skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not exactly. The engines themselves are decades old, Orbital Science is quoted as saying

"'As we went through testing, we did discover there were some effects of aging since they had been in storage for awhile, including some stress corrosion cracking,' Culbertson conceded at the time. 'That’s what we [corrected] with weld repairs and other inspections.'"

They got the engines that were decades old, and they've been fixing problems that they have found, and refurbishing them and installing them into rockets. It doesn't say they have built new engines on the old designs. That would have been better, because then you would have someone who had designed the engine on staff and could understand it in a deep way.

Presumably Orbital is designing their own engines now, or contracting with someone to do so, perhaps their go to market strategy was "Get some things into space with these old surplus engines, use the revenue/time to design/test/manufacture our own engines, and then continue on with our own bespoke design." I don't know of course if that was their intention or not.
I'd like to recommend Mackup for backing up machine config (and keeping them in sync) https://github.com/lra/mackup.
Moz engineering: Taking it to the next level
An interesting follow-up would be to run PageRank on the citation graph. That should lower the importance of the scientific methods papers since they are likely to be cited by a very large number of random papers of limited importance, which bumping up papers that have led to further work that is itself important.
Something similar using SQLite virtual tables and the proc filesystem
https://github.com/claes/osql
I am doing an in-development project, we patched to 7.32 minutes after the initial SA was sent. We do have some components sitting out on the net (not public) and they were not updated (brought in sync with development code) for about three hours, so I am going to go ahead and conduct an audit.
You're perhaps mistaking NK-33 for their predecessor, NK-15, which was used in all 4 unsuccessful N1 flights?
No lolligaggin'.
What stops the data from being updated asynchronously by another db connection?
Isn't this a false dichotomy?

Option 3) Spend the day fixing the security problem, then write a transparent post about it thus improving revenue/traction with new/existing users.
No, the engine is literally decades old. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33 :

"Nearly thirty years after they were built, disbelieving rocket engineers were led to the warehouse. One of the engines was later taken to America, and the precise specification of the engine was demonstrated on a test stand."
New Simba MongoDB ODBC Driver - SQL for MongoDB Data Is Here
> the liberal arts classes I took - those seemed to focus on regurgitating facts or the professor's viewpoint.

You had bad professors and/or were skating through. To a degree, you will get out what you put in.

Perhaps in STEM fields good work product often is more defined (e.g., the number either is right or wrong) and therefore more efficient for professors to evaluate than in, for example, a history class where you analyze the primary documentary sources for and the causes of the Meiji Restoration.
Wharton grad here -- I have to reply to your characterization. Wharton still has a strong finance background, but we've also applied the same ideas towards all disciplines where a quantitatively based, structured approach to problem solving is useful. That's why many consider it a "quant school." I specifically learned critical thinking there, and not anything that has helped me in my job specifically (PM at a big tech company).
IronRuby is a dead project and IronPython was heavily written by Microsoft.
No, in this case part of the rocket itself was decades old. Orbital used AJ-26 engines for the first stage, which are refurbished NK-33 engines originally built for the Soviet moon program. [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33
> it's all about what the company wants, rather than what the consumer wants.

This is definitely true, but I'm not sure how much it matters.

I, as a consumer, definitely prefer using credit cards because of the protection it affords me, plus I get rewards for what I buy - I never use a debit card to pay for things. I'm also a bit leery of the marketing surveillance state that's cropped up in the US over the past few years, and a scheme like this sets off alarm bells immediately. And I'm sufficiently well off that I'm unlikely to be enticed to try it out just to get some discounts.

But I'm also not a typical consumer. I could see where - if properly and/or luckily done - this might appeal to a not insignificant number of people. If I'm getting a bank account at Walmart, it's likely because I have difficulty getting one somewhere else. Those discounts might seem more attractive to me. Maybe you could argue that's the type of consumer who's also less likely to pay with their phone (or have a phone capable of handling the payments). Dunno, but it seems like even though nobody particularly wants this, it could work because there's a lot of folks who might not dislike it enough to make a difference. DIVX failed because the idea of DVDs that are single use is just a blatant cash grab. It's less obvious here, from the consumer's perspective.

