skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've been having to use Windows a lot more lately (after barely touching it for 15 years) and the word "nightmare" is an apt description.

I think, though, I've come to realize why: backwards compatibility. I've seen videos where people have installed Windows 3.1 and then upgraded the OS from there and pretty much everything continues to work. I think in one video I saw, Quake or Doom stopped working after one upgrade (probably Vista) and then started working again after a patch release or something.

I have to hand it to Microsoft that they honor backwards compatibility as well as they do. However, at some point, you have to just make a clean break. You have to acknowledge that what you have is bad and broken and should no longer exist in this world. Microsoft finally did just that with Internet Explorer and then (to a lesser degree) with replacing Edge's rendering engine.

For Apple, backwards compatibility isn't a sacred cow. They're more than willing to throw something out that is old and/or doesn't work as well as it should. They handle breaking that fairly well, all things considered. They give plenty of notice (sometimes not as much as they probably should have -- https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/apple-prepares-macos...) so average and power users alike have the time to transition. Sure, it's never as smooth as we would like but what transition ever is? Still, Apple users don't have to deal with things like Windows users do.

Microsoft needs to start making a clean cut with Windows, probably starting with the Explorer shell. It's old. It's obnoxious. It actively gets in the way and makes me less productive. They can do this if they just put their shoulders into it a little. (Christ almighty why does the scroll bar have to jump back to where it was if my mouse veers away from while scrolling? "Because that's how we've always done it!" is easily the worst answer to any question ever asked)

Also, for the love of all that is holy they need to reverse the decision to have ads built into the OS. How can they not see how bad an ad-centric model is becoming for Google and Facebook? Having a whole OS where the user is the product? That's a privacy nightmare that makes Google and Facebook look like little league.
The article seemed well written to me. Though I don't know enough about Indian politics to consider its accuracy.

What about this article strikes you as low quality? Do you have a better source on this news?
Fact-checking some Apple Silicon exuberance
I'm pretty sure Amazon forced bookshops online.

(For younger viewers: Amazon used to just sell books)
I actually like this because I often get lots of things wrong about something. It's like I'm giving the engine a whole bunch of detail some of which is misremembered.

"Which movie did tom hanks drill into an asteroid to save the earth"

Tom Hanks wasn't in Armageddon but that's what I was thinking about.

This is a tool to me. I want it to try.
I might be mistaken, but is Oasis also somehow related to the suckless [1] community? (Edit: yes, the maintainer seems to be part of it.)

Another static distro by the suckless people is stali (static linux) [2].

1: http://suckless.org

2: https://sta.li
> Probably suggest arch linux to someone complaining about having to track down dependencies does not make sense, since such a person is more interested in the OS just working rather than making the OS a bit of a hobby that that they want to customize.

Sure, in the beginning you have to spend some time to set it up, but due to the rolling releases it has a great longevity. And talking about application integration, I prefer the package management style (even through AUR) greatly to the chaotic download some binary and execute it way windows does it. Over time your windows always gets so messy because every device manufacturer seems to think that it is cool, to bundle his device driver with hundreds of megabytes of non-sense-ware (last weekend I installed some Logitech driver on Windows, because the default Windows driver didn't work (on Arch I didn't have to install anything extra, just saying... yes, anecdotal evidence)).
Transloadit | Remote | Freelance | Part-Time | Senior Technical Content Writer

https://transloadit.com is a bootstrapped and profitable file processing service for developers. People have said: think Adobe suite as an API. Plenty wrong with that analogy but if it helps to frame a bit :)

We want to publish one or two blog posts a month covering our open source technology (https://uppy.io, https://tus.io) and encoding capabilities. Discussing new features, writing walkthroughs, etc. You’d probably use our SDKs a lot to showcase how to leverage our platform to optimize videos for iPad, recognize text in images, etc. You’d be the Jeff Bar of Transloadit so to speak :)
Transloadit’s culture is open, curious, optimistic, and our tone of writing should reflect this.

