skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hmm ... "Stores power from your generator" might be a market with room here since generators are often inefficient (and produce weird power) and batteries have grown a lot lately. OTOH, in practice home generators are more limited by "how often do we need to (and given the state of the infrastructure, can we) go buy a new can of gas" than efficiency. And even if efficiency does matter, how long will it take to pay off?

Practical problems we had the one time we actually needed our generator were:

* (remember to turn off the main breaker)

* whoops, we blew the GFCI when we tried to back-feed power through an external outlet, so we had to run an extension cord through a door (with all that implies). This is the only thing that actually took us by surprise and took some debugging in the weeks following.

* the 120V generator only one half of the split phase, so every other circuit in the breaker box doesn't work. Pick your half carefully!

* the generator is strong enough to run normal appliances, but not the well pump (note: we had a completely different plan for heating). Here I suppose a battery could've been useful ... but then, the reason we didn't just buy a bigger generator in the first place was cost (for an extended-outage event that only happens once in multiple decades; for anything shorter you can just ... not open the fridge).

* (just a note that with the increasing electrification of cars, some variant of "plug your house into your car" is likely to become more of a thing)

While I've seen the grid flicker, this has only ever happened just at the start or just before it comes on permanently, so I'm not sure how useful it is to consider the "comes on for a bit" case either.
this isnt descriptive of the past while.

the prices are going up because the landlords have entered a web2.0 mediated cartel.
The public impression of him radically changed in recent years, and -- like old friends and family trying to make sense of the person who "became someone else" after getting involved in a dark scene -- people are naturally looking for an understanding that can make sense to them.

I think many of us see the the through line in Musk's story the same way we can see how our friends who spiraled into chaos and self-destruction had always been fragile or angry or hurt or whatever, but for others who were never perceptive or open enough to have seen the already-troubled side of these people, a drug abuse narrative (which often can have truth to it) can help it all become less bewildering.
Rather than fixating on this single Prisma example, I'd like to address your larger point which seems to be that all greenfield projects are necessarily best suited to low level languages.

First of all, I would argue that software rewrites are a bad proxy metric for language quality in general. Language rewrites don't measure languages purely on a qualitative scale, but rather on a scale of how likely they are to be misused in the wrong problem domain.

Low level languages tend to have a higher barrier to entry, which as a result means they're less likely to be chosen on a whim during the first iteration of a project. This phenomenon is exhibited not just at the macroscopic level of language choice, but often times when determining which data structures and techniques to use within a specific language. I've very seldomly found myself accidentally reaching for a Uint8Array or a WeakRef in JS when a normal array or reference would suffice, and then having to rewrite my code, not because those solutions are superior, but because they're so much less ergonomic that I'm only likely to use them when I'm relatively certain they're required.

This results in obvious selection bias. If you were to survey JS developers and ask how often they've rewritten a normal reference in favor of a WeakRef vs the opposite migration, the results would be skewed because the cost of dereferencing WeakRefs is high enough that you're unlikely to use them hastily. The same is true to a certain extent in regards to language choice. Developers are less likely to spend time appeasing Rust's borrow checker when PHP/Ruby/JS would suffice, so if a scripting language is the best choice for the problem at hand, they're less likely to get it wrong during the first iteration and have to suffer through a massive rewrite (and then post about it on HN). I've seen plenty of examples of competent software developers saying they'd choose a scripting language in lieu of Go/Rust/Zig. Here's the founder of Hashicorp (who built his company on Go, and who's currently building a terminal in Zig), saying he'd choose PHP or Rails for a web server in 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQnz7L6x068&t=1821s
Yea agreed, my comment was more of a sidenote than a direct response.
>>The email was sent under the name of Erica Carr — the acting executive secretary at USAID — and bears a USAID logo.

>Typically the industrial security people at contractors aren't so naive as to be fooled by an illegal-sounding request from an unknown source.

So you're implying it bears a cryptographic signature?

