skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Magnetars are even more mindblowing than blackholes, in my opinion.

Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Magnetars, to blow your mind as well:

"X-ray photons readily split in two or merge. The vacuum itself is polarized, becoming strongly birefringent, like a calcite crystal. Atoms are deformed into long cylinders thinner than the quantum-relativistic de Broglie wavelength of an electron." In a field of about 10^5 Tesla atomic orbitals deform into rod shapes. At 10^10 Tesla, a hydrogen atom becomes a spindle 200 times narrower than its normal diameter., from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar

Edit:

"Die Massendichte, die einem derartigen Magnetfeld über seine Energiedichte in Kombination mit der Äquivalenz von Masse und Energie gemäß E = m c^2 zugeordnet werden kann, liegt im Bereich einiger Dutzend Kilogramm pro Kubikmillimeter (kg/mm3)", from german Wikipedia, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar#Entstehung

says that the mass density (via energy-mass equivalence) of such strong magnetic fields might be dozens of kilograms per cubic millimeter (kg/mm^3).

Mind. Blown.
> whether people are the cause. Of. Course. We. Are.

And that's how conversations go to hell. You just postulate your own correctness and the opposing side recoils from that. Do you really think it's productive?
> From split brain patients we know that there are two fully functioning halfs

I don't think it necessarily shows that. The "two halves" may just be a phenomenon that arises when the brain splits, not something that's normally there. And I believe there have been recent studies that even brought the original split brain conclusions into question, i.e., there might still be communication happening between the two halves.
Hi HN,

We just launched Vocally.us - a tool to collect qualitative feedback from your users, customers, employees or market using intuitive voice surveys.

We built Vocally.us because despite working with tons of data in our past, we always felt like there was something missing the connected quant metrics (the What) with qualitative rationale (the Why).

We think that Product, Research and Marketing teams could all benefit for a tool that connects the What to the Why by making it easier to capture quant and qual data and connecting the dots between them.

Here's a short demo survey you can take yourself: http://bit.ly/Vocallyus-short-demo

Here's a full-featured version:
http://bit.ly/Vocallyus-full-featured-demo

Obviously there are tons of features missing and a long roadmap ahead, but would love to get your feedback on what you think of our stab at the MVP.

Welcome all feedback and comments.

Cheers!
That just seems to move along in little tiny steps. No balance or slip recovery shown. That's the wind-up toy level of walking.[1]

Still, it shouldn't be that hard to make a small version of Big Dog technology now. They put a lot of money into fast hydraulic servos, which you no longer need for anything smaller than a horse. Gyros and accelerometers are cheap now, because they're phone parts. Motors and motor controllers are much better and cheaper now.
Big Dog's compute power was a Pentium 4, which is nothing today. Force feedback sensors for the feet are still expensive, because there's no mass market. You need those for slip control.

[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Wind-Up-Wooly-Walker/194850858
Other commentary on this paper: https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-linked-groups-pus...

Bannon clearly has a narrative he wants to push, and this is just part of that play. This is far from objective science. The authors and funding clearly have huge conflicts of interest. The claims made are extraordinary compared with most other experts in the field. Those two facts alone are enough to significantly discount any claims made in the paper.
>but evolution must have led them out of wildfire conditions in the past.

or maybe such extreme wildfire didn't happen frequently enough in the past, for animal to develop a method to mitigate.
Please keep nationalistic flamebait off HN. We've had to ask you this before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Ask HN: How do you manage a bunch of microservices?
I have a project that is currently running on 9 microservices. I don't have a centralized place to manage all of them and it's annoying to go to 9 different dashboards just to make sure my service is running. I was wondering what other people do to consolidate all of their services' deployment statuses/metrics in one place.
And yet you ask any developer shop they will say it’s a good thing that they don’t have support 20 different OS matrixes like they do on Android
FWIW I’ve had great success using ghostunnel[0] instead of stunnel in prod. Big fan.

