skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They're relatively slow for a single instruction, but if you compare the uops they generate with the number of uops needed for an equivalent sequence of multiple simple ("RISC style") instructions, I'd bet they're the same or even slightly better - after all, an equivalent sequence of instructions would need to perform the same operations the same way - by generating uops for the execution units. The difference is that the RISC-style instructions take up more cache and fetch and decode bandwidth, whereas these CISC instructions get expanded into uops inside the decoder - so the speed of these instructions is dependent upon how fast the decoder can emit the uops.

...and looking at the same Haswell instruction tables for the simpler sequence of instructions, we find that:

AAA performs a compare and decides whether or not to add some constant, along with some flag operations; 2 uops is what one compare and one add instruction would already generate, plus you'd have to take into account a (possibly mispredicted) conditional jump. If you find out a way to do it using a CMOV, that alone is 2 uops and a latency of 2 cycles. AAS is similar except it's doing a subtraction, but maybe there's something else that increases its latency by another 2 clocks...

AAD is an 8-bit multiply followed by an addition and clearing of a register. MUL/IMUL r8 generates 1 uop and has a latency of 3, ADD r, i is another uop with a latency of 1, and clearing the register is another uop (no latency due to register renaming, I'd guess.) This would be 3 uops and a latency of 4, exactly the same as the single instruction.

AAM is an 8-bit divide; a DIV r8 generates 9 uops and has a latency of 22-25, compared with 8 uops and a latency of 21 for AAM.

So it would appear that Intel has pretty much made these instructions as fast as they could for the microarchitecture, and glancing through the tables this appears to have been true since the Pentium II (with two exceptions - the Atom series, and the ill-fated NetBurst); e.g. in the Nehalem, we have

AAA/AAS/DAA/DAS 1 uop, latency 3
AAD 3 uops, latency 15(?)
AAM 5 uops, latency 20

and the Pentium M has

AAA/AAS/DAA/DAS 1 uop, no latency listed
AAD 3 uops, latency 2
AAM 4 uops, latency 15

The Atom is rather disappointing:

AAA/AAS 13 uops, latency 16
AAD 4 uops, latency 7
AAM 10 uops, latency 24

The P4 is extremely disappointing:

AAA/AAS 4+27 uops, latency 90
AAD 4+10 uops, latency 22
AAM 4+22 uops, latency 56

AMD has historically been worse on the complex instructions, and although they've improved a bit, are still behind Intel's latest; e.g. for Steamroller the timings are

AAA/AAS 10 uops, latency 6
AAD 4 uops, latency 6
AAM 10 uops, latency 15 (on par with 9 uops/latency 17-22 for DIV r8)

Edit: I benchmarked AAM vs DIV and AAD vs MUL+ADD (with a dependency chain, so the real latencies are being tested instead of being hidden by something else) on a Nehalem (i7 870) and for 500000 iterations,

5250303 clock cycles for DIV
5250258 clock cycles for AAM
3818905 clock cycles for MUL+ADD
3818907 clock cycles for AAD

So it's safe to say they're really just as fast.
It's actually four separate clusters. http://m.electronicdesign.com/blog/disney-supercomputer-rend...

The latency between the sites would kill its linpack performance. It's a "supercomputer" in the same sense that seti@home is a supercomputer -- it's really just a few thousand machines working on an embarrassingly parallel problem.
I feel the root cause here is the culture of setting hard deadlines by management.

Getting a deadline moved even for logical reasons involves pushing against massive internal red tape. Missing a deadline invites greater punishment from management than compromising on quality. Naturally, quality loses out.

Happens all the time in our own industry, and sadly, this case shows that it happens even in safety critical industries.

