skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> What's 'real' about the 'real' Mac Mini that's not real about this one?

Warranty and support. If Apple releases an update that breaks your Hackintosh then too bad, if Apple does it to your $100 more legit Mac Mini then you can moan at them if nothing else.

I do, however, completely agree with the upgrade argument. Particularly with the latest gen' of Mac Mini which don't allow the RAM to be upgraded because greed.
Failed, consulting, startup, failed, consulting, success, failed, job, job, startup, sold, job.
Great idea! I emailed you yesterday.
I love this comment, whether it is serious or satire.
While I'm not saying it's not fun to try and run OS X on PC hardware, can anyone explain to me how this is not morally equivalent to unauthorized copying / software piracy, given that they are both violations of the license agreement?
I left my company due to cofounder conflicts and lack of traction (we had a few customers, but weren't able to raise funding and I didn't see it going anywhere). I was really depressed for a while, and for lack of a better idea started doing freelance/contract development. After a couple of years of that, I got the itch to work on a startup again and decided to come back to the Bay Area for that. I got a job at a seed-funded company as their first employee.
With all the state and modes and such, is there a mode that just does perhaps: round to even, clamp to infinity, never produce NaN, and never trigger an exception? Because that's basically what a lot of people want - do the math and handle the extremes in reasonable ways without throwing exceptions.
This is really hard for me to explain and I don't want people to think I'm being ignorant. I've tried to think deeply about other people's ideas. Sometimes you have to experience a problem to really understand why the idea is good.

I still feel that 80% of these startup ideas are really bad. Maybe there is something wrong in the way I look at them. I want to join a startup here in Santa Monica but so many people like to work on garbage. Can someone explain to me what is wrong with my view ?
This is a really interesting path. Could you supply more info for each phase? Like a sentence or two and the maybe the time you spent on each?
Seems fun, because I didn't understand everything while skimming the website.

>We use so many of these ASCII glyphs that we like to be able to read them out loud. A language is meant to be said.

That's a very weird idea there. A painting is a form of language, but can a painting be said?
Show HN: Tag a Cat – App for Sharing Cat Photos
I tried to do this, but I just don't like working with Windows (or Linux). I don't like their current line of hardware, nothing fits me. iMacs: too rigid, I wan't my own screen. Mac Pro: too expensive, too powerful. Mac Mini? Soldered RAM, 5400RPM drive. If I max it out it's cheaper to get an iMac.

I ended getting a PC and throwing OS X on it. It's a pain in the ass when things break but it works for me. I would love a more upgrade-friendly Mini with desktop and not laptop hardware, even if it has to be bigger.
It undermines/reinforces their brand though. These misleading sticker prices with car-salesman trim levels piss off users except the Mercedes class who enjoy conspicuous consumption.
Does non-soldered RAM draw more power??
It has occupied an odd niche in my curiosity ever since my first grad-level class in astrodynamics/celestial mechanics :) . It's a fascinating problem because it's inherently tied to many physical phenomena in our Solar System and in other planetary systems, yet the statement of the 3-body problem is pretty much as simple as it gets.

And you're right, they are kinda off on their own, but that's mostly because this niche is an interesting meeting of the minds for mathematicians, astrophysicists and engineers. That means you get some "interesting" discussions to say the least.

As for the "political/historical" aspects, have a chat with Ed sometime if you get the chance. He's got an interesting backstory that's catalogued in his books too. Basically, to some extent, there was a lot of resistance at JPL to his ideas, and so he had to bypass them, which is what brought about the Hiten mission.

