skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It should be weighed like any non-trivial investment. Present an estimated yearly cost curve for keeping the system versus overhauling it: two curves. Upper managers will probably relate to that better than techno-speak.

Typically a replacement system has a nearer-term spike in costs for development, but is cheaper in the longer run than keeping the old one, because the old one will need gradually more expensive duct-tape, chicken-wire, and harder-to-find technicians willing to support something obsolete.

One advantage of the older system is that the costs are more predictable, because it probably works "good enough" at the time and will likely just gradually "degenerate". An overhauled system could be great or a grand failure.

An exception is if a vendor stops supporting a key legacy component and there is not enough demand for 3rd-party tweakers to take up the slack. Similar can happen if a security hole is found in a key legacy component.
Here's my counterpoint. Your argument makes 100% sense in the short-term. In the long run, Amazon's strategically thin margins on technical books will disappear when the other vendors are driven out of business, and books across the board will see a price hike.
You're assuming that Elon Musk personally run each company he found as if it's his full time job.

There's only one Musk.
Existing encoders have suported this for ages using multipass. In the first pass of multipass encoding, the input data from the source clip is analyzed and stored in a log file. In the second pass, the collected data from the first pass is used to achieve the best encoding quality. In video encoding, two-pass encoding is usually controlled by the average bitrate setting or by the bitrate range setting (minimal and maximal allowed bitrate) or by the target video file size setting.

The best way to understand why this is used is to think of a movie — when there are shots that are totally, absolutely black, like scene changes, normal 1-pass CBR encoding uses the exact same amount of data to that part as it uses for complex action scene. But by using VBR and multipass, encoder “knows” that this piece is OK with lower bitrate and that bitrate can be then used for more complex scenes, thus creating better quality for those scenes that require more bitrate.
You can't draw much signal from that. Any submission about that story making the front page would get lots of upvotes, and there are a lot of random or extraneous factors affecting which ones make the front page.
Humm critical infrastructure? No alternatives? Has this guy heard of google hangouts, Skype, WhatsApp, FaceTime, Slack...
Once upon a time, Oracle used Intel C Compiler (ICC) to compile Oracle RDBMS on some platforms [1].

I don't know if Oracle is still using ICC for that or not. (If you download Oracle RDBMS, and check the binaries, you will be able to work it out. I can't be bothered.)

[1] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20030507005238/en/Ora...
We have plenty of ways to observe neural activity, and have had them for years. This chip fab represents an incremental step. In fact if I had to choose for my lab this new chip or some other tech currently available, there are about 5-6 other things I'd prioritize over this Neuralink device.
Epic already had standing based on the $300 million in Fortnite IAP fees Apple has collected, they did not need to do anything else. The rest was for media attention.
Ya, my bad, haven't seen The Godfather and haven't heard that phrase used much.
They have the app as long as they don't have to reinstall it (new or replacement phone)
And this assumption is based on what exactly?
> (sidebar — I'm not white)

Thank you.
This is still the most powerful story I've ever read, I wouldn't wish the bus trip section on my worst enemy.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/08/18/the-marriage-c...
Codecs with better understanding of what a complex scene looks like (and allocates more bitrate accordingly) will do better, and codecs that are better are blurring away details instead of blocking will do better as well.

Keep in mind this is on Youtube and uploaded by some shitty clip site, so it's a very biased example. In this case there are four lossy encode steps involved: master -> bluray -> clipsite's master -> Youtube encode. Youtube in particular has absolutely horrific, just inexcusably bad bitrate even at the highest quality they'll give you. I'd have to see what the original Bluray looks like in this case to see if there's really a problem worth worrying about here.
> A 1 hr clip was maybe 800mb in prime, but a few gigabytes from apple.

Assuming x264 encoding, that sounds about right for 720p vs 1080p.
It's the correct goal to aim for here, beyond just the fees. Multiple fully functioning app stores is good for consumers on both platforms.
>formal software verification

There is a big misconception that this provides some sort of guarantee that the software will not behave in unexpected ways. It is just another tool and as such it has its own limits.
Ask for money up front. It proves people will pay. There is no proxy for willingness to pay, not even a contract.

It not only validates that there is a paying market, it validates that you have what it takes to ask for money. A lot of people don’t. That’s why proxies for paying are attractive.
Seriously? You really think that the purpose of charging for electricity is to be mean to poor people?

Electricity is generated by enormous, complicated machines. Those machines cost money to build and maintain. They consume massive amounts of coal or natural gas, which has to be transported in. They have to pay specialists to keep everything running. They need to have people on call 24/7/365 to maintain thousands of miles of wires.

All of that costs money.

There's a simple rule: Everyone pays for the electricity they consume.

