skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Two-million-year-old skull of human 'cousin' unearthed
It's not condescending, it's realistic. It's how I (as a tech person) approach most non-tech things in life. I rent because I don't want to deal with maintaining a house. I use public transit because I don't want to deal with maintaining a car. And so on.

I may be an extreme example in some ways, but everyone only has so many fucks to give, and most people have legitimately exhausted their budget by the time they get to tech policy.
I don't know what you mean by efficiency but trees grow on their own while whatever technology you use for carbon capture will need an external energy input. If we have trouble meeting current energy demand with carbon free energy sources then we will have even more trouble if we increase energy demand even further.
What about Trinidad and Tobago?

I remember there was an international ruling where the US was in a trade violation, and I thought the country was permitted to waive IP enforcement until they were compensated.

I am having trouble finding the reference.
The biggest piece that is missing is you have to go out of your way to get sane dependency management. I have only used JS and F# (same dependency management as C#) out of your mentions, and it's the official tools that enable the local dependency management with a single command ("npm install X" or "dotnet add package X").

If you're using python, you don't know to check out pyenv/etc until you have a huge mess on your computer due to pip's behavior.
Are there any options like these with redundancy built into the storage?
They should host the software in France, like VideoLan.

https://www.videolan.org/legal.html

>>> Are libdvdcss and libaacs legal? libdvdcss is a library that can find and guess keys from a DVD in order to decrypt it. This method is authorized by a French law decision CE 10e et 9e sous­sect., 16 juillet 2008, n° 301843 on interoperability.

>>> Patents and codec licenses. Neither French law nor European conventions recognize software as patentable (see French section below). Therefore, software patents licenses do not apply on VideoLAN software.
I swear I contemplated going in to wildlife biology as a kid, but decided against it because I figured there was no more cool, furry animals to discover. I also may have misguidedly thought this was the field to enter if I wanted to find Bigfoot. :-P

Exciting for the biology crowd especially. Very cool. Obligatory dark realization: Any new species discovered these days must almost certainly immediately recognized as endangered. Still cool.
Wow, some really great entries and winners. The macro world is so interesting. The little I've dabbled has always resulted in some new discovery of a part of a flower or insect that you'd never notice otherwise. I've never gone all in and bought a macro lens, but with some cheap extension tubes (https://photographylife.com/what-is-an-extension-tube) and a manual focus lens you can do a really nice job for quite cheap!
A solution to this walled garden paradox is to participate both in the Apple ecosystem and the open ones. Whenever you buy a new Apple device, invest the same amount in stock, and eventually you will have financed all of it.
You still got your ISP which likely includes some verbiage in the contract about prohibited use (but even if it doesn't, if the law makes it illegal, you and your ISP can be taken to court with it).
> Nuclear caused extinction is actually a preferable outcome

Wtf? Strong disagree. Extinction is the end. Anything else is of course preferable as it means live goes on and civilization has the chance to rise again.

> I'd rather just instantly die than live in a brutal post sociatle apocalypse.

That is just because because you're weak, your bloodline is weak, and you will not survive the winter without central heating and Uber Eats. But other people are more resilient.
My phone isn't mine, even though I payed over $1k for it, I'm not able to screenshot certain apps with no way to bypass...
Yep, Steve Blank wrote an article analysing the situation in 2016: https://www.inc.com/steve-blank/tim-cook-steve-ballmer-visio...
Arecibo radio telescope now at risk of collapsing after second cable breaks
https://archive.vn/9McmQ
Also Krita is improving pretty much constantly to become the "Blender of drawing".
It is typically done in compositing since it is impractical to render with depth of field which gives you a lot more noise and takes away your ability to change it without a re-render.
Can I read your thesis?
That's a fair point that I hadn't considered, and I appreciate it. But I still feel like "ability to use your computer as a service" is not something I signed up for.
Marginal cost. You don't build one network per drive.