All engineers, regardless of industry, should be trained in how to negotiate with management. All managers, regardless of industry, should be trained to respect opinions of subordinates.
Why? The original link seems to be have extensive photographic content which isn't readily accessible at the new link (if at all?), and also explicitly directed people to the main site if they wanted factual info.
Self Destruct – Temporary Downloads Folder
The only reason these ships exist is they are cheap per ton per mile. Fossil fuel would need to get a lot more expensive before a nuke would make sense here.
The Kickstarter video claims it's the first consumer VR glove with finger sensing. It's not. The Nintendo Power Glove, 25 years ago, has that honor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove

The Power Glove was a relatively decent input device. But the game machines of 1989 had no hope of displaying a virtual world in which it was useful.

Now if the "Clang" game kickstarter, which was fully funded years ago at $500K and produced zero, had produced something, there would at least be a game for this thing.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang
at all companies I've worked for, vesting freezes during leaves of absence

I'm also not sure if I can elucidate exactly why, but while I think leave -- and paid leave for medical emergencies or parental leave -- is great, something about a coworker peacing out for 3-6 months and vesting stock while I'm at work busting my ass would really bother me.
"2) Are there any crowd-sourced solutions available yet for these cases where doctors clearly have no idea? Someone enters all their symptoms and people discuss online and try to come up with some possible options."

A while back I was looking for info on some medical "issue" that I had trouble defining the correct search terms for. Anywho, I eventually came to some sort of medical site where users could ask questions. And then doctors would comment/answer/respond on it. Now, I presume that these doctors were paid and/or verified, but I never looked too far into it. They sure sounded like they knew what they were talking about, and it wasn't as if they copy-pasted something from the net / a book, the responses were tailored to the questions.
I edited that out because I felt like everyone would just go top and hope someone would save them. By introducing a long path before they can help others, it makes them think "Well, I could just finish the level, or trust that someone will save me and help them..."
Then there would be a huge incentive to hire older people, who are (statistically) done having children.

Just accept that having children comes with a career penalty and choose what you prefer: kids or career?
Red/Black gambling game: Drawing cards from a shuffled deck
About 40 at the moment.
We did a quiz game with cursor sharing earlier this year here: http://artefutureplay-20905.onmodulus.net/play/p (DE/FR lang only)
Ugh, as soon as I get far I get disconnected....
too bad the power from the gpu mining coins ( dogecoin, litecoin ) cant be used for such tasks.
How have we gone from an employment systerm where you are performing an action either unable(due to time or skills) or unwilling todo in return for money, to a system of slaving yourself for a company?

Id almost understand from a business poibt of view (which i have been in for the record), but also the people you are hiring are humans, and have a life to live and are trading one commodity for another (their time, your required work).

Now the article doesnt specificly target this(i am going off on a tangent i realise), but the amount of, disconnectrd with reality(for want of a better term) lately strikes me a lot, (also puts me atop my high horse as it were).

TLDR: Why are we treating staff as a commodity, not a valuable resource while realising it might not be forever and that they also have a life to live.
There's no problem with 20 other specs.

I didn't mean spec as in a universal standard.

I meant a language that defines its syntax and functionality as a spec so it can be implemented in the same way in many languages so you can pick your favourite flavour and use it in as many languages as you want without surprises.

So given the template 'T' and template context 'C', you could always produce the exact same output regardless of whether you used javascript or python (assuming the libraries implemented the language based on the spec).

The spec doesn't mean it has to be a silver bullet, it will be a single bullet and there will be many bullets, but whatever bullet you pick, you can use it in more places.
That is correct. The law is sexist, and women's choices often are, too, as they try to meet the biased demands placed on them by a male dominated society. And that's not my view, but the accepted definition of sexism. You should look it up - it's a fascinating topic. As to the standard of proof, that was me trying to simplify things. It's generally safe to assume that any discrimination against a non-dominant group is sexist/racist until proven otherwise. Speaking about choices is also often a cover for racism, as some groups are often nudged - gently or less so - towards making certain choices.

Once you begin looking at any discrimination this way, you stop taking certain things for granted, and start examining society in a very interesting way.
"Some will be assholes."

