skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting that this subject came up today. A few days ago I was looking back at Capsicum [1], a project meant to bring a capabilities framework to UNIX I knew about from years back. The impetus behind it being a short review of containerization primitives I was doing. Sadly it doesn't seem Capsicum went anywhere in Linux-land beyond kernel patches. But one of the subsequent project that pages on Capsicum often pointed to is the WebAssembly System Interface [2]. POSIX APIs, capabilities and portability sounds strangely apt for microservices, but at this point I'm still not too sure how to think about it. I'd appreciate it if anyone had good WASM/ASI resources for stupid devs like me.
In any case I don't see why k8s or Terraform couldn't orchestrate WASI-defined containers. If anything it's a dig at containerd/docker/podman.

[1]: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/capsicum/

[2]: https://wasi.dev
Might not want to take that at face value. I skipped through most of the video but it seems like a series of thoughtless jabs. The cost estimates are way off, ignores the fact commercial launch prices are a large multiple of the actual cost, ignores economics with Starship. It handwaves the fact that Starlink orbits are so low that the satellites naturally decay in 5 years, so no permanent space trash. Comparing the addressable market (telecom alone is already 2T) to average income per capita is pointless.. I stopped there. Too much of the "i am very smart" vibe.
I've tried watching their latest videos and it was frustrating and weird. You see people toying with excel and somehow they manage to answer the game questions but you don't understand what they do. Often they fail and you don't know why either.
> We've already detected all asteroids with that mass in our solar system.

We really haven't. We found Sedna in 2003. Makemake and Eris in 2005.
Not a biologist, so this is just a guess, but I imagine their simplicity is their weakness.

Viruses rely on the machinery of nucleic acids to replicate. That machinery is complex and robust and the result of some long period of continuous evolution, which means viruses exists in a fairly smooth fitness space where mutation and recombination are effective means of improving fitness.

Prions by contrast seem more like isolated spikes in a much sparser fitness space. Presumably the equivalents of mutation and recombination for prions lead to molecules that almost never retain the capacity to replicate, so they have limited potential to become fitter over time.
> K8s itself is an evolution on a previous architecture, OpenStack. OpenStack had each container be a full virtual machine, with a whole kernel and operating system and everything.

Linux containers (LXC) are designed for running applications whereas Virtual Machines (VMs) are designed for running Operating Systems. So, they are nothing alike and any hint to "evolution" is just more complexity layered on by people who have nothing better to do than make things seem complicated.

Not every application needs this type of complexity. Sometimes an idea or application can just run on a regular old VM until such time it doesn't and then I put it on AppEngine, where it's technically K8 and Docker, except I don't have to think about it.

The amount of complexity K8 and Docker brings is not worth the time and effort require to learn those things well if doing one's own deployments. I'm thinking back to Docker literally uninstalling itself SEVERAL times on my laptop, leaving itself in a broken state. Sure, I can learn these technologies a little, but I am certain problems will crop up over time that whittle away at the usefulness of choosing to use them over just using older, more well known methods to get shit done.
What is crazy is, with the increased cost of my two 32gb servers, it is now a better deal to drop those and replace them with a single, new, 64gb server with new hardware (compared to the two old robot servers). All because of energy costs o_O
If only there was a readily available, highly effected treatment for COVID that you could buy over the counter and had no side effects..... oh wait... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34194240/
At Starlink's low attitude all orbits decay eventually without active station keeping
If scanning for near Earth asteroids was really a priority, there's nothing stopping us from building a detection network in space, above the altitude at which Starlink satellites fly.
and yet if a lock could be picked, you don't get to exchange it for another one that couldn't be! Analogies breakdown when compared too carefully.

I think software sellers is doing a courtesy when they provide security updates for free. They are not legally obligated to do it. The users are entitled to switch to a competitor however - by not having their data held hostage (which, i think modern laws don't properly address).
There is a saying that you can make any program run fast if you don't care about correctness.

We have reached the point where C programmers cannot understand the language/compiler anymore.

Given that this has been going on for a long time, my hope is that Rust will be the next systems programming language.
This is not a western exclusive. See Russia’s strongest little boy for an example.
The eruption is compared to 500x atomic bombs
I tried rubocop once, 8 years ago or so, and it saw code like this:

def foo(x)
self.bar = x
end

and complained that `self.` should be removed. Somebody ran rubocop with autofix. It changed the code to just `bar = x`, which is not the same thing (it just creates a new variable called bar), and it resulted in some really horrible bugs that made their way to production.

I never used rubocop again.

(I'm really hoping this was just a rubocop bug, and has since been fixed, but it's enough to ruin your trust.)
"Robinhood, which does not charge an upfront commission to trade, makes about three-quarters of its revenue from payment for order flow, which are payments it gets from market-makers who execute its customers' trades. The more people trade, the more money Robinhood gets."