Nowhere in the article does it state that. It talks about an USAID logo which, if anything, only raises doubt.

>Please continue giving the administration the benefit of the doubt, just not when it's beyond the shadow of one.

There is no benefit of the doubt given to anyone here. Only doubt.

And, again to be clear, I only observe as a third party (not a US citizen nor resident). I endorse no political party.
It's hard to make people view both intelligence and arrogance (or other bad traits) in hand. And neither does society encourage benevolence. I think Dijkstra was right about many things, but I can take those views and choose to act in certain ways, not just parrot Dijkstra as an all-knowing god. Although I will be the first to say that I am too arrogant for my own good. But still. Don't be like me or like Dijkstra, I guess.
One simple script that automatically connects to your account on the current time frame's server and unifies all into a single timeline will kill the fun.
If you’re in Minneapolis I could recommend a few stores where that’d work.
Turning Congressional Job Listings into Data Using LLM
RISC-V Processor Design – Lec 6 – EXU and Co-Simulation
Lecture here: https://youtu.be/lI5qD1PkHtA

In this lecture, we stitch together a custom Instruction Set Simulator I created with the RISC-V CPU (now with the execution stage) and see the first instructions flowing in the pipeline.

We wrap up the lecture with a minor bug-fixing session, during which I will walk you through using the ISS logs to debug issues quickly.
Thanks for chiming in with these details, but I would just like to say:

> It will not conflict with other applications that do the same thing.

It is possible not to conflict with existing parallel deployments, but depending on your IPC mechanism, it is by no means assured when you're not forking and are instead launching an external process.

For example, it could by default bind a specific default port. This would work in the 'naive' situation where the client doesn't specify a port and no parallel instances are running. ...but if two instances are running, they'll both try to use the same port. Arbitrary applications can connect to the same port. Maybe you want to share a single compiler service instance between client apps in some cases?

Not conflicting is not a property of parallel binary deployment and communication via IPC by default.

IPC is, by definition intended to be accessible by other processes.

Jupyter kernels for example are launched with a specified port and a secret by cli argument if I recall correctly.

However, you'd have to rely on that mechanism being built into the typescript compiler service.

...ie. it's a bit complicated right?

Worth it for the speedup? I mean, sure. Obviously there is a reason people don't embed postgres. ...but they don't try to ship a copy of it along side their apps either (usually).
> the gaben strategy

this was a reference to Gabe Newell and Valve
Kind of wild to imagine an alternate universe where Commodore and Atari were still big names in computing. Would have loved to see the Amiga continue to grow, it seemed so ahead of its time.
A use case I can see is for people who are dependent on things like insulin or other temperature sensitive medications. If you have to get out a dose every few hours or even every day or two, you might not be able to rely on thermal mass, and if you have a month's prescription or more on hand, it could cost thousands to replace if it perishes during the power outage.

You could probably run a dorm-style mini-fridge for a lot longer than a 25-cubic-foot side-by-side, and it would be perfect for that case.

Hell, buy the guts of a $79 dorm fridge, bolt the Pila product inside the chassis, and sell it as a "medical supply" for 10 times its cost-of-goods.
To clarify per the article: they sold 10K of their current model, the comma 3X, which launched about July 2023. Total sales of all devices is likely higher.
> Judging by the negativity here you're going to be a massive success -- search up the dropbox, airbnb, coinbase and ethereum launch threads

This is not a new product, though. Battery power inverters with AC and solar input are a popular class of products.

You can buy similar products with higher capacity and better solar input at Costco or Best Buy.

I think people are confused by the "Show HN" tag and the misleading way it's being compared to a Powerwall, despite not being a comparable product.

My problem with this post is that it's a "Show HN" from an account that registered 2 months ago. Their only activity is this post. It's pushing a product with misleading marketing comparisons (It's not comparable to a Powerwall) instead of similar products on the market. The poster is also making claims in this thread that contradict their own marketing on the website. Their website says it will run a fridge for 1.3 days, but one of their employees is in this thread making claims of 2-3 days in some places and 3-4 days in other places.