I wouldn't personally say "essentially free" though.
No problem, now it's here: https://pastebin.com/0U14ahpm
Selfies and Sharia Police
To be fair, Google's pricing on storage is more than reasonable. I pay £2.50/month for 200gb of storage which more than covers my lifetimes worth of photos so far (in full res with a fair few RAW photos in there too).

And they're not deleting any photos that users already uploaded. I think Google deserve all the criticism they get for shutting down services. But this one seems to have been handled quite well.
All this debate in here about software platforms is moot as it all runs on closed-source hardware.

I'm a Linux guy, but I certainly don't feel like I "own" my computer, what with my CPU and other hardware components being a black box.

This is why debate over cryptographic software is likewise moot, seeing as those algorithms are run on opaque hardware manufactured by major corporations.
Are you referring to adding !g ? This redirects to Google but AFAIK there is no way to get Google results on a DDG-branded page.
> Without the ability to grow up playing with system level software, combined with the software industry's unwillingness to pass on institutional knowledge to younger generations, I fear we are already on a path towards a civilization that loses a lot of the technological capability we currently enjoy.

Kids today aren't as skilled with computers as I would've expected years ago. I feel the app culture stunts deeper learning.
Well it is like an infinite order of magnitude of a difference when PROMISED otherwise.
you really need to read the partial evaluation book.

https://www.itu.dk/people/sestoft/pebook/
Big bonus of the proper "business" laptops also is support. Wouldn't want a work machine I rely on without on-site support anymore (of course ideally you want a machine that never needs support, but since you can't rely on that from anybody...)
time to do some cleanup. surely the auto-sync / auto-backup in Google Photos app has uploaded a shiploaded of photos not needed. also check gmail & drive for large attachments/files and see if they can be deleted .

time-consuming, yes .
Soft-gel
I understand people doing live music with it. Think about what would happen if Windows forces you to update during your performance^^

Graphic designers because the nice display...

Otherwise i don't get it. I think for most other people it's a status symbol ;)

I especially don't understand why IT affine people buy it.
Just buy DELL, HP, Lenovo, Alienware and install linux.
Gives you more bang for the buck...
What is product lifecycle and how it relates to healthcare product development
The network was hardly the culprit in my explanation. How much is the cost of 4TB of georeplicated storage do you think? Surely you have to at least pay for the storage itself? So like $300-$400 at least if it's replicated 3-4x? And I haven't even hinted at offline backups and all kinds of other things.
It certainly could if Apple wanted to do the same thing that Lenovo did.
Don’t super glue heatsinks to your Raspberry Pi
> this is Norway, so probably reasonably well

If you're a private citizen doing minor things to your own land then the government will cover the archeological survey[1].

However if the owner of the land is a commercial entity or you're making larger changes, the owner has to pay. And it can get quite expensive, as this couple found out when [2] they wanted to build a new barn and had to pay $70k for the archeological digs.

It even affects the counties themselves[3], as the money goes to the central government.

[1]: https://www.nrk.no/vestland/fryktar-kulturminne-gar-tapt-gru...

[2]: https://www.nrk.no/rogaland/bonder-ma-ut-med-700.000-kroner-...

[3]: https://www.nrk.no/nordland/kulturminner-gir-millionregning-...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16211/intels-dg1-gpu-coming-t...

Hopefully there's some way to get it when it's released

According to videocardbenchmark.net Intel Xe graphics are about 20% faster than the GT1030, that currently leads in the world of single slot low power GPUs
The price of storage is the price of maintenance not of storing.
Flagged for not bringing in anything to the table besides requests.
I use MSI laptops almost exclusively although they're definitely wiped and reinstalled to win10 ltsc or freebsd.

In as much as I love the Mac touchpad for kanji/hanzi input the 2015 pro will probably be my last.
It is a choice to buy or not buy a device from a company. In this particular case the greatest threat is that devices that were always used by powerusers, are a step away from preventing us having superuser privileges on them, and instead have a moderator like on an iDevice.

