skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wonder how many of the issues listed in this article could be addressed if my HTML-based web technologies allowed for a real concept of an "app?"

Right now, we're very much faking it. Every time you go to a website, you're downloading a document that unpacks into code and data in your client. Caching aside (because the cache timeouts are never long enough), you have to do that dance every time you visit. The performance hurdle ppk describes is less about having to go through the DOM to get to your elbow (though that's true) than it is about never being able to precompute and locally cache view logic. That's a performance hurdle that can't be crossed.

In contrast, native apps divide everything quite clearly into "code" and "data." The code is the app you download from the store; it can auto-update, but it isn't trying to pull in a new copy of itself from scratch every time you use it. It can also be pre-optimized for your architecture. The data is only what is needed for the app to present it appropriately to you.

I'd be willing to wager that if a real standard for downloadable client-side cached web apps ever caught on, ironed out the optimization issues, and stuck, quite a few of the performance issues of web vs. native could actually be addressed.

(Of course, we'd still have to deal with the DOM really being the wrong language for a lot of high-interactivity use cases, unfortunately).
Why the mistrust? The author did an entire career change after suffering her burnout. That's not a decision to take lightly and surely isn't emblematic of someone who is faking it. Furthermore, she indicated she was putting in 11 hours or so a day in her banking job. That's not a schedule which is lightly endured by anyone, no matter how spirited or strong-willed the individual may appear.
I think UIKit (and possibly Android, which I haven't worked with) has the right idea: nested, texture-backed views that can render their own content.

You might argue that canvas and WebGL nodes in the DOM already serve this role, but I disagree. In their current form, these nodes exist inside the document-based world of the web rather than containing it, an inversion of what I see as the proper hierarchy. This arrangement poses a number of problems for designing rich apps, including very poor performance related to content reflow. Some companies[1] are trying to fix this by manually doing all their rendering inside canvas and re-implementing HTML and CSS along the way. Unfortunately, this is a ton of work and results in a web experience that is non-standard in many ways, including for things like accessibility and text selection. The fact that this actually does work to significantly improve the user experience, however, points to the fact that something needs to drastically change for the web to remain healthy, useful, and relevant.

My understanding is that the DOM is already implemented as a series of texture-backed views in many browsers. That would still remain the same — nobody would have to reimplement this functionality. I just think it would be a great idea for us to be able to use those same texture-backed views for custom UI unrelated to HTML and CSS, and to separate the rendering concerns of text and document flow from the design of user interfaces.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9029159
A 5-mile test track won't be big enough to examine the biggest concerns: thermal and seismic. The alpha brochure linked to in the OP barely touches on the two. Here [1] is a better analysis/take-down of what thermal issues such a long structure will encounter. (TL;DR: A 400-mile long continuous structure will need to accommodate 1000 feet of thermal movement over it's length and lifetime.) Seismic is another beast: it requires a much more thorough examination than the cursory glance it was given in the alpha paper.

[1] http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/08/hyperloop/

Thermal effects on Maglev research: https://www.lib.utexas.edu/etd/d/2007/kimh10315/kimh10315.pd...

EDIT: Apologies for the negativity... I hope this reads as more of thoughtful criticism, rather than as being hypercritical.
What's Really Driving Income Inequality
> (Need a Scala/Akka guy?)

Yes. Are you local to Seattle, or interested in Seattle?
Show HN: VIPtrace.com – Content Will Follow You
How to Generate a Vanity Bitcoin Address on AWS
Stop reposting this :(

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9600427
There is one simple trick to avoiding RSI, and it works. It goes like this: change your keyboard every 3 - 6 months.

That's it! Its that simple! It doesn't matter if its an ergo keyboard or not. What matters is that you change your keyboard and get your muscles moving in different directions.

Been doing this for 20+ years, after suffering RSI horrendously in the late 80's, and I'll never look back. Whenever I start to feel uncomfortable/pain while typing I just change keyboards to something else. Solution!
Show HN: Real-time Uber fare map
Kick ass desk!!
I upgraded my main workstation to the recent Ubuntu with systemd, and sadly that has turned into a big problem. I use btrfs, and have several subvolumes as well as multi-drive filesystems. At some point systemd decides to filesystem check something it doesn't need to, and then times out. Sadly this kind of thing is really difficult to diagnose. The exact same devices are already mounted - the second mount is just a different subvolume. If it just went ahead and mounted instead of outsmarting itself, then all would be good. Thankfully I can make it boot using upstart which works fine.

It is very frustrating that /etc/fstab has just worked for several years, but now systemd does the wrong thing. I really want to like and use systemd.