My gut says clusterfuck, though.

EDIT: added a sentence.
Finally, the problem of creating those fancy desktop-at-a-coffee-shop splashes is solved! throws away SLR
Yes and no.

Rocket engine design has not actually made that much progress in the meanwhile. It's not the design that was the issue.

Also, the Russians were VERY good at making rocket engines.

The real problem is that these are engines actually made decades ago, and stored under a tarp in a former Soviet facility for a long time before they were purchased by Orbital as the cheap option.
The only argument here is that crypto on internet connected (and potentially compromised) devices is insecure.

Actually, that's pretty far from the standard arguments: http://matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/

That's pretty much the seminal work of why browser crypto is insecure.

The issue isn't whether the primitives you're using are secure. It's that the security of your primitives can be hijacked by any third-party javscript you load into the page. Any attacker that can gain a foothold into your javascript execution environment can trivially subvert your security.
Which begs the question... If they don't know enough about rockets to build them, how can they possibly know how to safely repair them?
What Does an Idle CPU Do?
Why must Hacker News become one more internet hotspot for gender wars articles? I can understand upvoting Science, cause that's kinda maybe slightly related to Tech and Software.

But...can't we just have one news site that doesn't cross into social/political areas?

If anyone can point me to an alternative to HN that focuses more on software and tech with the same general quality, would be much appreciated.
Unraveling the Mysteries of Quantum Computing
To be fair SpaceX's last launch (Aug 22) exploded too. It was a test, not a real mission, but to quote Elon: "Rockets are tricky."
No one is blaming Russia.

We're blaming the age of rocket engines (that just happened to come from Russia).
Downvote. The engines were indeed originally _built_ in the 60s or 70s and have literally been sitting around for the vast majority of the time since.

Second, not sure what your point is with the Russian launch. It uses different engines and was scheduled awhile back.
Linux does not expose a consistent snapshot of its state that could be read within a single transaction.
Osxc: simple configuration tool for OS X
I think we already have modular phones in the larger sense. We can attach thousands of peripherals via Bluetooth, the charger, headphone jack or wifi and add one of zillions of third party cases. Our personal data sits in the cloud and/or on our huge PC drives and works seamlessly with many slabs. Apps are portable, many even across ecosystems.
Not the rocket, the engines. And yes, they are decades old. The project that produced the NK-33 engines was abandoned i Soviet in 1974, so they are at least 40 years old. Aerojet bought a stockpile of them in the 90's.
Emerging Cyber Threats – Report [pdf]
Yup, that was me :)

Thanks again for notifying us, I'll be checking if any other Goodies may have fallen through the cracks.
What do you think a slave should do if it is told to replace its state with empty state? How about half-empty state? There's really no answer that's satisfying for every possible use case (certainly I don't want my slaves to refuse if I tell them to clear the database completely on purpose). And indeed you haven't given any examples of databases that try to do 'better'. I think that's because there aren't any.
Really enjoyed the relationship between this paper's title and the graph of its citation frequency:

http://i.imgur.com/RO6BVRx.png
> you'll see components disconnect from one another and the thing crash, a lot

Isn't the whole point of project Ara that you can disconnect components and the phone doesn't crash?

> you'll lose performance as data is transitioned in and out of generic interfaces

I was thinking about this - I doubt they'll have a single interface that is generic enough to attach CPU and memory as well as other peripherals - I'm guessing each connector will bundle separate connectors for the CPU and RAM, so that whichever slot the CPU and RAM modules go into, they'll still be on "their" bus. Then you'll have the generic bus, which will be like a USB or PCI bus on a computer - you can attach anything else to it and it's all treated the same. The performance loss would come from the bus itself being inferior, not having to shoehorn disparate devices into using it.

