skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Firstly, this isn't the first time Amun 3554 mining has come up [1].

Look, I'm a sci-fi fan like so many other HNers but the economic reality just doesn't add up.

Amun 3554 has a highly eccentric orbit [2], even though it does cross Earth's orbit. JPL has data [3].

You need to consider that:

1. It's expensive to get into orbit. Even at SpaceX's prices, you're talking ~$1000/kg for LEO insertion;

2. You need to get equipment to the asteroid;

3. You need to get to the asteroid. Proximity to Earth isn't the problem here. The problem is the delta-V required to match velocities;

4. You either need to bring back the entire asteroid, which would require a massive amount of delta-V, or you need to mine the asteroid, which would take a massive amount of equipment;

5. If you get raw materials back to Earth orbit, depending on the application, you may then need to get them back to Earth, which granted is significantly easier than escaping Earth's gravity; and

6. If you get a massive quantity of some valuable material it'll change the economics. That $20 trillion won't be $20 trillion with the added supply.

I am assuming this would be an automated operation as the cost of manned spaceflight is significantly higher and automated systems should hopefully improve in the intervening years.

Now, compare this to some other materials we have on Earth. Iron is pretty abundant (both on Earth and in the universe, due to it's energy relationship with fusion). On Earth, we dig up iron for under $30/ton and can ship it anywhere on Earth for another $50-100/ton (IIRC).

For the cost of a single SpaceX launch you'd need to bring back about a million tons of iron to be on the same scale.

Obviously that's why they're targeting much more valuable materials like platinum but I hope that puts things in perspective.

Our society is built on cheap and plentiful resources (fossil fuels, metals and minerals). As abundant as they might be in space, increasing the cost of iron 1000 times is going to have profound implications for our entire species. At some point of course recycling makes more economic sense but that's just a temporary cushion (eg you lose materials through corrosion).

I believe we're coming to a resources-crunch within the next 100-200 years that will result--one way or another--in a massive drop in population and a fundamental change in our society. Let's just hope we survive it.

As much as I'd wish otherwise I have a hard time envisioning space mining or even prolonged living in space as being economically viable in any way, shape or form.

[1]: http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/27/technology/business2_guideto...

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3554_Amun

[3]: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=3554+Amun
The price of bad advice
That's ridiculous. It is extremely easy to forget your password, that situation does happen and resetting passwords should be catered for in the system.

Your premise is basically false. A system administrator should be able to reset a password.
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Science fiction doesn't seem to touch on "first generation" all that often. From the video games perspective, in Mass Effect you're at least three generations out from first contact, which was initiated by the military, although corporations quickly started exploiting planet systems for resources and became very wealthy, improving humanity's standing in the galactic community by the time of Mass Effect. You also have Dead Space, where corporations crack planets to get at their resources. It seems to be a general theme in space science fiction that big companies mine resources to become very wealthy, but you don't get stories of big companies financing space expansion a la East India Company.
" That doesn't mean Groklaw is above criticism or without faults, a jump emotionally invested commenters seem to want to take. Please take the time to read through things before you jump to hurl invective."

Did you even read what I wrote? I never said they were above criticism. There is a difference between criticism and bashing. And your comments in the aggregate amount to the latter. Claiming they are "breeding a mentality of cheer leading" anything is just ridiculous sophistry and that is what I was pointing out so why the attempted misdirection?

"I'm hardly the only one here expressing the same sentiments about Groklaw"

And there are more people saying the opposite. For any point you can bring up, you can find as many lay people as you have time to look for to agree with it which proves absolutely nothing.
It could, but you also have to consider the cost of getting these materials back to Earth. No article has mentioned the details of that. I don't know if Planetary Resources has disclosed that. And then there's extracting the material. Yes, the sheer scope does mean a huge wealth... But it costs to access. And until I hear a professional suggest a price tag on that, I'm not too worried about it destroying economies.

(Or maybe they could extract it in space... But that would need new first gen technology, but at least retrieval from space may pay off in the long run, as they'll no doubt require space extraction eventually.)
Some source code is worth a (three) thousand (fourteen) words ... =P
Those who use E-Mail clients, do you mind the harddrive space it takes up?
Just curious...I was wondering if it was worth using something like Sparrow for email as opposed to just the Gmail client or if there is some real benefit to having email stored locally.

I was wondering if you all felt that if there could be a similar experience if I just used sparrow to only view email but not store it locally.