As an objective researcher, I can say that low-energy transfers for mission design are interesting, but really for a specific subset of scenarios. Time-critical missions, e.g. manned spaceflight, falls outside the scope of low-energy transfers. Additionally, it turns out that the maths is a bit finicky and that low-energy transfers only lead to a significant Delta-V reduction if you launch in the right "geometry". In the case of Earth-Moon transfers for instance, it turns out that if you neglect the Sun, you can't actually reach the Moon "for free", as is advertised by WSB transfers, because of KAM tori around the Moon. The Sun is crucial, as it's perturbing effect ensures that phase-space opens up and you can actually reach the Moon. This comes with a BIG caveat though that the geometry of the Earth-Moon-Sun has to meet certain requirements. Hence, launch windows are limited.

As you point out, I do think the greater interest in studying low-energy orbits, WSB and invariant manifolds in high-order gravitational problems is in using the theory to explain natural processes. This fits within the larger context of dealing with resonances in the 3-body problem. Murray and Dermott have an excellent textbook on the fundamental theory behind all of this [1]. It's a must-buy if you're interested in delving into this further.

All of this has tremendous potential to elucidate exoplanet systems. There are plenty of systems discovered by Kepler, CoRoT etc. that require a deep, fundamental understanding of the processes that shape(d) them.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Solar-System-Dynamics-Carl-Murray/dp/0...
No, it can't be off, but good design would have it drawing a tiny fraction of the "on" current while on standby. Evidently power consumption wasn't one of the important design requirements.
As a stage performer, you're grateful for every performance you get to do. It might get a bit old, but it beats not being on stage. (Also: You don't last for a decade at any given show. You keep moving on to other things.)

And for many, being on stage is every bit as exciting as flying a space ship. The emotional energy from a good performance is amazing. (It's certainly not the pay that keeps them)
Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson tiptoes back with new comic
> What I would really like is for them to email me back and say either "Oh wow yeah thanks for catching that" or "God damn you dumbass, no that's not actually a problem because xyz"

They're not going to acknowledge any issue until they've patched it if they're smart.
Right now, DataFrames is handicapped by problems with how DataArrays was designed. With some revisions coming in Julia 0.4, it should be possible to fix a lot of the worst problems (esp. performance) with DataFrames.
It could be something important. I don't know the exact intention behind this particular view counter, but consider for instance the scenario of using such a counter as an element aimed at enhancing credibility and establishing trustworthiness. You'd be more likely to read an article knowing it was also read by other 100K people, wouldn't you?
Sure, but only once the title has attained secondary meaning over and above the words in the title. Basically, it has to be beyond the level of a bestseller. Most book titles don't come anywhere close.
Very popular without a big marketing campaign. It can also only be used to describe things that are still relatively new. That would be my definition of viral (or the way I perceive that word being commonly used today).

That Serial is just that can easily be argued. (I also very much disagree with you about it dragging on for way too long – and I don’t think qualitative statements like that have anything to do whether or not something is viral anyway. That is just so irrelevant. To me the average quality has been higher than This American Life, and that’s quite the achievement.)
It isn't possible to never produce a NaN. 0/0 and inf-inf, for example, have no reasonable result that can be produced. And indeed, the spec defines those operations as resulting in NaN.
Posted three days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8561787
What are good retail NUCs?
I definitely was thinking about something like this, but not exactly this. I mean, yeah, the only way to save ourselves from damnation is to finally announce "enough of 70's!" and rewrite everything from scratch, so the idea is dear to me, but that actual implementation of the idea is… maybe "weird" is the right word. I'll continue reading, but I already have a feeling that after I'll get myself completely familiar with it, I will hope it will not succeed.
> and for older hardware makes sure to let you know that your Mac/iOS device doesn't support this feature.

Where is this case? In my experience, something I saw online simply wasn't available to me, like AirDrop, for instance. I upgraded my mid-09 MBP to 10.7, looked for AirDrop and couldn't find it.

Same for Handoff and the Bluetooth-required new features in Yosemite. Apple doesn't go out of its way to inform me my hardware is out of date; features talked about in the media are just missing.

edit: Also, your post sounds dangerously close to the uninformed "Apple purposefully makes iOS n perform worse on device x", as if that's a smart business move.
If you feel it's garbage, don't work on it. :-) Many startups fail because of execution problems, many fail because they are too early, many fail because they are too late. And yes, some fail because the idea doesn't look good. There is no reason to waste time on the 80% (or 99%) of ideas that don't look good.

