skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Dropbox makes a profit (just barely). Google is still dodges investor questions on YouTube profitability which suggests it doesn't. Flickr/Soundcloud have been fighting for survival for years now.

The power law distribution is problematic because unless you can predict which content becomes a hit, you either treat all the content like it would (extremely expensive), as if it wouldn't (extremely slow and still expensive), or some smart predictive in-between (which is a very hard problem that you can see Netflix/HBO and even Youtube suffers from). You can see Dropbox is working on smart-sync too, because it's pretty critical for keeping costs down.

Besides, you really don't want things to go viral. Viral is expensive to serve and expensive to engineer for.

I think torrent-style distribution is a brilliant idea. Not sure how people will feel about their phone data or metered connections being used, nevermind the engineering challenges of getting torrenting working on a cellular connection.

You're asking Dropbox to essentially become Google without the profitable part (search ads). Way easier said than done. There's very little profit to be made from being a commodity, it's not clear that becoming an umbrella of multiple commodities is any different.

Dropbox is certainly positioned to make a good product, so is Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Apple. But until people actually start paying for good products so they're profitable products, they won't be built or will keep disappearing to be replaced by subsidized/free mediocre products by Google.
GnuPG

I'm surprised that it hasn't come up, yet.
But it's CLI interface as well as it's data model are truly archaic. It's near impossible to properly invoke from other programs or scripts and most users don't even understand half of it's "web of trust" concepts.

This is especially bad since small mistakes can easily break your security model.

I don't want to rewrite GnuPG, I want a fresh start without all the cruft.
> No Javascript, so no need to vote.

I just double checked, voting works regardless of whether Javascript is enabled. Vote away.
The Internet archive...or just individuals sharing the cost.
When you minimize an app and switch to another, it disappears. Even if you alt-tab back to the app it remains hidden. It's ridiculous.
Flamewar comments like this will get you banned here regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
It depends on how quickly you need to upgrade, how important smooth operations are, and of course, whether you depend on bootcamp/virtualisation.

If you need to upgrade soon and are dependant on the machine "just working", get an Intel based Mac. Obviously the same, if you need virtualisation. You do get a machine, which works now and will do so easily for the next 5 years to come.

The new ARM Macs are very tempting, but it might take up to 2 years until the device you want to refresh is avialable with an ARM processor, and there might be teething problems. In any case, it will take some time, till most software is avialable natively. On the other side, unless there are first-generation issues, with an ARM-Mac you are very forward-looking.

So for me, the answer is easy. For my work, I am going to renew my MB Pro on Intel, but privately, I am going to try to stretch the life of my iMac out, until I can an ARM based one. The iMac is still running on Mojave for compatibility reasons, so if I upgrade, going to ARM shouldn't be less compatible (which probably was the reason for Catalina to be that incompatible).
34% is not that impressive...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-specific_fuel_consumptio...

Gas turbines and 2-stroke diesels can have over 50% efficiency.
> * Zoom - worst video conference product __EVER__. Can't say a single good word about it.

There are tons of problems with Zoom, no disagreement there. But the heaping pile of crap called Skype for business formerly known as Microsoft Lync is a lot worse. It doesn't even run on Linux...
> I fall asleep, I wake up, what is there to track?

Oh man, I remember those days. Enjoy them while you have them.
I have 2 ADD children.
I’m ADD myself.
Yea at home learn is a nightmare.
Someone had to sit with kid entire time. Even when video camera is on with teacher
Not at all... Depending on the setting the meals are either picked up at the school, or dropped off at the student's home. Both are generally easy to arrange in a "no contact" way. It's not like they are inviting the students into the cafeteria for one big group meal.
I consult to a company that uses Notes to this day. It pains me every time in see it opened up.
Who’s going to pay for that?

The "Imperial We", obviously. Goes along with "someone should do something ...".

It's true it would be nice to keep copies for posterity, but it's not realistically possible to archive everything created for all time.

OTOH, state actors like the NSA should be archiving lots of things like this, because "you never know ...". But, unfortunately for us, a meme from years ago nailed this: "My computer hard drive crashed. NSA won't send me their backup copy."
I'd not heard of this site before but I'm surprised they've got 6 million users, 11k monthly server costs, and aren't profitable.

I clicked around for a few minutes and saw a lot of user activity and no ads. If I owned the site, rather than trying to close, I'd just make every tenth post in a feed be an ad.

That plus some actions to curtail server costs, depending on whatever their high cost items are... Seems like you could probably monetize that userbase somehow.
I see quite a few people in this thread blaming the high cost of AWS. I don't understand, why is this a problem with AWS - isn't it a problem with freeloading? Yes, moving hosting may save you some bucks, but fundamentally isn't the problem the large number of freeloaders?