> There is no empty space, a Project Ara phone needs room for connectors, housing, and similar. Where does this space come from?

No doubt, these will be larger phones.

> I genuinely hope they succeed and I'd buy a Project Ara phone if they can engineer something [awesome]

Me too :)
Neat idea, but I don't necessarily want a whole new computer, just the projector + 3D camera.

Someone should hack together an open source version. The hardware should be pretty straightforward: a commodity projector, a couple webcams, and perhaps an Xbox Kinect or similar.
It's not that unique - in Russian space school oxidizer-rich turbines are routine. Proton, for example, used to have - until latest years - a pretty solid track record, especially for first stage engines, and those engines use N2O4 for turbines. Considering that N2O4 is burned with some amount of (CH3)2N-NH2, making HNO3... the gas going to chamber from turbine is the nitric acid. Still engines work just fine.

One of big reasons for Russians to use oxydizer-reach gas generators is that on the rocket there usually much more oxidizer - by mass - than fuel, which makes the flow through the turbine much bigger - several times. So efficiency of turbopumps goes up. That justifies the complexity of having oxidizer-rich gas flow before the chamber.
RDBMS can guarantee that there are no such updates
It sounds fishy. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Islands_Settlement_Sche...

Earhart disappeared in 1937, since 1938 there were people on Nikumaroro and it seems they didn't report anything that would certainly be easily visible one year later on a 5 x 1.6 miles big island if Earhart and Noonan managed to land and live there.

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIGHAR
> There's a reason why Saturn V beat the N1 to the moon -- the N1 had a distressingly consistent habit of blowing up:

That, too, was a symptom, not a cause.

The history of the N1 program is complex. As a westerner, you're probably more inclined to quickly thumb your nose at it, but the program failed for a sum of non-technical reasons.

Korolev died early during the project. That alone was a major blow.

Then, the Communist Party severely cut the funds needed for the project. They couldn't even test the rockets properly. Their "tests" were the actual live launches. Imagine if NASA was operating like that.

They did the best they could, but with the chief engineer gone, and with almost no money, they couldn't get very far. I see the whole thing not as proof of lack of competence, but rather as a heroic effort against literally insurmountable difficulties.

Someone should make a movie out of it, starting with Korolev's awesome early work before WW2, going through him being exiled in labor camp in Siberia by Stalin, then his rehabilitation and then the Sputnik and Gagarin, the start of the N1, Korolev's death (hastened by poor health after his siberian sojourn), and ending with the N1 being stopped and the engines being hidden in a facility against the wishes of the Party higher-ups to have them destroyed. A Dostoevsky drama kind of vibe would be quite appropriate, I guess.
Are We in a Tech Bubble? All Signs Point to Yes
Wrt. strength change - the Earth's field would easily change 1% depending on your location, so definitely shouldn't be an issue for a sea/continent crossing birds.

What is special about the second field is that it was probably much more - several orders of magnitude - curved than the Earth's field (which for practical purposes of flying to Africa is a bunch of straight lines pointing to South). I'd bet those "ripples" and "criss-crosses" was what confused the bird. And in addition the field was oscillating :)

From the article :

"Moreover, in the 7-MHz oscillating field, this effect depended on the angle between the oscillating and the geomagnetic fields. The birds exhibited seasonally appropriate migratory orientation when the oscillating field was parallel to the geomagnetic field, but were
disoriented when it was presented at a 24 or 48 degree angle. "
Orbital Sciences launch failure
https://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/MissionUpdates/Orb-3/

What Orbital calls a 'Launch Mishap' could also be referred to as a 'giant fireball'.

