skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Cafe Mediterraneum[0] in Berkeley retained this kind of atmosphere until a few years ago (money issues from what I heard.)

I hung out there on a daily basis for a year or so, and it was like I'd finally found the social environment designed for me: I could go in and just read, or work on whatever I was working on—and typically before long I'd be joined by someone from a fairly large ring of folks who knew each other to varying degrees. There was a kernel of us who all knew each other very well (many had known each other for years or decades even), and then a larger outer circle who would sometimes join in or not but were always around.

Occasionally you'd strike up conversation with someone new just because you both had been showing up regularly for a while, and associating with some common people, "Hi, I'm XXX—I see you've been talking with YYY recently. What are those books you have there?" (If you were showing up regularly enough, then you were becoming a "Med Head," which meant you probably had enough in common with any other Med Head that an interesting / amicable conversation would likely result.)

There was a rhythm through the week and month when traffic patterns changed or periodic events were held (e.g. Tango night once a month). We knew all the staff and the owner, and at least bits about the life stories and work of a group of regulars numbering somewhere around... 30 maybe? As much as our conversations might be about philosophy, literature, linguistics, mathematics, etc.—they were as often just gossip related to the community there or around town.

If you were talking about something that sounded interesting, it was not uncommon for people at nearby tables to chime in, and if that was going well we might join our tables together and continue. It was open until midnight and we'd almost always stay until then, often chatting more rather than working as the time got later. At some point people would pick up instruments or someone would hop on the piano and improvise something while the rest of us continued talking. Maybe a couple times a month a couple of us would order a beer from behind the counter as the night was ending. Several nights a week a group of us would go on a walk around town after closing.

Since then, I've considered the existence of a place like that to be the biggest draw to living somewhere—but I haven't had much luck finding it. I was optimistic that Cambridge (MA) would have something, but I never found it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffe_Mediterraneum
It's not that SIP does nothing - it's that past a certain point, the rates are what they are. San Mateo and Santa Clara counties have seen a slight increase in the number of cases last week over the previous week. Other Bay Area counties have seen a slight decrease [1].

I don't see how increased traffic/travel as we're starting to see [2] will do anything other than increase transmissions.

[1] https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2020/coronavirus-map/
[2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Bay-A...
How about WHO's current stance...

https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-p...
Slowly increased volume yes, a sudden burst of volume is a whole different story.

For example right now they are trying to hire 100,000 people to cover the increased demand. In the meantime, they are making their existing people do the work of those 100,000, or letting the work go undone. In both cases that's lost profits.
There are a number of cases where creators of popular works have been granted substantial sums to create subsequent works through crowdsourcing.

Edit for examples.

Cyan, creator of Myst and Riven, had two very successful Kickstarter to fund new works. First, they raised $1,321,306 to make Obduction, then $1,433,161 for Firmament.

Elite: Dangerous raised £1,578,316 for a modern remake.

Yes, it works for books, too: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=18...
I quit a few years ago. I wrote about my experience: https://enki.org/2017/08/13/quitting-caffeine/
I think the reason that capitalism does not allocate money to save children’s lives is that the investor cannot claim any of the child’s future income. That’s also the reason that capitalism tends to under invest in things like education and nutrition for kids, or environmental protections or fighting climate change- how are you going to recoup that investment?

There is one way. If everyone were slaves, then the capitalist really would own every child they saved. You’d probably see rates of malnutrition and disease plummet. Of course, then we’d all be slaves. But that would be a purer, less dysfunctional capitalism. Maybe that’s the only direction capitalism can go- it might go that way through a maze of debts and complex contracts and property rights rather than legal ownership of persons, but that’s probably the direction capitalism is going to go, if you assume that capitalism is evolving to be the most economically efficient version of itself.
Some automated train systems already do this for control such as some of the Vancouver SkyTrain lines.

From the SelTrac wikipedia page:

"in newer versions of SelTrac, the control signal is transmitted inside the running rails at radio frequency using IEEE 802.11 (WiFi) access points. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SelTrac#Communication
These are not mutually exclusive.

Option 3 is a consequence of not delivering on Option 2.

No one is advocating holding the SIP just because its fun. The reason is because of a lack of control on it (Option 2).

Removing SIP prematurely and having a resurgence WILL destroy the economy as well, along with human lives. It's the worst of all options.
The bigger issue isn’t writing code (that’s feasible, as is using git), it’s building code. You need a server to load it to or a build pipeline setup for the repository.
I found Walmart online cheaper than anything, including in store prices.

Since that wasn't mentioned, is this basically an affiliate list?
> What, if anything, is more necessary to a free society than the free expression and debate of ideas?