The electrical power industry is highly regulated by the government. Utilities have to provide power to all areas, they can't overcharge people too far above their costs, and they have to give plenty of notice before rate increases or disconnection for non-payment.
[Edited - point taken ]

I apologize for having jumped the gun here. I guess your reply was appropriate for a 'Show HN' thread, since these threads are feedback requests.
The HBO intro’s white noise background is pretty bad too. Quite blocky and degraded.
Plus as it's HN, there's a lot of people who want to have control over what their customers do with their products. lol. It's like those threads where some company is exposed for spying on their users, where a bunch of people argue that it's just telemetry and they wouldn't know what their customers wanted if they didn't spy on them and stuff.
If your source of information is Adam Curry then I just don't know what to tell you. On that note alone I'm pessimistic that we could have a meaningful conversation. That fella is so unhinged he is likely an undiagnosed schizophrenic.

Also we are not likely to agree on 80% of the issues. At least not when weighted by relevance. People who make fun of the catastrophe that is climate change and the collapse of the ecosystems will never find a common ground with progressives.

I'm sorry to tell you this but the modern conservative movements have taken a divorce from reality and dwell in an alternative reality that only exists in their minds.

I just can't see a common ground to launch from. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts.
30% sounds steep, I agree. But it's also industry standard. See: Google Play Store, Microsoft Store, Steam, Samsung Galaxy Store, Amazon App Store, etc.
Perhaps that works for epic as well, giving apple customers an incentive to move to a platform that allows side loading?
"To compare apples to apples..."
Reminds me of running to the PO box for the Lindsay's Technical Books catalog when I was a kid. Someday I'll build that milling machine from scratch.
Does MS Exchange or any other relatively big email server allow multiple emails with mixed case? As far as i'm aware all of the big consumer providers (Google, Yahoo, Outlook) don't allow it.
An example of beliefs affecting technology is the coal industry's wildly successful astroturfing campaign against nuclear power in the 1960s and 1970s.

Nuclear power was an existential threat to coal mining but was derailed almost completely by manipulating people's beliefs.
> Apple acts on my behalf as a security officer - they have no interest in selling me ads - they already got their revenue hunger satiated from the high price of my device and all the internal Apple services I pay for (Apple music, TV, icloud, etc).

They remove apps that compete with their own apps even if those apps existed before hand. They disallow cloud gaming because it they can't collect fees from it or control it. They've already done a long list of "abuses" that have nothing to do with your device security (or battery life, etc).

Honestly I do think Apple has done a great job of device security and I think they could do a lot more with their OS. I don't see why I need an app store to prevent apps from sniffing off my personal data, usage patterns, cookies, etc -- the OS could protect those from me if that's what Apple wants to do.

> Apple should be charging way more for exclusive access to their App store. It's their turf.

I think something is likely anti-competitive when there is absolutely no market pressure on pricing.
The AI is already here. It's called technocapitalism. We're not becoming an AI, we're being controlled and modified by one, so as to better fit its teleology.
It shows they have a majority share of the mobile OS market in the US; therefore, they can basically act like they have a monopoly in the US. Everyone else is a distant second, so they can monopolize or attempt to monopolize the mobile app market.
Mmmh, I considered a MITM attack an interception. While maybe making a custom browser (that obviously have access to the webpage) could be considered as "In the Middle" I do not think the definition sticks to it, but they seem to do, given your link. I understand the reasoning but I dont share it, it sort of make sense, but doesnt. If someone got to install a "Chrome Embedded Framework" then they already bypassed the "(in)secure screen", but I see how this could be a problem..
Regardless of where you stand on this brouhaha, it's still a cautionary tale about what can go wrong when you develop for a walled garden platform where your access to developer tools can be revoked on a whim.
Is it possible to make one of these robots cheaply? It seems like the cost of actuators (which you might need dozens of) and to a lesser extent sensors would make this cost-prohibitive for most uses.

For instance, if you were replacing a human salary, it might make sense to purchase a hundred-thousand-dollar robot, but if you just want something to pull weeds in your yard once in awhile, it might be hard to justify spending more than a couple thousand. If the parts alone cost tens of thousands, then that's a pretty big economic limitation on how the technology gets used.
Love this idea. I was a fan of this novel a long time ago. I really want a bite-size reading newsletter style like this.

What I think is you should have an index of similar novels too. You can put a list of recommended novels in the newsletter email, or sent a follow up email after finishing the whole seris of 117 chapters of Monte Cristo.
I wonder how often human players invent explanations for what is really just a gut instinct?
Is there anything besides (massive) engineering challenges standing between more advanced devices like this physically eating away at cancerous tumors in the same way physicians use special maggots for wound debridement?
>Well, how could Epic continue developing unreal engine for iOS without a developer account?
I thinl this nicely sumariges whats wrong - why the hell should one need an account somewhere to develop software for an OS!

