DNA Methylation Clocks' Predictive Capacity for Aging Phenotypes and Healthspan - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7376380/ <comment><USER2> Ok, ELI5 anyone? I have a homozygous MTHFR 677 C>T mutation, e.g. my body methylates at like 20-30% efficiency unless I supplement with methylated B-12, e.g. methylcobalamin. Is this study good news for me or bad news for me?

<comment><USER3> There are two things:

\- DNA Methylation \- DNA Acetylation

Methylation downregulates a gene's expression. Acetylation upregulates a gene's expression. In any case, over your lifetime methylation profiles of your genetics can vary, generally increasing.

Methylation of your cells isn't something that happens in every tissue at the same rate. So you actually need to define a biological clock based on methylation over time for all the different tissues. Then you can also build clocks for 2 or more tissues, or the whole organism... maybe

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetic_clock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetic_clock)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Really looking forward to some of the startups in this area, specifically companies that A) help you measure how healthy you are, and then B) help direct you on how to optimize your own health. One would think this is a job for our current medical system, but preventative care and true health and longevity optimization get very little attention compared to treating problems as they come up and settling for mediocrity.

There's a lot of interesting people that work on minimizing their biological age (sometimes measuring it with simple blood metrics that correlate with youth, and other times with more advanced and speculative ones like DNA methylation tests), and it's definitely an important, neglecting, and upcoming area. The downside is that to do a good job of maximizing your health and lifespan like this, it takes a lot of work, time, money, and research. For that reason I'm hoping some startups in this area do some amazing work and really start to make the field of healthspan and lifespan optimization more mainstream and accessible.

Some related links for those interested: [https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/](https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/) (one of my favorite podcasts focusing on optimizing health and longevity), [https://levels.health](https://levels.health) (GCM/metabolic fitness tracking startup), [https://old.reddit.com/r/longevity/](https://old.reddit.com/r/longevity/) (subreddit with many interesting links on longevity), [https://ouraring.com/](https://ouraring.com/) (detailed sleep tracking+optimization startup), [https://www.zerofasting.com/](https://www.zerofasting.com/) (app to help track+optimize+inform about fasting), [https://michaellustgarten.com/](https://michaellustgarten.com/) (another interesting Doctor that does a lot of work on optimizing blood markers and diet), [https://hackernoon.com/im-32-and-spent-200k-on-biohacking- be...](https://hackernoon.com/im-32-and-spent-200k-on-biohacking-became- calmer-thinner-extroverted-healthier-happier-2a2e846ae113) (a more eclectic but nonetheless interesting approach to many biomarker optimizations)

<comment><USER4> I have a 23andMe test waiting to be used, but "privacy fears" have kept me from using it. Found My Fitness (Dr. Rhonda Patrick) offers tests that ostensibly help individuals shape their health strategies: [https://www.foundmyfitness.com/genetics](https://www.foundmyfitness.com/genetics)

So, Ask HN: is my paranoia unfounded? Is my DNA already catalogued and the cat is out of the bag? Fortunately I've committed no crimes of significance, so I'm not I'm not worried about being identified like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it's unfounded, since once these companies have your DNA, they can keep it forever, share it, or even lose it in a data breach, and presumably over the next years/decades we will be able to make DNA information about you significantly more valuable.

In general there doesn't _yet_ appear to be common significant gains that can be made from the DNA tests available. Sometimes you will be lucky and find you're at high risk of certain things, but the vast majority of the information won't help you much. You still need to eat and exercise well either way.

Until this changes, and we can actually do a decent job of offering personal recommendations based off of one's DNA, you're likely better off getting a lot of blood tests and working from there.</comment></comment></comment>


Build an 8-Bit Computer from Scratch - <AUTHOR> https://eater.net/ <comment><USER2> Watching Ben's videos inspired me to finally assemble my Brainfuck-based CPU. That is to say, its native instruction set is Brainfuck.

[https://hackaday.io/project/4237-mental-1-a-brainfuck- cpu/lo...](https://hackaday.io/project/4237-mental-1-a-brainfuck- cpu/log/59356-hello-world)

And a more recent video, showcasing PS/2 keyboard input: [https://twitter.com/treykeown/status/867809790294097920](https://twitter.com/treykeown/status/867809790294097920)

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Sometimes I forget how crazy hackers are, and then someone goes and builds a CPU... and uses BF as an instructions set. Thank you :)

<comment><USER3> It's impractical, but it's not theoretically out-there: Brainfuck is essentially a minimal Turing-machine system. Someone attempting to build a computer based soley on Turing's "On Computable Numbers" might very well wind up with something like a Brainfuck-CPU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really amazing. In addition to the interesting project this individual has a great gift for articulating everything in a concise manner and with a very pleasant cadence. What a great teacher. Thanks for sharing. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of this series.

If you only have a limited amount of time I would highly recommend the control logic video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXdoim96v5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXdoim96v5A)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the kind words! And thanks to everyone for your interest.

<comment><USER6> Hi ben, how do you feel about minecraft as a tool to learn about and practice computer design? Most of my comp-eng work has been in minecraft, but i constantly feel as if it isnt quite 'legit'. The main reason i used it is because it has no cost for components.

<comment><USER7> I'm not OP but speaking solely for myself, Minecraft has really turned me back on to all the logic design stuff. For example, see my single-push-button castle gate control, [http://imgur.com/a/tBzJh](http://imgur.com/a/tBzJh). Of course, Minecraft physics aren't the same as real physics, but I think this is a great way to introduce anyone to circuits. It's certainly a lot more fun than the various exercises I had to do in my college EE classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been building PCBs for this series in my spare time for the past couple months, this last weekend I finished the design for the ALU: [https://github.com/lelandbatey/custom_cpu-- ALU](https://github.com/lelandbatey/custom_cpu--ALU)

I've then been having them manufactured in China for, which you can have done for ~$15 for 5, shipped. It's very satisfying to have finished fancy PCBs to solder together, and I've learned so much about electronics, PCB design, and small scale board manufacturing since starting this project!

<comment><USER9> do you have a link to the manufacturer you are using?

also, do you have images of the empty pcb and finished product after soldering the components that could be added to the git repo?

edit.. just saw some pics from your other comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14457760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14457760)

<comment><USER8> Here's who I've been having the boards manufactured by: [https://www.elecrow.com/5pcs-2-layer- pcb.html](https://www.elecrow.com/5pcs-2-layer-pcb.html)

They're by far the cheapest I've found. They charge $5 for 5 PCBs, with a 10cmx10cm area each. The cheapest shipping at $6 will get them to you in about 20 days from order date, while the Shenzhen DHL shipping option will get them to you in about 7 days from order date. At least, that's been my experience ordering from them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd love it if Ben sold a single package kit that had everything and printed instructions inside of it. It would be a fun thing for bored highschool students or university students.

Maybe it could even have a PCB that has everything socketed like a breadboard except closer together.

<comment><USER8> I've actually been designing PCB versions of the modules for Ben Eaters tiny CPU, you can see them on my GitHub. Here's the latest one I've done, the ALU: [https://github.com/lelandbatey/custom_cpu-- ALU](https://github.com/lelandbatey/custom_cpu--ALU)

Here's what the physical versions of the clock and the register look like during testing (red is clock, blue is register): [https://goo.gl/photos/NSAEYVu7AbXVjcBK6](https://goo.gl/photos/NSAEYVu7AbXVjcBK6)

<comment><USER4> Wow these are great. Is your background in EE then?

<comment><USER8> No, my background is entirely in CS. This is the first circuit and electronics work I've done, though I have two friends much more acquainted with electronics than I who have been giving advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been following this series for a while now and it's been fantastic. In particular I recommend the videos on making an EEPROM programmer with an Arduino.

To help me understand everything better I've been writing a kind of emulator/simulator[0] (I'm never quite sure of the difference). It still needs work and some terminology changing to match Ben's, but it's got basically the same functionality as the real one.

It's actually a really nice way to be able to rapidly prototype new microcode because the instructions are defined as a slice of bit-fields representing which control lines are set for each cycle[1].