Accordingly all this companies (Peloton, Robinhood,..) will suffer now that the pandemic & WFH is finishing.
Right, and the old way let you choose your upgrade cycle, rather than letting the company choose how often they’d like to make you buy.
In Covid-19. I've recently taken interest in Nigella Sativa and quinones. Nigella Sativa's main active compound is thymoquinone, and it has scores of research showing significant benefits to immune function. In Covid-19, this manifests as prevention of the deadly "cytokine storm" that happens in severe cases.

This is just one study I stumbled upon, there are a few others, but it's surprising that it's not in widespread use. Wanted to share and discuss other opinions.

Wanted to add that this is a relatively small dose (40mg/kg) of the seeds, which makes the results even more impressive. Commercially available extracts exist with 100mg thymoquinone per gram, while the powder has (roughly) maybe 2% thymoquinone, but even that might be on the very high end and not the general case.

[edit] @dang, this got flagged, and I wonder why
The software world today is also very different. SaaS has become the norm because the typical user experience for software products spans multiple devices and is a far more connected experience that relies on services carried over the Internet. When you add server-side services into the mix, you have a much-increased variable cost to delivering software that is more difficult to absorb in a once-off price.

While many of us here would prefer the idea of owning and licensing software in perpetuity, the reality is that most users don't care and are typically more price sensitive to the point that they will prefer to pay a small amount monthly than pay a large lump sum once. The monthly pricing mechanism also provides a safety net, as you can stop paying at any time if a product no longer provides utility or if you straight up can't afford it.

At the other end of the spectrum, SaaS works very well for business. Larger companies always paid recurring fees to software vendors anyway - typically as support and maintenance, because they need SLAs and commitments that ensure continuity of being able to use the software in a reliable manner. In the past, these were usually a recurring add-on that was paired up with a major up-front cost. Today, it's reversed where you now might pay a small once-off cost for implementation or delivery, but the bulk of the pricing is weaved into the recurring subscription cost. This works better for most businesses.

Also, a much higher percentage of software makers these days are doing so on the back of venture funding. The north star metric for most venture-backed companies is annual recurring revenue, so a subscription model is almost the default when it comes to a venture-backed startup. When a company is focused on rapid and high scale growth, having to start every year at zero makes it significantly more difficult to succeed.
A good start is to deal with the diverse subsidies granted to the oil/gas/coal industries. The world is paying these people to stick knives in them.

Politicians are given huge bribes (severally in the forms of paper bags of cash, offshore cash deposits and the 'clean' campaign donations)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_depletion_allowance

https://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/1964_16/32-33/depletion_...

https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?...
They might share a grid but the prices differ massively between countries, sometimes having a 200-300% difference as is the case with Finland and Germany.
Perhaps because of the web's deployment model? Quickly getting from "interested in" to "running the game" might be a game-changer. (apologies for the unintentional pun)
Most desktop Linuxes are changing and deprecating APIs way too fast for the usual glacial development flow of a big commercial software company.

The fact that apparently the API for Wayland/Flatpak screen recording is less than 5 years old and it still does not work on X11 desktops does not inspire a lot of confidence, either.

However, desktop video calls and screencasting is one area where I think the free and open source alternatives are up to the task.
But they do prioritize ofcourse, you can't plow everything at once. It's usually fixed within the day of the snowfall unless it's a bad snowstorm when it can take up to a couple of days until everything is done. Like we had several of last year.

They first just run the plow everywhere, then they switch to machines to move the worst snowpiles away from corners and make more space for the next snowstorm so the plow can run again. If you don't do this, the roads will get smaller and smaller for each snowstorm.

Priority is buss roads, main roads and priority 1 bicycle/walkways, then they start on priority 2 roads and bicycle/walkways. The sidewalks are used for snowdumps until they have time to remove them.

The inner city areas doesn't have enough space to store snow so it gets carried by trucks to designated snowdumps that may or may not be empty by the next winter. Our town had several excavators digging in the snow piles all summer to try to make them melt faster. They didn't succeed this summer so they are dumping on top of last years snow.
The Phoenix guy works for them, so I'm sure they have a lot of organic interest from Phoenix users. It's like how you don't have to use Next.js on Vercel, but…
I'm sorry I'm a bit insensitive, this isn't my experience at all.

Me and all my friends are in better shape (most of them left big city to go to a more rural area), all of them now cook (i might have influenced this).
my brother and sister are too, two of my cousins went from 35+ BMI to 30 BMI, the rest are still in shape. It might be because of the environment, or the country. It is easier for me to be outside, we have outdoor gyms 8n most cities, sometime with gym trails. My point is the experience is very anecdotal, and can be great for some and a disaster for others.