An Ubuntu bug report did not help (ignore the wrong title) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/14478...
WTF? Department: Low contrast text on websites
I wish people would stop using low contrast text on websites (gray text on gray or white background or other low or ultra-low contrast combinations).

It adds nothing whatsoever other than perhaps giving the the designer a sense of being trendy and making the site annoying to users.

Low contrast text is hard to read, particularly if you are tired or have less than perfect vision. It's just annoying and, my opinion, counterproductive.

You want to make your site easier and more comfortable for users. Making them squint, turn-up the brightness, zoom or put on glasses fails to capture that concept.

Yes, it does work in some cases. HN uses gray text on gray background for instructions or anything that isn't primary. That's OK. If threads were displayed in gray-over-gray it'd be a horrible UI/UX experience in my opinion.

Let the flames begin!
Yes it is. You're confusing what's right with what seems intuitively wrong to people. It's strange because it's inconsistent with most systems which group numbers by significant digits. For example, a person who is 30 years old has entered their 30's.

For someone who is clearly perturbed that most people don't know this archaic and inconsistent rule, I'm surprised you're perturbed by a writer who is helping your cause by including a parenthetical. I suspect the writer selected the word "Strangely" to prompt the reader to pay special attention to the rule, because what he's about to say is going to violate many people's intuition and assumptions.

If you can't stand that people are unfamiliar with this rule, then this writer should be on your Christmas list.
I was laid off in Aug 2009. I negotiated 3 months of continued employment to start and finish a project I knew they would want to do (cost savings measure to move to the cloud). Tech at the time: rails.

I had (part-time contract) work within 15 minutes of leaving the layoff meeting. It pays to network before you need it.

Before my extra 3 months ended, I reached out to the individual investors in the company and asked if they knew if any of their portfolio companies had any work. I ended up taking a contract in February (there were 2 months where I did odd gigs, but was essentially out of work and living off savings - again it pays to plan ahead) that paid way better than I was making before and positionally a better spot. (titles matter too, though less than the work at hand - depending on what you want to be doing)
That is how Real Player, Windows Media Player and many others work, or used to work back in the early 2000's.
Reminds me this question about the --> operator. [1]

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1642028/what-is-the-name-...
isn't this thread in fact, meta?
Oh no, most definitely not! This is totally different! Really totally different !!!
> Remember, on the web, you are the product.

The same goes for many other things:

- Movie theatres in the last few years (commercials before movies)

- Television since the days of black-and-white TVs.

- Radio dramas "sponsored by X" before TVs existed.

How has anything changed?
Perhaps they were hoping of building that market. It was feasible that through some effort, you could convert enough every day windows users to Linux, based on the lower price, reliability, and low maintenance (no spyware). In retrospect it was a foolish idea.
Cheap phone with built in reliable solar charger - please
It makes it more fun then ;)
I guess powerobsessed, competitive people will just rush towards politics the minute their time spent in the job won't increase power anymore.
10 Rules of Great Game Level Design
Sony Xperia devices have a Stamina mode that turns off data and wifi right after the screen is turned off. Big difference in battery life if one is not really interested in push notifications, etc.
Can you explain the rational behind arbitrage being heavily frowned upon? Either arbitrage is effective, and prices are set efficiently without any intervention, or they aren't and the exchange makes collects their fees for the trades.
Nice! If only I had seen this last Wednesday.....
Back in 2008-9 I worked as a PHP developer for a small startup and at the end of my first year we had worked through our whole roadmap and there wasn't anything interesting on the horizon. The economy was pretty bad so sales were taking a hit in that market (helping people get into business school). I was planning to quit and I already had my next job lined up to start in 3 weeks (I planned to give 2 weeks notice, then take a 1 week vacation before starting the new job). The new job was also as a PHP developer at a bigger company.

On Friday I told my boss (VP of operations) that I was planning to resign, and he told me to hold on to my resignation letter until Monday, and act surprised when the founders called me in to lay me off. I probably laid it on a little thick by telling them it was the greatest opportunity of my career to be able to work with such visionaries. I complemented my boss on the great job he was doing and that I understood the need to tighten the purse strings in a tough economy. I was given the choice to be laid off and collect unemployment, or to sign a resignation letter and receive a 6 week severance (I chose the latter).
I got a new job within a week making 15k/year more (this was in San Francisco). It was actually a good thing, in retrospect.
Wouldn't they then become emulators of app runtimes?
IPC between multiple Java processes/JVMs with nanosecond latency
Windows 10: Designed for All Your Devices
Here's Deltek's GSA schedule (price list page 20 and on), though I don't know which product includes "Time & Expense".