The commons must be protected from bad actors, and bad faith whose purpose is to use the openness of society against itself. [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Your ignoring population size and focusing on totals. We are talking about the USA overall. According to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ as of now:

Country, Deaths / 1m pop, Cases / 1m pop

USA 171, 3,045

Spain 503, 4,907

Italy 446, 3,298

Sure if you cherry pick the worst city in the US and compare it to Italy or Spain then yes you can make it look like there are more cases in the US and be technically correct but overall the US is doing better then Italy and Spain.
That might actually be a myth: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ring-around-rosie/
Coffee is life, I can't start a day without a good cup of it. My brain won't function well without coffee. It's okay if this drink is only my breakfast before going to work.
That is ridiculous and impossible. Don't kid yourself thinking that it will go away. It's not going to happen.
That was the consensus of the same Apple reviewers at the time, too. It is apparently still a capable machine (I’ve never used one.)
One is not paid what one is worth--rather, one is paid for what the job is worth.
The US is approaching 20% unemployment. The stock market dropped ~32% from the peak, and is down about 15% from the former peak presently. But the richest person in the world has 50% more money than they did 6 months ago.
I don't know what happened in Europe at the time. I wasn't there.
>Plus people value different things. Do you realize how much this quarantine is costing us?

>It kills less than a percent of the people it infects.

At 30% population infected, 1% is more than a million people.

I'm sorry, our values seems radically different.

>Do you have any idea how stupid most people are?

I thought I did, but reading your comment did bring an enhanced understanding.
I can write code with it, and execute on it in some cases. For example, I find myself using Swift Playground to quickly test out some code I’m tinkering with and run it on device. Or Pythonista/the other interpreters on the App Store. Or I use Blink to SSH into a VM where I can write code to run on Linux etc. I use it quite often.
I've been thinking about this all morning and the platform isn't the problem. After all, plenty of software is based on using someone else's platform to form legal agreements.

The problem here is the requirement of Consideration in contracts. Twitter can bind me to their TOU because they give me the ability to use their platform. Disney can't, because they can't stop me from using #MayThe4th on Twitter - there's no consideration from them to me, so there's no contract.

If you could trademark dates, however...
Love that the author recorded a YouTube summary. This is something more people should start doing!
Or perhaps they know more about the topic than we random HN readers and have a plan that they're following.
nit: crowdsourced != curated
Since when is QNX a typical OS?

Most programs need to run on the OS they need to run on, and on the hardware they need to run on. QNX (or other favorite obscurity) most usually is not an option.
Ask HN: Software/Technical Design Documents
I have worked at a couple of different startups and none of them had any formal design review process/protocol in place. Is it true generally for startups?

Which tools do you use mostly to write a design document (Other than Google Docs)?

Design review means:

- Someone writes a requirement doc
- Engg then writes a design documemt
- Peers then discuss and review this doc
- Finally peers approve it and implementation starts
- This doc then serves as reference throughout the implementation.
Attempted to quit twice - failed twice.

For me the quitting symptoms come in four phases:

1) very slight uncomfortableness (nothing severe) [~3 days]

2) more vivdness, alertness, euphoria, calmness [1 to 2 weeks]

3) weird chest / heart issues (nothing too severe but very unpleasant and first time was quite worrying) [2 to 3 weeks]

4) I'm feeling down, unmotivated, dull [starting at about week 4 or 5]

---

stage 4 is what I never survived so far. it's just taking too much of a toll. then again it's an up and down so I once managed to stop for 4 months. but it brings me to a pre-depressive state where I just don't see much point in working. otoh I very much enjoy just relaxing, chilling - if I can do that I'm happy. if not it's a chore - no productiveness at all. very slow mental processing.

---

I started drinking coffee during puberty. So, I guess my brain is not just chemically hooked on it but actually neurologically developed around it.

---

then the first cup - what a bliss.
This is why "We're in this together" is just not true.

Oprah has it better than me right now. But we both have it way better than my hairdresser (who knows if her salon will survive). And all three of us have it better than a Silicon Valley janitor.

I'm filled every day with deep, deep sadness for everyone whose refrigerators are running out with their bank account at zero.
Thanks for trying it out!

The main use case is for more focused discussions / information sharing. It started as a threaded chat app but evolved over time. I used the GitHub Issues analogy because you could use the app to make a customized generic version of a GitHub-issues-like bug tracker.

For that analogy, you can think of each board in ThinkBase as a repository of issues, while the cards are like issues.

Each board that you create in ThinkBase can have its own "card template" to focus the cards/conversations on that board, just like GitHub Issues has templates.

When it comes to tracking the status of your cards, you can create your own tags like status:open, priority:10, asignee:mike, and then perform queries on these custom tags (e.g.: segment engine status:open priority>1) to segment the cards to your liking.