[0] https://github.com/ghostunnel/ghostunnel
I'd say the fact that 1) it's very lightweight/portable and 2) a bit more constrained in terms of hardware. I can't open 50 tabs and watch YouTube in the background. Additionally, I have some side projects on ARM code that, previously, I had to cross-compile on my desktop. Native development is a small boost, but not massive in comparison to the smaller hardware.

I could get the same "constrained hardware" effect by just hacking an older 2015 laptop, but the laptop is essentially a 2015 CPU with 2019 parts, so if I were to hack an older laptop to upgrade it'd likely be ~$200 since I wouldn't have the advantage of purchasing + assembling parts in bulk to reduce cost (also, my older laptop doesn't have a GPU).

Aside from cost, something a hacked older laptop wouldn't have (unless I rip out the CPU from its motherboard, which I wouldn't be willing to do) is the pretty amazing case and how light it is. The lightweightedness and good feel of the case makes it extremely portable for me.

Some might argue that "constrained hardware" is a con, but to me that's like saying using a headless system is a con. If you don't need/want it, why use it? Additionally, it's not like you're paying an extra/similar amount for lesser hardware -- it falls far below the typical market $/perf curve.
Not the parent but anyway: my completely tech-illiterare parents have been using Antergos (which is based on Arch, and with Cinnamon) now for several years without any issues. They use only browser and email most of the time, but it's nice to have a always up to date system even though it does not matter to them.

I consider user friendliness mostly just a buzzword in linux world these days. Almost everything works out of the box and if not you still need specific knowledge and/or help (and willingness to google error messages) to solve the issue no matter what distro you choose. If you have some special hardware or needs then some distros are better and easier to use but that's another story.

Antergos is what I recommend these days to beginners since it's easy and simultaneously offers most (all) of the benefits of Arch. Modern rolling release distros in general are nothing to be scared of.
Hmm, depends, it's one way to aim towards objectivity though. Unless of course these being exists in dimensions where base reality itself necessitates a different mathematical makeup ... causing the entities themselves to respond to your presence with "yeah, right, nice try fantasy person, wink-wink, now get out of my day dream"
Yea I meant a for-each loop.
Apple does not own the device though.

If they own the device, then I want my 1k back.
Fancy Shops Harm Start Ups (2014)
>It should be noted, they don't build 2 bedroom homes anymore

I don't know if this is what you meant by this, but I do see this same argument come up a lot, and it's a great example of the "entitlement" I'm referring to.

The only reason it would be relevant that they don't build 2 bedroom houses anymore is if you for some reason think you must have a newly built houses. The old 2 bedroom houses didn't suddenly disappear. They are there in abundance for great prices (at least in my metro), but my extended circle (close friends plus people I know from childhood/high school/etc) won't buy them because they insist on new builds or new renovations.
Cool... i just wander that does AHK supports detect when clicking to a textbox of any Windows apps?
My wish is I want to use terminal bindkey when typing in textbox. For example, Ctrl + E = End, Ctrl + A A = Home...
Thanks! I'll give it a try. It looks like it might help.

In general, I'm happy with Sway, but it would be nice to have an X option that works for my workflow too (gnome doesn't seem to have the screen tearing issues i3 did).
Local control over zoning is a massive problem. Most people agree that building more homes would bring housing prices down. However, most cities have more than half of the land exclusively reserved for single family homes and have rules that prevent any creativity or density. They want other places to add the housing. I can't see the problems going away unless entire states reform zoning.
Would love to hear more about API-QL. It doesn't sound like this is something available for public use yet. Is there any plan to open source this?
Open up gnome tweak tool, go in the extensions tab, and on the "material shell", there is a little cog next to the switch. Click on it and there you have the available configuration options made available. Actually, this is how you can configure most shell extensions ;)
Very well written and amazing job. I really trust Dropbox engineering teams. My only wish would be the return of the simple desktop app for those of us that just need ultra reliable synced folders (I use macOS). The app today is bloated and upon boot takes 600MB of RAM. Would you guys ever consider a streamlined version of the app for desktop?
Oculus Quest 2
I will project confidence while stating that you can go fuck yourself.