I primarily use gmail but I don't know if worth even trying to honestly keep local access to emails on my computer.
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To give a counter example to your first point regarding the "old Google": A year or two ago they did a major redesign of the Google News page. There was a huge amount of negative and often thoughtful feedback in the user discussion forums, but it was all seemingly ignored, and the new interface was implemented ostensibly without change.

The page has since changed again, I believe, and it's even more of a mess. Scanning the page while scrolling is nearly impossible unless you've very carefully placed your mouse pointer over elements that do not expand on hover. (It's really maddening and I barely use the page anymore because of it.)
> Assuming that it costs as much to haul gold from orbit to Earth

It doesn't. Coming down is way cheaper than going up.

But that may not even be particularly relevant, as there's a good chance that a lot of the material may be sold in space. After all, we want to launch more stuff into space, and that's expensive, so why bring it down if you're just going to shoot it back up again?

Of course, not all of it's going to be sold in space. A tonne of aluminum or a tonne of water would be very valuable in orbit, but, at least for now, a tonne of platinum is going to do much more good down here on the ground in catalytic converters and electronics than it would up there being used in... I dunno what. But the stuff that stays in orbit could still be a pretty hefty chunk of the bottom line.
Pixel Qi claims it can beat iPad display
It would have been interesting (and perhaps a little more convincing) to see some examples of the Haskell type system boosting productivity in such a dramatic way.

I can count on one hand the number of type issues which have caused trouble for me in Ruby over > 5 years of producing complex systems with it. I haven't used Haskell though so would be interested to see some examples of this. If his audience is Ruby users, it is not very informative to just say it is better in a general way. The main point of comparison in the article point 1 seems to be with unit tests, however there are no concrete examples given of a failing test from a real program where types would have helped. A strong type system adds friction and verbosity, so it would need to come with a lot of advantages for me to prefer it to Ruby, which will not allow something like 2 + "2" but does try to get out of your way as much as possible.

It's quite hard to compare type systems as they vary so much but at least here is he comparing just two systems Ruby/Haskell, so comparisons can be straightforward examples of situations where types have caused him trouble with direct comparisons. I'd be interested to see an example of something like a telephone number (from untrusted user input) where the Haskell type system is superior to having some checks on formatting, and an explanation for those less familiar with Haskell of what advantages the type system gives.
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I've also found the "important" filtering very useful. It's fairly rare now that I get an email that really matters and is not marked "important". I think that it takes a while for it to figure out my patterns (yay for machine learning), but after that it works great. I bet most people just weren't patient enough to train it properly. (Of course some may just have more complicated ideas of what an important message is than me.)
"pure" and "const" are GCC function attributes which are supposed to help the optimizer. Confusingly enough "const" demands a higher level of purity than "pure"..

I would never use those attributes except - maybe - in the most critical loops and then only with a big "WARNING!!!" sign. Why? GCC does not / cannot enforce the guarantees given by "const" and "pure" yet the optimizer always assumes they are true. I.e. accidentally reduce the purity of a function decorated in this way.. and you might create very hard to find bugs.

This is a general problem in C and C++, those languages simply weren't designed to enforce such contracts. C99's "restrict" has the same problem.
I was excited by this chip because like others have mentioned it reduces the tolerances and therefore cost of PCBs, which is great for hobbyists. What are the specs for your BGA boards and how much do they cost for small runs?
Sooner or later these gigantic resources will be the reason for armed spacecrafts and intergalactic conflicts :)
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Are you trolling?

I don't say that lightly, but your response here has nothing to do with what I said at all.

Otherwise, yes: you have correctly identified one aspect of this case.
Forcing users to relearn an interface without providing any added value makes no sense.

I ended up moving to Mail.app (which isn't perfect) because of the hideous in-page scrolling forced on me in the new Gmail interface.

Desktop experience is unbeatable; snappier interface, better performance, wider access to system resources, better integration with the OS, and you don't have to rely on the browser to be open all the time. I find this advantageous especially when composing emails.
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I don't find it that slow - but you can hit 'expand all' in the top right (next to the printer icon) to download the whole thread at once.
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The House of Representatives just passed CISPA (wikipedia)
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webhooks/streaming api for changes would be awesome!

skydrive: tried it for 10 minutes, could'nt find versioning/revert support => deleted
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?Beautiful.

Does that really matter? Take a bloomberg terminal - its literally arcane. If you don't know the specific commands to type, and the stock naming system they and only they use, you won't be getting anywhere.