But.... Many great ideas didn't look so hot at the time. Instagram? Does the world need one more startup doing photos? Snapchat? Text that doesn't stick around? Really? Of course hindsight corrects us.
> What does mobile app dev have to do with a full web stack for example

While the author's definition might be too expansive, I can answer that one: Design your APIs to support mobile clients that sync, for which you'll need an experienced mobile architect, or your mobile clients will be stuck not taking advantage of local storage for better performance and resiliency in situations with unreliable connectivity.

If you treat mobile as an add-on, it will bite you in the ass.
Can you, for example, spell out what you mean by "you really want your data model to be acyclic and not require GC"? What is cyclic about the "data model" in e.g. Go or Lua?
NaNoGenMo 2014: A procedurally generated mysterious codex
I've failed myself a few times. It normally consists of a month of bouncing around doing passion projects / thinking before returning to work.
I tried once but now I don't understand it.

The main benefit for me using OSx is that is a nix desktop os that works well on a very specific hardware. Having used linux on the desktop before for years I always had some problem with drivers and alike.

If I were willing to deal with these kind of issues I'd do it with some linux distribution not osx.

I guess there are some cases like developing software for Apple os.
Especially in case of unclear title it's a good thing to have the building occupied as a squat. It prevents further detoriation of the building and urban blight in general - the occupants will see that the roof is tight and that the windows remain whole. Whoever owner there is may lose out on the real estate, but an abandoned building isn't worth much to begin with, and the city benefits at the end of the day.
I can still compile non-free software to any Distro on FSF's list.

The policy is if the official repos have non-free software. You can always install non-free on any of the FSF listed distros also. Also I think the world has moved past FSF when you just look at the distro names. Very small communities.
The biggest challenge I'm facing now is how to convince those around me to take the leap and step over to Julia. We have a wealth of legacy code in MATLAB, C++ and Fortran. I've seen the various methods to call these codes from Julia, but in the case of C++, it seems that only rudimentary support is provided.

My goal is to port a lot of my code to set up astrodynamics simulations. I've even created a placeholder Github repo for it [1]. Just have to find the right strategy to involve the dev in my existing projects and get my colleagues to chip in.

[1] https://github.com/kartikkumar/Astro.jl
Mind if I shoot you an email too for an invite?
Python's Decimal module (though not its floats, for some reason) has, IMO, a pretty good implementation of these features.

https://docs.python.org/2/library/decimal.html#context-objec...

Basically, it encapsulates attributes and status flags into a thread-local "context" which you get/set through normal function calls. There's also the helpful "with" syntax which allows you to say "run this code block (and anything it calls, etc) with this context instead of the current one, then restore the current one on exit".

A sibling comment talked about a sin() example where you want to use an explicit rounding mode for your calculations, then apply the global rounding mode to the result.
Under this paradigm it would look something like:

with MySpecialContext(settings, etc) as ctx:
calculations...
check status flags in ctx
get result
round result # this uses the parent context
return
What are you using to control all the LED lights?
This is a dope idea, I signed up on your site for early access.
Concrete Could Make Wind Towers Taller
Haven't seen the film yet, but I did have a chance to read through the screenplay. The characterization and the dialogue are in the main uninspired. The plot felt disjointed - like taking a shortcut through spacetime. The visual effects will be stunning, but they will not be enough to convince audiences that the movie was above average. If anything it will alert moviegoers to the deficiencies in character, plot and dialogue. NO SPOILERS
I know that's what a lot of people want, but I do not see how one can 'handle the extremes in reasonable ways' without producing NaNs. I have heard people advocate 0/0 = 0, but IMO that is NOT 'handling the extremes in reasonable ways'. What would you propose for 0/0?
Is this live now? if so how do I get on it? I want to get mentored in UX design.
I'm from South Korea.