From the ground:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/10/29/a-years-work-goes-up-in-flames-as-b-c-students-science-experiment-destroyed-when-iss-bound-rocket-explodes/

From the air: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zarWT7H9t54
The only thing I was not referring to were the technical parameters.
Drupal is saying that people were being compromised only hours after the details were known. That's a very short window to update software. In this instance, I'm not really sure what anyone could have done to avoid the potential for compromise. Your install is practically DOA by the time you will learn of the news.
Thanks for the comments. We are fully committed to the project and trying to get into YC was sort of a clearing the vision and putting everything into one single document. It helped a lot. Though we'd do our best to get into summer batch we'll keep on doing on what we're doing regardless if we succeed or not. It is just another motivational element:) Trying to get into YC and making progress with customers and users are the same to me. The more we are attractive for YC the better are the chances.
This was really touching. Not only a physicist, but a poet as well.
> That's why the engines were tested - many times, both in Russia and in USA, and also analysed, trying to predict how several decades of storage could affect engines.

One of the refurbished NK-33's failed on a test stand in Louisiana, destroying the engine and causing heavy damage to the test stand during static testing in May:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/05/antares-aj-26-engine-...
Anyone else just skim the title and then get disappointed when it didn't actually relate to homemade booze?
Thanks, I'll give him a try when I have the chance.
Not sure what proper HN etiquette on this is, but I made a comment on the launch news story on this exact subject:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8525057

TLDR- Those engines may be 50 years old, but they're a technological marvel. Using them is a little crazy, but I'm sure Orbital saw it as the "least crazy" of three options: building a new engine from scratch, buying prohibitively expensive engines from Rocketdyne, or buying risky but cheap engines from Russia.
the wider variance certainly would make more sense... the US has a ton of people. New Orleans PD is notoriously corrupt, the "Chicago Way" is even a thing (vote early and vote often!). Compare that to a mid size city/state like Des Moines, Iowa and of course you're going to see big differences in corruption perceptions.
Should be "JavaScript" and even when abbreviated, it's "JS" and not "Js".
Have you been flying BLAH Airlines?
The license is designed to work like a font or stock photo license. It's allows for a specific user individual or within a company to use the sounds for as many projects as they'd like.

From my experience this is typical for most licenses on most royalty free items. The same type of license can be found at sites like Shutterstock at the Boom Library that another user mentioned in the comments.

It's just the nature of the business. I believe the prices are fair for the quantity and unlimited project use. But it wouldn't be fair to just then share all of them with as many people as you had in an organization.
Please don't do astroturfing and promotional voting on Hacker News.
> break into my home through my 2nd story bedroom window

It's even more telling they were trying to break in secretly.

If they were genuinely concerned someone desperately needed medical attention, where were the paramedics, and why didn't they loudly bash on the front door, announce themselves then smash it down loudly in front of everyone?
Hahhahahahhahahahahaha
These are completely different markets, though. At the consumer level, I question the claim that modular won.

At the corporate level. Makes a ton of sense. Consumer level? Hell, we are at the point that the battery isn't even really modular anymore.
How to Style a Monochromatic Look
So the predecessor was involved in 4 consecutive mishaps and the successor never even used? Not sure who is mistaking here.
It makes coffee for the GPU.
Absolutely. I had the first Droid X, and when I got it, folks were always asking "does it even fit in your pocket?" These days that 4" screen wouldn't stand out at all. It's the same way now with my Note 3. We get used to larger phones, in spite of the inconvenience, because of the other features they have that we want.
If people are considering this, let me throw out another option: antwerp, belgium.

Tuition isn't free, but affordable. Around 3000 euro per year for non-EU students (subsidized through taxation). Admission requirements are not strict. When i was studying CS we had a few foreign students and accomodations were made for them so they could study in english. Living costs are reasonable, lower than london, amsterdam or paris. The city itself is very international. We have more nationalities living here than live in New York. Most people speak english, and in fact i have a ukrainian coworker who isn't even bothering to learn dutch because english is sufficient. You can be in amsterdam or paris in two hours, and cheap travel to anywhere in europe is available. The city has a rich history and culture. You can drink beer in bars which are half a millenium old, and visit buildings which were centuries old when columbus discovered the americas.