You would never have someone make an interface like that today. At the same time - it works. Once people get learn it, it moves into muscle memory. Since it obeys internally consistent rules, its also possible to uncover more functionality once the first beach head is made.

If you want more brutal examples - think of DwarfFortress, nethack and other ascii based games. Once you know the command structure, it becomes second nature.

You may not need a beautiful interface. The interface is just a wrapper.
wow, that is seriously nice documentation. Thanks!
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Ask HN: What's your favorite productivity app?
Since I can't add a poll I'm listing a few I've tried. Feel free to add yours.

I'm looking for the best to-do / gtd / project management app. As simple as Basecamp, but with repeating tasks and metrics if possible.

It seems none of these are meeting the requirements:
http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/tasks-management-todo-lists-web-apps

http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/task-management/top-10-apps-web-based-task-managers/

Thanks!
Superb idea! Definitely keeping an eye out for this.
Oompf me up!
Basecamp (http://basecamp.com/)
It's not about first-gens though, loonies have been there for a few generations (the protagonists's line marriage is a century old)
Ask HN: Random idea ("gitfs")
It occurred to me that it would be useful to be able to edit configuration files and things (/etc stuff, etc.) with version control. Of course, there are all manner of backup systems, and maybe some amount of recoverability if you're clever/careful. But something seamless and easy (but unobtrusive; we don't need bits of .gits lying around everywhere) to allow one to say "hey, I'm gonna muck about in this folder, let's keep track of how things look from time to time" seems incredibly valuable! I guess I just want git-like semantics overlayed on arbitrary filesystem interactions quickly/effortlessly. Perhaps tying it into multiple machine management could be useful, too...Anyway, sounds like something fun to hack on. Just wondering if anyone else has ideas or suggestions to this effect.
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To prepare for demo day, I've decided to use iPG with M-x doctor (she's from a small, not widely known country that has some native naming eccentricites and is in constant war with their two lettered neighbors), the CEO at my new health startup Psychologr. Obviously I'm the technical cofounder and she's the ideas person, so I let her do the talking.

-----

iPG: Who might become competitors?

M-x doctor: What do you think?

iPG: How big an opportunity is there?

M-x doctor: I'll ask the questions, if you don't mind!

iPG: What do you understand that others don't?

M-x doctor: Can you elaborate on that?

iPG: Why will you succeed?

M-x doctor: I could ask the same thing myself.

iPG: Who would be your next hire?

M-x doctor: I would appreciate it if you would allow me to do the questioning.

iPG: Would you relocate to Silicon Valley?

M-x doctor: Why do you say?

iPG: How much does customer acquisition cost?

M-x doctor: I have asked myself that question many times.

-----

So, the tactic seems to be stay firm, and let him know who's asking the questions.

Can we have our money now?
I tried this , it was no good ( because of escaping of special characters, and parsing performance. )

then i switch to newline and n r . and all my problems were solved (for now)
Photos are lacking. Mayor this, mayor that, other people looking at mayor, a lounge chair.
It's a cute concept, but apparently the visionaries have little sense of supply and demand. The high prices on rare earth metals are dependent on their extreme scarcity. If the supply is bolstered (in this case, to the tune of $20,000,000,000,000), the selling price will decrease. It's simple economics.

I'm not saying it's anything but amazing. However, if the founders think they're going to get today's prices for every last ounce, as the article seems to imply, they are in for a realization.
If a huge supply of platinum became available, its price would plummet. If one company figures out a way to mine asteroids, competition would soon follow. So they won't be able to control the supply and hence price of platinum. So even if they do succeed in mining and transporting the metal, they are not going to make anywhere near the money they're claiming.
Let's not forget that the massive increase in supply of platinum would massively decrease its price </economics>
The new UI SUCKS!!!!
Flow (http://www.getflow.com/)
http://book.personalmba.com/12-standard-forms-of-value/

It is likely you fall into one or more of these.

"We're depending on user aggregation to drive advertising revenues initially, but hope to move to move into white label SaaS as we develop our platform." would be a good 15 second answer.
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what issue are you referring to here ? Could you link to any relevant discussions.
question: why did you go with the Vostro? Dell seems to be intent on gutting their ubuntu product line. I can't get Ubuntu with an i5 or i7 processor, a solid state drive, or pretty much anything one might actually want.
I worked almost exclusively in Ruby and Python over the last ten years and coming back to static languages after that long was a real eye-opener. A good type system doesn't just help you catch a certain class of bugs. It completely changes the way you write code. Functions become self-documenting, aggressive refactoring becomes routine, the underlying architecture of your code emerges much more clearly. And you usually get much faster code for free. It's like having a genius savant pair partner.

