skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've been a fan of esports since I was downloading RealMedia replays of Boxer's Brood War games in the early 2000s, and still watch pro League and Dota2. Have gone to the EVO FGC tournament most years, as well. Plus some live League/Starcraft events in Korea.

The hype is fading because it was vastly overhyped and oversaturated to begin with. Games that should have never been made esports were turning into esports. One end of the spectrum was just bad games getting esports leagues prematurely. Remember Infinite Crisis, the DC Comic-based MOBA that had a full "season 1 championship" in beta, then the game itself ended up lasting only 5 months before getting shut down?[0] On the other hand you have games that are popular, but are really bad spectator sports. Fortnite and Rocket League are great examples of hugely popular games which have attempted an esports scene but failed to gain much traction, especially relative to their popularity. And then there's the ugly, which is Blizzard's massive investment into Overwatch League. Despite all the shady metric-gaming in the books (they used to automatically embed OWL Twitch streams into the Blizzard launcher, meaning anyone who launched a Blizzard game while OWL was happening counted as a viewer) OWL has looked pretty bad. They've even had to change the game rules multiple times to "fix" staleness in pro play, and Overwatch 2 is heavily targeted at adjusting pro play as well.

You can't just throw money at a game and have it become an esports phenomenon like Blizzard has tried; a lot of things have to go right with the game itself. The map and game state has to be easily readable to a viewer, which is why MOBA, RTS and fighting games to a lesser extent have done a lot better than FPS historically. The balance needs to be there; the GOATS[1] (3 tank 3 healer) setup in Overwatch made the game miserable to watch. The pacing needs to be right; it can't be too slow-paced or too fast-paced. This includes both any fighting that happens, as well as the overall pace of when fighting happens. If any of these factors aren't quite right, pro play is going to be a mess.

And sometimes, even with all those boxes ticked, it just doesn't take off. Heroes of the Storm is a great example here, where it was mostly pretty good as an esport on paper, though perhaps a bit slow-paced with too much healing. But the game never really took off in popularity and thus Blizzard killed its esports league.

Investors get tricked into thinking they're investing into the NBA or NHL with esport pitches, when in reality they're investing into the XFL, USFL or a lacrosse league.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Crisis_(video_game)

[1] https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/25/18239845/overwatch-goats-m...
No "Jeremiah Johnson"?!?
I don't think it's a coincidence I run into so many software engineers turn woodworker.
Sure.. but you've been around this site for at least as long as I have, so you must've seen that you can directly tell how technical a discussion is by the points/comments ratio. The ranking goes like this:

1. Political/current events stories have a million comments -- sometimes more comments than points if the OP is a controversial opinion

2. Software engineering opinion pieces have the 2nd most comments (everyone has an opinion), followed by

3. Software engineering technical pieces. These usually have a few comments by some smartypants that has worked with the software, and a few other people hallucinating technical challenges around them for some reason.

4. The least commented on are these kinds of pieces that require at least a master's in some other non-SWE field. Mathematics gets quite popular since most of HN was "good at maths", and thus will upvote it, even though the most maths they have understood in the last decade was when they copied some formulas from a random paper.
I don't yet understand why this is better than Fission. Surely Fission provides us with unlimited carbon free energy (given enough fissionable material).

What will Fusion give us that Fission can't already? Is it safer perhaps?
Pretty well so far for whom? We've initiated a mass global extinction. There wasn't ever a competition to take over the world as a species - no award, no prize - no one and nothing cares.

The only way we've done it is by eliminating everything in our path. We've been excellent at justifying eliminating entire ecosystems - when will we stop?

Probably right before we've justified eliminating entire countries of people with the weapons of death we've developed by extracting every last resource for the ground by digging it up.
I tend to agree.

I grew up in Norway, and now live in the UK, and one of the big shocks to the system on moving to the UK was that in Norway even most employment contracts - contracts which has a very substantial impact on peoples lives -, are often a page or less. Exceptions are very senior staff and sometimes multinationals who don't know better (half the time most of their extra verbiage is null and void due to legal restrictions in employment law). The most complex Norwegian employment contract I had was a couple of pages, mostly just spelling out terms which were covered by the law anyway.

The reason is simple: There are presumed legal defaults for almost everything, such as duration of notice periods (typically 3 months) and other terms, and except for clauses that have little impact on the employee the defaults are good enough that few companies want to go above and beyond, and trying to deviate the other way (offer less than the default; such as e.g. a 1 month notice period) is often difficult, sometimes impossible, and almost always requires consideration that makes it unattractive (before I moved from Norway I'd never once had an employment contract where someone tried to pay me less than 3 months notice, but I had one where they wanted to retain the right to pay me in lieu of notice)

The irony is that while Norway is often seen as complicated for businesses, in this respect things are easy unless you try to make it hard on yourself: You can draft a valid employment contract yourself in less than a page. A well regulated environment can reduce a lot of friction even if the regulated terms are not exactly how you'd like them to be.