The main power (I hope) of the app is that you can focus each board on whatever type of discussion or information sharing use case that you'd like depending on how you craft your templates and tags. Boards don't have to be "issues" focused but they could be.

To be honest, at this point in time I'm still refining the different possible use cases. Perhaps there is a better analogy to use. Once I'm able to hone in on one or a couple solid use cases I'd like to build out more features to better support them.

You bring up a great point about columns. I've been thinking lately of a feature that would allow you to choose which tags you want to use as your columns if you prefer a column view. So for the GitHub Issues analogy, you would create the tags - status:TODO, status:doing, status:done, and designate those as your "columns".

Appreciate the feedback.
Treating the court as a purely political entity which will flip flopping on issues as the majority changes is counter to it’s design.

The the normal way this is maintained is to have narrow opinions on the specific issue at hand. As such I can agree politically and still say the ruling was unequivocally incorrect.
https://medium.com/@igorandreev/how-to-code-with-ipad-pro-ma...
It is remarkable that in this soaring call to "build" institutions, the author does not cite a single example of institutional capacity he would like to build up, rather than tear down.

He cites some obviously real examples of institutional dysfunction (hi, San Francisco zoning!). But these examples are all (or are all portrayed as) institutions "hindering", "stifling" or "limiting" otherwise beneficial processes. This implies a worldview in which the only thing institutions do is get in the way of "the freedom to build", and the only implied remedy is to get them out of the way.

This is counterproductive, because it takes us straight back to the "government is [bad/good]" argument. These arguments haven't got us anywhere so far, even - indeed, especially - in Silicon Valley, which features one of the world's highest concentrations of libertarians.

(My amateur hypothesis: If you approach institutional reform with an agenda of dismantling those institutions, that's a recipe for scorched-earth resistance from anyone who believes in that institution's goals - however well or poorly that institution is currently functioning. This leads to the worst of both worlds: dysfunctional institutions, held in stasis by the tug-of-war going on around them.)

If you really believe in institution-building, you should be able to cite some examples of what they should be able to do more or better. Otherwise, you're just advocating old-school deregulation and calling it "building".

Tyler Cowen's summary of "state capacity libertarianism", which this article cites, is much preferable on this score: It is explicit about what Cowen believes institutions should do (and do well), as well as what they should not: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/01/wh...
especially for the businesses who are struggling. At least let the most desperate ones open up and get some income. Gov should have some compassion on the small businesses that depend on monthly incomes.
If I take a subway next to you, and you get Covid from my cough, no amount of probing from manual tracing can reveal our link when we're strangers. You can't categorically say "manual tracing by trained personell is superior".

The apple / google proposal is designed to minimize the ability for abuse from surveillance states.
Unless the data shows that states/countries which did not lock down have almost the same cumulative health outcomes, minus the voluntary economic destruction.
It's getting a bit ridiculous how powerful the iPad is getting. Not necessarily in a bad way, I'm just confused about the use case.

For anyone with personal real-world experience, what convinces you to buy an iPad Pro + Keyboard over an Air or vice-versa?
1) For current patients, how will you get their data. I'm reluctant to give some places my email address; access to my complete medical records for the rest of my life is a giant stretch.

2) For future patients (or their doctors), how will you convince them that your recommendation is credible and not some kind of front for a specific manufacturer?
We can see how Seattle and Tokyo kept their SARS-CoV-2 case load very low by listening to their own scientists; New York City and Austin, not so much.
Someone needs to write a book about breaking into writing software like RocksDB, HSE, etc. Years ago I found myself wanting to learn more however going from 0 to 1 felt impossible. Graduated from a T3 school in CS so understanding the concepts wasn't the issue, I just didn't know how to build a good foundation in low latency persistence. Years later I ended up contributing to low latency java which was really interesting, but what an opportunity missed.
Yes, and that's a GOOD thing. If their job really is that essential then it's on the employer to pay them enough to make it worth it. No one should have to risk their lives (and that of their loved ones, and really everyone's) to put food on the table.
Sweetwater is awesome in person. Super friendly staff and they have a free arcade for the community as well as a massive slide that my nephew loves to go down.
SPDK has made some progress since [0] was posted in 2015 (see https://spdk.io/ if you're curious). Still, I am excited about io_uring and what it brings to the table.
Very intersting. I did not expect that.

> Though the caffeine in coffee may have a diuretic effect, it’s unlikely to dehydrate you.

> For caffeine to have a significant diuretic effect, studies show that you need to consume more than 500 mg per day — or the equivalent of 5 cups (40 ounces or 1.2 liters) of brewed coffee (12, 13, 14).