The negativity is because this is a misleading marketing piece and a lot of people are getting tricked into thinking this is a new type of product.

Some examples of competing products with better specs and lower prices:

https://www.bluettipower.com/collections/power-stations

https://us.ecoflow.com/collections/delta-series

EDIT: This thread is being astroturfed. Someone affiliated with Pila is alternating between talking about developing Pila and pretending to ask questions about Pila. See this comment pretending to ask if it qualifies for the Investment Tax Credit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43339416 . It took me 10 seconds to find his LinkedIn page where he's clearly associated with Pila: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chadconway_pila-energy-is-8-o...

EDIT 2: Here's another comment where 'chadconway' pretends to ask a question and 'coleashman' answers it: https://archive.is/ws9bp . Both accounts are associated with Pila. This is a clear attempt at astroturfing.
hahahaha i'm stealing scrollytelling, that's brilliant
I didn't know this and have always wondered why in the UK we didn't have something like the Chinese system for civil service.

Ironically the civil service is full of intelligent people and it's a competitive grad programme, but it's also wholly undesirable as a career path for many.

I know plenty of smart driven people who want to make a difference who won't go anywhere near the civil service for fear or bureaucracy or salary sacrifice or both. I also know plenty of people who left the civil service jaded by the whole experience.

I don't know what the solution is but I'm always a bit saddened that people end up moving money around or optimising clicks because there's no alternative if you don't want to get left behind
I think Gates tried to sell off most of his fortune at one point. It came raging back, if I’m not miss-remembering. Money begets money, or something.
I was at (insert infamous unicorn) and they spent a ton of money (all relative, the money meant nothing) but more importantly 18 months attempting to get SOX compliant and never made it, because running the business was too important. Of course it all came down to lack of leadership to enforce policies but even if we had it, it was objectively super fucking challenging.

When I do get a chance to implement compliant processes at the beginning, it’s one of those amazing IT things where we prevent WW3 but never get the credit for it.
I worked with pg in a three-person startup in a basement in Harvard square just before he started YC. I was an undergrad at MIT and met him after arguing with rtm (who was a TA for my class) about TCP backoff. It was called Aspra and we were trying to build an app development platform for mobile phones. The idea was that you could build an application that could "render" to either an IVR system, for dumb phones, or the kind of web page that a Motorola "smartphone" of the day could view. Ahead of its time, like Paul. It didn't go far, and not long after he started YC. Good thing he did, for the industry and many of the folks here! Anyway, the "20 years" got my attention because I didn't feel that old, and thought someone might like the little story.
I guess what makes this different than EG4’s all in one inverter plus a 5kwh server rack battery, is the integration of software and hardware.

I think you have a great shot at being successful. Because the cheaper options, software isn’t great or fully integrated with the hardware.

These systems are a fraction of the cost of powerwall though.

I learned a lot about the DIY side of this from Will Prose on YouTube. It’s amazing how much markup Tesla has on top of LFP batteries.
I don’t know, I get the feeling Sir Humphrey would approve of this fine piece of statecraft (unless of course it was an adversary of Her Majesty’s government, in which case he would be appropriately concerned)
The Real Threat of Chinese AI
> There are things you should start doing early that lay the groundwork for attestations, but you should be doing them anyways, even if you never plan to get a SOC2 (and if a big-ticket customer never demands it, you shouldn't SOC2). That's stuff like setting up single sign-on and having protected git branches; simple best practices.

This is in many ways the spirit of SOC2, no? There are a lot of startup founders, far more than I'd like, who would purposefully eschew such "simple best practices" unless they had an axe like a SOC2 audit swinging over them.