But for employment the importance is at least significant enough that you can expect people to read the contract even if it's longer.

For things like subscriptions etc. there's even less reason there can't be reasonable defaults and why you can't make it hard or unattractive to deviate from those defaults, such as by requiring the contract to offer concessions in return.
American Football is extremely simple game relative to other games. It also is piece-wise fast paced. The game goes really fast, then gets a small break. it lends it self easily to television broadcast with its timeouts, changing of sides, etc. I am not of fan of american football, but I can see how it became popular.
I think fusion-plants have always been "15 years away", and most likely will be so for quite a few years...

Edit: I was wrong, fusion is always 30 years away: https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/why-nuclear-fusi...
The latest League Worlds was gigantic and viewership peaked at 5.1 million. These big finals are the eSports equivalent to the Super Bowl, and a lot of people tune in even if they're not active players.

My favorite moba is Heroes of the Storm but I still check out League Worlds and DotA2's The International, despite not playing either game.

StarCraft 2 is a decade old and viewership is still pretty solid for big events. Brood Wars is two decades old and they still get thousands of viewers!
That’s great! Because there are [ONLY] 8500 coal power plants producing 20% of the CO2 emissions globally.

Removing 20% of emissions will make a huge difference.

ETA on this should be around 2030?

What I don’t get is since solar is cheaper, why are we building so many coal power plants?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2317274-china-is-buildi...
What about blocking by ssl fingerprinting? Established browsers have known fingerprints derived from how the ssl request is made, supported connection options, etc.
"Do you feel like this applies to American Football?"

Honestly, yes. Protestations that it's too difficult to understand seems to me to stem from people who literally want the game explained in three seconds or less.

The core is simple. Team have ball. Team want move ball that way for points. Other team want stop them. Work out the legal ways for them to score points and move ball around as you go. The super detailed lacunae of what penalties are for what exist in all sports, it just isn't generally noticed. The FIFA rules for soccer run 144 pages: https://www.amazon.com/Official-Rules-Soccer-U-S-Federation/... Not a huge book, probably not huge pages, but a great deal more detailed than you'd try to "explain" to someone just learning what soccer is.

Most of the meta around passing plays versus running plays can be explained easily.

It really isn't that complicated.

To the extent that it is, all the sports are. At the top end everything gets complicated, hence, Moneyball and that sort of thing. Basketball is a simple sport of putting the ball in the hoop while dribbling it, but at the top end you start talking about matchups between this guy and that guy and how being 3% better at three-point shots affects this team's matchups against that team... but that's not something you have to care about to watch it, any more than you have to care about what the name of every position is in every sport initially.
Recursion in Language vs. Math
That's probably the main issue with esports. They don't really have the longevity established sports do. It's really easy to just move onto the next big thing.
Wooow, you killed me with the last words of your comment: “snow on the ground”. Sounds amazing. I’d like one day to be able to swim in the freezing water as well. How and why did you start?
> They just won't have a choice; if we can provide a real alternative, we can just forbid gas car altogether. Just like we banned CFC to save the ozone when better alternatives were developed.

Banning gas cars outright, I think, would be a political miscalculation. There is broad mistrust of anything the government does right now in the US (not wholly undeserved), and it is likely to continue getting stronger, so not tainting it with a political ban would be a better solution in my view. Otherwise you risk polarization and failure, because not everyone buys climate change, or banning something because X is determined to be better now. It also would breed widespread resentment from people who aren't ready to switch (because, let me tell you, outside of cities, "reduces climate change" is something nobody cares about as a selling point). Just let electric vehicles naturally become better at everything and let gas cars slowly die naturally. The "invisible hand" will take care of the rest - just like it did with the horse and buggy.
my hack for making the `htmx:confirm` event act like it is blocking:

https://github.com/bigskysoftware/htmx/blob/a3c414dcee94fd03...

basically, redesign the arguments for a function such that I can call it again at a given spot with one parameter changed and, to a first order approximation, it acts as if the function is resumable.

I've used this trick in a few places now, just recently in idiomorph to allow head elements to load before the rest of the content is morphed:

https://github.com/bigskysoftware/idiomorph/blob/e6dfc189fa3...
Goodbye Spotify
I'm probably off-base here because I'm told i conflate woodworking and carpentry a lot, but isn't it a fairly well-paying profession?
Could someone break down the costs of realistic fusion for me like I am 12 please?

For example, for fission, my 12 year old understanding is: Stack uranium plates until the reaction is self-sustaining, boil water to spin turbine, if reaction gets too fast, cover it with lead / cool it with water. Circulated water is slightly radioactive. Main costs are keeping reaction container / need power to circulate water cooling, disposing of spent fuel is a problem. Power output is 100s or 1000s times more effective than coal / oil once running. In addition to meltdown risk, public opinion is concerned about radioactive cooling water near their community.