I've heard that autistics people in the US suffer from wearing masks. My psychologist (specialized in functional autism) told me that most of her patients feel the same way I do, or better, even those deeper on the spectrum.

Again, I'm not saying you're wrong, but you are generalizing too much, and maybe too US-centric.
Eh I still chose to buy, I usually use a copy of office for 5-10 years, so it’s still vastly cheaper to buy.
That’s a great feature, brings a lot of peace of mind.
You're absolutely right, but I see that the infrastructure exists - the roads in winter are regularly salted, any snowfall is cleared immediately(at least in cities), and yet the entire country is still at a standstill, because....people are worried to go out? Like, if there was a foot of snow outside and it wasn't getting cleared because it's such a rare occurance that the city never bought any equipment for it - fair enough. But I see that local councils are equiped to deal with it, but some remaining caution remains, I don't know if it's a cultural thing or just a habit, I don't know.
No need for a "stable channel". Just download the updates on the background, apply them on launch, and stop showing the notification.
> It's incredible how the business world panders to software engineers.

Supply and demand is the only force here, software engineers aren’t special.
> The Finns were German allies throughout.

No they were not as Germany had very much agree not to get involved as the Soviets beat up the Finns. Despite popular opinion on Germany very much wanting to do so.

> Perhaps to make WW2 less strange, think of alliances as British/Russian group

Yeah but the Brits were about to launch an attack on Russia in late 1939. In total all the events between 1936 and 1947 are quite the diplomatic clusterfuck.
As if their opponents didn't practice exactly what I said too
Can you share the trick? I'm slipping quite often these days :(
> We don't want "super cheap products", we want reasonably priced products we own after we buy.

I'd fully expect someone to provide this if there is a market for it.
Archaeologists Unearth Colossal Pair of Sphinxes in Egypt During Restoration
> And they are very easy to see because they actually have blinking lights on them that are designed to make the planes more visible. It's a complete non issue.

Interesting point. They'd also be harder to remove from your data because they'd be less predictable. Presumably someone could track/monitor all the satelite's so you could adjust for them (as best you can) in your data.
Windows 7 was probably the best it's been for a long time.

But you're right, they completely screwed up the control panel. If not for that then it would've been the new pinnacle (let us never discuss Vista).
The main problem I see with this business model is not the primary characteristics of this model which sound like a rent. But I have a feeling that having such a model does decrease the drive to innovate.
In a pay-once model you always need to entice the customer with new features or open up entirely new markets. With subscription, the customer will basically pay for maintenance.

How would the world of cars have looked if it had a primarily subscription model (which will probably come in this area as well)?

So long story short, I find subscription model bad because it drives down innovation.
And yet nobody's invading US to get rid of white supremacists.
db is just 1 commoditized piece of a platform
The amusing thing I am seeing is how much the decline of a tool aimed squarely at paper-based communication can still surprise me given the extent to which paper based communication has basically ceased to exist. The part of me that didn't expect the decline and the part that didn't expect Word to stick around so long don't even shout at each other, it's as if there wasn't any contradiction at all.
“Busy” Light for WFH
One thing unique to N++ IMO is how well it works with lots of files open, and how easy and fast it is to do search'n'replace across lots of files.

It has several modes (normal, regex, normal-with-multiline) so you can always choose easily the one that fits your scenario. The multiline one is IMO pretty useful - it allows multiline but allows to avoid clunkiness of regexes and escapings.
Good point. This is true for the larger firms too but they can weather storms better.

- PayPal wants their people in Austin.

- Amazon wants their people at one of the hubs.

- What other large firms are telling applicants they have to reside in a particular city or close to a hub?
I’m not sure I’m proficient at Word. I’ve used word processors for decades, but I stopped using them on a regular basis after college (mid to late 90s). Back then I used Word Perfect. Since then I’ve only needed to use one a few times a year. And never anything more complicated than something like a super simple sign with large letters. I find Word to be complicated when I try to use it. Why are the menus constantly changing? How does anyone find anything when they change so often?
It fantastically benefits US military providing reliable communication channel and high speed networking everywhere. Not sure if Europeans will want this. Not sure if Russians will be able to afford this. Chinese might want the same very much and they can built all the satellites for sure.
>If no one wants those improvements, why should they pay them to keep working on it?

They should not pay them, they should use one of the numerous alternatives.
Good to know that the "energy" pun is versatile enough to translate! https://www.nrg.com/
Didn't see Terminus either[0]

[0] http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/
It's not different in any way and definitely not immoral. Essentially it's "illegal" because it hurts corporate interests and they want to make it stop. Corporations have money and will just buy laws with lobbyists if they have to, it makes no sense to take this process seriously.
To the Fly.io team here, other than the "daily storage-based snapshots of each of your provisioned volumes"[0], is there a plan to offer something similar to Heroku WAL based restore system [1] where you can (from the control panel) restore a db to a moment in time?