> A study in 10 casual coffee drinkers reviewed the impact of drinking 6.8 ounces (200 ml) of water, lower caffeine coffee (269 mg of caffeine), and high caffeine coffee (537 mg of caffeine) on signs of dehydration.

> Researchers observed that drinking the higher caffeine coffee had a short-term diuretic effect, whereas the lower caffeine coffee and water were both hydrating (15).

> In addition, other studies show that moderate coffee intake is as hydrating as drinking water (16).

> For example, a study in 50 heavy coffee drinkers noted that drinking 26.5 ounces (800 ml) of coffee daily for 3 days was equally as hydrating as drinking the same amount of water (16).

> Also, an analysis of 16 studies discovered that taking 300 mg of caffeine in a single sitting — equivalent to 3 cups (710 ml) of brewed coffee — increased urine production by only 3.7 ounces (109 ml), compared with drinking the same amount of non-caffeinated beverages (17).

> So, even when coffee makes you urinate more, it shouldn’t dehydrate you — as you don’t lose as much fluid as you originally drank.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/does-coffee-dehydrate-y...
It depends on your use cases. I think it's a good thing overall. I like the iOS app model much better than the desktop model.

I resent that desktop apps can basically reach into any part of my computer, take 20 seconds to close when I tell them to exit, prevent my computer from shutting down, hog all my resources when I'm not using them, actively steal focus if they decide, fail to run because of some "missing dependency", and do a half-assed job uninstalling themselves.
I love Amazon because you can find the majority of the products that you are looking for from this online platform. The usual stuff that I buy from them is food especially now that the pandemic is on-going. There are other alternative online shops to choose from but they are still my favorite.

Moving on, if you guys are planning to modify your car at home feel free to check out: https://4wheelonline.com
There's absolutely no way I would sit at a desk for an entire work day staring at the back of a coworker's desk area and thinking it's all cool because of a clear plastic sheet. Merely rearranging some furniture and adding signs to an open office is no solution at all.

Nothing less than a radical, bottom-up rethink of what "office space" is in a post-coronavirus world is needed at this point.
100 reported cases.

There could be anywhere from 5-100x that amount. Lots of people without or with very mild symptoms. Very hard to know without 10-100x the tests we are doing.
I don't think they even need to ask. The way I read the terms, they already had it, so I think they are angling to put themselves in control unilaterally and one-up Twitter. Disney's terms have prohibition on "offensive" content, while Twitter's terms acknowledges you maybe exposed to offensive content. Twitter says others may use the content on other media and services:

> This license authorizes us to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals for the syndication, broadcast, distribution, Retweet, promotion or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.
An author's children shouldn't get jack unless the author saved royalties for them.
Can you tell me more about it? Looking into this now, but in MD. Waiting for an electrician's quote for running 220 V down there. Which heat pump did you go with, how did it turn out and all that jazz?
It's a Tragedy of the Commons of their own creation. It's the platform's/s' responsibility to vet them and hold them accountable or risk making the platform/s look bad and dissatisfied customers. They are negligent and complicit in letting it happen by not taking meaningful steps to curate and assure sellers are legitimate and treat customers professionally.

PS: It was supposed to take 15 minutes but it's been several hours and I'm still waiting for a callback from NE. I'm very close to calling the credit card company to execute chargebacks and close the NE account.

Edit: I ended up canceling the other orders and buying different models of boxed processors that were twice as expensive directly from NE. What a PITA. Never again.
That’s great! What kind of hardware projects?
Don't let your hard-earned wealth be forgotten
Hi HN,

I'm Jos van der Westhuizen, co-founder of Nexus (https://www.thenexusfamily.com/). Nexus is an online dashboard for family members to share where they have life and health insurance, where they bank, and where they have investments.

After realizing that our families have very little transparency on where we have assets, we discovered that many other families share the same problem. Subsequently, we discovered that billions of dollars go unclaimed every year.

Nexus is our attempt to make families aware of this problem and to make it easier for them to automatically track their estates.

Thanks so much, and we can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
BTW, this happens all the time when using structural optimization programs, where you tell the computer what material you're using, how it's constrained and loaded, and then it figures out what it thinks is the optimal shape for the part.

It means somebody left out a load or a constraint, or messed up the material properties, which is all another way of saying the math model is wrong.

So when a part doesn't look right but seems to pass the math, be very suspicious of the math! :-)
I don't think this qualifies. You have to use bespoke tools end environments to be able to code in a very limited fashion.
I was able to do that, yes.
This is bizarre... There is a statewide stay-at-home order in effect until further notice. Any less-restrictive orders, such as San Francisco's, are null and void.
Two words: Read Code.

Three words: Read Good Code.