What's the same tldr for fusion? (and feel free to correct my tldr)
Uh, it's been done a few times as a neat tech demo, but the reality of surgery is that you really need a surgeon there, in the room, who is capable of doing the surgery as an open procedure if the robotic attempt fails, or if they hit a bleeding source.

And you need someone who's qualified to place the ports in the body in the first place.

In practically all cases, if someone needs a highly specialized surgeon, it's logistically much simpler to take the patient to them.
Do you have any source for this? I've been playing Counter-Strike since the original beta, and it's been popular since its creation, far before skins existed. As far as the funding goes, I have no idea, but would love to see some numbers.
This might work with post-Surak Vulcans, but it's not gonna fly here on Earth with humans :)
Thanks. I’ll take a look.
> he can force a large group of his followers

Just a small point; if you want to make that argument, force is a very imprecise word to use to describe his actions.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NmWwRmvjAE8

this is a different version of the talk where perhaps this duality becomes clearer at the end
Not to entirely disagree with you, but comparing football to Counter Strike is kind of an apples-to-oranges comparison - you're comparing an introduction to something new with something that most American viewers have probably known for their entire lives, so that factor of "explainability" doesn't exactly apply to it.
-> rural Canada was in deep on the socialist end of the spectrum.

Isn't socialism an urban phenomena? How did socialism develop in rural areas?
You may find that you don't have to leave tech in order to find more fulfilling work. "Tech" spans so many industries that you can likely find a position at a company that's more aligned with your interests than whatever it is you're working on now.

In other words, I think you can have it both ways—fulfilling job while utilizing the technical skillset you've built up over years of professional life.

That being said, if you want to leave by all means go for it. One of the benefits of cushy jobs is that you can try something else for a while and come back if it doesn't suite you.
Who Owns Buried Treasure? (2019)
Yeah, the cost of capsules for NIF is something like 4 orders of magnitude higher than it needs to be for commercialization, though admittedly it's not like they've industrialized the process yet.

The other thing is that if LLNL is still using their own definition of Q, it's not necessarily the case that they've demonstrated net-energy breakeven; they like to compare direct energy delivery to energy release, so when calculating Q they basically pretend there aren't any energy losses from actually running the huge laser facility itself. As a result, LLNL assumes that laser technology will improve to the point that real-life Q can catch up with their "scientific Q" metric. (IIRC I think "Project LIFE" was supposed to develop some of those technologies, but it never worked out, possibly since NIF is so far behind their promised schedule.)
These are emergency broadcast alerts. Different countries have different laws on these - and in some countries you might not even be able to disable them.

Just because its listed under "Apps & notifications"/"Wireless emergency alerts", it doesn't mean they are "user settings". Its not necessarily the local "carrier" that turned the settings on, its more that connecting to a cell tower in a particular jurisdiction can enforce receiving emergency alerts.

More on the EU alerts systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Alert
Once again, I am reminding HackerNews that the technology to build a battery capable of storing enough renewable electrical energy for the (world|nation) for even half a day *does not exist* at any reasonable cost.

And if you want to store multiple days for a northerly nation with very cold winters, frequent high pressure anticyclones (so, no wind) that can last about a week, and you want to switch everyone to zero carbon heating, then the technology doubly doesn't exist.

And the only retort to the above will be mumbling "yeah, but exponential improvement in batteries plus didn't someone say something about hydrogen?" which is essentially, wishful thinking. When you can build a zero carbon grid out of nuclear fission plants - and we've known how to do so since the 60s.
Football is dead simple, even simpler than CS: One team wants to go one way with the ball, the other wants to stop them, drive them back or, ideally, get the ball away from them and go the other way. They get four tries to go at least 10 yards and if they don't the other team gets the ball. If they make the 10 yards, they get another 4 tries.

There are a lot of fiddly details in offsides rules, incomplete passes, extra points, etc. but they aren't necessary to understand and enjoy watching a game.
It's interesting to witness the increase of FUD against Binance the past months

Will be interesting to see what the outcome of all of this will be, if Binance collapses, it'll be the end of Crypto

If Coinbase remains as the sole exchange, then we'll be able to conclude that it is indeed operated by the CIA/FED to promote a digital EURODOLLAR issued by the central bank

It can't be otherwise since China is making moves with its e-YUAN [1,2]

That's the natural outcome of this post-capitalist society in the making, you own nothing, you get your credits that resets every months, no interest rates, no savings

[1] - https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202212/06/WS638e7e0fa31057c4...

[2] - https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2022/12/12/commentary/w...

What's warranting getting flagged?, care to explain what i'm doing wrong that's against the rules?