We would like to hire someone with a few years of relevant experience and that can quickly cut to the heart of things. Native English and strong writing skills are required. Someone who tries to leave out as many words as possible. If this is you and you have some hours to spare, please send me a motivation and experience to kevin@transloadit.com. Keep it brief :)

I have covid and while I can leave a comment on HN, I can’t really handle recruitment/onboarding right now, please allow some time for me to get back to you. Pay would be $50/h.
Onai | | San Jose / New York | FULL TIME, CONTRACTORS, GRADUATE INTERNS, POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS, REMOTE

We're tackling exciting difficult challenges and building offerings relevant to interesting real-world problems in a variety of fields. We have particular strengths in dispersed computation, functional programming, cryptography, and deep learning.

We're currently most interested in engineers with solid experience in Rust, Haskell/Idris, or cryptography. We also have openings for enthusiastic developers or researchers who might lack this precise experience but are eager and able to learn. We welcome internship/fellowship interest from postdoctoral scholars or senior graduate students.

We do not presently have openings for current/recent undergraduates.

Send your resume to info@onai.com and we'll let you know if there's a potential fit.
From the research I did, here's how languages stack up in Lambda runtime (lowest first):

1. Python & JS
2. Go
3. C# & Java

I couldn't find any data on Rust.

The understanding at the time was that Python & JS runtimes are built-in, so the interpreter is "already running" Go is the fastest of compiled languages, but just can't beat the built-in runtimes. C# and Java were poorest as they're spinning up a larger runtime that's more optimized for long-running throughput.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/best-practices....

https://medium.com/the-theam-journey/benchmarking-aws-lambda...

https://epsagon.com/development/aws-lambda-programming-langu...

https://read.acloud.guru/comparing-aws-lambda-performance-of...

Of course, benchmarks like this only go so far. Use as a starting point for your own evaluation; not as an end-all-be-all.
How so? With Google Cloud Run, you don't really interact with Knative or Kubernetes, so the underlying platform is a non-issue.
How long would you like it to be?

Chris Munns - Lead of Dev Advocacy for Serverless@AWS
Okay, how about this: Why are you on Hacker News? It clearly doesn't align well with your self-professed interests.
How to Use JWT Authentication with Django REST Framework to Log in to Firebase
I doubt this will be more popular than GitHub's public-access registry[0], but it's good to see more public registries coming online - people had gotten too comfortable with Docker Hub being almost entirely free.

0: https://github.blog/2020-09-01-introducing-github-container-...
If you're making an awesome app that many Mac users use and depend on, they would be stupid to terminate your dev account.
I've installed Ubuntu, Mint and Debian in many different ways, but never did it take three days, though I did end up tweaking a bunch of stuff in the following days. I mean, I guess, if you take that time into account, then the "installation time" becomes a bit longer, but... not really. Or are you building them for very spesific (or odd) hardware?

Personally I'd never dream of setting up any serious production environment on a Mac or Windows PC though, outside those spesifically geared towards it like .NET. But then, if you use the latter, it kinda narrows down your options though. I mean, isn't that just common sense these days?
There is a Windows store. It kind of failed, mostly because using it requires using gimped APIs. If they got rid of that more people would use it.

What does seem to work is the certificate and code reputation. It does actually prevent users from running things but is easy enough to click through if you really know better.
As someone who gives programming courses at an art university I always like to teach programming languages that they can use for "serious stuff" afterwards. Python turned out to be a good choice, because the syntax is beginner friendly, problems can be googled and there are a lot of good libraries included.

I think the biggest challenge in teaching someone programming is to teach them the way you have to "speak" to a computer and in what it differs to speaking e.g. to a waiter in a Cafe. Many people who teach programming sort of just assume this (they probably forgot how long it took themselves initially to get to the point where they could from this).
Open Source GTM Guide
Hi HN! I am nervous to post this, but I wanted to share a labor of love that I've been working on.

If you're an early stage founder who is not sure about where to start with go-to-market (GTM), here's a handy place to start. It has a step by step process of how to start thinking about it, and has a glossary of key terms (GTM, freemium, buyer persona, CAC, etc.)