[0]: [https://github.com/tomnomnom/eater- cpu](https://github.com/tomnomnom/eater-cpu)

[1]: [https://github.com/tomnomnom/eater- cpu/blob/master/instructi...](https://github.com/tomnomnom/eater- cpu/blob/master/instructions.go#L35-L41)

<comment><USER12> Emulators can be used in place of the system they are crafted after for real world use. Simulators on the other hand are more meant for analysis as they offer more variable control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This remimds me so much of the computer i made in minecraft.

[http://m.imgur.com/a/lPZbk](http://m.imgur.com/a/lPZbk)

<comment><USER13> That, for want of better words, is absolutely amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> He's on patreon: [https://www.patreon.com/beneater](https://www.patreon.com/beneater)

His videos are so great, I'm happy when I get my monthly emails that he's receiving money. It's a good reminder that I need to hop back on them!

</comment><comment><USER15> This is awesome!

I had to build a 4 bit computer in college and it looked almost exactly like this (less breadboards and components though). The professor wrote the textbook herself. If she made it into a webpage I imagine it would be a longer version of this.

To date is one of my favorite classes I took.

</comment><comment><USER16> Still waiting for the Primitive Technology guy to do the same thing, with the camera opening on a pile of sand.

Sure, it's still cool to see someone use 4-bit binary full adder etc and build a computer, but the from Scratch always feels disingenuous.

<comment><USER17> To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

<comment><USER16> To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe _from scratch._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been waiting for something like this for awhile and am super excited. I'd be even more stoked if the next project was building a small Forth from scratch and flashing that on the board.

You could show how you could interactively test and control the board that way.

</comment><comment><USER19> Been following his YouTube channel for quite a while now. Very fascinating

</comment><comment><USER20> For some definition of "scratch".</comment>


Show HN: A better smart mirror - <AUTHOR> http://innate.cc <comment><USER2> Nicely done tutorial. I was wondering how you got the display onto the mirror and then I scrolled down and saw the monitor on the back of the silvered surface (doh-doi!)

A couple of suggestions: (1) Externalize the mic - either have it hook into your phone to listen to your voice or through some other mechanism - it will boost recognition accuracy significantly and allow you to do complex tasks (2) Better demo. I'd sure you could take this into school / work and film in a better lit location. If screen brightness is an issue, you could sand down the silvering right in front of the screen (3) If commercialization is your plan, look into Samsung's new OLED tech that's super skinny. (4) Android speech interfaces are easier and more flexible to program. And dead-simple to use (5) Find someone who can build a nice interface for you and design that interface in the _highest contrast_ possible (bright fonts, black backgrounds)

While I was building my NLP product, I went looking for companies that were building smart mirrors and came up empty for ones that were on Google but still in business. I suspect that was the situation because of the prohibitive price but garbage speech recognition. As of today, however, the tech's available to let you do things with SR you'd never thought possible even 2 years ago</comment>


Show HN: Ascii to SVG - <AUTHOR> https://ivanceras.github.io/elm-examples/elm-bot-lines/ <comment><USER2> In a perfect world, everything is generated from ASCII diagram sources: [https://github.com/sigvef/sigvehtml](https://github.com/sigvef/sigvehtml) .

<comment><USER3> Oh, this is amazing.

I wondered how it figured out to use the elephant JPEG from the ASCII art. Well:

      def educated_guess_at_image():
          return 'http://pensivetoaster.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/elephant-banner.jpg'

([https://github.com/sigvef/sigvehtml/blob/e2cfa586f43aacbb374...](https://github.com/sigvef/sigvehtml/blob/e2cfa586f43aacbb374b700cacf788471299dd2c/sigvehtml.py#L112-L113))

Very xkcd 221.

<comment><USER4> I guess one could train a Convolutional Neural Network to convert the ASCII art to an actual image. Something like this, but for ASCII: [http://sketchy.eye.gatech.edu/](http://sketchy.eye.gatech.edu/)

<comment><USER5> Wow, that works surprisingly well. I drew a terrible cat face, and it managed to get it dead on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It looks nice but the SVG generated seems _incredibly_ big. Every ascii characters seems to be replaced by one svg element.

(You can have a hint at this behaviour because some pixel are "more black" when an area is covered by two SVG elements)

edit: killercup as made a similar comment with answer from the author, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12621863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12621863)

<comment><USER7> Is that a practical problem? Sounds like it would compress very well.

<comment> vertex-four Network isn't the only issue - speed of processing, and memory usage, are both things people should care about a lot more than they do.

This is equivalent to wrapping every character of your website's text in a div, precisely positioning it - at a large enough scale, or with a dynamic page, it's just eventually going to cause performance issues or even lock-ups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the "Safety-Control" chart, C++ is turned into C. That seems like fairly major problem

<comment><USER9> Or, alternatively, a pretty bold statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Years ago I had a program that turned ASCII diagrams like that into line drawing characters.

        ┏━━━━━━━━━━━┓  ┏━━━━━━━┓
        ┃ Like this ┣━━┫  Box  ┃
        ┗━━━━━━━━━━━┛  ┗━━━━━━━┛

It's an easy transformation. You only have to look at 3 lines at a time, and then only at 3x3 blocks of characters. This would be a fun transformation to put in a text editor.

The line drawing characters in Unicode (and originally on the DEC VT100) aren't expressive enough. They lack arrows and round corners. With SVG, you can do more.

There are a lot of people who just can't use a draw program. Not sure why. I use Inkscape for this sort of thing, or sometimes LibreOffice Draw.

<comment><USER11> Emacs has this: org mode and Dita.

<comment><USER12> Ditaa link: [http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/](http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks good. I hope it's compatible with the emacs Artist package. [https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ArtistMode](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ArtistMode)

<comment><USER14> This reminds me of Ditaa[1]. Org-mode offers support for it, so you can basically draw diagrams with Artist Mode and have org-babel convert them for you[2].

[1] [http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/](http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/) [2] [http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/ob- doc-d...](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/ob-doc- ditaa.html)

<comment><USER15> Or asciidiagram ( [https://github.com/Twinside/asciidiagram](https://github.com/Twinside/asciidiagram) ), clearly inspired by ditaa

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was currently using [http://shaky.github.bushong.net/](http://shaky.github.bushong.net/) for the same purpose. Except, this just did canvas, instead of SVG.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, it's great! It'd be cool to have some kind of export option, I thought right-clicking it would make it but it doesn't.

BTW, a related project of mine to create mind maps in the browser: [https://josetomastocino.github.io/mindmapit/](https://josetomastocino.github.io/mindmapit/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Great! Perfect complement for [http://asciiflow.com](http://asciiflow.com)

</comment><comment><USER19> Cool!

It seems to not recognize shapes and instead renders them using a bunch of lines, though (just like in the ASCII version). This is visible, at least in Safari 10.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I want to add an optimizer to reduce the svg elements into paths and into simplest form possible, when I have more time.

<comment><USER20> Would this [https://github.com/svg/svgo](https://github.com/svg/svgo) help?

<comment><AUTHOR> Have tried it, but it seems it can't reduce seperate lines into paths. I'll have to reduce the separate lines first in my first pass.

<comment><USER21> Would you be able to repurpose algorithms from ImageMagick for this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Shame those old-school graphics characters aren't easily typed (the ones DOS used or even older the ones Commodores supported).

<comment><USER23> I built a thing in Emacs to do that

[https://github.com/ocodo/.emacs.d/blob/master/plugins/ibm- bo...](https://github.com/ocodo/.emacs.d/blob/master/plugins/ibm-box-drawing- hydra.el)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> 1\. Use [http://asciiflow.com/](http://asciiflow.com/) to generate diagram

2\. Use Ascii to SVG

</comment><comment><USER25> I made an ascii diagram a long while back for my uri parser ([https://bitbucket.org/russellballestrini/miniuri/src](https://bitbucket.org/russellballestrini/miniuri/src))

The SVG version looks amazing! Great work!

Is there any way to easily "download" the result or do I just copy paste the code into a file?

I was able to use chrome "developer mode" to inspect the rendered svg tag and copy the element into a file named miniuri.svg

Inkscape is happy to load it up! I think providing a "download" button would be useful though.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a work in progress, the SVG generated is bloated, I'll plugged in an optimizer later on when I got enough time.

<comment><USER25> I'm not looking for it to be optimized just easier to download and save the result. Great work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Will something like this become part of Markdown?