In the ass.

With a rake.

dick face
Modern Linux kernels can also run binaries compiled in the 90s. Apple just doesn't care.
> Part of that comes from Facebook's aggressive policy about making Facebook social media accounts (whose terms of service revolve around a "real name" policy) mandatory to use new Oculus VR headsets, including the Quest 2.

That's all I need to know to stay away from this. 300 bucks and you still need to use a Facebook account?? No thanks
Social psychology is one trainwreck.

Almost everything we thoght we learned from it sooner or later does not replicate
I see this argument, but it has limits. A seasonal farmworker today has access to Google and Wikipedia, but they are still working 12 hour days. They are less likely to get communicable diseases due to vaccination and disease eradication, but hospital stays are more prohibitively expensive than before. It's complex.
Maybe those who now complain about it becoming a product didn't agree with Steve Jobs.
How green-friendly is cremation at this point?

I'd personally prefer not taking up space. Just give me a web page memorial in case people want to "visit" with me and I can even curate it before I die, and I'm good.
>> Actually the median 401k balance at retirement is only around 60k, so that alone would quadruple their retirement savings.

You are comparing apples and oranges. You are comparing today's values at retirement to future values at retirement. It is almost certain that $200k 40yrs from now will not be worth $200k in today's dollars. Inflation accrued over 40yrs -- however low and however faked -- is absolutely going to make that $200k seem not so much.

Presumably, some of the $200k invested will grow, but also, not all the 200k is invested right now, it drips in over 40yrs.

You also forget the wildcard of healthcare lottery. One large medical surgery co-pay and you lose half your nextegg.
That kind of math is fine. The mod operator is not one that everyone uses but add/sub/mul/div is something most people use all the time. It is why I avoid mod in that situation.

Once I show someone the 'mod' trick they instantly get it (if they have any sort of math background) but I want to avoid as much as possible anything tricky in a interview. I want them relaxed and not tense. As that is a different kind of test. Throwing in a trivia trick can hurt the interview. I have run across many programmers that are decent at it and have never used it.

Also for your problem it would depend on the level you are interviewing for and how much time you want to allocate for it. As it is also a balance of filter and getting to know them which is mostly time management on your part. Remember you probably are going to be working with them. So a bit of chit chat goes a long way too. You can also use 'fizzbuzz' as a question 'do you know the trick of fizzbuzz'. If I show them the mod trick and they get it right away they show aptitude to learn. If they already know it then see if they can explain it. etc etc... Get them to talk. Also talk back to them like a peer as they very well could be! They should be interviewing you too.

I just try to avoid tricky bits in interviews and expecting tricky results from them. It would be like asking the to write a swap two values function and expecting the triple xor solution. Tricky is for something you have been working on for 3 weeks and need a better solution, plus two spike stories. It is not for interviews. :) Just ask yourself would you be massively annoyed if someone asked you this in an interview with no context as to why and expected a particular answer. If the answer is you would be annoyed then do not do it. If you feel it is OK and you would expect it then go for it. Just remember your time management.
So? Apple has a monopoly on Apple products? Big deal. Ford has a monopoly on Ford trucks, Sony has a monopoly on playstations.
Two people can be simultaneously racist.
I'm not super knowledgeable about Rust, but I have tried poking at it a few times, so... you know.

Rust seems to be extremely focused on memory safety. Meanwhile Ada is much more focused on correctness in general. Restricting the discussion to simply memory safety ignores, well, most of anything that might be programmed.

Ada also has more memory safety options than people tend to talk about. As others have mentioned, it's possible to allocate quite a bit on the stack. Other rules also prevent some reference issues.