If even 5% of the 6 million users paid $20 a year, Soup would have $6 million a year - more than enough to run a small company on.

FInally, i'll point to my favorite post on the subject, Don't be a free user by idlewords: https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/
That article actually says it's "highest risk" according to the CDC website.[1]

> Since May, the C.D.C. website [link to 1] has cautioned that full reopening would be “highest risk,”

And from that site, we can see that it's not the highest risk among all possible ways of spreading COVID-19, it's simply the scenario with the highest risk of COVID-19 spread among 3 scenarios for schools: full reopening, virtual-only instruction, or:

> Small, in-person classes, activities, and events. Groups of students stay together and with the same teacher throughout/across school days and groups do not mix. Students remain at least 6 feet apart and do not share objects

I believe the CDC director is recommending something like that middle risk plan, and saying that the risk of spreading coronavirus under this plan is outweighed by the risks of having schools closed.

1: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-...
I'm a huge fan of qutebrowser.

It feels years ahead of any other competition in just about every sense.

Runner-up: IntelliJ. I haven't written a line of Java in several years, but I still use it.

Probably goes without saying, but I don't know how I would survive without GNU/POSIX. Many blessings to all involved.
It's not for vehicles though. It's for power generation. I guess you could use it in a vehicle, but I think it's intended for stationary use.
Honestly, no. I can’t even think of what would qualify as cancelled for her. If publishers refused to sell her books, she could start her own.
It may be that the trail near you isn't on OpenStreetMap (https://openstreetmap.org). If you're interested in fixing that (and thus the myriad of tools that rely on OpenStreetMap data), head to https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Getting_Involved
In my case, because none of the auditing software required by work will run under Linux. I got away with it for a few years because I started before we had an actual IT department, but eventually they caught up with me and I had to swap my Linux machine for a MacBook, I could have had Windows, and possibly would have done if it were today.
This looks like video jacking. The description talks about acquarius, but the video is about a completely different free piston system being developed by a research group at newcastle university.
You might want to check out Flockport: https://thenewstack.io/flockport-time-to-start-all-over-agai...

They're trying to use built-in Linux LXC container features.
What is BEAM? I tried looking it up on google.
Likewise. Drinking less tea though, that was the better alternative to bad office coffee.
Please post the exact locations and routes so that the developer can make improvements.
We switched from Jira to Rally about a year ago. Our company just did a survey about which tool they'd rather use and Jira won by over 95%. We actually joked about having a party for using Jira.
With certain windows, for certain sounds, you can put actuators on the window itself. They vibrate the glass as a speaker. Unfortunately it is very tricky- the resonant frequency of glass panes is far lower than sound, so its very hard to make the glass all move together. Instead it prefers to take on wavy bends, which can even create their own noise.

One neat idea is electrostatic speakers! They're one of the more exotic speaker types, but have unparalleled quality at low volumes. However they are prone to distortion as volume increases and require high (100+) voltage supplies. They can be dangerous and fragile.

The idea is you stretch a mylar film very tightly into a rectangle, and then sandwich it between two metal meshes, with an air gap. By putting voltage on the meshes, static electricity pulls the mylar forward and back while keeping it almost perfectly flat.

You can put meshes (or ITO films) inside a double pane window to create a very even force over the whole window, making it an excellent transducer. It requires far higher voltages to move glass, though. Putting mylar in between the panes doesnt work (you need some free space to create proper cancellation- oversimplifying) and putting mylar on the outside is dangerous. Tricky problem.
I use watchtower with docker compose and the update is seamless.
Private window, enable JavaScript, bypass GDPR banner, disable JavaScript. (Though I'm boycotting NYT until the risk to Scott Alexander has passed.)
Light Field Cameras (with arrays of micro-lenses) also seemed extremely hard (to me), yet Lytro managed to get the tech working at non-laughable resolutions in a small package, so...shrug.
With important caveats.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ#:~:text=The%20....
> Slack: their web UI is ridiculously slow, and I hate how it creates this expectation that I’m online 24/7.

Or 'little' annoyances like it being impossible to mute notifications on one device (say, your phone) and not another (say, your web browser).
In my experience, you can do all that on github directly, with the benefit that everything's closer to the code. I presume Bitbucket has comparable functionality. Jira is just another tool on top that doesn't add anything unless you're doing the perf tracking bit outside the team.
Camera in 2020
You are right, do you do learn when you have to teach something. Often though you're teaching how a internal system or codebase works, so you're learning/teaching stuff that isn't useful for you anywhere else.
The main reason I use Dropbox is to just have a cloud backup of all my files so I don't lose anything. It doesn't look like Syncthing serves the same purpose, and syncing files to AWS S3 is also a lot more expensive than Dropbox. (2TB costs $46.99 on AWS S3, vs $11.99/mo for Dropbox.)
Not a guideline, but a feature I'd like to have:

Allow me to disable any kind of indication that someone is talking, not just to me (red dot) but anywhere (blue dot). Not everything needs my attention and having the tray icon change its state is distracting.