<comment><USER21> Please, no. Maybe as a "plug-in" like MathJax, or a drop-in replacement for syntax highlighting in code blocks fenced off by "```svg ```". But please don't bloat the Markdown core.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's built with Elm ([http://elm-lang.org/](http://elm-lang.org/))

Source code: [https://github.com/ivanceras/elm-examples/tree/master/elm- bo...](https://github.com/ivanceras/elm-examples/tree/master/elm-bot-lines)

</comment><comment><USER28> What environment cannot render ASCII text but can render SVG? I think converting in the other direction could be a lot more useful.

<comment><USER29> This is useful in a plain-text based document system, for producing nicer rendered output. Box diagrams typed up in a man page can be rendered more nicely in a HTML version.

It could also serve as part of the markup input language in a system like asciidoc. The benefit is that the source resembles the output.

In this man page, I have lots of occurrences of

      <-->

[http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr-manpage.html](http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html)

in verbatim code which could be turned into a nicer arrow.

Also, textual diagrams occur:

[http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-03E5CED9](http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-03E5CED9)

[http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-027AA48B](http://www.nongnu.org/txr/txr- manpage.html#N-027AA48B)

<comment><USER30> For displaying "inline glyphs" made of sequence of consecutive characters there is option to use font with corresponding ligatures baked in, such as Fira Code [0].

[0] [https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode)

<comment><USER29> Yikes, LICENSE! Full of how it may or may not be sold phrases requiring a lawyer to understand to answer the question, "can I stick this font into a PDF that could end up in some software distro that could end up being for sale". The LICENSE appears to involve users into a contract; i.e. is not a pure license grant. 2-Clause BSD or fsck it.

In a HTML rendering, references to exotic fonts are pretty much a nonstarter, unless you include them in the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Reminds me of ditaa which is also pretty awesome. I even use it in an (internal) production tooo to generate a manual.

</comment><comment><USER32> Isn't SVG already ASCII to SVG?

<comment><USER23> rim-shot

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Funny, I just started using this: [https://github.com/dhobsd/asciitosvg](https://github.com/dhobsd/asciitosvg)

</comment><comment><USER34> Reminds me Markdeep [https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/](https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/)

</comment><comment><USER35> ASCII to dot (graphviz) would be interesting.

<comment><USER36> Yes, I thought this would be interesting too, check this out: [http://blog.scottlogic.com/2015/11/18/d3-ascii.html](http://blog.scottlogic.com/2015/11/18/d3-ascii.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This would be great as a latex macro (or however it might work), having diagrams inline in the source would be amazing.

</comment><comment><USER38> Two corner cases:

        +----+
        |test|
        +----+

        +</comment><comment>+
        | test +-->
        +</comment><comment>+

</comment><comment><USER39> Small challenge: Add overtype for OS X users.

Also make the divider draggable.

Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER40> It's Foo Bar Baz Qux... not Moo. =)

</comment><comment><USER41> Shameless plug: If you're on a Mac and want an app to create those ASCII diagrams, check out Monodraw [1]. I've just released an update [2, 3] which allows you to define to define snippets / templates which you can easily re- use: seems perfect to define snippets for this website.

[1] [https://monodraw.helftone.com](https://monodraw.helftone.com)

[2] [https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-snippets-update-sneak- pee...](https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-snippets-update-sneak-peek/)

[3] [https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-snippets-update- released/](https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-snippets-update-released/)

<comment><USER42> I just wanted to thank you for this incredibly useful piece of software - I've used it even for creating diagrams on its own as it's very user friendly, and the ability to "render to ascii" is just an added bonus :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is actually really awesome. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER44>
      WW    WW    WW    HH     HH    YY      YY     ??
       WW   WW   WW     HH     HH     YY    YY    ??  ??
        WW  WW  WW      HHHHHHHHH      YY  YY        ??
         WW WW WW       HH     HH       YYYY       ??
          WWWWW         HH     HH        YY        ??
           WWW          HH     HH        YY        ??

<comment><USER45> Why not?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which chapters of "AI-a modern approach" are relevant today? - real-hacker Which chapter(s) of "artificial intelligence - a modern approach" are relevant for today's AI practitioners? Or, which chapters do you recommend to someone who just want to apply A.I in practice? <comment><AUTHOR> Most of what people call "artificial intelligence" today is machine learning, neural networks, things like that.

Norvig's book is more about the "old A.I." or symbolic AI, which many people felt crowded out neural networks in the old days, but then itself kinda faded relative to other things.

In the early 1980s, for instance, there were games like Zork with a natural language interface. Graphical user interfaces and menus really displaced that, then 3-d came along so that graphical video games are much better than they were in 1980, text games not so much.

The "expert systems" technology has been rebranded as "business rules"; your bank almost certainly has at least one license for IBM iLog and there many products such as Drools, Microsoft BizTalk, etc. That technology is also good for "complex event processing" and it may someday be seen as a rosetta stone for solving the problems of orchestrating asynchronous communication. (It is very good for combining automated and manual processes such as "send this to the loan office for approval")

Other areas in symbolic A.I. research are still active such as constraint programming, SAT solvers, semantic web, etc. They don't get as much press as deep networks. Problems such as route optimization, production scheduling, etc. all involve search processes similar to what is done in computer chess. "NP Complete" problems frequently are involved in "artificial intelligence".

Also many things that were once considered "A.I." are now mundane. For instance, the technology now used to create lexers and parsers for artificial languages was originally designed to model natural languages. Most of the features of LISP have made it into other programming languages such as Python, BASIC, TCL, Java, Haskell, FORTH, etc.

Symbolic A.I. did not die out, but it did fracture in many different directions so that it doesn't really seem like "one field".</comment>


Tell HN: we launched on HN 2 years ago and today hit 1500+ paying customers - <AUTHOR> http://team.wingify.com/milestone-weve-hit-1500-paying-customers

<comment><AUTHOR> Here was the original Ask HN of Visual Website Optimizer which was severely bombed <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=991252> :)

This one was Ask HN of Wingify (initially product name, later the company name) which had got good comments but the whole code was eventually scrapped <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141>

And we're still bootstrapped. It's been an awesome journey so far!

<comment><USER2> You're an inspiration! All of my paid customers (90+ so far) all know I have no plans to ever take outside funding. Once you do that, you're no longer accountable to just your customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey man congrats to you and your team!

It's great to see some people from DCE doing cool things in New Delhi! Loving your success story! Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> Essentially a million dollar company in two years, impressive!</comment>


LinkedIn acquires employee engagement platform Glint - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/linkedin-acquires-employee-engagement-and-retention-platform-glint/ <comment><USER2> Terms/price undisclosed. LinkedIn has given up on building features, they simply leverage their P/E ratio (MSFT's inflated stock price) to buy the "most successful" company that has the feature(s) they want to integrate (e.g: Lynda.com ...) and "grow by acquisition".

We all know the likelihood of success in these kinds of transactions ... If anything this is an opportunity for any alternative/competitor to Glint, because Glint's management will be completely _distracted_ by "integrating" with the "systems" of their corporate overlords (HR, Accounting, Coms, etc.). The founders of Glint will be too busy counting their millions to remember to _improve_ their core product and as a result it will stagnate. We've seen this pattern so many times it feels like ground-hog-day. The only people who "succeed" in "M&A" are the "advisors" who just walked a way with a percentage of the transaction value without any commitment to the outcome of the deal.

Well done for buying another "feature" LinkedIn; there is clear "symbiosis" between the two products. Good luck to everyone having to integrate the two systems/companies. 2 years of your life you won't get back.

Screenshot journey: [https://github.com/dwyl/start- here/issues/145](https://github.com/dwyl/start-here/issues/145)

<comment><USER3> A typical management dance move. Why build something if it "already exists" elsewhere? Integrating that 3rd-party tech is typically more expensive than growing something organically that would have been integrated from its inception. Except that this way, you don't really need a plan nor architecture and can blame "failure to integrate" on the other party.

<comment><USER4> I don't really have any relevant data to counter, but are you sure it ends badly more often than not?

As tech news readers, we might be a bit biased. I think evil corporations buying lovely startups is a typical story where devout users are pissed off, angry tweets are tweeted and bitter blogposts written. If an integration later fails, it's a great moment to remind everyone you called it as soon as it was announced.

But big companies are still buying smaller ones all the time and maybe we're just not noticing successful projects because they're not news.