Hope you find value!

I created this to give back to the community, and founders can copy any of the slides or use the worksheets within the deck.
Supercomputers are identifying Covid-19 therapeutics
The Trump Organization is privately held, I assume the SEC has limited jurisdiction.
Self-Hosting Still Pays
Generally speaking, functions don't run continuously. If your use case is 100% compute 100% of the time, it's not a great fit for lambda.
I don't necessarily see that "impossibility" as a bad thing. The idea that the cost of actual goods are being driven down is always good for the people buying. I feel like we're reaching the point where retail has to start charging directly for the value they bring to the table instead of trying to put it in the cost of the goods. Because you can't compete with huge companies that operate on super thin margins and scale.

If your value as a bookstore is as a 3rd space or a co-working space then charge for that. Don't try to hide it in the price of books or food. We have coffee shops that charge a cover if you want to work there. If the value of your bike shop is the show-rooming then charge for that. I would absolutely pay to try out different bikes and if you charge the same as everyone else for the actual bike I have no reason not to buy from you.
"Zamboni drivers, like athletes, see the Olympics as the pinnacle of their profession." - from a cool 2018 article: "The 22nd-Largest Team at the Olympics: Zamboni Drivers" · https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/sports/olympics/zamboni-d...
You are billed by the execution time of the function. So from the millisecond we hand the event over to you until you return a response or timeout.

- Chris - Serverless@AWS
why is your cnc machine internet connected?
Just out of curiosity, what are you getting out of your 160 million CPU cycles? Are you mostly on the CPU, or mostly waiting for something (database call or whatever)?
A Comprehensive Guide to Profiling Python Programs
Yes,

I'm not questioning that 5 is a tenth of 50. I'm questioning the Rust speed :D
The Win32 loader will always load kernel32 no matter what. You don't even need it in your import table. It's just a matter of finding where it's loaded and calling into the right functions.
It's important to note that the goals of this BEAM JIT are a lot more modest than those other JITs.

There's no goal of heroic optimization; the optimization goal is really just to remove the overhead of interpretation.

This removes the need to apply the JIT only to some code, because it's fairly simple, it's fast enough to apply when the code is loaded, and so all code is JITed to native as it's loaded. Or you're on an unsupported platform and all code is interpretted.

Because it's all or nothing, testing the OTP release should uncover any JIT bugs; you won't have the hard to track bugs sometimes seen in other systems where a function's correctness depends on whether or not it was JITed and that depends on runtime state. That won't mean no JIT bugs, of course, but they should be easier to track down.
AWS Lambda – Functions with Up to 10 GB of Memory and 6 VCPUs
Note that a typical "Hello World" executable written in C does not contain any code capable of actually printing anything. It links to libc shipped with the operating system. That is about 30MB of code that C executables get for free.

You can link libc statically and dead-code-eliminate everything except print. That's what Rust does too, but Rust has fancier machinery for formatting and handling of panics with backtraces. These bits don't get dead-code-eliminated as thoroughly in Rust (probably because the print could theoretically fail).
Can an 18th Century Statistician Help Us Think More Clearly? (Bayes' Rule)
I hope AWS has plans to reach out to maintainers for things on Dockerhub to get them to mirror here.

Or at least be a steward in maintaining containers themselves (Dockerhub has the concept of Verified Publishers IIRC).

Worst case here might be lots of containers showing up here that aren't by the same organization maintaining the equivalent Dockerhub containers, would get really annoying to deal with.
I'm not sure about lambda, but cloudflare workers use v8 isolates to avoid starting a new process at all.
This is why I love HN. These rare moments of hearing someone articulate something that I haven't quite grasped yet, but have seen glimpses of and have struggled with, presented clearly, insightfully. Feeling my brain being rewired. I've watched this talk multiple times over the last days and it is transformative.

It's not like anything he says is, by itself, that new or counterintuitive. But the whole talk, when fully digested, lets you view the world in an entirely different way.

The talk isn't about writing. It's not about science. Not about careers. It's about everything. The same thinking can be applied to speaking, to dating, to everything human.

