger artists get paid more (not sure about the details)
That's the whole point. The article even starts with an example of this. printf doesn't let you write strings with embedded NULs, but you can use fwrite instead to write them. The 3 cases given in the article of places where you cannot use NUL bytes are places where not only is there no API that lets you include the NULs, but it's impossible to have one (without changing the kernel interface).
Of course it is their responsibility to take it back.

Suppose I order a watering can from the garden supply store. When I get home from work, I discover that instead of a watering can, they've delivered 2 tons of mulch in a giant pile in my driveway.

I'm not sure how you could make the argument that it's now my responsibility to get rid of the mulch that I didn't want or ask for?
+1 for the Pilot fountain pens for newbies to the fountain pen world. Great way to learn how to write properly with one without ruining expensive nibs.

Honestly, my writing fatigue has gone way down since I switched back to fountain pens years ago. The fact I don't have to press hard, and can control stroke width etc. with very light pressure changes has meant I can write longer (and neater) nowadays.

I still use my Pilot pens for everyday note taking etc. and for carrying around, as I don't mind if I lose one. I reserve my good pens for writing in my journals or ideas book when at home.
https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/ might help?
Parasite becomes the first foreign language film to win best picture at Oscars
Should VCs Ban Warm Introductions?
> Going from 50% chance of making something useless to 25% - by seeing how users react to your product - is worth increasing the chances of a copycat from, say, 1% to 2%

This is a very good argument for not worrying about copycats during MVP. I'll keep that in mind.

But what about users? You talk with users, and tweak the product accordingly, they like it, and then they want a new feature, and it's also on the feature list, but very difficult to implement. What do you do? Just make them wait as long as it needs or should I make sure that before releasing a MVP, I at least have the technical capacity to implement all the features that are challenging (at the cost of delaying shipping, probably significantly)?

I forgot to mention my averse to making users wait is also part of what worries me. I wonder if such concern is warranted?
One of my favourite podcasts is moving to become spotify exclusive. It is hard to put the betrayal I felt into words, when they first announced it.

I know it is a little silly and they probably do what is (in the short term) the best financial decision for them, but I already accepted that this is it and I won't listen to them anymore.

If you go exclusive to any plattform you never do it for your fans, but essentially against them. They might have a podcatcher they listen to you on they used for years, which they now should change because you want to limit the plattforms you are on.

The german podcast scene gladly seems to be quite resistant against these kind of things and they say they earn more through direct donations than spotify and/or audible is able to give them anyways.

Why would you voluntarily give up that freedom? And why is it so often US podcasters who do it first (they are also much more plastered with ads)?
Sprechgesang
Simple printable document design with plain CSS
You're probably joking, but there's several "let us use your connection to ''' mine ''' coin", and as far as I know people are just being used as open proxies for malicious purposes.
Make sure you flush and clean the pens every now and then (I do mine every 3 or 4 refills). The climate where I am means ink normally dries in the nib or ink channels if I leave them too long without using them, so a routine flush with tap water tends to keep the gunk out of the system and ensure smooth ink flow and good 'feel' between nib and paper.
I don't understand why they are using JSON, especially systemd already use an INI-like config format extensively.

Maybe because they are not web devs so that they haven't had an annoying moment when they realize there is no proper way to add comments in package.json?
That is because its a purely politically statement.

NASA's budget and mission is largely kabuki theater. Remember when Bush Jr [0] said we were going to have a moon base and land a human on mars during his reelection year?

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/14/bush.space/index.h...
The insertion isn't my concern, it's that they do tracking to decide what to insert :/
I followed this tutorial when I Fallout 4 first came out and I had not yet built a desktop. It worked pretty well and, given spot prices, was pretty cost competitive with a gaming desktop if you only cared about one or two games.

AWS inbound traffic is free but persistent storage is not so I downloaded the entire game whenever I spun up the AWS instance, which probably happened 10+ times. I still wonder how much that cost Steam in terms out outbound traffic....
"Economically viable" isn't very glamorous these days. Or difficult.

You can pick up a used i5-3xxx or 4xxx system with 8GB of RAM real cheap. If you get one that has at least a 300W power supply, you can then put in a GTX 1660 or similar and do quite well with most games. Max settings @ 1080p for some older games, and still decently playable at decent quality for the newer ones. And all for $300 USD or less.