<comment><USER5> mergers & acquisitions fail about half the time (somewhere between 40% and 60%, from what i remember from business school). it's often either a failure to merge cultures or a failure to read the market, rather than a technology or operations failure (although those do also occur, but less frequently).

despite this, CEOs keep pushing for them because it's such a feather in the cap, both for the splashiness of the event and the ability to manage a larger enterprise (not to mention the extra cash and non-cash compensation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What actually _is_ employee engagement?

<comment><USER7> LOL. My take: proportion of the empoloyee's result that comes from their own initiative -- against that of their manager. Varies between 0 and 1.

Blessed are the companies where the middle management has no initiatives for their teams.

<comment><USER8> even better: companies that don't have middle management

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thorny issue I think will be connecting employee engagement to LinkedIn job search "status". Will anonymity be preserved? I could see them offering hard numbers where an employee engagement score of X translates to Y workers actively seeking a new job. So you have to wonder if employees will truthfully report.</comment>


For security on Intel processors, disable hyper-threading - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/29/running_on_intel_disable_hyper_threading_says_linux_kernel_maintainer/ <comment><USER2> And eBPF of course.</comment>


Announcing the GitLab Issue Board - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2016/08/22/announcing-the-gitlab-issue-board/ <comment><USER2> Different link, but we saw this a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12338096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12338096)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, now that you mention it I recall seeing that. Whoops! Thanks for identifying :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> GitLab seems to be dominating GitHub in terms of features recently. It's unfortunate that so many SaaS integrations only support GitHub or it would make the switch much easier.

<comment><USER3> I was just lamenting this recently. GitLab's latest features are really nice but the lack of integration with things like Heroku's Pipelines makes switching more costly because I'd have to setup that type of functionality myself. I'm hopeful though that as GitLab gets more popular this will change.

<comment><USER4> We hope too that more SaaS services will support GitLab. Please know that GitLab already has CI, CD, and pipelines. We're working on Review Apps [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/20255](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/20255)</comment></comment></comment>


The most fun eight Python lines I've written - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/ZpiAqUsm

<comment><USER2> BTW, the random module has a "choice" function, which takes a sequence and returns a randomly chosen element from it. So instead of "result[randrange(len(result))]" you could have "choice(result)"

</comment><comment><USER3> is this a porn comments scraper? The only thing more diabolical would be a youtube comments scraper

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing! hahahah xD</comment>


The Global Helium Shortage Has Gotten So Bad, Party City Is Closing 45 Stores - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/the-global-helium-shortage-has-gotten-so-bad-party-cit-1834680067 <comment><USER2> From what I understand this whole 'shortage' is just a result of the US selling off its massive helium reserve over the years. So the prices are artificially low due to this, and now they are going to go up since production will have to meet demand. Nothing really to do with running out of helium or a shortage. This is more like there was a huge artificial surplus and its run out now.</comment>


Tesla driver in fatal crash had reported problems before with Autopilot feature - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-crash/tesla-driver-in-fatal-crash-had-reported-problems-before-with-autopilot-feature-idUSKBN20522C <comment><USER2> I'm waiting for the Tesla apologists to say something about how drivers are supposed to stay alert or autopilot is in beta. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Autopilot is dangerous. It actively encourages drivers to completely ignore the road and _not_ be in a position to correct the vehicle while at the same time it has been shown on multiple occasions to happily drive into stationary objects at 60mph+.

<comment><USER3> Tesla is not a car company. They are a data company. They are far ahead than any other autonomous car company because every driver is contributing data.

Hence they will likely be the first to come out with a fully autonomous car. That's all. I want to leave it at that.

Not disagreeing with you. My 2c after reading your comment.</comment></comment>


Software? eugh - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gingerlime.com/2013/software-eugh/

<comment><USER2> 'Apps' seem like self-contained units, vs. 'software' that might spread its muck all over your operating system. Apps tend to live in environments with a degree of enforced quality control. Or, in the case of web apps, are at least restricted in the damage they can inflict (see muck-spreading above).

Software is a stuff. Who knows where one part ends and another begins? Applications are things. I have and use a discrete number of them. (Is this pertinent? I dunno, maybe.)

Maybe all this is overthinking it. Apps are for phones and tablets, and those are easy. Software is for computers, and those are a pain.</comment>


How YouTube perfected the feed - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/30/16222850/youtube-google-brain-algorithm-video-recommendation-personalized-feed <comment><USER2> Perfected the feed? As a YouTube user, 'perfected' is probably the last word I'd use for it.

Instead, it seems to either:

1\. Hide stuff I actually wanted to see from channels I'm subscribed to 2\. Show me videos I've already seen before. 3\. Show completely irrelevant videos 4\. Mix up subscriptions and recommendations by recommending videos I'd already have seen if they showed me the bloody subscriptions in the first place.

And watch later... oh boy, their idea of videos to show there seems to be stuff I've either seen years ago and didn't like enough to finish, or that I've seen multiple times and didn't finish once or twice because I saw something new to watch.

<comment><USER3> Wholeheartedly agree.

Feels like a generational difference. I'm from the generation that prided itself on its ability to selectively craft one's own "feed" (RSS originally) by spending time finding the highest quality, most relevant sources of trusted content.

The author of this piece doesn't take that approach. And YouTube caters to such. [edited to be less judgmental]

I'm constantly annoyed that the YouTube homepage requires several clicks for me to find new videos posted by channels I _subscribe_ to. The organization on the home page is different every single day. My only options are to delete suggested channels (to see them reappear a week later!!). But in small print on the side, YouTube taunts me that it actually does remember all the channels I've subscribed to. It just thinks that it knows better what I want to be watching.

And you know what? I probably do spend more time on the site because of this shitty design. But what their algorithms don't tell them is the slowly simmering resentment I have toward the site and my feeling of being in an increasingly adversarial role with Google as a whole. Maybe that feeling will never have any monetary impact on anyone, but it seems dangerous to ignore.

<comment><USER4> > I probably do spend more time on the site because of this shitty design

Same can be said about the insufferable video suggestions that now cover half the embedded player right where you have got used to click to pause/unpause it over the years.

YouTube UX designers implement this dark pattern, then look cheerfully at their metrics as if people are really into it because they use it so much. When I know for a fact I've mis-clicked it almost every time it's popped up.

Drowning design decisions in metrics needs to die, it's just a breeding ground for dark patterns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perfected the feed? Uh.

My biggest complaint with youtube is that the feed is _awful_. It doesn't help me discover new stuff I like, it doesn't even help me discover obvious stuff like new uploads from posters I like. I don't know what the hell they're doing, but I've caught myself resorting to google searches to find Youtube content that I like on more than one occasion. Maybe I'm a minority, but the entire front page of youtube is a huge miss for me.

The feed seems to be incredibly biased towards recently watched videos, to the point where clicking a single weird link on reddit is enough to fuck up my top suggested videos for a while.

</comment><comment><USER4> Watch one video about graphics cards and then have YouTube recommend you Linus Tech Tips every day, till the end of time completely ignoring how many times you click "Not Interested" completely ignoring you have blocked his account.

Noticed several other scenarios like this where you watch a part of one video on a topic and YT's algorithm will try and force a certain YouTuber on you for the rest of the time you use that account.

This isn't perfecting this is force feeding. Respect my blocks.

<comment><USER6> "Not interested" sadly send like a point block rather than having any kind of semantic intelligence behind it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, I don't know when, but sometime in the past few months I've basically been exclusively using YouTube's recommendation engine. While before it was kind of blunt ("you like video games, so here's some more video game videos"), now it's very sharp ("you've been interested in half life recently, and you like the video essay format, so we'll give you half life video essays"). It's honestly amazing how easy it makes it to reach good content.

A giant feed of neurally recommended videos, created by average people with passion in topics _really_ feels like the future.

<comment><USER8> That has been my experience except that at some point it forgets what videos you have watched last year, becoming super annoying and useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The example at the top of the article is actually an example of what makes me _dislike_ the YouTube feed. I watch one video review of a game, and now I'm getting 20 videos suggested about the same game which I only had a passing interest in.

Sure, show me a few related videos, but often it can be a large percentage of the home page taken up by a section like this.