Agreed, I'm just glad I'm in a position where I can simply walk out on a doctor being an asshole to me. And then proceed to the next practice over.

If enough people do that, things would be much better. Unfortunately, that's not always possible.
I would expect they already have GPUs.
Passive Resistance
If "privilege" in your definition includes people who have degrees and who have no formal education, from a broad range of countries, from wealthy backgrounds and poor backgrounds, male, female and other, gay, straight and other, black, white, brown and Asian... All this within a small group of 20 people... Well then your definition of privilege is unavoidable.

Perhaps I wasn't clear about something: we do consider personal/medical issues to be a person's own thing to share if and when they're feeling like doing so. Business data secrecy is hunted out of existence, but personal sharing is entirely voluntary, and not everyone shares everything about their personal life obviously.
Ah yeah, good observation.
GODHAJ HÜSEYİN ALTIN JESUS UNIVERSE REIGN
They are adverse because your tax rate is to use a legal term: fucking insane.

Did you know that before Obamacare / Bushcare, America spent more on medicaid as a percentage of GDP than Canada did for its entire healthcare system?

Protip: Make your government more efficient, and stop spending more than every other nation on earth combined on arms. Or just watch the cross of iron speech from 60 years ago where Dwight 'bombs away' Einsenhower said your military spending was to use a political term: fucking insane.
i doubt it was rendered at 24fps because it probably is a 3D movie.
Thank you for this. Got me really interested in folly now.
Yep the server is in C++. The level editor is mostly for personal use right now, so it just generates the C++ code that I need to paste into a file. I plan to make the editor public and make an easy process to submit levels so maybe some day no one will ever be able to reach the end.
I'd suggest familiarizing yourself with Henry Ford.

Also, there are tonnes of stupid companies in Vancouver that want you to work insane hours, by law they don't even have to pay the tech industry overtime, yet every company that tries to pull this shit ends up with the shittiest developers imaginable.
> what are the optimal principles to govern our behaviour

Given the litany of factual errors in your post, I'd be entertained to hear what you imagine is able to provide optimal principles to govern our behavior.

I hope you say science.
Still wondering why make physical ignition switches that actually mechanically cut the flow of electricity.

For years, cars have been equipped with all kinds of 'convenience' electric components such as Bluetooth, touch panels, and on top of that all critical elements in the engine have been controlled by an ECU for decades -- yet still only some cars have electrically, not mechanically, controlled ignition.

The car key doesn't even have to be wireless: you could still have the lock and ignition key as now if you really wanted but turning the key would only give a signal to the car's computer to wake up from sleep, authenticate the key, close the main circuits electrically to let the components start drawing the big current from the battery, and start booting sequence, self-tests etc. and eventually drive current to the starter motor to crank the engine up.

That's a huge number of things to do, and it had best be left for the computer to handle. Pulling the key from the physical ignition switch is aking to starting and stopping your PC by pulling and inserting the plug from/to the wall socket. You'd better push the suspend button and let your laptop put itself to sleep and let it wake up by itself.

It's also much easier to design a system that will handle startup and shutdown by itself, rather than a system that must survive opening and closing the main circuits at any time.
This is awesome, you totally need to make cursor RPG.
Well, performance scaling in software has advanced (in average) with a stronger exponent than Moore's Law. Which is why we can get visuals as awesome as Jurassic Park on modern GPUs - while the hardware isn't quite as powerful as the rendering farms used for that movie, other advancements allow us to achieve what are in many ways more spectacular results.

So, he may be wrong about what makes this happen, in essence he's probably correct. In the time frame he outlined, I expect both Ray Tracing and Radiosity solutions on both hardware and software to match and possibly exceed what he has outlined in terms of capability.
Yes, I have my own company, I only have contractors right now, and yes I pay for it, in my taxes.

Here's a better question since the 'government' is paying for it, what's your top corporate tax rate? IIRC it's 35%, mine is 19%.
Cutting all the power based on only the key must be the most stupid thing I've heard today, especially power steering?! Really, I've worked in automotive and all designs I've seen keep important components alive as long as the vehicle is moving, regardless of key position. THAT is the design flaw here, not that the key is too easy to twist.

