skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I’m pretty sure they hired Erlang developers to dig into ejabberd internals and optimize certain things. They didn’t just decide to become an Erlang shop out of the blue.

Eh, I was there since October 2011, and we didn't hire any people who knew Erlang until much later. All of the early server engineers (including me) learned it on the job. By the time I left in 2019, I think we hired two people to the server team with previous Erlang experience; it's hard to find people with it, and while it might have been nice, it's not important.

It's possible we had some consulting possibly before I was hired, but I don't remember seeing any evidence of that; OTOH, I do remember setting up and working with a FreeBSD consultant and Moxie when he was consulting on end to end. From my understanding, when things started bottlenecking, Rick Reed was hired to fix bottlenecks; which he had been doing at Yahoo! for many years and had worked with Jan and Brian there.

FWIW; WhatsApp the service started as just a text status, built on PHP and MySQL, but people were using it to chat, so the founders went looking for a chat server to use rather than building one from scratch. I don't know the decision process, but ejabberd was then powering Facebook chat at the time. (Of course, Facebook abandoned Erlang, they said because they couldn't find people with Erlang experience to hire)

Anyway, by the time I got there, I was told that the chat server had been mostly refactored over time and while a lot of names remained the same, and some of the basic architecture was the same, it wasn't ejabberd anymore. Mostly I worked on things that weren't chatd, and I don't think I've seen ejabberd code, so I can't verify, but it seems likely, as we customized the protocol, auth, offline messaging, contacts, session handling, etc.

Erlang is a tremendously right fit for a chat server, and hot code loading is almost necessary when you have hundreds of thousands or millions of connections per chat machine and want to push small changes. Of course, changes to BEAM itself, or the OS kernel take restarts, so you still need to do those from time to time.
People sometimes secretly do bad things that are not actually illegal. When that happens the public need to know so that they can pressure politicians to change the law. That is what this is about. The scandal is not that Facebook broke the law, it is that it did all this stuff without breaking the law.
No clue. Maybe someday I'll figure out why my inlaws took their son to the Honda dealership at 20 and talked him into signing a lease on a base model Civic. He loves the thing though. I hate it and it hates me. I will say it rolled over 100k the other day and we've yet to do any major repairs. Just the battery that I can think of. Twice so far. Both times I was driving it and a long way from home.
They have a good FAQ on this:
https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/faqs/ami-aptio-v-vs-core...

The AMI UEFI firmware behaves like most UEFI firmwares these days and locks out writes to firmware flash after boot and only allows updates by way of efi files being dropped into place and then updated via reboot with signature check.

The coreboot setup leaves writes to the firmware flash open and root can use flashrom at anytime.

This makes for security trade-offs, a choice between freedom to change your own firmware and know what you're running vs a mechanism to reduce the chance of advanced persistent threat at the firmware level.

Also, their build to order model under additional OSes does include Windows 10 as an option at an additional cost, so I imagine a UEFI firmware is required.
Lights are the most obvious use case. Done right, you may almost never have to touch a light switch again.

In my house, the central lights turn themselves on when it becomes too dark (except after bedtime), and off when it becomes too bright. Lights turn on automatically when someone enters a room (when it is dark) and turn off when they leave.

When the last person leaves the house, all lights go out, except when I am on vacation, in which case the lights turn themselves on and off in a pattern that looks like I am at home.

After lights come extractor fans (keeping the humidity constant) and heat/air conditioning.

It is all about maintaining a comfortable home environment without having to manually turn things on and off all the time.
Web3 – Solving Trust Issues Using Math
Hey HN ,

I'd like to introduce you exabox, a side project I've been working on in the last few months.
It is a set of 30+ tools for developers: convert/format JSON/YAML, encode/decode Base64, generate fake data, parse JWTs, transform a text using multiple rules, and much more. All in a single app.