https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS35F0004P/0NIRVO.31QO...
Am I supposed to apologize that I want everyone to have an income that would allow them to live and be healthy? Yeah it does sound nice that I could work for just the extras and then spend the rest of my life enjoying them. I don't feel the slightest bit sorry that I'm appreciative that we live in a world where technology could take care of most our basic needs and every day the need for human input is shrinking.
Sounds like you live in a fantasy land where everyone acts rationally! How's the weather down there?
This has meaning in combat arms. Most information is suspect. It can have a short shelf life, be biased, be incomplete or wholly inaccurate. Fog of war man. Most paper military maps were made off of surveys in the 70's and 80's. Things are more built up now, etc.. etc.. So let's turn to this fancy new laptop 3D map we've got. Imagine you're a special forces team and your calling up a fires mission (CAS, artillery, whatever). Let's say this fancy new satellite/3d whiz-bang map you're using to get a grid coordinate for the ridge full of bad guys happens to be off by just 100m, the bombs drop, miss the ridge line and sail onto the peaceful village in the valley floor below. Things like that don't go over well with the locals.
Periscope arrives on Android
I find that I care very much about desktop versions whether I'm on Mac or Linux. On Mac OS, it's been "is my CAD app ready for me to upgrade to Yosemite yet? Because I really need that weird behavior with system app X fixed." On my Linux desktop sitting next to the MacBook, it's been "I have everything just right, but the latest version fixes the memory leak in cups-browser!" In both cases the version question is very much in play.
At a high level, we have a younger generation (currently in their 20's) who have grown up with video games and the Internet. They have spent countless hours playing anything from Donkey Kong to Call of Duty, which exposed them to this culture. This is the first generation to experience this en masse, and they are the right demographic to target since they may become lifetime customers.
Mr. Rogers Introduces Kids to Experimental Electronic Music (1968)
Very nice, downloaded :)
It would be cool to have an extension right in the Photos app.
Google likely has the most accurate "IP Address <-> Location" map of any company. They have all the data necessary for a true "god mode" view of the internet map. Consider the data they have:

- Google maps cars collecting wifi ssid's

- Android phones collecting wifi ssid's

- Chromecast scanning internal networks

They know the names of the networks behind public IP's, they know where the networks are, and they know who connects to them.

Sometimes I wonder if IPv6 will ever be truly adopted, or if big companies have mined so much IPv4 data that they have little incentive to switch all systems to IPv6. Not everyone has the level of access and insight to IPv4 networks that big companies do. When every device has a unique IP, big companies will lose a competitive advantage.
One of the confusing things to me about the apparently competitive smartphone market is how little creativity there is in smartphone design. Why do we only get thin rounded rectangles? Seems like there would be a market everywhere for big thick indestructible smartphones.
I should note two extra benefits from not always being available:

- many problems often resolve themselves

- those people who would rather ask someone instead of google, tend to learn to google.
I didn't mean to make it sound like a business strategy (entirely), I mean it more as a natural progression of how people function. If as an engineer you are spending a lot of time working on Openstack, I'm sure you want to see the new advances and features in the product that you've invested so much time and effort into get into the distro ASAP, as long as they are stable (egg on your face is much worse than delays). I just view that as a facet of human nature, and one that has worked for Red Hat's advantage (whether on purpose or serendipitously) quite well.
Someone already did this:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/30/5666092/pixel-press-review
> My question is how does that singularity get there if the compaction itself that would form the singularity continually pushes the goal post down the line?

Isn't it just in the future of every particle within the event horizon (perhaps arbitrarily far from the particle's perspective, and necessarily infinitely far from any outside observer's perspective.)
What about what happens during hypothermia? Both during Cardiopulmonary bypass and cold water immersion, the brain is cooled enough that activity stops.
> And, for sure, sometimes the lane next to you is actually moving faster. But the point is that these cases are happening far less often than you think, and they largely fall outside our powers of detection.

Maybe I am falling into the illusion they speak of, but I am very suspicious of their claims, especially because of the quoted point above.

I realize that anecdotes aren't data, but I makes me think of two things I've noticed...

1) I have a family member with anxiety problems who has trouble just getting into traffic. She hates changing lanes because she perceives it as extra stressful, so she just stays put, content to follow the car ahead of her. While she always eventually reaches her destination, there are times when I've beaten her to a location by 10 minutes or more, all because I'm willing to change lanes.