This can be quite a hot topic, I frequently see people wanting the key as a "last line of defense against electronics and programming error switch" and i can understand that concern and sometimes think that way myself but really, if they are not confident enough in their system and think they require a human controllable "main switch" they might as well put a big red emergency shutdown button in the middle of the dashboard, i wonder how many people would buy such a car.
The Google Earth Plugin is currently only available on Windows and Mac OS X 10.6+.

Pity. Can I use Google Earth proper somehow?
Increased density = more transistors. Don't be pedantic.
a nice n.y.d. service (not yet deprecated)
You're right; the frame count should be doubled, and the other calculations adjusted accordingly.
> In what sort of world default DROP is not a widespread practice?

That's the problem. Instead of asking why you're running services you don't really want to be running, just kill anything you don't understand. It's like over-prescribing antibiotics. You grow a new crop of firewall-resistant services and then the firewall doesn't work when you really need it to.
Yes, a stat like people being shot and dying. 8.8k firearm related homicides in 2012. Plus 20k firearm-related suicides in 2010, the last year I can conveniently find numbers.

Your post may seriously be the stupidest thing I've ever read in my life.
Noir Run – Free Game for iPhone/iPad with unique story and visuals
They don't do final renders immediately. They render previews with expensive features like global illumination turned off.

Rendering a single frame across multiple machines sounds wasteful. They would have to load the exact same textures and models for a single frame across all of them. When batch rendering, it would be more efficient to do that work just once per frame.
Probably one of the best usecases for parallel processing and truly saturating a massive multi core enviroment to the fullest.
On the other hand in 2014, having >4 cores in the desktop space hardly has any benefits over 2-4 cores with high single threaded performance.
I'm not sure about Italy, but in the United States, you would definitely want to pay taxes on that income, and, an important part of organized crime (an, as we saw in Breaking Bad, not so organized crime) is laundering the ill gotten gains, paying tax on them, such that you can then spend the money without worrying about the IRS. Because, if there is one thing that scares the Mafia, it's the IRS. They are ruthless.
> Should I spend 1 hour explaining to every fucker with a headache why a CT head is more likely to cause brain cancer than it is to diagnose it?

Absolutely you should. Because the beauty and the curse of the American health system is that patients can and do find other doctors willing to perform meaningless tests (as the article points out: because these tests are lucrative). If CT scans are more likely to cause a brain cancer, shouldn't the patient be informed?

> The solution to the US healthcare woes is NOT more patient autonomy and decision making.

No, more patient autonomy and decision making is happening regardless of whether it is a solution or a problem for the health care system. Medical professionals need to accept that patients are more informed than ever, and work with that fact instead of against it.

Imagine if the software industry had the same attitude (saying this with tongue firmly implanted in cheek).
Promises guide from W3C has beautiful ECMAScript 6 programming style
"...Even so, most of these kids are not new to conversations about race; the majority of them are students of color..."

and a paragraph or two later

"...The 60s era black nationalist terms come out next, usually from one of the all too few black male students in the room..."

Phew! — sometimes being determinedly politically correct is nearly as much of a logistical minefield as being an <insert race / religion> supremacist.
Because its cheaper to put a $1-5 mechanical switch in than to put a smart key system. Yet again, cost is the driving factor. How many lawsuits would you need due to ignition switch failures before smart keys for all cars was cheaper? A lot.
I agree that changing paternity leave rules to match maternity leave would reposition employer incentives with little or no improvement to unfair bias. I disagree that we should just accept that a choice must be made between preferring kids or career. We haven't figured out the best system yet, but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist.
Since we are talking about recursive lighting and global illumination, GPUs aren't particularly well suited to this task. The major bottleneck I'd expect would be memory coherency or interconnect speeds rather than brute compute at high enough levels of parallelism. There is probably a sweet spot of memory speeds, reliability, parallelism and processing power which they aimed for.

tl;dr: I doubt the engineers building the cluster didn't think of that.
Nobody uses EC2 for this type of workload. The requirements to get any sort of real performance are far too specific.