The same over-personalisation is an issue in a lot of Google platforms. On the Google news feed in Android, when I enabled personalisation it became dominated by unimportant articles about games, films, or TV shows I'd looked up recently, and hardly any general news. Not to mention the filter bubble of Google searches in general. I find this trend of over personalisation inconvenient, and not to mention a bit creepy.

</comment><comment><USER10> The tool that's "perfected the feed" for me is mps-youtube.

This is a console-based audio- and video-playing tool which allows me to:

1\. Search for content.

2\. View detailed information.

3\. Search by _user_ or _YouTube playlist_.

4\. Selective add or remove items from a _current_ playlist.

5\. Save and manage multiple named playlists.

6\. Queue up large sets of content to be accessed. Including audio-only, in background (my preferred mode).

7\. Works on Android via Termux.

8\. Keyboard playback controls to skip, jump, play, pause, speed, or slow playback. (Similar to mplayer's if you're familiar with those.)

9\. No ads.

10\. No comments.

11\. No recommended "fail", "dash-cam", or "blackhead" crap. _That corner of YouTube._

It's everything I've wished YouTube was, and that it isn't.

[https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube](https://github.com/mps- youtube/mps-youtube)

</comment><comment><USER11> I really wish there was a way to exclude certain videos from their feed recommendation engine. Or at least put them in a different category. If someone sends me a particularly funny cat video, because it is their cat, I really don't want to get a deluge of cat videos. Also, if you are playing videos for your 2-year-old, those shouldn't influence the playlists that come up when you are driving to work (the Gummy Bears videos keep popping up in my 80's playlists).

<comment><USER12> You can click on three dots and select "Not interested". This works for videos, playlists and topics in your feed.

<comment><USER11> Except that I am interested, if I happen to be playing videos for the kid. I could create another account, but I'm not sure how to tie additional youtube accounts to the youtube red service. And I'd have to remember to switch accounts before playing videos for him (they should introduce "listening profiles", and have the ability to move certain instances of watching a video to a specific profile).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> YouTube and Amazon both have an awful recommendation system. Both sites have a wealth of data, a wealth of consumables, and yet if I go to them without something specific in mind I'm pretty much only offered things I've previously viewed.

</comment><comment><USER14> What are the qualities of a good feed?

1\. it shows me cool new stuff

2\. it keeps me on the site

1 is obvious. 2 is questionable. It could be a consequence of point 1. Or it could be a matter of sneaky manipulative tactics. I am suspicious of platforms' recommendation algorithms. They are working for the interests of the platform, not necessarily mine. (But that isn't the way it needs to be. Recommendation bots independent of platforms could resolve this conflict-of- interest issue.)

</comment><comment><USER15> Just wait until Thursday 31st Aug, the day of the YouTube Purge

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/google- ro...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/google-rolls-out- its-biggest-crackdown-on-youtube-hate-speech)

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there a way to turn off the watch-this-next feature? I sometimes show educational videos to my toddler, and if she sees the tiles of other videos, she always wants to watch them (and will often throw a fit if she's not allowed). I would literally pay money to turn off this "feature".

<comment><USER10> [http://fixyt.com](http://fixyt.com) is one interface that avoids that. Though its search features seem broken currently.

The other option is to use a downloader (yt-download, mps-youtube -- seem my comment elsewhere) to specify _only_ what you want to watch, without YouTube's "helpful" drug-pusher suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The YouTube RSS feeds are pretty much perfect, aside from being hidden or, sometimes, non-existent.

<comment><USER18> Yeah I use those, too. Turns out you can use some url hacking to get them, even if they don't have a <link rel=alternate>. The URL is [https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=](https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=) followed by the channel ID (if your channel URL is [https://www.youtube.com/channel/something](https://www.youtube.com/channel/something), then you can just take that 'something', if it's [https://www.youtube.com/user/something](https://www.youtube.com/user/something), you may need to search for the ID a little). EDIT: Oops, that last one actually exists :S

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The mention of sibyl, which is rarely discussed outside of Google ([https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~niejiazhong/slides/chandra.pdf](https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~niejiazhong/slides/chandra.pdf)) is interesting. Most people really do not understand how effective simple, straightforward linear and logistic regression done on large scale data is. The Brain stuff and deep learning is nice, but the meat and potatos is still basic regression.

</comment><comment><USER20> They need to change their objective fn from "increasing minutes played" to "increasing overall service satisfaction".

</comment><comment><USER21> Why do I have an image of "feed" as in cows being fed corn mush?

In light of recent transgressions against speech on their platform, I wouldn't use the word "perfect" to describe YouTube feed.

</comment><comment><USER22> Perfected the feed? its worse than ever. And the new reskin of youtube is also the most lazy hack job I ever saw from Alphabet, its quirky even in chrome.</comment>


Reading Proust in the Gulag - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/books/review/ayten-tartici.html <comment><USER2> So beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER3> My brain briefly interpreted 'Gulag' as 'Golang'.

<comment><USER4> Mine as well.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best way to share code on ios, android, desktop? - <AUTHOR>

I have a new project that I want to run everywhere fast. It is heavily based on opengl.  I need native uis on all platforms but I would like to share logic and rendering code. How can I do this in the modern way that is efficient? <comment><USER2> I have implemented application for clients using xamarin and have been pleased. Portions of the code can truly be written once, compiled once and bundled into iOS or Android, using portable class libraries. Xamarin can call into native code on either platform, as well as has support for opengl.

That said, I don't think you could write cross platform opengl code unless there was an abstraction. However, there is a framework called monogame, which depending on what you're trying to do, may be useful. See [http://www.monogame.net/showcase/](http://www.monogame.net/showcase/)

I keep a lot of business logic and networking code in shared modules, then have the UI be very thin. These shared pieces can be tested on a desktop system. The biggest negative about Xamarin is it feels like they push some things out the door too soon, without sufficient quality or documentation.

If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email at curtis [at] saltydogtechnology [dot] com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response, we'll start investigating Xamarin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Xamarin is a good option. You can also write your logic & rendering code in C++, which you should be able to share across those platforms.

</comment><comment><USER4> you can put your files on cloud, there are many free cloud storage tools, you can try one.</comment>


Gondor expands its Django hosting to any Python WSGI app - <AUTHOR> https://gondor.io/blog/2012/06/19/gondor-11-launched/

<comment><USER2> > Gondor 1.1 is an optional upgrade, but we will force everyone to upgrade by > the end of September.

So then it's not optional.

<comment><USER3> It is optional, but it won't be at some point in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The service seems to be kind of expensive for what it is.

<comment><USER5> Compared to what? Remember it's managed hosting, not a VPS (see [https://gondor.io/blog/2011/12/20/why-pay-more-gondor- rather...](https://gondor.io/blog/2011/12/20/why-pay-more-gondor-rather-just- get-vps/) for an explanation of some of the differences)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the link. It makes a clear point: I'm not their demographic. They are going after businesses and not individuals. I still wonder how they compare proce wise vs heroku?

<comment><USER5> Actually, the majority of Gondor users are individuals, just individuals who want to spend more time developing and less time configuring and running servers. Heroku has a free tier which makes them cheaper for starting out but for various setups, Gondor can be cheaper.

<comment><USER4> I build flask apps, and I'm currently shopping for a VPS. Leaning towards Linode, even though their security proved to be less than stellar. My aim is to have a platform where I will not be limited to what I can and can't ship in terms of libraries, db's, and the like. Could gondor provide me with such freedom? Or do I have to open up supports tickets in order to ask for a library to be installed and made available? This is how web hosts operate and it is a huge time waster. Rather thanked writiing pip install whatever, I have to wait for someone to do it.

<comment><USER6> Check out webfaction, their virtualenv support is a _little_ wonky but the python environment is per-app so you don't really need it.

I run half a dozen Django apps for less than $10/mo but they support any WSGI system, postgres or MySQL and their platform also handles your mail & DNS.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the tip. I will explore their offerings. Have you had any problem with installing anything that you may need?

<comment><USER6> Not as of yet!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any first hand review of Gondor ? I have consider it for my app few times but never tried it.

<comment><USER8> TL;DR == They're awesome!

Longer:

I signed up a couple of weeks ago to try them out.

A preface:

My requirements:

Django==1.4 PIL==1.1.7 distribute==0.6.24 django-crispy-forms==1.1.4 psycopg2==2.4.5

I also knew for my next project I'd need Redis support for sorl-thumbnails.