What's in your head isn't intrinsically interesting to anyone except your mother. What value do you deliver? It's harsh. Harsh and cruel. It's not the cozy feel-good message you see everywhere nowadays. Maybe some would call the whole framing toxic. But would you rather taste the poison and then learn how to handle it, or would you stay ignorant and die of it (silently get ignored, nosedive your career, etc.).

In a masterfully meta way, the talk manages to deliver immense value.
Flexibits | Frontend/Backend Web Developer | Remote | Full-time

We make Fantastical and Cardhop, award-winning calendar and contacts apps for Mac and iOS. We are 12 person, fully-remote company spread across the US and Europe, and welcome anyone from around the world. We prefer candidates that are in time zones between US Pacific Time and Central European Time.

Expect roughly a 75/25 split between frontend and backend work. You'll be helping us make Fantastical, Cardhop, and Fantastical Premium even better. This will include improving and maintaining flexibits.com and hub.flexibits.com as well as creating new features for Fantastical and Cardhop.

A short summary of our tech stack: We primarily use Django, Python, Go, React, and TypeScript, with some PHP and WordPress thrown in. MySQL and Redis are used to store data, and everything is running on Google Cloud and Google Kubernetes Engine.

More info at https://flexibits.com/jobs
Well, he didn't. Tesla was named 'Tesla' by the founders, not Musk. And Tesla the man was more obscure back then than he is now (and that's in large part thanks to Tesla the company plus various pop culture ephemera like a certain webcomic).
A lot more money is spent on education than on the military in the USA (where education is funded by three levels of government), and most other countries.
I guess deal sites are a dime a dozen, and this does go some way to personifying it, like it's "great finds shared by a friend".

I'd say there's merit to both approaches.
Drone Mapping: How to Create Your Own Terrain Surface Model
There was a great post here on HN showing someone using DKIM to validate authenticity of some of the emails (ones from gmail at least), so it’s clearly not completely bullshit.

For what it’s worth, Greenwald and Taibbi both covered it and didn’t say “this is why joe Biden shouldn’t be elected”, they covered it as “why is the media refusing to cover a story that is worth covering”. Big difference.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24953454
To the edit: right. I like the description using half barriers, but I have trouble reconciling that with the Linux Kernel's READ_ONCE/WRITE_ONCE macros, which guarantee no tearing/alignment issues, but boil down to reads/writes through casts to volatile qualified pointer dereferences. I guess those don't have the same notion of memory ordering that the C++11 API has... Maybe rmb()/wmb()...
There was also some video of "a rather sensitive personal nature". Who knows where it all came from (was it on the laptop, was it obtained elsewhere and planted on a laptop), but the story certainly isn't a complete nothing burger.
OpenClinic Version 0.8.2 – security advisory
A lot of this was based around the fact that we've seen languages become just so much more performant. This includes Go/Rust/etc, but a lot of Node.js workloads are also sub 100ms, or fast enough that they'd benefit from this pretty well.

- Chris, Serverless@AWS
Habana EC2 instances in 2021 (-40% price/perf)
Definitely not a waste of money. Apple charges $1200+ for a soldered-in 4TB SSD that I can buy for $400 and upgrade in the future.

IMO their price gouging is ethically much worse than someone making a hackintosh and using it to enrich the MacOS software ecosystem.
Advertising?
Part of my job is managing about 60 Windows pro Desktops/Laptops. I have yet see any advertising on them.

-On Windows Home however, it comes with Candy Rush and a bunch of nonsense that show up in the Start menu tiles. I just uninstalled them and call it a day.

-Yeah this is my biggest issue.

-Indeed but I have not even thought about it.
What in the world? No it is not.

We have to trick our immune systems because we didn't design them.

An OS is, obviously, designed by humans. So we shouldn't have to trick it.
Within the halls of Arecibo, it was rather well understood that the early funding/control issues that started in the mid 2000s was due to bad blood between leadership at NSF Astro and NAIC (through Cornell). Can't be proven for anything more than coincidence of course.