I think you're both right, for what it's worth, and my take is that you are more aligned with TFA than you perceive.
Seeing as how the remark begins with “I don’t understand how…” it seems you’re the one with unchecked assumptions: namely, about what the text actually says.
Happy 20th Birthday, Y Combinator!

In 2008, I transferred schools and moved to San Francisco with just $600 and a dream. Soon after, I started my first design agency, Badaboom Labs, hiring my college roommate and friends. With no company formation experience, I had no idea how to get clients either, so I walked to every coffee shop in the city, hoping to land my first gig.

My break came at The Creamery in SoMa. They were still remodeling, but I was determined to talk to the owner (shoutout to Ivory if you're reading this!). Eventually, they became our first client, then Vans. Back then, Squarespace, Stripe, and Shopify didn’t exist, so I hired developers off Craigslist to build the e-commerce side. Looking back, the opportunities were endless in building software!

We barely made any profit, but we had our first client and were building something real. At the time, I was more focused on building with a team than understanding customers. I knew little about scaling or growth, but I just needed to start—and learn as I went.

As the team moved on, I sold the business to a small print shop. That experience led me to experiment with new ideas, but my limited technical skills slowed me down. I knew I needed to level up, so I worked at startups, then moved into SAP & Apple—but corporate life wasn’t for me. I learned what I could, then quit.

The YC Journey

Around that time, I started meeting founders from YC through mutual friends and our soccer club in the Mission. I didn't understand what YC was exactly, but I was intrigued.

Some of them lived in a hacker house on Howard & Rausch St. in SoMa, where I remember meeting Justin Kan, Drew Houston, and Brian Chesky for the first time. Twitch didn’t exist yet, Dropbox was still new, and Airbnb was struggling with growth.

Imagine if I invested in just one of these companies. holy cow.

It was a defining era, but at the time, I had no idea just how much these companies would shape the future—honestly, I don’t think anyone did. I was simply inspired by the energy, the community, and the drive to build something great!

That’s when I decided to apply to YC with my third company, RecurPal

I was rejected multiple times..

But I kept pushing.

Then, YC opened up applications to their second program. I applied, interviewed, and got in.

Shoutouts + Gratitude

I’m super grateful for the mentors, friends, and investors who shaped my journey:

Jude Gomila (always believing in me & taking a chance), Anton(wisdom + friendship!), AJ Asver(former co-founder & friendship), Immad Akhund (support + friendship), Roger Dickey (building epic community at Greenwich Castle), David Langer (wisdom + friendship!), Sumon Sadhu, Dilan Dane(my first Burning Man Project), Gustaf Alströmer ( footy teammate + friendship), Keith Rabois, and many more!

Lastly, thanks to Jessica Livingston, Paul Graham, and the YC Community.

Excited to see YC continue shaping the future and fueling the next generation of founders!
>> they are "Pratchett" footnotes though.

I wouldn't date to presume to compare my footnotes to Pratchett's. Like, my footnotes don't have footnotes of their own, but his often do.

I wonder how that works on an ebook.
I mean, I do understand if you’re big enough to be a target, but seriously, how is Germany or Taiwan or Argentina or wherever the fuck else going to 1) even know that I (a little US-based SaaS app doing under 8 figures in revenue) exist, 2) know that their citizens are paying me, 3) know how much, and 4) be able to do absolutely anything about it?

I’m genuinely asking.

For the pearl-clutchers here, I don’t do anything for GDPR for the same reason. Pass whatever laws you want in your county. Not my problem.
It's not annexation to invite a country to join the Union. It's quite the honor, to be honest.
The DELTA EcoFlow is another line of similar products: https://us.ecoflow.com/collections/delta-series

These are everywhere. You can even pick them up at Costco, Best Buy, and other retail electronics distributors. They're a lot cheaper than the linked product, too.

I think people are getting misled by the Powerwall comparison. This isn't a powerwall competitor. It competes with all of the other battery power stations on the market, of which there are many.
You're not on a tangent at all, you're 100% correct.