In fact, even if you don't come to study, come anyway, for a vacation :)
Common Knee Surgery Does Very Little for Some, Study Suggests (2013)
We just fixed the link. Thanks for catching this!
On the contrary, my personal experience is that Universities are very good to transmit specific knowledge (i.e. Python), but fail miserably to develop introspective and critical thinking in their pupils.

By necessity, you gain the later by long years of self study (and probably lots and lots of of detours and false starts).
So these engines were built when Paul McCartney was 23 years old?

Apparently Orbital Sciences scoured the museums and antique shops in Russia and picked up enough of these engines to base a new rocket on them.

The reason they were surplus was that the rocket that they were built for was canceled, because the engines exploded on each of the four test launches conducted.

Orbital Sciences was once a scrappy startup. Books were written about it. However, this is just embarrassing.
Would've preferred to see the from-where-select style rather than the normal way of writing SQL.
For someone who doesn't know much about aerospace engineering, can someone outline the actual challenge with getting something like this right?

What's the missing piece that'll effectively eliminate accidents like this? Or is this one of those things that will just happen from time to time because going to space takes a lot of math that we don't fully understand yet?

I was just under the impression that this was a very well known area of science.
We have at lots of immigrants doing great work, such as Elon Musk.
I actually tried mackup a few weeks ago and had to wipe my machine because it messed up my settings so much (who would've thought backup could be such a dangerous command?)

Cider's approach is much safer since all it does is reinstall the components & settings you've specifically allotted it to. Rather than move all your various configs and caches around in an attempt to keep them in sync (which is, IMO, subject to headaches and not worth the hassle), the whole point of Cider is to keep as little state on your machine as possible so you can stop thinking about this stuff.
How Dropbox, Airbnb, and Others Acquired Their First Users
Let me put it another way. A science/engineering program teaches you the scientific method, which is the best technique ever discovered for separating truth from crap. That's a critical thinking skill that actually works.

As opposed to, say, arguing about who is a better President - Obama or Bush? Liberal arts majors can argue that all day, and never be able to demonstrate a thing to be true.
Great feedback. We'll look into making it more clear for future visitors.
If the form itself was delivered over http then it doesn't matter. An attacker could easily change the POST address to something else. And how could you even tell? Browsers don't display the URL that a submit button is going to POST to...
It works fine when I open the page with my phone held vertically. When I hold the phone horizontally the button doesn't seem to work though.

Opening the video with the phone held vertically and then rotating the phone once the video loads works fine, however.
I don't know enough about computers to make my own PC from scratch. I however can fix some problems with PC. So you can have one without another.
Through the eyes of the author, the original comment probably seems obvious in what it's attempting to convey. Through the eyes of other people, its intent can be ambiguous. In my case, very ambiguous. I wouldn't be surprised if you were downvoted just as much for being unclear as for people misunderstanding your point.
Yup. IIRC it was auto triggered by some onboard system because of one of those 'anomalies'.
KISS did it as well. http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/kissblood.asp

And The Flaming Lips. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/wayne-coyne-makes-pos...
Agreed with the learning how to code part. You still have not addressed the question on how to land connections with wealthy individuals. Otherwise, you are going to end up making lots of money... for somebody else.
Building a new engine is, quite literally, rocket science. On the plus side, we know the problems can be solved, because we've done it before. On the minus side, a lot of that knowledge has been lost and needs to be recreated or redesigned. We can't easily rebuild the Saturn V, for example, even though its design would work well for many of today's launches. [1] New rockets are being designed, but its a major undertaking. [2] NASA's SLS is in the $18 billion range. [3]

[1] http://amyshirateitel.com/2011/04/03/the-lost-art-of-the-sat...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#Proposed_successors

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Program_cos...