What exabox has to offer compared to other similar apps:

- It works entirely offline
- Buy once and keep it forever (no recurring subscriptions or in-app purchases)
- It is available for macOS and Windows (and soon Linux as well)
- There is a full-featured free web version
- You can personalize the UI

The free web version is available here: https://tools.exabox.app/

I'm currently expanding it and adding more tools and features. Here is the roadmap: https://github.com/albemala/exabox-app/issues

I'd be interested in hearing what you think about exabox. Questions? Concerns? Suggestions? Thank you in advance!
What's your rationale to suggest that inflation will double the price of everything in the next 4 years?
Social media makes it cheap and easy to retaliate against speakers who say unpopular things. Anonymity protects from exactly that. If you think such retaliation tends to be a positive/negative force in the long run, you probably dislike/like anonymity.

As someone with a wide portfolio of unpopular views who prefers a loosely coupled, bottom up social architecture, I value anonymity as a key value and technology for promoting adaptation. A society with strong anonymity norms can test the fitness of more, and more diverse life algorithms than otherwise. That tends to make it less fragile and more likely to find a variety of local maxima.
The body text of this is very hard to read on Windows (Firefox & Edge) since the text appears to be bolded.

I would change to font-weight 300 or something like this.
I note with pleasure the obligatory animated gif features nyan-mode[0]. The patrician's choice for unmet modeline silliness needs.

[0] https://github.com/TeMPOraL/nyan-mode
Hertz Orders 100k Teslas in Deal Reportedly Worth $4.2B
That's perfectly understandable. It's a major purchase decision.

But also, I'm not aware of anyone that implemented "proper cooling" sufficient to handle the last few generations of Intel chips (at least at the high end.) I read reviews of a variety of machines. All of them had issues with throttling.

I was so happy when the Ryzen 4000 mobile chips were reviewed and did not require elaborate cooling systems just to perform their regular duties. I would be shocked if the 2021 Macbook Pro 14/16" have issues with thermal throttling.
A better question is, what % of web developers test their JS rendering on the array of browsers it's guaranteed to encounter, or consider what happens when very basic privacy tools are in use?

Those aren't relevant questions for this case, however. The page isn't failing to render without JS, it's failing to render without third party JS. For a group whose nominal message is bragging about their hax0r skills, it's pretty clumsy to build in a single point of fail dependency on code they don't control, then require their users to run it.
in the future, there will be requirements to have sensors on cars that help the driver keep control of the vehicle, right now i fear that car companies may be hoarding safety technology for a single bottom line. which is sad considering how many lives are lost to those who buy a vehicle with less safety features due to budget issues. like i get it, companies have to make money to survive but some technologies like safety for instance should be open sourced engineering projects of love. sounds hippy but if we all chip in on areas that benefit safety than we all share in the reward. imagine being on the road with your safety enhanced car only to be hit by someone who does not have the same features as you, now imagine the other car having the same features as you in a similar situation. do you think the end result of the first would produce a better outcome to the second scenario or the latter? i think it would greatly help us all if we decided today that car safety technology should be encouraged and shared instead of hoarded. you’d be surprised how many good ideas come from people without a formal education. so maybe if there was a true effort to listen to all employees for potential safety gains. even “low level” employees. i’ve seen it happy many times were a person would say a great idea and the manager or higher up would agree with their body language but you could see them not do anything about it due to a company culture mismatch which makes it impossible for people to present their ideas unless it’s on a slide deck. kinda backwards if you are being honest with yourself
I think you're taking my comments out of context and changing the subject.

First, you seem to have dropped the percentage topic, which you had initially talked to. It seems like you're just changing the topic for the sake of arguing something on a tangent (isn't that against the rules here).