2) When I am in traffic, I look at the car ahead (of course) as well as the farthest cars I'm able to see without obstruction. When I see the lane 'breaking up' several cars ahead and my own lane staying still, I tend to change lanes to take advantage of the temporary speed advantage I'll have. I can't count the times this has worked very well. The main reason is that people tend to get lazy in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and when cars start flowing there is inevitably one who is looking at his phone or just slow to react. By timing it so that I can overtake these slow-goers, I tend to make quite a bit of progress.

Maybe this study is focusing on people who only change lanes in response to the movement in their immediate vicinity and not up ahead? Either way, it seems like a shortsighted conclusion.
This doesn't have anything to do with Instagram's TOS though. The artist is banking on his screenshots being considered "transformative". However, what this means is kind of grey. Does adding a comment under a picture add new value [1] to that picture? There have been cases brought where the art in question had much more transformation applied to it (examples: Harry Potter encyclopedia, Obama Hope Image).

[1] http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/#...
No, singularities aren't a red herring here, they are very muchthe core of what I'm asking. I don't really care that much about the event horizon (at least for this specific question : ) ).

Imagine two neutron stars colliding and forming a black hole. Now imagine the particle inside one of these that's closest to where the singularity's point would be upon formation. How does that singularity form given that the actual compaction that creates it also continually keeps pushing the goal post farther away due to gravitational time dilation.
templates are mostly not the problem, even on python, when you use jinja templates getting generated really fast. However the problem mostly comes through the database.
A single page view could hit like 10 queries.
I'm curious to know if, since these networks can learn syntax, whether they can also be re-purposed as syntax checkers, not just syntax generators. That is, can the syntactical knowledge learned by these models be run in a static classification mode on some input text to recognize the anomalies within and suggest fixes.
That was what I was digging for. I liked the idea of Fedora but I always seemed to get in trouble with stability. I just might give it a try again on a secondary machine.
Science article on same-sex marriage retracted over faked data
Millennials (aka the crybabies you refer to) have not bought into the Protestant Work Ethic as you have. So while you think it's OK to slave away, work for free and abuse the State sponsored drug, they don't.
> It pays to network before you need it.

This is very very true. Go to those meetups, have those lunch meetings, do good things for others.

My second favorite action is to send an article I know will be of interest to an acquaintance or former colleague. My favorite thing to action is to introduce a possible employee to an acquaintance or former colleague.
On the theme of constantly re-inventing time-tracking, it's interesting that 18F called out chosen in their write-up of their time-tracking solution, since chosen is developed and maintained by Harvest, which primarily sells a time-tracking solution.

https://www.getharvest.com/
Periscope for Android
> Before my extra 3 months ended, I reached out to the individual investors in the company and asked if they knew if any of their portfolio companies had any work.

That's genius. Of course the investors would want the software talent to stay "in their neighborhood", and secondly it helps b/c there's one less disgruntled unemployed ex-employee.
Edited the title to cover both.
I was laid off in 2009 - business had declined and as the most-junior developer of three in a company that was almost entirely 1-person departments, I was the natural choice. I was told on a Tuesday, paid for the remainder of that pay period (through to the following Friday so 8 days paid after separation) as well has had my accrued PTO bought back, which was nice as they were not legally required to do so. I had already built my side business up to about 70% of my FTE salary so it was about as painless a transition as possible. I consulted for about 3 years full time after that before going back to an FTE role.

I've also had to fire someone for cause. We make it abundantly clear during the interview phase that we will call every reference, verify all credentials, and all dates of employment as legally allowed. We made an offer to a mid-level developer but it came to our attention that he had lied about dates of employment to cover up a period of unemployment, and stated he had a degree which he did not. Neither of these things would have hindered his ability to get an interview or offer.
GET HOMESICK WHILE TRAVELING ABROAD?
Thermal expansion is not really an issue that gets worse with distance, as the track can simply be made from independent segments connected with expansion joints. The issue is being able to cross from segment A to segment B not the number of such segments. In other words if it works on a test track it scales just fine, but getting that first connector to work is the hard part.

Earthquakes require active dampening which defiantly increases costs, but a larger issue is how to cross fault lines as you need a very large turning radius so very long segments of track need to be able to move. AKA you can't do this: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2003/fs014-03/pipeline.html Unless you’re willing to really slow down.

PS: Also of note, you are going to need safety exits on a fairly regular basis and some way to quickly add air to the pipe as people are not going to be able to walk hundreds of miles in case of an issue.
I am so glad someone has made a very compelling article to explain why PowerPoint is a terrible tool. Viewing slides are not engaging at all. Though having a couple to for an outline of what is to be discussed or for sharing graphs is okay. But thats all. Meetings should be about discussion and planning not mindless sharing of slides that are probably meaningless anyways.
How to be a Vocabulary Master