Every arguments i provide are always sourced
i don't personally care about DOTA, but isn't "The International" that for DOTA?

I do watch SC2, and blizzcon (and now IEM) is the world championship for that.
Yeah, rocket league too. I didn't think of it. Although I'm iffy on anything with non-reality physics, since people have to learn a new intuition.
This synergizes with several other comments, but I think you're looking at another victim of the interest rates rising above 0%. It isn't just the easy availability of the money for esports themselves, it's the easy availability of money for sponsorships, ad spend, hardware, no immediate need to show profitability on the chance that maybe someday it will, a whole bunch of things. With the rising interest rates, that all disappears at once.
invest
verb
gerund or present participle: investing
1. expend money with the expectation of achieving a profit
or material result by putting it into financial plans,
shares, or property, or by using it to develop a commercial
venture.

Seems like a correct use of the term to me, even if crypto is highly speculative and kind of a dumpster fire recently.
Or adjusting the brightness of their screen.
> Can the mouse scroll speed be configured in KDE, nowadays?

If you use Wayland the answer is Yes. There's a "Scrolling speed" configuration in the Mouse settings.
The question in this case is who is right? If the science is in, and you'll get a better crop/profit/outcome by doing X, it doesn't matter that your grandfathers grandfather has been doing it a different way since 1066. And that's basically what this comes down to.

If farming were a market and farmers were self reliant like other businesses it would be none of my business how they ran things (within the usual bounds of not eating babies etc). But it's not, farmers get the majority of their income from government subsidies. So they're free to fuck up actually farming because they get those either way. In that environment, you need someone to actually be responsible for output who is motivated to care.
One thing to consider: Even if you prefer solar, you still need to initially make those solar panels and that is an energy intensive process.

I think we're still probably 20 years away from commercialization of this, but I still think this is a very big deal.
I mean “fairly” well paid is still a far cry for most people from FAANG salaries. For example, I have a number of educated friends who have said things like “I’d kill for $70k”.
They are all beautiful works of software, but nothing can really compare to the seamless experience of using a tool that you have designed to meet all of your needs from the ground-up.

This is the downside of building your own tools (well)- once you have experienced how good life can be with those tools, it's very hard to go back to working with tools that are not designed with all of the same intricacies in mind.
I did, but then I realize it isn't technology that fulfills me. It's my sense of accomplishment because I build (at least a few) things and I like to learn new things. Even if those things have no day-to-day value in my work. That taught me that if I want to have a job that's fulfilling, it needs to have impact.

I had my lowest sense of fulfillment working for contracting companies where my work was as likely shelved due to whole programs being cancelled and I'm just one of many projects. No matter what I did, it did not feel like I had an impact in the world. I also felt like I had little agency to change things, after a while. Months of wasted effort, weekends in the office, etc. go up in smoke.

I considered ditching software development because it was fun, but brought me no sense of accomplishment. I looked at opening a store, going back to school to get a Masters in Tax Accounting (I used to be an accountant), or even law school. My sense of accomplishment came from actually doing side projects. It took me 10 or 15 years to connect those dots.

For the last 5 years I've been working for a cloud/product company where I do feel my work directly impacts people. And that is fulfilling. I've watched the result of my efforts unblock numerous lines of revenue. I wasn't some kind of sole hero, but part of a team. But my contribution had a real, positive impact. The difference is my work actually had an impact.

I currently program in bare metal C - a language I've known for the better part of 30 years. I live in an environment no more sophisticated than Visual Studio Code, CMake, and C. It is enjoyable. More than when I worked on cutting edge frameworks with all the 'best' tools. So it's obviously not the technology - it's the job.

I could probably find that same sense of fulfillment doing any one of a dozen things. It's just that I'm probably undiagnosed something or other and I'm pathologically obsessed about all things related to computers. So probably a good alignment between my interest and my job. What I've learned is that I think I could go dig ditches, and as long as it had an impact, I would have a sense of accomplishment.
Construction still hasn't begun on that project, 3 years later. When is the last time LA had a large construction project come in under budget?

I'll believe it when the batteries are actually installed and the bill is paid.

Also, the solar farm is planned for 800-MWh of storage. In 2021, LA used over 65 TWh of electricity[1]. That's over 7 GWh, per hour. So this storage would run the city for a few minutes. Not exactly a replacement for base load generation.

[1] https://ecdms.energy.ca.gov/elecbycounty.aspx
I'd take all of that with a grain of salt. First he was probably trying to impress the girl, and second, every scientist says their work is possible, they just "need more funding". If they didn't think it was possible, they wouldn't be working on it.
Pausing an entire cloud, swapping storage systems, and resuming the cloud :)

Weaponized virsh save/restore because of how Linux handles mounts (mnt_id)
> to track down who paid for what

The 'for what' part actually isn't that easy, meaning LE at least needs additional data points.
And then there is Monero.