Now you seem to be talking about people who are too good to do things. Which is entirely different than what I'm talking about - appropriately staffing a team based on expected tasks and minimizing budget.
Personally I dislike this bit. Thinness isn't everything, but it's something. I don't know that the new models really needed to look as brick-ish as they do, and the previous design was certainly sexier.
How the Internet Works in Just 10 Lines
> They could win, it wouldn’t be that difficult

If they are doing such a horrible job and they could easily change and become better, why there haven't been actual competitors for so long then? You seem to have solutions, you should work on them or at least share them.
It's not freedom when there's little alternative to car usage in the U.S.

As a society, 10-15% of household spending goes towards transportation costs (largely vehicle payments, fuel, and maintenance).
That's really good news.

140W charging on the 16" had me worried that Apple was using a proprietary/non-conforming extension to USB-C, just like Nintendo did for the Switch. The reports of bricked Switches from standard USB-C chargers was an unfortunate demonstration of why this is a bad idea, and why it's important that Apple is using a standard (even if it's very new) method of increasing power delivery.
MVP before the term MVP – Release early and Minimal version
OK, but changing stuff for no reason also wastes user brainpower.
>I suspect that Jony Ives’ departure may have facilitated this.

This is a popular statement but Jony didn't have any design oversight for years before he formally left.
We agree that much of what Google does is bad, but your solution both doesn't seem like it gets to the core of the issue, and moreover I can't actually think of a company that meets your threshold - it would be stupid for a company to produce a product that nobody wants.
And indeer, Curevac (the mRNA startup that lost against Biontech and Moderna) has published this:
https://www.curevac.com/en/2021/10/12/curevac-to-shift-focus...

All three of those companies know that the two with the best vaccines made billions, the third made a loss.
Im curious, what kind of monitor set up needs that kind of power?
Pixel 6 Pro Review The flagship Google needs is the one buyers deserve
The answer for FPV footage is almost always that it is real time. FPV camera drones can go upwards of 100mph. In the hands of a skilled pilot they are incredibly agile.

They are also almost entirely built by the pilot. The entire FPV scene is a pretty cool hobby to get into.
It crops up more in JavaScript since it doesn't have integers, and if you try to convert non-numeric string to a number you get a NaN
You probably shouldn't be using K8s Secrets
That's not exactly it. It's more of a "If you have nothing that takes more than 1% of your resources, no single optimisation can get you more than a 1% reduction in your resources". That seem to be how most web apps are: you parse a little bit of HTTP, a little bit of JSON, you validate a few things, you call the database, that does a few things too, you have a bit of business logic, you call the database again, then have a bit of glue code here and there, and finally respond to the user with a little bit of HTTP and maybe some HTML, maybe some JSON.

If that's how your app works and nothing can be optimised significantly, that's usually here where you can make big gains in performance by changing a big thing. One of these big things might be to put a cache in front of it, because a cache hit will be way faster than responding again to the same request. Another could be to change language. For example, from Python to Go. Since Go is (most of the time) a bit faster on everything, you end up being faster everywhere. Or even from Python to PyPy, a faster implementation. Another could be redesigning your program so that you have one single obvious hot path, and then optimising that.

That seem to be the case for them here: no component is taking all of the resources, but by using memo everywhere, all of them take less resources, which leads to a good reduction of resources in general.
HackernewsCommentCoin?
Even if that was the basis at some point I suspect much of it is now just an argument for particular parts the designer likes, as "function" isn't necessarily completely defined.
Settlement happens off-chain. Purchases using a crypto credit card through the MC and Visa network are instantaneous.
I'm curious what specs are software developers planning on getting. From what I've seen, the m1 mba/mbp was good enough for a lot of use cases so I dont see the point of get some specced out mpb. I am currently leaning towards the base model 14" but with 1tb of space.
Where are you getting that from? I see $2.58 right now.
Deforestation Dividends
Or maybe no one was ever that upset, beyond the small but vocal group of HN commenters who will take any opportunity to bash Apple anyway.
If it was above board to download and run MacOS in VMWare as a guest under my linux host (slowdowns because of arc differences forgiven), I'd be way more willing dip a toe into the ecosystem and see how I like it...
You're misusing statistics. Your life expectancy is not being lowered by .0001, but 124 out of 1,000,000 lose their life each year through something preventable. This is the cost of your "near-absolute freedom of movement" that you are trying to hide.
There's a pretty dangerous left turn by where I live. Rather than people coming out of a shopping center and making a right, going to the light, and U-turning, they try to slingshot across 3 lanes of traffic, a center divider with trees, into a 4th lane. It even has a slight curve, making it even harder to see cars.