In my experience a good type system doesn't add much friction and the extra documentation you get from specifying types more than pays for itself in the long run.
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Offshore production is increasingly moving back to rich countries not because Chinese wages are rising, but because companies now want to be closer to their customers so that they can respond more quickly to changes in demand. And some products are so sophisticated that it helps to have the people who design them and the people who make them in the same place. The Boston Consulting Group reckons that in areas such as transport, computers, fabricated metals and machinery, 10-30% of the goods that America now imports from China could be made at home by 2020, boosting American output by $20 billion-55 billion a year.

This is absurd, manufacturing will move to the places with cheap energy, or in case of non-energy-intensive production to places where resources and supply chain is. In most cases it's much cheaper to move produced item, and, for example, it already takes just two days for Apple to move a custom-made item from factory in China to doorstep in US.
this is easy. someone call Bruce Willis.
It's not color, but the Kindle DX makes a great computer monitor for reading or coding, especially in vim (since the mouse is next to useless):

http://tinyapps.org/docs/e-ink-monitor.html

Would love to hear about any other options, color or b&w.
> Agree with this 100%. I think dynamically typed languages are a transitional technology

54 years old transitional technologies?

Look the split between dynamic typing and static typing is as old as computing itself (older actually, see untyped v typed lambda calculi), as it looks to me you're asserting properties your prover can't cash.
I agree with you on the issues regarding the orbital mechanics of getting to the asteroid and getting the goods back to Earth, but I think you've missed one important idea regarding how these materials could be used.

Assume $1k/kg for LEO insertion. That means a metric ton of iron, in space, would cost a million dollars if you had to ship it from Earth.

Let's now say that you wanted to build a large space-based manufacturing facility, focused on producing high-value goods like zero-gravity metals and pharmaceuticals. Shipping the raw materials from Earth to build the facility would cost around a half-billion dollars, and then afterwards, you'd need to ship them the additional materials from which to produce the goods.

Or, you can do something crazily ambitious -- figure out how to get the materials from somewhere in near-earth-orbit, and use that to bootstrap both interplanetary travel and space-based industry.

It's crazy. I know. It's crazy enough that it just might work.

Personally, I'm excited. This kind of ambition is what we need as a species right now, and I'd rather see the money spent on this than on yet another collection of mega-yachts.
First, there's already a ceiling on the price from the current supply. The price can only go down.

Second, if it works out for them and they're able to start mining these, other people will start doing it, too.
Computers aren't worth very much. Try reselling a computer to find out how little they're really worth.

Cars aren't worth very much. Try reselling a car to find out how little they're really worth.

Shoes aren't worth very much. Try reselling a shoe to find out how little they're really worth.
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Because using a binary format prevents you from tailing your log file without additional tools.
I'm incredulous that one of the goals of the redesign was to make more powerful themes. New-style themes are much, much less powerful than the old-style themes - cf. the new Terminal theme, which can't even change the text color or font, but is rather a hollow shell of itself with a small gif of a blinking green cursor in the upper left corner the only remnant of its old self. A preview of the old page in my Opera speed dial is all that remains of my old green-on-black monospace friend; I have set it to never update.

Incidentally, the new UI for video calls makes the 'end' button the same color as the background, and it is very difficult to see.
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Allen Steele has the Coyote series, which covers some colonists settling on a planet. They're (at least one of them is, I forget if the others are) chapbooks, but that's okay.

There's some nice stuff about failure of important systems and the consequences of that for outbound travellers; food and shelter; exploration; law and order; and eco disaster. I enjoyed reading them. I wasn't a fan of the audiobooks.

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Not that I disagree with your conclusion, but increasing the actual supply doesn't necessarily have to wreak havoc on the economy if limited number of distributors are willing to control the release of the supply (which could be considered the perceived economic 'supply').

See (at least formerly) the diamond industry.

(I am not an economist, so somebody correct me if I'm terribly off base here.)
You focus on the problem not the language.

Then when you understand the problem, you pick the language you personally will be most effective using to tackle the problem.

There are no silver bullets. There is no magic language. And PHP can be a good choice for some problems, and can be wielded with finesse.

The programmer is far more important than the language.