Thats a totally arbitrary limitation and as nicely illustrated by Apple - very very dangerous.
Well, Bitcoin design WAS well thought out, until Blockstream nerfed it, and pushed its own product, Lightning Network.
Did you email a lot of reporters about your product?

How did you make the list of reporters to email?

Did you email them pre-made articles?
My point is that if Netflix thinks they can do better, it would be great to see their code contributed to the public, since they're using an open source program to do all their encodes.

Also, you're making a slight mistake. About a decade ago (?), x264 was changed so that even 2-pass mode is really just using CRF under the hood. It's not "achieving the best quality", it's just figuring out what quantizers you need to hit your average bitrate target exactly. Some more information about that here: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264

> normal 1-pass CBR encoding

You may be confusing constant bitrate (which no one should ever use) with CRF (constant rate factor), which varies the bitrate from frame to frame and scene to scene, without having to do a 2 pass encode.
Fine software, fine company.
Well, clearly it’s profitable enough because companies bend over backwards to launch on iOS.

And Apple doesn’t “deserve” anything anymore than any company deserve anything. Apple built the iOS and iPhone platform, so they can charge based on that.

> ...lower cuts could result in lower prices

I’m not confident that if Apple stopped taking a cut that companies would lower prices.
Meh, my kids just used the Google Meet links the teachers sent out when Zoom was down. Meet is even better - no app needed. Schools already have Google Classroom. With Meet you just click the link and it works.
I'm sorry but I need an example. This is not my daily experience.
Advanced Operating Systems COMP9242 2020/T2
It's payment in-app that are the issue, not payments to the store. Apple played no role in generating these in-app payments, and shouldn't have the right to mandate use of its payment solution. If you bought Fortnite at a store, would the store get money over purchases made later inside the Fortnite application? Of course not.
Work at a scale that resonates with you
I think the problem with downvotes is that they tend to make the comment invisible. Initial downvotes don't reflect the community unless it's a general consensus (political flame bait).

They get buried and then no one ever sees them to upvote. The visibility in the absence of raw numbers works as a reference and sometimes it is misleading.
Considering a teenager recently commandeered the Twitter accounts of a number of world leaders, and then used this awesome power to run a two-bit scam with electronic money, makes me think cyberpunk is indeed dead because it is now reality.
This is a breath of fresh air in comparison to HN's typical ignorance on IPOs. I can see why it wouldn't be popular here.

A mix of the theoretical grounding of the activity with the on-the-ground realities of filling up a book and mechanics of how it happens. The IPO isn't perfect, and is in need of a software-defined overhaul, but does have clear value. We'll see if Carta's Xchange product can live up those goals.
I think this comment highlights your inexperience in enterprise it systems. There challenges facing enterprise IT are not due to there being no good engineers - because all of them are working in Silicon Valley.

It is a people problem. Every department, every group, entry business unit is its own little kingdom that is fiercely defended by its workers. They cling on to it because that’s all they have done for the last 20 years. They know that if this system gets modernized, then their job is toast. Their job is vapor ware and they know it.

Having worked with many state and local governments, I see that these entities are never in favor of a business process redesign that simplified things, unless the consultants carve out a special exception for their little Access database or somehow save their pre historic C# ASP.Net application.
In effect, paper US currency does have an expiration date, because common denominations last 5-8 years. Or so I've read.
You can throw "renewables" in there too. Everyone just assumes battery tech is on some kind of moore's law scaling just like how everyone thought SSDs were going to be 1c per TB by now.
That doesn't make sense. The apps can be made available outside of the play s tore. There's no state level censorship here.
When preparing for a battle like this that's basic optics. Get the users on your side. But don't be fooled for a minute, in the end this is simply Epic not liking to give Apple a cut of what they consider their income. What surprises me is how easily people are fooled about this.
Definitely - it is better than keeping tabs on thousands of small predators (apps) that want to milk your data at every instant possible.

Apple's entire business model for decades is about selling hardware and services, not advertisement. And they're doubling down on it.

The alternatives are "open source" masquerators like Ubuntu who had a boatload of Amazon spyware in it.

This is an age old argument about Apple. Last couple of months for Apple has been rough in terms of PR, but I can point you to many many threads about how Apple cares about their users and despite of the "dictator" status, they're a safe bet relative to what other options we have available. It is fashionable during this time to hate on Apple. See @dang's warning at the top of the thread - I've kind of lost hope in HN since it has become too emotional and less objective day by day.
That's true, but still a far cry from Valve which has native Linux support for Steam and is actively involved in many open source projects.
Switching to another platform is hard. That's why it's called a walled garden.
In this case the Sherman Act is relevant because all of Epic's federal claims are brought under the Sherman Act. (There are some California specific claims too.)