FWIW, PIL requires some C libraries for image handling.

I found this [http://www.kencochrane.net/blog/2011/06/django-hosting- round...](http://www.kencochrane.net/blog/2011/06/django-hosting-roundup-who- wins/) and sort of went from there. I even looked at GoDaddy and Dreamhost. Found NOTHING on Dreamhost's site regarding Django, even though I stumbled upon a coupon on the web. And I'm one of those who don't like GoDaddy...

The short list : Heroku WebFraction Gondor

Why not Heroku? \- A free tier exists and I REALLY wanted to use this \-- Free only goes so far. Add Postgres/Upgraded Redis == $$ \- No local storage \- No indication of support for PIL (multiple attempts to reach support resulted in 0 results) \- AWS

Why not Webfraction? I fear the cheapest thing(s). I believe you get what you pay for. No, that does not mean the most expensive thing is the most valuable, but I feared over-selling. \- Web searches resulted in mixed reviews/issues with deployment. I personally know someone who was on WebFraction. She seemed happy/content.

Gondor (Initial Impressions) \- I had never heard of them before! WHY had I never heard of them before. This made me apprehensive! \- They're on Rackspace! \- By all accounts they only do Django (or did only Django). I believe do one thing and do it well. \- SSL Support

(First Impressions) It "just works" Support is nothing short of AMAZING! Brian and Pat both have taken their own personal time to school my n00b @$$ on Django/best-practices and what not. I've learned more from them than anyone else in the short time that I've been in the Django community. I've been able to find someone in IRC most weekdays between 8AM PST and 10PM PST. Outside those hours, e-mail works and a response exists first thing in the morning (no, I don't think there is 24x7 support short of them receiving an alert -- but I host nothing that is 24x7 business critical (yet)).

(Gripes/Issues) Their deployment is as simple as 'gondor deploy <instance> <branch>' -- BUT their deployment tar's up the repository locally, transfers it over, unpacks it, etc. etc. This puts your site in a '503 Maintenance' mode, so deployments WILL take down your site. My gripe that exists here is that if I make a simple change to CSS, I shouldn't have to tar the local repository, transfer it all over, etc. etc. I should be able to just upload the CSS file and Gondor can reload Nginx as necessary/needed. I read somewhere that indicates they will be releasing a zero-downtime deployment.

It's not clear what allocations exist as far as bandwidth, storage, backups, etc. I don't want to stream a 5GB video and find out the hard way, but perhaps it's my only option. :P With that, there are means to import/export DB exports, and that'll likely be my DB backups. Local/Remote git repository exists so that covers my Django project. Now I just need local (user-content uploads) -- TBD.

I am running on a dedicated instance because I need SSL support (static IP) and I also have plans on running a second site on the host. It is about 2.5x what my VPS costs me, BUT like the blog posted above. I no longer have to care about Updating/Patching Ubuntu/Postgresql/Nginx. FWIW, I did spend about 3 days in my spare time and have a working model/scripts necessary to deploy Ubuntu/Postgresql/Nginx should the need arise....but I don't want to, which is why I started down the path of looking for Django-only hosting. I also don't know ANYTHING about Postgres short of what Django tutorials exist telling me how to get Postgres & Django to work. I'd rather leave this to the "experts".

It's only been about two weeks...site will hopefully go live at the end of the month. Good or bad, you'll hear about it.

My advice, try it! I haven't been this happy about a web host in years!</comment></comment>


Black Sky satellites return images just 58 hours after launch - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/17/blackskys-latest-satellites-return-images-just-58-hours-after-spacex-launch/ <comment><USER2> If things go well, we'll soon enter a new technological boom.

Like computers. I am surrounded by these things. Something like a smart watch is only feasible after a drastic decrease in cost and massive increases in capability. If you went back a few decades and suggested people would be strapping supercomputers on their wrists, you'd likely be committed to an institution. It would be unthinkable to devote the required amount of resources to such a frivolous task.

A similar thing will happen with spacecraft. Right now, it is still expensive, but SpaceX dragged down the price enormously. This is likely to decrease even further, either due to competition, or with the likes of the Starship(how many satellites could we fit on that monstrosity?).

This will enable entire new industries, both existing(satellites will become commodities), and also ones we have no idea about - yet. Pretty sure some "frivolous" tasks will pop up once this is cheap enough.

And that's only unmanned flights.

EDIT: I've found this amusing - that's in the direction of what I'm talking about, we are just missing the "1-click launch": [https://www.rocketlabusa.com/book-my- launch/](https://www.rocketlabusa.com/book-my-launch/)

<comment><USER3> The difference here is that space is a lot more international (and thus harder to police) than your wrist.

We really want to avoid [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome), and so far humanity has shown a pretty terrible track record when it comes to exploiting earth's commodities or ensuring the prevention of long-term global disasters...

Already we have astronomers being increasingly hindered by man-made objects dashing through the field of view of ground-based telescopes.

<comment><USER4> Scott Manley made a good youtube video about just how much of the "basic" stuff one can already see around the earth by recording the sky in a 360-degrees video from a deserted place[0]. The current trends in launches with little thinking about the long run reminds me a bit of how we've approached fossil fuels.. we're basically waiting to hit the wall hard before re-thinking our approach.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJNGi- bt9NM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJNGi-bt9NM)

<comment><USER5> You don't even need to be in a deserted place, with super-human vision to see this! Just grab a pair of binoculars, go out on your roof, and look at the sky.

I'm in the middle of a light-polluted city, and I can observe a satellite transit directly overhead every minute or two.

<comment><USER6> See A Satellite Tonight ([https://james.darpinian.com/satellites](https://james.darpinian.com/satellites)) is a nice tool for finding these. I have a young kid and it's been fun heading out at night and spotting these.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an interesting capability.

Since the very first spy satellites were placed into orbit, adversaries have carefully tracked their orbits so that they could avoid exposure during an overpass. This form of cat and mouse game has had various options thrown at it, from satellites that can change their orbits, to "cover" satellites which operate as one thing and provide surveillance capability in addition to their "public" persona.

SpaceX threw up 2 satellites on a ship that was carrying 60 separate satellites (the others being Starlink nodes). But it _could_ throw up 60 black sky satellites if asked. Further it could do that fairly quickly[1] from time to request to launch using a flight proven booster. Or perhaps 30 satellites with their own booster engine to maximize the number of orbits they could reach.

At some point continuous monitoring of a point on Earth becomes simply a question of cost. That can be kind of game changing from a geopolitical perspective.

[1] Where quickly here is anywhere from 10 to 60 days depending on whether or not a company like black sky could have the upper stage on hand with the delivery system.

<comment><USER7> Planet Labs already has full coverage of the Earth, and with the latest SkySat (another 3 launched earlier today) they will have the ability to image the same point on earth 12x a day.

I think it's very unlikely that the USA and maybe others _don 't_ have this capability already.

<comment><USER8> The USA does not. The NRO does not operate large fleets of small satellites. They have just a few big ones. The optics are way better though.

<comment><USER9> >> optics are way better though

That was going to be my question. Doesn't the NRO need big optical lenses for their missions? Are there any "telescopic" advancements that can fit into small sats that can meet their mission objectives?

<comment><USER10> In 2012 the NRO turned over two satellites to NASA [0] for research purposes. The scientists who have examined them (they have not been launched yet) described them as being better than Hubble even though they are comparable in size (designed to fit in the Shuttle bay). Given the unlimited funds available to them, I expect they're a decade ahead of industry.

The NRO is probably going for larger lenses in future satellites to increase their field of view. Could they use a series of smaller sats orbiting in a cluster to form a virtual lens, much like the multiple mirror telescope in Arizona [1]? Maybe.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMT_Observatory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMT_Observatory)

<comment><USER11> To clarify what they turned over were lens and optics assemblies that are a sort of cousin to the hubble space telescope's structural body and lens, not whole satellites. No power systems, no control electronics, no batteries, no comm systems, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's funny that people are surprised by this. It's not new technology really, the defence sector has had taskable satellite imagery for decades, it's just a matter of the cost coming down to the point where it's feasible commercially. That is super cool though. There are a lot of applications for space based real-time imagery that could be tremendously more useful to the majority of society than tracking bad guys.