I've lived here for 7 years, and the only accidents I've ever seen on this road are at that point. I've no clue why they allow it to be the way it is. There's basically no safe way to make this left turn.
I assumed that 10gbit ethernet was only quietly released as an option for the M1 Mac Mini some time after the initial announcement, because Apple didn't want to commit to components where supply constraints could limit their ability to scale up production in the case of high demand.

Likewise, I wonder if there will be options for HDMI 2.1 (for 4K@120Hz), SD slot with UHS-III, and wifi 6E in the next few months for the new MacBook Pros.
A manager needs firing.
Depends on the scale. Facebook needs so many engineers that a reduction in hiring or a jump in attrition could begin putting the hurt on internally. Heck, look at the stories coming out of AWS these days to see what hiring problems looks like.

The issue is that Facebook has very effective strategies to deal with this, both in terms of money and social structure. We all know that they pay lucratively, but Facebook is also filled to the brim with people either working on non-core products that can think they’re doing no harm, and people who think they’re making a positive difference. I think the combination of these things is keeping Facebook ahead of their reputation problems with potential sources of labor, although I wouldn’t wager a guess how long it can last.
How NFTs are creating a generational divide between platforms
you nailed it, i just got done posting a reply to this article and refreshed the page and saw the truth of the matter. we are as a collective society are not thinking about safety in the right light. a lot of it has to do with an old outdated ideology of “doggie dog world” which reeks of scarcity
The FBI's internal guide for getting data from AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon
And that they've gone with Wayland and KDE, actually sponsoring open-source developers to improve both projects.

It is possible to be a for-profit company and still do something positive for the consumers. Thanks Valve.
The minimum. Even the smallest M1 GPU in MacBook Air has performance better than most Intel Macs.
I've contributed to Nim's development and I say that.
> Fear is great and essential.

I think fear is neutral - productive where it can be and crippling where it can't.
With corporate tax off table, U.S. Democrats turn to billionaires
I don't know anybody who shrugs it off. I haven't met anyone (other than on the Internet) who sees it in such absolute terms. Cars provide a tremendous amount of utility, and we weigh the risk against that. Even in absolute terms the risk is fairly low.
I've been a happy user of the CalDigit TS3 Plus for a couple years: https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/

Based on their reputation and my experience with them, I assume their TB4 Element Hub is a winner as well: https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-4-element-hub/
How about $1 billion? Irreversibly, in 30 mins, for 10 cents? Doubt it.
I only use classical VMs, accessed via RDP, or do everything via the various managed services from Azure, so wasn't aware of that being the case.
So it is a subtle joke? What was the intent of the butterfly design change, then? Just reduced key travel?
That isn't really a use case in this particular instance not better served by a free ACH transfer.

It's also super disingenuous to suggest that the Bitcoin network isn't collecting its take. Miners are collecting block reward in the amount of 0.004BTC per transaction, roughly $250. This is a direct reduction in net welfare of the system. That's on top of the transaction fees of roughly $3-5.

So yeah, Bitcoin costs $255 to transact, vs a free ACH.

This is also not intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is the calculated value of Bitcoin which remains $0. All value ascribed to Bitcoin is extrinsic, and this transaction extracted non-trivial value.
Here's a link disproving GP's claim: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-hiv-covid-expla...
That's not the trade off. For instance, lowering speed limits in urban areas by 5mph and enforcing that limit would significantly decrease pedestrian fatalities. That will have a minor impact on your freedom of movement.
Naive question: where are you getting this info? Link?
> Its not. I have worked at a bunch.