You can mute the channels, sure but why not make that as an option in the notifications settings?
Founder/Market Fit
Yeah, the push to re-open schools just seems like a bad idea on multiple fronts, this part included.

A few teachers I follow are being asked to name someone who can "replace" them if they contract covid. I can't wrap my head around putting people in harm's way like that willingly when we don't have any control over the outbreak.
If you're willing to pay $400 for the convenience (like I did) an HP printer/scanner/copier/all-in-one which can scan to a network drive (Samba) should tempt you. I've gone through 2-3 different cheap Brother laser printers, but I got to a point where the hassle isn't worth it anymore.
Really, for sleeping just get a good set of passive earmuffs like shooters use. Cost about $20 and will provide 25-30db of real noise reduction (and unlike active NC will also work on non-periodic sounds like sirens or revving car engines). Can double up with foam earplugs too for even more blockage.
Since you've ignored our request to stop posting flamebait, I've banned this account.

Please don't create accounts to do that with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It’s non emulation really. Emulation is like JIT. Only converting code as its running. So emulator and the code have to run at the same time.

This time they are doing AOT — converting the entire app at once ahead of time. Slow to start the first time, but decent speed after. Without the source it is not optimized, but still faster than emulation.
Youtuber SerpentAZ has reported that in China, doctors generally don't wash their hands because:

1) washrooms are not stocked with soap. (In general, after something is built, there's no on-going maintenance.)

2) the older generations of doctors don't believe in bacteria

3) the current generations of doctors halfway believe Chinese traditional medicine and Western medicine.

With corona and a shortage of PPE, it's also likely gloves are not being changed between patients.

OTOH, most of the hospitals in Silicon Valley are on a watch list for MERSA contamination, so hygiene is a struggle even with hand-washing.
I drink about 36-cups/day, so this sounds as if I would be really irate if I had that little...
It didn't work for the GP. That makes it poisonous and evil.

I've seen this sentiment way too much on HN. X didn't work for me, therefore X is a scam, its perpetrators are evil sociopaths, and if it worked for you you're a cog in the machine, man.
There was an article that explored this question many years ago, and IIRC, the answer was because the surgeons were in a hurry and didn’t have much time. This problem isn’t as common today with the ubiquity of hand sanitizer dispensers.
India Now Has Asia's Largest Solar Power Plant
I use git a lot, and I like the speed and decentralized nature. But I do think there's much to be improved.

Named branches don't really exist in git: there's only a moving target name that refers to a leaf node. This means there's no "history" associated to a branch except for the parent commits. But in merge commits with several parents all parents are considered equal, and the system does not contain info about which commit belonged to the "main branch" and which was imported in. This information can be valuable in some cases. This leads to a lot of rebasing just to keep the commit log clean, but this actually rewrites history and destroys information.

Also, there's no support for keeping two parallel views of the same repository (for example, an internal view with lots of subcommits, and a cleaner public view with more detailed messages, and perhaps fewer privacy-compromising names/timestamps).

Finally, handling merge conflicts is still a PITA, especially on LaTeX documents.
Have a source for that data?

Just because it might be lower risk to children still means that they bring it back home which gives you a near ideal vector to reinfect a large portion of the population.
Announcing The Zig Software Foundation
The Android one completely disables my phone. The car never acknowledges that anything is happening. The worst is when it does this when I just want to charge the phone in a car.
I think this is the transmissionism versus constructivist view on teaching.[0] This is something that is well-known in education and I wish more people knew about it! Lay people commonly think of education as transmission of ideas from teachers to learners, but educators believe that learners construct their own understanding of ideas. So these educators try to create situations where the learners can do that construction.

[0]: http://nas-sites.org/responsiblescience/files/2016/05/Dirks-...
These folks used a synthetic control to do the exact quasi experiment you described: https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/13319/face-masks-conside...
Since they brought up memes, why is this not just #learntocode all over again?

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/learn-to-code
I'm probably going to lose a lot of geek-cred here, but if you're on hour 4 of wrestling with your SANE config, have some mercy on yourself and checkout vuescan. It works flawlessly on linux with every scanner I've tried: https://www.hamrick.com/
There is ZERO mention of any data or research in this article providing any evidence that this decision is a good one.

It may be a good decision, BUT it hasn't been justified, as far as I can tell.

Moreover, the article quotes school administrators, teachers, and their representatives stating in no uncertain terms that schools in the US do not yet have the resources necessary for reopening safely.