One thing I rarely see mentioned are memory pools and subpools. It is possible to ensure whole types are allocated in a particular subpool, and deallocation can be left for when the subpool falls out of scope.
Even when it was a nice "do one simple thing" company, that thing was a bit of a square peg. The fact is that the hierarchical file system is a silly way of structuring data that doesn't meat people's needs.

I've never understood how Dropbox could be a sustainable business. All the walled gardens have legitimate UX and anti-competative / anti-interopt reasons to get away from files, and the actual core service Dropbox provides is quite commoditized.
The thing I saw with Pascal in the late 70's / early 80's was that in order to handle industrial use cases, each computer company invented its own dialect (I worked on one at Burroughs).

That was one of the problems Ada addressed. But its initial problem was the cost of compilation and builds on the hardware of the time. That got sorted out by the end of the 80's, but then other factors like contractors not wanting their customer telling them how to do their work came into play. Sort of a confusion of requirements and implementation methods.
I think people generally perceive these entities as being advanced and hyper intelligent, hence the math question.

But yeah, still not conclusive either way (but the most likely answer is still that they're constructions of your own mind).
Facebook's Project Aria is test-driving tech for AR glasses
Canada Opens World's Longest Hiking Trail from Coast to Coast
It's likely because of the Apple Watch Series 6, which will almost certainly release with WatchOS 7, which is in-turn only compatible with iOS 14. The Series 6 launches Friday, so if they wanted to delay iOS 14, they'd have to delay that launch too.
SOC2 is for the US as ISO27001 is for EU. The two overlap somewhat, so there are some efficiencies for doing them at the same time when you get into the audit mode. When I ran both for our startup, I found ISO27001 to be easier to get.
The only thing better than this article is the author.
These modern web APIs have a massive user experience problem, and if we want the web to be truly competitive with native, we'd be foolish to ignore that.

Beyond the "punch the monkey" game you mention, another massive problem is that web push notifications have just become another vector to deliver spam to users. If you look at devices belonging to "normal" users, you'll often see dozens of spammy web notifications (pornographic content, "30% off, BUY NOW", etc...). And because these are average users, they don't necessarily understand how to configure their devices to reduce or eliminate the spam.

Web push notifications needs a way to proactively filter out those that abuse the API, otherwise its doomed to become just another vector for spam that pisses off end users.
After reading his wikipedia page it's mind-boggling to me that this guy was trusted at all. He's literally a (failed) car salesman!
This is definitely something we're talking about. We're aware there are a set of users who want just sync and we're figuring out how to ship that while making our other features discoverable.
Sorry, I seem to have partly confused this with another approach, but can't find the paper at the moment.

That being said, it does read like it uses similar approaches to automated reference counting: code is inserted by the compiler to manage reference counts and eventually dispose of objects when no longer referenced. It also appears that there are approaches toward using regions and linear types where possible. I think the takeaway though is that ASAP makes as many decisions as it possibly can to statically enforce memory safety and reclamation, but building a finely grained program-specific approach toward garbage collection for anything else. Literally every distinct program would result in a distinct garbage collector tailored to that program that is inlined into the code.
We get it. The simple truth is we need to provide more than just storage to succeed in the marketplace. We rewrote our sync engine recently to make things much more performant and we're working on shipping more value to users with fewer upsells.

https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-o...

FWIW you can turn off all the notifications in the preference panel.
Strongly agree with you. When Apple things fails to 'just work' it is a nightmare. I used to have this issue for downloading MacOS updates. My internet wasn't too fast and it would get interrupted and restart from zero. Who can't do download resume in the last 10 years, I would assume only apple. My office network was faster and we also had those cache server, it worked for everyone except me. MacOS provided zero hint and it 'just failed to work'. Office internet was fast enough to download in multi MB/s yet Apple update weeks after released (so I don't think there was rush and it was US night) would have speeds 50 KB/s to < 500 KB/s and of course you can't choose a mirror or whatever cause it 's meant to 'just work'.