It's shameful (in the most absolute sense of the term) that an entire class of people who contribute nothing to the world get to dictate—at the barrel of a gun or threat of imprisonment no less—that we owe them money that they then go and spend carelessly and without accountability (and this is independent of political beliefs—every single politician and bureaucrat is guilty). It's made even worse that they can't be bothered to make it easy to pay them (which is in their best interest). They exist solely to waste time and give otherwise unskilled people something to do.

I sincerely hope that the younger generations see all of this for what it is and aggressively work to remove it. "Oppressive" is exactly the right term. It hurts the prosperity of the majority in favor of a helpless minority (and no, I don't mean the people who actually need our help like the disabled—I explicitly mean government employees).
You're not seeing everything he does. For example, he removes capabilities from people's accounts and he can't remember why he did it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42917749

He says he likes things to be "informal" by which he really means "opaque".
Apparently it's letting me reply now although it wasn't previously.

I'm just going to note that for whatever reason the goalposts appear to have shifted here. Originally, I was replying to a commenter who was claiming without substantiation that the VPN was a massive financial sink that was part of the reason for Mozilla's loss of market share.

Meanwhile, the argument you seem to be making is that you want information that supports the contention that it's a significant revenue raiser for Mozilla which is not the claim that I was responding to. If you're also doubting that the VPN is a huge money losing bet, then we're probably in agreement.
A nearby (excellent) comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43338459) gives further context, but: the 6-month revisit period is just an artifact of the Earth-orbit-based sky scanning strategy. In 6 months the satellite, precessing at 1 degree/day, and facing away from the sun during data collection, will scan the sky completely. (See Fig 1 of the paper [0]).

So in particular, the 6-month period is not to revisit these distant galaxies more than once to observe spectral changes. The strategy, indeed, is to “stack” the multiple exposures to beat down noise. (Fig.6 of [0], top left).

It is possible that they have designed the system so that it could produce “just good enough” results in 6 months, with one complete scan. This is called a “threshold mission” and it would only be described in the full proposal.

I looked through the rest of the science cases (which are secondary to the driving case of this mission), and none of them seem to be reliant on revisits. (But open to correction on this.)

[0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.4872
What happens if I want to store -1 as a value?
One could also try out the new shell, literally codenamed "NewShell" 2 months ahead of Chicago/95's release in July 1995 with an update to NT 3.51. I've been meaning to try it out on my 486 rig.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.51#NewShell
I recently acquired a SaaS that does business with people in the EU (we bill with stripe), so I decided to continue paying VAT. I do it all by a combination of code, scripts, and by-hand.

We have custom code that determines the VAT rate to charge, and also looks up a customer's VAT number to see if they qualify for VAT exclusion. At the end of each quarter I have a script that calculates the amount of VAT to be paid to each country in the EU, then visit the Ireland VAT OSS site, input the values for each country manually (they don't allow CSV!!!!), then send them a wire using wise.com.

The current scheme is an evolution of what the former founders did. It was a nightmare to get things onto good footing after the acquisition. But once I did it for the first time, the subsequent times are pretty straightforward, and I probably won't touch it again for a long while.

I could probably move towards stripe tax, or paddle/lemonsqueezy, but the migration would be a nightmare. And it's not a good business decision to do a lot of work including risky migrations to move onto a new provider that will charge a larger percentage as a service fee, just to better handle taxes, which I've now largely figured out.

The one advantage to doing all this, is that I actually understand this stuff pretty well now, rather than it being a black box where I just pay a company a lot of money so I don't have to think about it. Open question on if that's actually worth my time. It seems like it is for now.

One opinion I'll offer, is that all these foreign tax agencies are far less organized than you might think. You could probably get away by not paying VAT, for far longer/more revenue than you'd think, and if you do want to be a proper foreign business and pay, there's basically zero verification on if you're paying the right amount, so just try your best??

Feel free to ask me for any advice around VAT/etc. matthew@improvmx.com