To apply for a Korean company, they usually require a formal photo, SSN, parents' jobs, house income, written self introduction, etc. No kidding. And I have a few years military service experiences as a Korean army that might be not related with software engineering.

So for those reasons, I had to split branches to appeal myself to diverse companies properly. I don't want to make companies confused with unnecessary info.
You don't find "returning to work" has a stigma with the bouncing around?

Meaning, startup to "big corp" or "any company" doesn't mind you were bouncing around.

I'm just curious how dev's go through the interview/hiring process with the jumping around like that. As a more Operations dude, it hurts me pretty badly, even though I "jump" a lot with startups. Requires more explanation.
TREWGrip
Earlier versions of the site featured a larger quantity of Moldbug's baroque, trollish prose style. Plus there was an extended argument about language design, due to the author being present in the thread.

Frankly, I'm disappointed. It used to be clearly the personal work of a lunatic. Now it feels more like a quirky open source project.
In your "never produce NaN" arithmetic, what do you want sqrt(-1) to be, and why is that a better answer than NaN?
The Seiki, AKA the first cheap, readily available 4K TV, only does 4K at 30hz due to the limitations of HDMI:

http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-SE39UY04-39-Inch-Ultra-Discontin...
Make a List of Blogs Written by the Hacker News Community: Add Yours
Modern western civilisation is grounded on compulsive consumption. I can agree it's insane, but I don't think we're all mentally ill.
There's one picture of naked Germans. Not pornographic or anything.
I built a Yosemite based Hackintosh a few weeks ago and had a same problem except it occurred almost every time computer wakes up. Solution was to unload audio drivers before computer goes to sleep and then load them again when it wakes up. Somehow it works even when kext is in use and cannot be unloaded.
Those people are in their 40s now. Other people have become the establishment around them. (Though they did have a lawyer amongst the interviewed.)
I would not trust this map, since after doing a 10 seconds check of the airspace that I am personally familiar with I have noticed that restricted area R-2531 above Lawrence Livermore Lab is not marked. Who knows what else they have missed and what sources they are basing their data on.
During the past 10 years I tried launching startups a few times, failed most of the times within 6-12 months. After each failure I spent 3-6 months trying some more relaxing things (public speaking, dancing, standup comedy), and then got back to doing startups again and again.

Right now I'm quite tired of all that, but fortunately the past micro-startup & investments brought in around $300k which would be enough to live comfortably for ~5 years in Poland.

Right now I'm 30 years old, and the plan is to keep on trying. What changed during the past 10 years is that I'm no longer striving to go all in with a financed business and spend 70-hour workweeks. I don't want to build a billion-dollar business. Instead, I want to build something much smaller which will allow me to have personal life as well.
It all comes down to the messaging / how you position yourself when you interview. If each 1-2 year stint was a good learning experience and that made you a better ops / dev, then you need to present that on your resumes / cover letters. Also, ideally while doing startups, you've also met a ton of people where you know that if the current project doesn't work out you can always work with / for one of them!
Apache Wicket's encrypted URLs don't protect from CSRF
The fridge would be my guess
John Henry (folklore)
My take is that due to the exponential speed increase we have had in processors, general purpose of year n+2 has run faster than special purpose of year n. Thus, there was little point in building special purpose processors.

But those times are coming to an end now.
2002: Started a small business.

2008: Pivoted to a somewhat more scalable and clearly defined small business.

2011: Started a true startup.

2013: Realized I'd started the wrong startup. Got a job at somebody else's growth stage startup.