However, it is true that some of Epic's claims were brought under Section 1 of the Sherman Act which do not necessarily require monopoly power. (Section 1 has to deal with unreasonable restraints of trade, whereas Section 2 deals with monopolies.)
Wage garnishment? Works for child custody, use it for something more critical.

If they don't have wages, allowing people to relocate with a large time frame from delinquency (like 3 months) without electricity cuts.

Debt accumulation without interest whose payments can be garnished from wages once pay arrives.

There are many ways of solving the problem if there's will to do so.
Crime rate is different. There are at least 3 ways to do the statistic:

1. What race has the biggest number being killed by cops? (answer: white)

2. What race has the most per-capita being killed by cops? (answer: black)

3. What race is most likely to be killed by cops if they get in a police confrontation? (answer: white)

The obvious solution for non-equality with #2 is to fix the culture so that conflict with the cops is less likely. Don't do crime. If you are stopped by cops, be fully compliant and don't look like a threat. When stopped by the cops, don't even think of reaching for something they can't see. You just wait, and then you'll be able to sort things out in court.

Eh, we also should fix the non-equality with #3. It shouldn't be more excusable to shoot white people.
Quantum Simulation of Quantum Crystals
> Are Tesla, SpaceX, etc. engineers generally... happy/satisfied?

I don't work at either but I have watched plenty of SpaceX product, err, rocket launches, and they seem to frequently live-stream from their Hawthorn CA headquarters with lots of gleeful & cheering employees. My impression is that at least for SpaceX, it's probably both highly demanding and highly rewarding. In another life I'd love to work at a company like that!
> The app in question would presumably be denied by Apple.

Why would you presume that? How would Apple even know?

Many popular apps collect location data, and this is allowed on iOS. Once the location data has left the device and been transmitted to 3rd party services, Apple has no control or knowledge of what happens to the data.
I remember that article too! Can’t believe it was 17 years ago.
> I’m not sure I fully understand, in retrospect, the desire to shave off inconvenient corners for large life events you do so rarely.

Same. I’ve seen people but one car over another just because it was available nearby instead of a half hour bus ride away. How many times in your life do you buy a car that an extra half hour is significant?
An important part of this is that as far as I can tell, most AAA mobile games now ship all but the most fundamental "code updates" as updates to interpreted scripts/data files over the Internet, bypassing the App Store update mechanism. (Where does data end and code begin? That's a philosophical argument that historically Apple could look the other way on for high-performing mobile games with weekly or even more frequent event releases.)

Part of the calculus must have been that Fortnite was stable enough, especially from a low-level and netcode perspective, that it could do without needing App Store updates to remain cross-play compatible in the medium-term.
The scam here relies on someone having compromised the network of the company sending the instructions. In that situation, wouldn't you have to assume the intruder found the secret key?
How much would this technology cost?
Also have to mention apple is charging a fee way outside the norm for a payment processor at 30%.
Have to also remember to deploy to the app store and a lot of the development has to be done on a Mac. So it is really equivalent of saying you must buy the factory from us, only sell in our store, and only use our payment processor.
Different countries have different cultural norms and laws.
Back then 'the media' was a thing. Walter Cronkite would come on TV and tell everybody what was going on, and you'd see some footage of some guys in Vietnam looking miserable and that was it. That level of political simplification isn't an option anymore. We're no longer hidden from the complexities festering beneath the surface of everything happening around us.
~25% (straight line) of their customer base churns to a new iPhone every year [1].

Those customers will no longer be able to download Fortnite.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/08/four-year-smartphone-upgrades...
we can hardly observe running code on computers, even when we have the source. Programmers have trouble understanding what their own code is doing!
WebTorrent Desktop 0.24.0 Released
New Way to Manage Subscriptions on Android
I have created a new Android app with a new way to manage subscriptions so that you will never forget one in it. I would appreciate it if it would be reviewed.
there isn't necessarily a fix. all compression algorithms expand the size of the data on most inputs in order to make certain inputs with sufficiently regular patterns a lot smaller. it just so happens that most of the images/video/audio/text/etc people are interested in is fairly regular. with a lossy compression algorithm that is required to hit a certain compression ratio to keep the bitrate under some threshold, the only way to be able to guarantee that it is hit on uncompressible input is to introduce regularity/remove randomness, and in the case of video the easiest and least visually distorting way to do so is to pixelate it. this particular video is basically random noise which is incompressible by definition, which is why the result is so bad. if it was 1080p going in and the output size is required to be reduced by 16x, reducing the resolution to 480x270 is about as good you can do.
You can validate your contract all you want, but if it matters in which order executions matter, you're still subject to the whims of the underlying blockchain.
It looks like it is not good for daily dev use. I'm hoping the next iteration could be built using Cortex-A77 or more powerful.
Eg. what alternative?