This is just one example that I vividly recall. The simplest of operation downloading of an update, only apple can make it as big a nightmare as it was. Now they do a lot of things fabulously but when the fail they just fall on their face and ignore it or they would fail where I can't even imagine how to fail this bad.

The latest blunder (again download), my iPhone lost it's wifi after a fall and wow! behold you can't download an update over cellular. Apple will make you save your money by not using your expensive cellular data after all it's so much more expensive than your $800 phone.
Safari -> share icon -> Add to homescreen
> glorification of suicide bombing and the killing of US soldiers on Al Jazeera

I've read AJE occasionally for years; I read BBC for the same reason: to get perspective outside of North America. I've NEVER noticed anything so egregious... I've considered the reporting and editorial to be at par with BBC. Can you provide examples? Is the english content significantly different from other languages?
This is another example of what the GP comment is complaining about. It's not a DIY Alexa. Alexa is the virtual assistant API. This is a DIY Amazon Echo that still relies on the Alexa service.
that's a good point. i'd add that even in the legal system, assigning blame is highly problematic because decisions are overwhelmingly pressured into being purely binary findings, whereas blame is nearly always shared by multiple entities. lawsuits would be much better if the "win-lose" dichotomy was entirely abolished in all its forms.

in this case, the backup driver should shoulder some blame, but not the majority of it, and commensurately, should not face any of the harsh penalties associated with manslaughter.
Pretty simple answer. in August 2020 they became the first $2 trillion U.S. company. There is no repercussion for them at this point to treat everyone from Epic Games, to your run-of-the-mill Xcode devs, like trash.

In the case of the former, you can outlast these comparatively small players for decades with flush cash reserves and an army of bored attorneys with nothing better to do than watch your pittance of a legal team fight it endlessly until the last star falls from the heavens. Epic may want a fight, but its investors would capitulate sooner than people like Tim Sweeney think.

as for the latter, Apple has a fun track record of running small developers into the dirt. Either you sell your company to them, or they just build the same app in-house and blacklist you from the market.

Id also argue that the average apple afficionado outside of HN just doesnt care what apple does. Apple makes affluent status symbols and markets a premium brand identity, so developers like facebook and epic are hungry to tap into a market thats not only willing to drop more than a grand on a cellphone and accessories, but doesnt question often times predatory microtransactions. They want cash cows, apple runs the farm.

full confession though, i dont know how small devs fight this, and id be eager to know if anyone on HN has a cogent strategy? a boycott seems most effective.
https://defipulse.com is the new hype. The ICO hype has turned into DeFi hype. Plus NFT's and decentralized storage hype around the corner.

Reddit also added ETH-based coins to some subreddits this year and is doing an ETH scaling competition - https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/hbjx25/the_great_...

https://www.reddit.com/community-points
Plenty of money in that. Look at how many startups and large tech cos are solving this problem under different skins. Everything from Notion to iCloud to Netflix remembering the timestamp you stopped falls under this broad umbrella problem.

Imagine if you were the Stripe of multi-device sync. Sure maybe end users will never know your name but damn you’d be drowning in money.

Like imagine adding multidevice sync to your product with a simple library instead of everyone cobbling it from scratch and hiring huge teams to make it reliable.
No, I haven't. I mainly work with Vertica and did some troubleshooting on a Redshift cluster. I've mainly read comparisons of performance and price/perf vs. those platforms.

Reading through their docs their semi-structured data support is similar to Vertica's flex tables. It's a handy feature, but not critical IME.
I always found it somewhat amusing that people used to point to that quote by Jobs as a knock on him for being wrong. Lately it seems like he may have been right all along.
And while I'm not too sure of the development history behind PostgreSQL's PL/pgSQL (I suspect Oracle's PL/SQL had influence), the Ada influence necessarily shows there as well.
“Insanely Fast”: Reviews in for GeForce RTX 3080
There is no smartphone which can run Android without binary blobs. Exceptions: https://tehnoetic.com/mobile-devices, but many essential things just don't work.