I just put an RX 580 with 8GB of video RAM into my old i5-3570S system. The card was just $135 at Microcenter, because it was open-box.
I was expecting a quick call-out, but man he went on for quite a while. Very specific about what he doesn't like about them, and I can't believe how much time he spent railing on these keyboards (well deserved, IMO).

One thing that didn't make sense though was he mentioned the iMac keyboards. I assume he meant to say MacBook/Air/Pro, since those are the ones getting all the hate.
Vic’s argument can be applied to almost everything Google has for. Google+ turned out far less successful though.
That hasn't been the case for several years now has it, since perhaps QNX v4? If not, you'll need a time machine as well.

http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html

http://qnx.puslapiai.lt/qnxdemo/qnx_demo_disk.htm
He was asked about union negotiations and replied with an extended riff about keyboards.

You can hear people laughing at the end of his remarks.
I use a western broad for most of my writing. I would also recommend Lamy Safari as a good beginners pen because of its ease of use and wide variety of nib choices.
I don’t know, but there aren’t many podcasts I’d switch platforms for. I’d much sooner find other podcasts.
Same here. Spotify for me is a legal way to sample all the music that's out there. If I'm listening to a song or album repeatedly then I buy the album, and the artist earns more from a digital download than if I only listened on Spotify. (Though I often listen on Spotify out of convenience, so they get the revenue from both.)
You can take my Uni-Ball UB-157 from my cold, dead hands.
Cloud is an existential threat to Google. Amazon got there first. Microsoft got there 2nd.
Your phone sees this as normal SIM and connects to cell towers in the same way, so not sure what this achieves?
Man... one of the top comments on this article calls you out for being overly negative and unable to do any introspection... this comment certainly speaks to that.
Even the most selfish "podcasts should be free for me!" person should be able to understand that they also benefit selfishly when people can make a living making the content they prefer instead of hoping a hobbyist has free time to do it. But this isn't always so.

Imagine all the books that never would have been written if we seriously thought free Reddit r/writingprompts fiction should be good enough for anyone. "Fiction should stay open and free!"
virtualenv?
Turns out some people like to force change upon others. They will always win out. These same people are oblivious to cause and effect.
That still sounds like a bad model for paying artists. If I sign up for Spotify and only listen to a few artists I'm fond of, those artists get next to nothing of my subscription fees. Instead I'm subsidizing the payouts to artists like Drake. Who I have nothing against, I'm just not listening to his work.
Of course there is truth; everyone knows that Apple has had problems with their keyboards.

What is funny is suggesting that that should be the #1 priority for the Writers Guild of America.
Reducing risk of automotive death
I don't mind this. As a consumer, I really love having podcasts available on spotify. I hated using another app, and its nice to be able to queue music/podcast/music for some variety in the gym.

I was never a big podcast user beforehand, but I listen to a lot now. The main reason I didn't listen to any beforehand was the friction in needing to download another app (Which one!? There's so many!) and swap between it. It was very difficult to build a habit when I could just listen to music.
The 2 device solution seems best. One device for connectivity and essentials, the other device for personal stuff.

Prepaid sims are so cheap, can't see how this is about saving money.
What can a human in a spacesuit accomplish on the moon that a machine can't? It's a genuine question, though I'll admit my initial answer is not much.
Business Trends Set to Take Off This Year [2020 Trends]
Expat Mortgages
None of the patents seemed to have anything to do with anything we did whether actual IP or marketing claims. I think the generalized scheme was "spam out this huge brochure to enough people and hope we get something back".

I understand the whole 'ownership of govt funded stuff' well enough; I don't think I am entitled to ride around in a tank. And yet it doesn't seem entirely like the public good that was trying to be achieved, especially this kind of spammy approach, where they clearly had no idea of which patent we might be "infringing" or interested in licensing.
Development Finance
Cap-weighted index fund on Vanguard is worse than a random portfolio
I disagree, Amazon's or Microsoft's cloud services dominance doesn't impact how Google makes nearly all of its money: advertising.
That only works as long as the artist keeps their music on Spotify. I've run into situations where an artist has pulled a release from Spotify, and the downloads disappear once I get internet connectivity again and Spotify re-syncs the licensing.
I’d call that a reverse cargo cult, if so.
My experience exactly with Last Podcast on the Left, which is just now going Spotify exclusive. The frustrating part is how many fans defend such an anti-listener action.
normal returns are pretty painless - I order thing, I get exactly that thing, I return thing.