At the same time Gen Z has way more choice and exposure to "computers", so worrying about them sounds very diminishing to their prospects. Sure, adoption of computers, even if they fit your bag or your pocket, is much greater nowadays which leads to way wider range of usages, for better of for worse.

In the end same could be said about the Edison generation and electricity. In the end I barely have a clue how electricity networks operate. Can I experiment with it? Sure. Do I need to if I just want to power on my computer? No.
The Data Transfer Project is working on this although I believe it's still fairly early stage.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/20/17589246/data-transfer-pr...

*I work at Google but not on this
"If this bad thing happens = $$"

That's actually, just douchebaggish and evil if you think about it, a perfect HN comment :D

I'll upvote your comment for that :)

That being said, I'll probably just find another platform if that happens, some SBC that can run linux, heck, we're almost at the point where it's realistic to build a good-enough computer out of whatever Atmel chips you can get free samples of :)
Not a side project for us[0], but lack of community beforehand/notoriety. Some companies with backing or from an accelerator/incubator are built around what is basically one feature in our product, but they have more engagement/notoriety because they're branded. It's interesting to see that dynamic, especially given the fact they don't have a background in the problem/domain and we think the problem they're solving is not what actually matters.

However: given the nature of our activity [we build ML products for enterprise] and have been profitable for the get go with this activity [no need for VC money], we're building the product for ourselves.

We made a decision to develop that platform as if it were a normal SaaS to put positive pressure on ourselves and round off rough edges. For example, early users of the platform were important in that they helped us focus on common/irritating quirks we were aware of, and expose problems we were not aware of.

One issue we were aware of is the "tragedy of the commons". Users were training models and competing with each other for resources. We then quickly made users able to schedule notebooks because we were hitting that problem often and it was really annoying.

Another problem is troubleshooting code for users. We added near real-time notebook editing. Around thirty early users were students of one of our colleagues who used our platform in their machine learning final year project, and given COVID and financial resources, being unable to set up compute environments, we onboarded them and fixed whatever they were complaining about.

- [0]: https://iko.ai
> hey, why can't I install a program on a different disk than my OS?

Apple user here (had Linux on the desktop for 5+ years and windows for a longer time):

Why would I care whether my program is on one disk or another? Why would I even "install" something, instead of dragging/dropping a single "file" (yes I know it's a directory) like I usually do. Do Linux applications all self-update using Sparkle like Mac-applications do?

I also love Apple-music where I can listen to everything on all my devices, can I have that in Linux?

Does linux have the same beautiful font-rendering that I get in OSX, or do I have ugly non-antialiased bitmap-fonts now and there?

I also haven't used installation-media for operating-system installation in many many years, everything just works via the internet. I input my apple-id on a new mac and everything sync perfectly without any issue. Do I get that in linux? One login and my mail, notes, calendar, photos, music, files, backups, keychain sync across all devices?

And also simpler UI-questions: Can I rightclick on a file/folder and it says "Compress to zip?". I can have that in windows, can I have it in Linux? Can I easily create a encrypted bundle and mount it in the UI? Can I drag the little icon on top of any open window into any filedialog to rapidly access that file?

Can I easily configure keyboard shortcuts system-wide?

Can I have a photos-app that is as good as Apple Photos?

I think OSX is great. It feels more and more locked down, that is true, but I haven't had any real issue with this yet. I still can develop whatever I want and run it if I feel like it.
I've had a Thinkpad and Ubuntu for 5 years.
The 'hardest' thing i've had to deal with is some flaky drivers with displaylink. I'm not at all putting crap on Displaylink. It's been fantastic, I just upgraded to 20.4 and hit a few small issues.

Ubuntu's been really solid. Boring even. Which may not seem like a compliment, but I don't nerd out on OS stuff, I just want a computer that I can do stuff with when I need it. And I personally found previously with mac and windows my ability to 'just do work' wasn't there.
I was just about to make an obnoxious, downvotable joke to that effect!
> "...people are still making excuses for continuing to use Apple/Google/Microsoft/et al products because the alternatives are a bit rough round the edges."