Wikipedia has a decently comprehensive summary of the funding cutbacks Arecibo faced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory#Funding_re...
They oddly enough don't mention some of the questionable things NSF AST did, like argue over Arecibo finding it's own funding: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/search-for-alien-...

> This probably means, the scientific output was less promising than those projects.

Not true. Arecibo was by far the most powerful planetary radar system on the planet, by something like a 20x factor of sensitivity. Arecibo's size and frequency used (2.38GHz) meant that it's beam was a great compromise between beam width and strength. The narrower beams available on the remaining telescopes makes it more difficult to find elusive and not well known near-earth objects.

Arecibo was contributing vast and meaningful science until it met it's untimely end.

> I wonder whether there should be plans made for a completely new rebuild?

Yes. Resoundingly yes. Even a comparable telescope (meaning we don't chase bigger and better like FAST) would be a massive enhancement. And with intentional planning, it would likely be possible to extend and enhance the capabilities while still reducing problems in the original design.

Unfortunately, I can only imagine the hurdles in design/funding/construction that a second telescope would face.
Activities are like a new set of workspaces for you to switch to. Like let's say you use your laptop for work and for fun at home. At work you use 4 workspaces and plain desktop backgrounds and conky to watch processes. Then when you punch out at work and want to relax you want just one workspace with cycling wallpapers or whatever. You can set up a "work" activity that fits those needs and then a "home" activity that is much simpler for at home. I think of it as like a third dimension for workspaces.
I said this in my other reply, but if you can implement a language feature as a local rewrite, it does not add expressiveness. Features that add expressiveness must involve some sort of non-local transformation. A language feature adds expressiveness iff two programs that are equivalent in the base language in all evaluation contexts are not equivalent in the extended language. Felleisen came up with this idea in a paper, which Shriram Krishnamurthi explains in this video: https://pwlconf.org/2019/shriram-krishnamurthi/
How much? I can't find acquisition price anywhere.
Isn't it argued that the English legal system (a form of enforce fairness) was responsible for the extent of it's Empire and was carried over in American success?
Awesome! That was the idea here. Lots of sub 100ms workloads and we really want you to be able to pay for what you use.

- Chris, Serverless@AWS
True: Last week HN had this to say about AWS + Rust:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25200324
Not necessarily, especially in a large company setting. Lambda allows you to scale and take care of spikey traffic. It also doesn't require server management. Servers are a pain in the butt.
Any sources for this? I've been trying to read up to understand how / when Binance decides to print USDT and what they do with it once it's on their exchange.

e.g., https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1333809716301094912
Yup! There are additional nitpicks that haven't yet been discovered, I'm cheering you on from the sidelines.
Microsoft's 'mimalloc' MIT-licensed allocator is lock-free. Perhaps there's something in there that'd be interesting to read.

https://github.com/microsoft/mimalloc
https://github.com/microsoft/mimalloc/blob/master/include/mimalloc-atomic.h

It has gone through testing with Clang's TSAN and (at least some with) the GenMC model checker.

https://plv.mpi-sws.org/genmc/
SpaceX founding member and rocket engineer Tom Mueller retires
Degraded Performance for GitHub Actions
Xilinx acquires Falcon Computing Solutions to expand developer community
Uploads Are the New Downloads
There are two versions of Cloud Run. The fully-managed cloud-only variant is actually an API skin over Google App Engine. The "for Anthos" (née "for GKE") variant is Knative[0] in both API and sourcecode.

AWS could plausibly do exactly the same thing: provide a skin over Lambda that speaks Knative.

I think Amazon's and Microsoft's reluctance to wade into Knative has been wariness about Google's intentions. And maybe 6 months ago I would have said "fair enough, I would be cautious too". But the recent update to Knative's governance model largely resolves the problem, in my view. I would very much like to see AWS and MS involvement.

[0] "Knative" is the correct spelling, FWIW.

Disclosure: I work for VMware, which participates in Knative development.

I also, like, wrote a book about it.
Facebook Never Fails to Disgrace