I imagine there's still no formal process in place for "oops we sent you a thing, keep it or throw it out or whatever"
Israel Bars Palestinians from Exporting Produce via Jordan
> A small diameter like .5mm is silky smooth

When I was in high school, I bought a .9mm mechanical pencil, and it was glorious for standardized tests. Filling in circles was just a quick spiral inward, and the forms with rectangles were even easier — just a swipe across. I still have the thing, even though I haven't taken a multiple choice test in over a decade.
Thank you for your feedback. I removed the problematic anime graphics from that page.
Many Noodler's inks are waterproof and have served me well even for legal docs.

I've even found a bunch of other inks that aren't advertised as waterproof/resistant that ended up to be waterproof depending on the paper. For example J. Herbin Perle Noire on meh paper.

I do fine with them as an everyday carry, my gripe is mainly when I get a new pen, paper or ink knowing that a paper might not like a certain pen or ink.
Those are really good examples of exactly why we can't. All of those just have really good marketing behind them.

Spotmini at this point is kind of just a neat toy. It doesn't really do anything. It is definitely not autonomous and requires human intervention.

Self driving cars are a bit of a pipe dream unless there is a massive breakthrough in actual A.I. they don't work outside of ideal conditions. Driving in rain, snow, sunrise, sunset are all out of reach for the most part. As they lack human intuition and they can't react on the fly. For example there is no way it would be able to navigate a parking lot that needs to be repainted. But humans do all the time.
This might be a silly question but does google already sell browser activity? Ads through doubleclick/analytics is one thing but are they already selling just straight the-user-opened-their-browser-and-went-to-these-5-sites-today type data?
Given that none of her posts are one-paragraph technical summaries, I'm not sure why you're imagining her audience is clamoring for one-paragraph technical summaries.
Is he not aware that there’s hundreds if not thousands of keyboard models on the market? Now, if he was talking about the Apple TV remote, that I’d be totally on board with.
Show HN: Convert your content to audio
> Microsoft and Google do this because they make money out of monetizing their users. What's systemd's excuse?

Who do you think is putting the resources (manhours/money/etc) into mainlining this crap into Linux? It's the corps. Add Intel to the list.
Why? The article gives convincing reasons that an iPhone monopoly was a threat (because Apple could gatekeep everyone's mobile experience) but those don't apply to cloud services. If Amazon and Microsoft had a monopoly on cloud services, how would that hurt Google's core businesses?
No, they don't sell that.
"Just leave the country if you don't like it."
Before I try to respond, you have to ask yourself: what do you imagine is the reason why Ubuntu folks have gone out of their way to patch Python for /usr/local? Surely it's not out of ignorance for virtualenv?
Alibaba Leads Chinese Retreat from Silicon Valley
A typical independent podcast with small-medium viewership really struggles to monetize.

It’s great if things in the German podcast scene are different than rest of the world, enabling German podcasts to make more from donations than Spotify.

But if that’s not the case elsewhere, can you really blame the podcasters? Let’s say you decide to bake specialty cookies and give them away while relying on donations. Months in, you realize the donations aren’t really covering your expenses and effort. Then someone comes along and offers you a multiple of your donations for an exclusive, enabling you to make a decent wage.

I guess you could say “you’re doing it against your cookie-loving fans”. But I could just as easily argue “your original fans didn’t help you get fair comp, so you found another set of fans/arrangement to get fair comp”
> As a tech enthusiast, you probably know what microprocessor is in your computer and how much physical memory it has, but odds are you know nothing about the power supply.

Ummm...tech "enthusiasts" generally spend a lot of time choosing the power supply if building a PC!
Why does the public get an opinion on an individual’s life when they know the risks? To me that’s the height of hubris and is something that needs to get corrected if we’re to move forward.