Dozens of companies exist that have massive render farms and they rent them out to shops working on movies and commercials, but most of the major players have large dedicated in-house infrastructure.
ABS depends on power not only for wheel speed measurement, but also for power to drive the brake piston.
Not really. The effective corporate tax rate is 9%.
The only downside is when disconnection occurs, the game gets reset, frustrating :(
http://domenic.me

Editor Domenic Denicola's website
The experience is so good! Though I wish there was some way to save state after connection lost. I have lost it a couple of times now probably because of load and it starts over every time.
shame the IRS is just getting the money for the fed (which is illegal, and doesn't go to providing any public service)
They're slower, but things like this can be really useful if you're golfing for size. They're available on some other chips like the 6502, as well - although how they actually work varies! (And is mostly undocumented, too - anything that wants to use the Z flag after an ADC, for example.)

You can also abuse them as part of things like base change routines sometimes… which is sort of what they're intended for.
Well put. Instagraham's new thing is spamming push notifications about things you don't care about to get you back on the app. And FB seems to have kept their hands off more than others since the brands continue on. It's impressive how much an acquisition changes the seller. In software you're either building a monopoly or you're treading water. Once you're bought the monopoly dream expires and the back stabbing begins.
1.1 million render hours per day on 55000 cores means that each core in their render farm is rendering only 22 hours per day.
>Would the country be better off if a new company could take GM's place?

Theoretically this is what happened with the bailout. Everyone made fun of Mary Barra for her "this all happened at the 'old GM', so the 'new GM' can't be responsible" but there's a reason it worked. GM was replaced by a new company: GM.
I can't go into any specifics, but the general approach that most places use these days is to assign complete frames to each node on the renderfarm. The nodes are multi-core and threads divvy up the work of rendering the image in tiles. That's not to say that production renderers can't do multi-process renders too, but you don't see it nearly as often as multi-threaded renders. Remember that it can often take several minutes just to read scenes in; even if you split up an image into individual pixels and gave each node just a single pixel to do there'd still be a limit to how quickly you could get a frame back. So if you parallelize across your cluster on frames, then yes, there's usually several hours latency for a frame sequence, but you also get much better throughput.

By the way, if you haven't heard of Blinn's Law [0], you may find it interesting.

[0] http://blog.boxxtech.com/2013/07/15/blinns-law-and-the-parad...
+1 Also "clear state".
That almost sounds like you're absolving the engineers (as though they can do no wrong). Changing a part, without also changing it's part-number, doesn't sound like a normal thing to do (and then forget about).

This is a complex issue and I do not agree with the (over-simplistic) reduction to 'management' and 'deadlines'.
I have been suffering from a bad handwriting my entire life.
In school and uni I would always be afraid, that answers could not be decoded by the person grading the test.

I also thought that the resulting text looked ugly.

Recently I have started to consciously improve my handwriting with great results. The simplest most effective step was to treat every letter as a single entity (in contrast of slurring all letters together into one word).

Of course this takes a little more time, but I now can actually read the results, and I also think that it looks good from an aesthetic point of view. Now I am not afraid of writing christmas or birthday cards anymore (I even bought a fountain pen for this purpose).
Also, find . -name "*.swp" -exec rm {} \; is also slowly getting abstracted away in my mind as a single, atomic and very useful command.
My takeaway from the article was that this was targeted at places where sea water contamination of farmland was a regular event, or where like in the northern areas of the Netherlands, keeping seawater off farmland is unsustainably expensive.
Seems like you already have this on your to do list but it would be nice to save state on local storage or something like that so that it doesn't reset every time the connection is lost.
Shall we fork Debian?
You should play "Trappy Tomb", if you haven't already.