And yet consistently, everywhere I look, I see that "agile" simply doesn't work as described. Every article like this one treating "agile" as intrinsic truth is responded to by many who have seen first hand what a crock it is. The key observation for me is that, if you succeed with "agile", you would have succeeded as well or better without it. It's never why you were successful, but is often why projects fail. The best you can hope for is that it doesn't get in your way...hardly a ringing endorsement.
I really like Pipedream - https://pipedream.com
Any reason for that suspicion? Better, any evidence?
Leak by Mark Gurman. John Siracusa put together an illustrative diagram showing how it works (functionally, not actual layout).

https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/1395706013286809600?s=21
These MacBooks are definitely worth the money. They cost a lot but they are not overpriced.

You don’t have to consider just the CPU and GPU but the whole SoC.
CPU is impressive and GPU is good, but for standard workloads some PCs may give you slightly better performances (on the GPU side), at the cost of needing the power adapter to show that.
However, for some specific workloads (especially the ones involving ProRaw video) the custom modules in it make it perform better not only than a Mac Pro, but than every other machine in the market.
There is also the Neural Engine that could be more important in the future.

You may not need those modules, but it seems like we are forgetting this are laptops with screens, inputs and more.
These machines have one of the best screens, with high DPI, high refresh rate but most important the miniLED technology which brings true HDR. And that’s something very pricey.

Far from defending Apple, they could sell this laptops for less and we would all be happier, but at the end of the day these machines are worthy in every aspect (specific cases aside).
mempool.space
heresiarch?
>"If every day driving is reckless, then it means the system is not designed for safety."

I don't think everyday driving is reckless. I just see a lot of drivers doing things they should not be doing - and this is not the fault of the civil engineers. These drivers are breaking the law by texting and driving, speeding, not using turn signals, and changing lanes when they shouldn't. I'm challenging the categorization that everyday driving is worse than reckless driving, as the article implies.

Our roadways are designed for safety and for various degrees of safety. You could say a particular stretch of road is not safe enough, but it would be wrong to say civil engineers are blasé about safety. There is no way to make a totally safe road because there is no way to engineer a totally safe anything.
Bloomberg's Gurman, about half a year ago.

>Codenamed Jade 2C-Die and Jade 4C-Die, a redesigned Mac Pro is planned to come in 20 or 40 computing core variations, made up of 16 high-performance or 32 high-performance cores and four or eight high-efficiency cores. The chips would also include either 64 core or 128 core options for graphics.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/18/bloomberg-mac-pro-32-hi...
For a moment I thought you were talking about the USS Liberty and got confused. For those who don't know the USS Liberty was a deliberate attack on a US vessel by the Israelis in 1967 that killed 34 Marines and Sailors that would have been used as a false flag to goad America into war with Egypt. The resulting coverup by a POTUS who got his position after another POTUS was assassinated is one of the most egregious coverups in the last century.

The USAT Liberty was just a ww transport vessel.
The purely democratic view might be to let the majority choose whatever regulations they see fit for online discourse, our diets or our clothes. Tyranny of the majority, etc.

Democracy isn't a value unto itself in my view. I would describe it as a method. Those who object to the premises of democracy in favor of individual agency would also object to bans of online anonymity. But as you say, if you already disagree with the ban, you're more likely to to let it slide.
I didn't care for this article.

We don't shrug off car accidents. Actually, I feel that driving safety is probably one of the top issues that politicans legislate on (in the form of drunk driving legislation, speed camera legislation, distracted driving, safety requirements, etc etc etc). Insurance companies even offer discounts if you put a device in your vehicle to help support that you drive cautiously.

Cars have more safety features than ever before. They have lane departure warnings, automatic breaking functionality, drowsiness detection, etc.

I'd be more curious to know why we shrug off other things that kill people--like the obesity epidemic--rather than cars.