<comment><USER13> A random example of a useful application: realtime forest fire detection. In e.g. Sweden during the summer months people are still paid (well, compensated for their expenses) to fly around in Cessnas looking for smoke plumes.

Imagine being able to dispatch a helicopter to drown out a typical forest fire within 10 minutes of the fire starting while it's still small. That's a game changer.

<comment><USER14> > Imagine being able to dispatch a helicopter to drown out a typical forest > fire within 10 minutes of the fire starting while it's still small. That's a > game changer.

And not necessarily a good one. Many forest ecosystems depend on somewhat regular fires to "clean out" debris. The problem however is that "thanks" to climate change leading to drier forests, what once used to be a fire that only consumed fallen off leaves etc. while leaving the big trees unharmed now burns intense and long enough to actually damage the big trees.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like you need to wait for the big trees to still be wet enough, but the leaves dried up, and then light a fire to have it burn while you're keeping an eye on it and know it won't burn down your nice forest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What, exactly, used to be so difficult about this? Do new satellites take time to train their orbits, or test systems, or otherwise commission when they're in the air? What technological changes have happened recently to make this feasible?

<comment><USER8> Yes. All of the above.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty much. However the biggest change is the capability per kilogram that can be packed into a satellite now. Today a 3U cubesat weighing roughly 20kg can take thousands of images, process them locally to manage for weather effects and orbital skew, and then transmit them to a single ground station several times a day.

The first spy satellites weighed tons and literally dropped film canisters back into space to re-enter and be recovered by aircraft or helicopters which would then take the film to a laboratory to be developed[1]. Typically, a satellite would take a few weeks to both stabilize in the environment in space, calibrate its optics, take some test photos for analysis, re-calibrate based on those results, and then be ready to go.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_\(satellite\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> larger image link

[https://techcrunch.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/08/image-f-3....](https://techcrunch.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/08/image-f-3.png)

<comment><USER18> They are detecting velocity vectors for moving vehicles.

<comment><USER19> Private/Commercial JSTARS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The night sky, for those that can see the Milky Way, is going to look like Wall•E soon, right? Gone are the days of Iridium flares.

</comment><comment><USER21> I do not look forward to the time where something akin to Google Maps starts to approach real-time (yeah I realize the government can more or less do this, but I'm happy with being obscure enough to not catch their gaze)</comment>


Andromeda 2.1 reduces GCP's intra-zone latency by 40% - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/11/Andromeda-2-1-reduces-GCPs-intra-zone-latency-by-40-percent.html <comment><USER2> Andromeda is one of the many reasons Quizlet observed this: "We tested snapshotting with 400 GB SSD drives given 300 GB of random data. On AWS, we observed snapshot times around 8 hours, while on GCP the same operation takes about 6 minutes." [https://quizlet.com/blog/whats-the-best-cloud-probably- gcp/](https://quizlet.com/blog/whats-the-best-cloud-probably-gcp/)

I work at Google.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm lost, can you point me in the right direction? - <AUTHOR> I'm in the middle of switching fields. I graduated two years ago with an undergrad degree in bio, but found myself working on computer vision and machine learning problems (self taught with opencv and scikit learn). I saw the potential of where artificial intelligence is going in healthcare, but I can't seem to find "my people." No one around me seems to really share my view that we can lower error to that of a human or better.<p>Where do I go from here? I'm lost. I'm working in healthcare, and medical research. <comment><USER2> There are lots of people that are very passionate about machine learning and artificial intelligence. I would say try to find a meetup group near by (meetup.com). If your area isn't really a tech hub, I'm sure there is a near by University with a computer science department. You could always try to talk to a professor there that is doing similar research.

</comment><comment><USER3> Get out of healthcare, it's a dead-end field for software and just full of sadness and bullshit. The only place potentially worse is game development, but at least there you have the chance of becoming a great programmer.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.ted.com/speakers/jeremy_howard](https://www.ted.com/speakers/jeremy_howard)

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually applied to Enlitic, they sent me an email saying they had already moved forward with the hiring process with other candidates. That was about a year ago; I should check back...</comment></comment>


CGA Graphics – Not as bad as you thought - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc <comment><USER2> Yea, this was pretty suprising, because I never used CGA+Composite</comment>


Startups Spend with Abandon, Flush with Capital - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/articles/startups-spend-with-abandon-flush-with-capital-1412549853 <comment><USER2> I've said it before, and I'll say it again, it is impossible to tell how someone will react so a sudden change in their financial status, prior to that change happening. The interesting thing I learned in the dot com era though was that when people conflated their _actual_ net worth with their _paper_ net worth, it really screwed them up.

It works like this, you own 10% of the equity in a company that raises a round of funds which price that company at $1B. You are worth $100M right? Wrong. Your wealth hasn't changed until you convert that equity into cash and them something unrelated to the company. Further you probably can't sell it (the board won't let you). What I have watched happen though is that people _think_ of themselves as being "worth" $100M and start spending like they have that sort of money in a checking account somewhere. And lots of people are more than willing to help them spend! And then things don't go quite as planned, the market changes, a competitor gets bought, the S-1 gets pulled at the last minute, what ever, and the company is sold at a firesale for not even the liquidation preference of the preferred shares. And our poor founder is living the $100M lifestyle with nothing in the bank. What follows is predictable, depression, bankruptcy, divorce, in some cases suicide.

It was, for me, the worst part of the dot com explosion. Watching people I knew and respected self destruct.

<comment><USER3> net worth is the accumulation of all the assets you have, including cash and the paper worth of the equity in your startup, less your liabilities (debt). so it's more appropriate to couch this in terms of asset liquidity, and secondarily, the riskiness of that asset.

as you allude to, the hard part is properly discounting an illiquid and risky asset (like the paper valuation of a startup) based on your risk tolerance so that you can adjust your finances accordingly.

what many new founders don't realize is that a startup is an undiversified investment. they are all-in on a single asset and that's _very_ risky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > But increased interest rates or a sudden stock-market chill could slam on > the brakes.

ZIRP _will_ end. The stock market will _not_ continue to be an easy source of double-digit annual returns forever.

The question is always timing, but anybody who is following the Fed and looking at the action in the market can tell you that we're closer to the end of the current environment than we are to the beginning. That doesn't necessarily mean a meltdown is coming (it's of course a real possibility), but even modest changes that inflict minimal pain overall could have significant implications for the startup scene.

For all of the genuinely smart, successful people in the Bay Area, I'm constantly amazed at how few people here seem to be looking at how the broader environment has made the most recent boom possible. Mention ZIRP and the majority of people will ask "What do they do?" thinking ZIRP refers to a hot new startup.

> More worrisome, Mr. Moeller says, are startups with small teams looking for > massive spaces and locking themselves in to long leases. Startups are > signing five- to seven-year leases on spaces that used to require two, and > more landlords are pushing for 10-year leases on new construction. Those > could become a burden if financing tightens.

Generally speaking, the landlords are far savvier than the entrepreneurs they're leasing to. They're not pushing 10 year leases to help tenants lock in a good deal.

> Mr. Altman says he met a few months ago with an entrepreneur who drove up in > a new Porsche sport-utility vehicle. The man's startup had completed a $10 > million early round of financing the previous week. Mr. Altman says he > looked at him sternly, asking him, "What message do you think you're sending > to the rest of the company?"

The message the entrepreneur is sending to his employees is irrelevant. If there's anything of importance in this anecdote, it's what such behavior says about the mindset of some of the founders investors are lavishing with millions of dollars of investment.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure if the landlords are as savvy as you think. If the startup runs out of money, landlords will be the last in line at bankruptcy proceedings. It's hard to claim losses for the next 6 years of lease income when they can turn around and rent the space to a new tenant.

<comment><USER6> "I'm not sure if the landlords are as savvy as you think."

Some of them are. Saeed Amidi, the rug dealer behind Medallion Rug Gallery in Palo Alto is famous for this. He demands some equity in startups leasing his properties. Google's first office was in his space. PayPal's first office was in his space above the bike shop. Facebook's first office too. Also Foursquare, Danger, and others not as successful. Amidi is now a venture capitalist, but he still has the rug stores.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2011/oct/14/welco...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2011/oct/14/welcome- to-silicon-valley-shuffle)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> to get through the paywall [https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fstartups- spend-with-abandon-flush-with- capital-1412549853&ei=BfsxVLbOGIyyyAT_zoGIAg&usg=AFQjCNGgO75xaCrJxX5bmW0M4fwrO2UNzg&sig2=Q9Y2hvarL9OVTbmcbAabew&bvm=bv.76802529,d.aWw)

<comment><USER7> That did not work it says you have to subscribe or log in

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Startup need to spend so much on other things because employees are not working 100% on making company a long term success. They are just doing yet another job.