~2018: Will start another startup. But this time I'll have a hell of a lot more understanding, expertise, connections, and
I have a feeling Alfred Hitchcock would've had a field day with this one...
There's an excellent little book with those two and many others equivalently bizarre accounts on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy: http://www.amazon.com/A-Short-History-Nuclear-Folly/dp/16121...
Thanks for the feedback. We normally charge subscription but we took off the pay wall this week for promo reasons.
telnet and tfpt clients are still part of Windows, just not installed by default.

You need to go into Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows Features On or Off.

They, amongst other tools, are listed there.
Adding onto this: for those who have failed and started again, did the failure affect your fundraising campaign once you did get traction on a startup?
Show HN: Teddy – A physical pet made possible using Estimote beacons
While we're on the topic, here's a cute tip: To make the opposite move -- from the command prompt to an explorer window of the current directory -- use "start ."
Better link with pictures: https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/renewable-e...
> such comparison is really an insult.

> Forget about living condition, corruption or censorship, let's talk about police state.

Here's a recent photo taken in Ferguson, Missouri:

http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/53f10e8decad046f3d4...
It's a crowd-sourced work in progress...
I ran out of gas and left my cofounder; divorced; worked a succession of small startup jobs, some better than others; ended up back at Apple. I have ideas that I cannot express at Apple and so may end up taking another whack at the piñata, now that a) I am not in the throes of a crumbling personal relationship and b) I've gone round the carousel once, so I have some idea how the world works.

I regret the way I left my startup, but at the time I was under an abominable amount of pressure outside work, and I just sort of shot out sideways, like a watermelon seed being squeezed between thumb and forefinger. I do not regret leaving Apple to do the startup, not in the least.
I suspect it's some type of system where they're even able to inspect the BIOS.

Speaking of... Richard Stallman uses the Lemote Yeelong because even its BIOS is open source[1]. The specs are a bit behind, but for his purposes, it seems to work well.

[1] http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/
So that's a budget 4K monitor. What did you expect for just over $400?

Dell makes plenty of high end monitors, they just don't give them away at loss-generating prices.

The 3008WFP-HC (not 4K) is a 30", 2560x1600 monitor, 30 bit, S-IPS panel.

I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that a $400 4K monitor is not running at 60Hz. It's not like Apple would offer that? You're right. But their solution would also not be anywhere near the same.

Hell, they haven't even updated the Thunderbolt Display. Even today, it requires a MagSafe to MagSafe Adapter to work with ANY Macbook currently on sale (seriously, Apple? You can't replace the connector with MagSafe 2?) and doesn't support USB3.
Traffic Engineers Say Slowing Down Will Get You Through a Jam Faster
it's all about your delta V. Delta V is basically the currency of space travel.
You just need to be able to construct a persuasive narrative. Not, "I hated it and so I left" but more "the new gig offered me opportunities not available". I've bounced around a fair amount between long-term gigs, and it's never really been a problem.
I suggest the car / airplane analogy was already strained before we got here.

Driving a car is easy, as evinced by the large numbers of people that are capable of it. Whether driving a car successfully (ie. without dying) is easy is obviously a matter for debate. With 0.000015% failing in this severe way, it might be argued that driving a car and dying is not particularly common, and could (no disrespect to the people involved) be thought of as a rounding error.

We have no evidence that Google isn't trying to invent self-driving or personal airplanes.

Try suddenly stopping your car on the autobahn, and see how tranquil the 'just sitting there' experience is.

Anyway, perhaps we are all missing the underlying point - an overly complicated solution (to an otherwise straightforward problem) has been the received wisdom for decades, and a re-think from fundamentals is almost definitely worth the effort.
Well, a bankruptcy suit pretty much always reflects poorly on the management team, no matter what the stated reasons are.
I went through a phase like that. I measured everything I could and found I could only improve things by about 10%, with light bulb changes, computer hardware changes, etc. The bulk of my usage was still HVAC, water heater, fridge, washer & dryer, and the rest of the appliances.

Home LED lights and better electronics efficiency might make a dent on total grid usage eventually, but it really feels like it's only scratching at the surface.