Also do you have any plans for a managed upgrading/patching of Postgres, again similar to Heroku?

For me personally the fully managed nature of Postgress on Heroku is brilliant and what I would love to see on Fly.io. It seems that on Fly its a little more hands on or am I missing something?

0: https://fly.io/docs/getting-started/multi-region-databases/#...

1: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres-data-s...
Migrate G Suite account to a Personal Google Account (2017)
Mine's set to Win+Space.

Finally a use for the windows key! (on top of win+shift+arrows)
I doubt it, because I do the same type of travel and many (or often most) of the other people at those locations are also from the “industrialized west”
For those who misread and get as confused as I did: this is “The Center for COVID Control”

> The company, a suburban Chicago-based chain that boasts 300 locations nationally, has been paid more than $124 million for testing from the federal government since the start of the pandemic.
This is paternalistic nonsense. It's "I'm right, you're wrong, you need to change what you're doing even though I am so far in the minority they're literally making what I'm doing illegal." I distinctly remember a time when I was a passenger with a friend's mother, who was going the speed limit in the left lane. Wide open in front of her, a line of 15+ cars behind her. She actually said "I'm going fast enough, you all can wait." The level of self-importance in such a statement, when it would cost you nothing just to get over and let people be on their way, is absolutely staggering.

And for what it's worth, there are several states where there are explicit exceptions to briefly exceed the speed limit for the purposes of passing vehicles in the right lane - some specify they have to be going under the speed limit, but not all.
Since I needed brief intro myself, Wikipedia says:

"The initial target audience for Briar includes "activists, journalists and civil society" with plans to make the system "simple enough to help anyone keep their data safe." As the ability to function in the absence of internet infrastructure may also make the project valuable to disaster response and aid organisations, the developers are working with the Open Humanitarian Initiative and Taarifa. Ultimately, the developers aim to create a system which is "as simple to use as WhatsApp, as secure as PGP, and that keeps working if somebody breaks the Internet.""

Would personally love a blog review or two of Briar but found little thus far.
There's one of these in my town that got scrutiny recently, and I believe they're currently shut down by the county. Reports started coming out of their Florida locations that people were getting "you're negative!" while still in line to take the tests.

This sort of thing is why I was pretty frustrated to hear the Biden admin talking about tests last week and basically saying "they're easy to find, just Google it".
It's admiring how quickly they fix these. Kudos to the Rust team. But I worry about older software compiled with an older version of Rust which does not have this fixed.
> except it is, WASM is designed to be AOT compiled to native code.

Interesting, I didn't know that. How does WASM handle different architectures? Do you build different binaries for x86/arm? Or does it do it the Apple way with the giant bundle that contains all binaries?

> Now Unity is so much more then just a tool to make cross platform easier. So comparing it to WASM is kinda pointless IMHO. Though it probably is a grate choice for any extension mechanism, like mods or even in game scripting.

Agreed, that was badly worded. Like you said, one could compare a module written in Unity and compiled to whatever Unity compiles to/is implemented in these days with a module in WASM.

Edit: Or does the AOT mean that the format that is shipped is some non-native format but the client compiles everything before the first run?
Dinosaurs didn’t have one either and are still doing… ooh
we (don't) like the stonk, ok?!
A protein can misfold in countless ways, and there are countless of proteins to misfold.

That a virus can be a big and complicated structure does not mean that smaller and simpler structure is fundamentally different.

Viruses themselves also have many different modes of operation, with things like virophages, satellite virus and giant virus showing just how unclear the term "virus" is.
That's my go-to karaoke song - grab a partner and have fun!
An IFR of 0.5% is still millions of people.

Case fatality rate is comparable to the Spanish flu:

* https://pmj.bmj.com/content/97/1147/273

* https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-...

As I understand it, reducing both inhalation and exhalation of the virus (i.e. everyone wearing masks) is more much more effective than reducing either one alone.

The classic formulation of rights under liberalism is "your rights end where mine begins". This makes it fairly clear that individuals don't have the right to transmit diseases to others.
Unlikely for Chinese devs, most of them don’t speak English. Definitely more common in India/Eastern Europe.
I still cannot run a Wayland session on my machine w/ an nvidia 3080 with the latest drivers. It either fails to boot (KDE) or runs at about 15 FPS (Gnome).

It seems a little unreasonable to be this mad at a company for not supporting an environment that doesn't work for the vast majority of hardware out there. Especially given that you can just use Zoom within Firefox.
I think another way to state this without getting into philosophy or semantics is that viruses are capable of evolving methods of being more successful at infection. Prions are not, because their method of operation involves remaining single molecules.
I'm sure the internet accepts the new normal in a week and starts defending it religiously, now that their social media platform overlord has decided on what's normal.
Well, he launched a car out of spite, so, why not?