I found myself being one of those people, so I made a commitment to no more Microsoft or Apple for my personal devices[1]. I'm eagerly awaiting PostmarketOS to reach full functionality on the PinePhone and I'll give up my Android phone at that point, taking Google out of the equation as well.

I'm even considering trying to learn C so I can contribute to OpenBSD for my hardware that is "rough around the edges".

[1] My wife's PC with Windows 10 is exempt for now; she's not a techie person at all and I don't want to force her into something alien. She tends to borrow my Thinkpad with Linux every now and then and is getting more used to it, so we'll see how that goes.
Ask HN: Creating a secure, minimal VPS web server image
I'd like to create a secure, minimal VPS web server image that can be installed on cloud services like Digital Ocean, Vultr or Linode.

Does anyone have any advice or links on how to do this?

I'd like the VPS web server image be stripped of any uneeded features. Essentially, minimal base OS + web server + programming language. The idea is to give this VPS image to users for installation.

Any advice on creating a secure, minimal VPS web server image would be much appreciated. Thoughts on different OS or distributions (Linux, FreeBSD etc) also appreciated. Thank you.
For most people, 15GB can very well be a lifetime.
Everything but the macOS software update notice is gone now, since it's too old. And there are no historical pages.

What's missing is also a section for MacOS apps not starting.
What’s the point if you’re gonna add 33% more cows?
>How do you prepare for a civilization collapse?

A large part of civilization will collapse but not all of it. Dense or poor populations will have a harder time than rich ones.

If you want to be selfish then you can simply move to a safe location and pull up the ladder by preventing further migration through military force.
So what? There are risks everywhere in life. You buy a new car and you decide to go on a road trip and there is a dangerous road ahead. The car company should stop your car remotely?
No.
I'm a computer scientist and work at the computer. In my free time i play at the computer. I don't like to walk around for kilometers in my free time.

Just because some people want to do it / can do it, it is not the same for everyone.
Why renaming Git’s master branch is a terrible idea
A large e-ink display for art powered by a subscription could be interesting. I think you’d have to do it as a prestige piece though... think $10k each minimum.

The art would need to be tailored to the medium. You could use a museum/gallery partnership to commission pieces exclusive to the service and optimized for the display. Pieces would rotate out. Perhaps have a gimmick where each piece is displayed on only one device at a time, and once it rotates away from your device it never comes back unless you pay extra for it. Call the whole thing a study in semi-permanence or something.

You’d have to get some high brow endorsements to make this work.
I'm giving Amazon Photos a try, since they offer unlimited high quality storage with Prime. I will appreciate if someone shares their opinion about this service.
The EU sounds like a great approach; do you know if and how often they re-evaluate the impact and level of their dependencies?
This could have an unintended consequence where the gas ends up being flared instead, or worse released as unburned methane.
Preserving your life's memories has never been cheaper — regardless of where and how you store it. Pay up or shut up, seriously.
But for many people it's a metaphor for taking their AR15 and paying Dr Fauci a visit.
Is this not a commonality between most "tech companies". The combination of tech, moving fast, disruption, etc, means that there's a lot of promises that drop once reality hits.
> Oh there is also this bug with screen locking that shows your desktop for few seconds.

I definitely encountered this on my mac work laptop from three years ago. (Left that job and have been Linux-based since then.)
For anyone looking for other options: I've been very pleased with Microsoft's Onedrive offering; I pay $70/year for access to all the Office apps plus 1TB of storage and their family plan is $100/year and supports up to 6 people, with 1TB of storage per account.
plain ubuntu?
Ok, suppose I can find an alternative to Adobe & co. on linux. Which laptop features a multi finger touchpad as nice and feature rich as the MacBooks?
Overloading, sure, destroying, no.

I would bet millions of Euros there have been islanding plans in place for years in the event of wide scale disconnects or voltage/frequency collapse. The aftermath wouldn't be fun but most of western Europe at least would only be enduring planned rotating blackouts at worst.
That sounds deliberately dense. Understand what marginal cost is. A megabyte of storage used to cost $1000. Today it costs $400 / 1,000,000.