What the heck?
The key is to decouple the two.

When you are required to act, act and act decisively. If you are clear that the understanding could be deeper (and it usually can), you trigger a work effort to understand more. So the next time you need to make a decision you’re more informed.
Thanks, things must have improved as its 10+ years since I was there and it didn't seem an unusual event then.
Can someone explain why Teams is so totally unable to interoperate with anything else, to the point where you can’t save messages, you can’t export chats, and you can’t even print them! The lock-in is intense.
git

It lets you keep track of your file history in one place. You can share that history with others in many ways. Use it as a collaborative tool. It allows everyone to work independently and combine their code on their own terms. It’s really hard to mess it up and put it in a bad state, almost everything can be undone without consequences. You can set up central repos on shared drives or servers, or choose to forgo central repos all together. It works fine using simple paradigms but can scale to be as sophisticated as you need. It’s easy to set up and doesn’t get in the way of your other work.
It's more inviting then, so I think it would draw more randoms. Now it's basically home to people who know the value already and choose to join because that's what matters to them.

That's at least why I come here. I hope that's a motivator until the lights go out one day. Without a doubt the most consistently intelligent conversations happen here.
Toggl the time tracker somehow went to complete shit in terms of performance. Its workflow is great, the Mac app worked splendidly until the redesign of a couple years ago. The redesign changed nothing drastically, pretty much only polished things, but somehow everything became much slower and gets slower still. Doing any single change requires you to wait. It feels like they do synchronous network requests on every action (which they quite possibly do, judging by the interaction with the mobile client). Sometimes CPU usage spins up too, for good measure. Even completion in text-dropdowns is hella laggy. Just switching to the app is often ‘app is not responding’ territory.

It's productivity software that I need to touch every half-hour or so. Productivity software has to be snappy. Toggl is the opposite of snappy now.

On top of that, the app forcibly updates itself and has no option to disable that—while I'm using Homebrew for all other updates. The Android app is also half-baked compared to the Mac one, which is no surprise by this point.

Toggl's workflow fit me almost like a glove: no automagic guesswork, just manual entry and tracking of me being AFK. No alternative app has that same model, from what I've seen, and/or the interfaces are meh.

Somewhat ironically, Toggl's client apps are open-source and I've cloned the desktop one right after seeing the redesign. But fiddling with them would likely require coming up with my own storage method. I might as well redo the app in Lua with Qt or whatnot, as Lua is hella fast—but the state of GUI libs for non-native languages fills me with endless dread.
Airflow is really limiting in some non-obvious ways: https://medium.com/the-prefect-blog/why-not-airflow-4cfa4232...
I moved into a "new" apartment just over two years ago, and ordered TP on Amazon. 24 or 36 rolls or something. I fat-fingered the "Add to Cart" volume button, and got like 4x36 rolls. I'm a single guy - so I accidentally stocked up in advance! (I am not even half way through two+ years later - happy accident, in retrospect!)
I still have my iPad 2, and it is "technically" a useful tablet. But it is worthless with Safari on modern (bloated) sites and doesn't show Netflix in HD, my two main usecases. No security updates either. I should recycle it but haven't been able to do it.
I stopped having 4 K-cups a day. Instead I grind and brew my favorite coffee every morning. And then I sit on the patio in the early morning sun and enjoy it. Life’s good!
Don't make me type shift on the command line. It makes my pinky finger hurt after a long day.
Hi, no plans to share at the moment, but please sign up for updates here: https://stripe.com/global#AR
Tell me about it.
We moved from Slack to Teams to cut costs. Common story.

Leaves a LOT to be desired.

1. The UI took the fun out of well, whatever, Slack was/is. For some of the common interest channels at work, I see less people going to them.

2. I'm in a group where we frequently need to share images (mostly plots) among the members. Sometimes they just disappear. Yes. You upload an image during a conversation, come back to it a few min later, its not there, and the person at the either end of the chat hasn't seen it either. Guess what OS I'm on: Windows 10 Pro.

Because of this I've resorted to using the web version of teams occasionally, which doesn't seem to suffer from this issue.

3. This one is actually baffling: when I try to upload an image in 2 different conversations (one after another), the second one complains the file already exists. This is during upload.

4. Inconsistent UI: did you know you could reply to individual messages from the Android app for Teams? Doesn't work on web or the windows desktop client. So when I am catching up on a conversation, I occasionally switch to the mobile app to reply to specific messages.

So that's my workflow: the Teams website opened on my laptop browser for most of the messaging, Teams running on mobile, in case I need to reply to specific messages, and Teams running as an application on my laptop for video/screen sharing calls.

5. You cannot specify a Download folder. Yes that's a thing in 2020. [1]

But, yeah, "costs". I miss Slack.

[1] https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/su...