To store a photo is not a penny. Its some percents of a penny. You wouldn't bend over to pick it up on the street.
The number of aluminium balls (battery swelling) that used to be Apple laptops I've seen recently makes me a bit worried.
But it should be your tool. Apple just grands you the right to use it like they think it's the best for you. That leads to this
https://mobile.twitter.com/lapcatsoftware/status/13269902964...

How could it be that people are all about freedom when it comes to governments but have no problem if private companies censor and controll what they write and do?
I remember _Drug of Choice_ from 1969:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18310318-drug-of-choice

Of course not as many had ever heard of Michael Crichton at the time.

And this was way before the supposed Fyre _festival_.

Eventually when they opened the initial far-from-complete version of Disney World, isolated in the middle of nowhere like a hidden Emerald City far from Orlando, when you went there, after you left it felt to some extent like it could have all been a mirage or an expereience influenced by some kind of gas they had in the air or something.

Especially if you had been aware of what it was like when the area was 100 percent swamp, and back then it was still over 99 percent so outside appearances were no different yet.

The Bahamas is isolated too and it's a famous resort even though it's always been 99 percent desert islands the whole time itself.
I wrote about the same thing this is a classic bait and switch

However their free storage plan is still very generous when compared to apple and Dropbox also they storage plans are very reasonably priced as well

https://www.tecowly.com/2020/11/12/google-photos-to-stop-giv...
> people have to get used to seeing computers as closed-source devices with app stores

Consider all of the school age kids using chromebooks, many of them their 1st computer.

Will they care in 10 years as adults that their Mac doesn't allow programs to be installed from "untrusted sources"? Unfortunately, this transition probably won't phase them.
I honestly can't see the outrage here. Sure, they've closed their free tier, but they keep up the promise for Pixel owners and do not count images previously uploaded. That's really more than one can ask for in something they get for free.
In fact I didn't knew until the news yesterday. Now I'm going to get hooked - upload all my pictures (landscape-only, people pictures stay offline) before the end of the free offer. AFAIK what you have already uploaded stays there and doesn't count when the offer changes.
Mac mini is a desktop computer. Regardless we're talking about energy efficiency not productivity.
Solutions like "switch to ___ manufacturer and run Linux" are great and relatively accessible for folks in the tech/IT crowd.

1. What do we do for family members embedded in the Apple, Google, Microsoft ecosystems?
2. How do we help move our companies and non-tech colleagues off of Windows and the Microsoft cloud behemoth?
At the OS level sure. Its still running on a completely non-free / hardly hackable platform though riddled with all sorts of backdoors and other curiosities. I'm aware of things like coreboot / libreboot, but support is even more limited there and porting involves a deep understanding of the x86 platform in my brief experience.
From what I understand, the photos uploaded up to that time will not count toward the used space even after that. So only newly uploaded photos will start counting toward the usage.
> To store a photo is not a penny. Its some percents of a penny. You wouldn't bend over to pick it up on the street.

You're storing 1 photo (like 3MB)?? Or like thousands/millions?

Give me an estimate for how much you think 4TB of replicated storage costs if you think I overestimated?
Great tips! Thank you! I'm more into 2D compositing for video, but I've had my eye on Blender for some time. Not sure how it stacks up against stuff like After Effects. For audio production I already use Reaper FM, but I might give Bitwig a go too. ^^
How to save money on AWS Lambda?
There is the letter and there is the spirit, though.
Not even close with social media, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.
They probably meant the lifetime of the google service.

So anywhere from 15 minutes to two years.
But users also benefit from it. You can search for the contents of the images in your private gallery.
Yeah they're nearly free too. For a photo, some invisible fraction of a penny per year.

We're being marketed storage by features, not by the cost of the thing. And in an efficient market in a sane world, that should drop to nearly free.