Reward employees with good amount of equity, so that everybody long term interests are aligned in success of the company.

I don't see most startup giving meaningful equity, so they have to compensate with all of these perks and high salaries.

<comment><USER9> The first part of this statement sounds like speculation, and the second part sounds a bit like Voodoo logic, no pun intended. There are many factors that will attribute to an employees stock in the company, and I'm not just referring to 'company stock'. Equity is an entrepreneurs best friend, and as such should be treated little different than a savings account (Rarely touched: with exceptions of a rainy day, or if something exists that you REALLY REALLY want/need e.g. a specific Employee) as opposed to monopoly money, where it is spent till the original owner has none of it left. If the company starts to award every employee high yields of equity, it hinders an entrepreneurs ability to leverage the companies assets to possibly position it's longterm stability. This is why there exist so many 'perks and high salaries', and they work... for the most part. However, to imply that these perks and high salaries are falsely impacting an employees investment at a company for long term duration's seems a bit of a stretch without data points, perhaps Hacker News should strike up an Anonymous Poll to find out if such claims are true? I will speculate that for some it is nothing more than 'just another job', but for the right person, it can be the right job. Thus, perhaps the solution isn't necessarily in an excessive amount of equity, or bloated perks, or high salaries; perhaps the true solution is taking the time to find a candidate that isn't necessarily as skilled as they could be, but over compensates by possessing a fervor of desire? If that is indeed the appropriate conclusion; isn't that in other words what Y.Combinator is all about? The ability to find individuals in the most unliklyist of places with a will and a heart to attempt what may just lie out of their reach, helping them grasp what once was only the impossible? It is people like this that attribute towards a companies long term standing, and without them, fulfilling the founders end goal will be much more difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone want to discuss competitive sober strategies for startups?

I see four main issues that the money is being used for

1\. Location

2\. Business Scaling

3\. Work-Place Incentives

4\. Founders Optimistic Self Valuation

These issues are all necessary to a high degree but what viable options are there that give startups a competitive environment to offer and work with?

<comment><USER9> I am intrigued of what others might add or discern from this list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Title has now changed to "Free Spending by Startups Stir Memories of Dot-Com Era Excesses".

Still can't get through the paywall.

</comment><comment><USER8> just search the title on google and than read to avoid the login thing.</comment>


US shutdown: Senate reaches fiscal deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24557469 <comment><USER2> Everyone that knows anything about politics knew this is exactly how it would work out. It has been political theater the enter time. That's why the financial markets didn't flinch, they knew it would never come to default. The politicians are playing stupid games with gullible people, and they aren't doing it to serve their constituents. They are doing it to serve themselves and their corporate donors.

If this isn't proof of a broken system that fails to serve the people, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER3> Exactly ... and if you're in the US, you really have to think about who you're voting for. I'm not voting for incumbents in November - period! There's no point in having an agenda when _NOTHING_ is working anyway, so we might as well elect individuals (in either party) who might actually do their jobs!

<comment><USER4> Thats a relatively close minded approach that may destroy America.

Question: did your Representative contribute to the blocking of the bills? Is it really your representative's fault for the shutdown?

Some Senators, such as Senator McCain have gone _against_ his party and tried to support the bipartisan effort to reopen the government. (Demonstrating that maybe McCain would have served as a decent President).

Research your senators, research your representatives. Learn their names, and what they did during the shutdown. DONT blindly elect them away. Actually do your research and make an informed choice.

Too many Americans don't understand politics. No wonder we have so many idiots in Congress.

<comment><USER3> It was intentionally close-minded, but intended to counteract the huge number of people that simply vote for the incumbent. And if you truly believe your congressman isn't part of the problem (and you've researched his/her positions enough to know what he/she stands for), by all means reelect the lone competent individual. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that they'd each _SEEM_ competent if viewed individually ([http://www.despair.com/meetings.html](http://www.despair.com/meetings.html)).

How about this instead ... we pick a high-karma HN'er from each district and elect them. At least we could expect some logic (I hope).

<comment><USER5> I've already contacted the Koch brothers for money to bribe HN members, just in case this happens. :)

<comment><USER3> You'd also have to wonder whether how the liberal/conservative labels would work out. Maybe IDE users versus emacs/vi (text editor) users?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought the issue was in the House, and this does not say that the House's game of chicken is over and anything has been resolved there, merely that "some" republicans are joining the democrats. Can someone explain why this item means good news?

<comment><USER7> The "problem" is that the House, the Senate, and the President (unless a veto is overcome) all have to agree- and so far, that hasn't happened. The Dems have a pretty good PR department, and are doing a good job of spinning it as though it is a problem with the (Republican led) House, though.

<comment><USER8> Nobody needs PR crew to spin it that way. Only a lunatic could have honestly believe that a president would abandon his most significant achievement since taking office. So either Boehner and the minority of Republicans he is working with are lunatics, or else they are willing to risk ravaging an already suffering economy for the sake of undoing a single law.

<comment><USER7> Few of the Rethuglicans actually expect the President or the Dems to completely abandon ObamaCare. They would like a few concessions, perhaps merely offering a delay for a year in the individual mandate while the dust settles on the health exchanges, would have been enough. Up until a few days ago, the dems refused to even talk to the rethuglicans about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> American economy will slide till [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma) is resolved.

</comment><comment><USER10> Stay tuned for part 2 in February.

Then part 3 later in 2014.

Sadly the elections won't fix this because of gerrymandering which is worse than any amount of money in politics.

The House will always be toxic because of it. Senators cannot play that game which is why they tend to be slightly more sane.

<comment><USER11> I still don't understand why we don't use algorithms to fix gerrymandering.

[https://code.google.com/p/redistricter/](https://code.google.com/p/redistricter/)

<comment><USER12> Because gerrymandering isn't the problem -- as evidenced by the fact that states that have non-partisan redistricting processes haven't managed to reduce the problem. There is no method of apportioning single-member districts whose representatives are elected in FPTP elections that has good results. Gerrymandering is politicians working to direct the way in which such a system fails in their own favor, but such a system is going to fail one way or another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> More's the pity--would've been nice to have an excuse to maybe kick all the bastards out of office.

Vote early, vote often.

<comment><USER14> The fact that it came to this point isn't enough?

<comment><USER15> Its come to this point quite often and probably will in the future. Both parties use the debt ceiling as a time to try to get what they want. Read each parties statements in the 2000 - 2008 era for a laugh at how they switched (almost word for word) this time.

<comment><USER16> I don't remember Democrats ever using threats over the debt ceiling. It seems to be specifically right-wing phenomenon [1]. In fact there are some for whom the endgame seems to be to force the government to default and assume it won't be catastrophic for the economy (one wonders if these folks have significant short/call positions).

[1] [http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/for-many- hard-l...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/for-many-hard-liners- debt-default-is-the-goal/)

<comment><USER15> Look at the run-up to the 2006 bill. 1999 was also a very weird one.

<comment><USER16> Can you provide some links or analysis? I don't find any threats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> unconstitutional?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origination_Clause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origination_Clause)

The Origination Clause, sometimes called the Revenue Clause, is part of the United States Constitution. This clause says that all bills for raising revenue must start in the House of Representatives, but the Senate can amend them as in the case of non-revenue bills.

<comment><USER18> What revenue is being raised? This is a hike of the debt limit, and allocation of funds for spending. No new taxes to speak of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ironic that in 2006 Senator Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling for many of the same reasons that the GOP is voicing today.

<comment><USER19> One of Ronald Reagan's most famous quotes was from a propaganda piece against Medicare, about how it would end freedom in the country... but when he became president he expanded it. Being President has a way to change one's perspective.

<comment><USER20> Utter nonsense, a more plausible and realistic explanation would be Presidential candidates say anything to get themselves into power, and then it becomes abundantly clear that the President is little else than a figurehead.

The goals, perspective, opinion, etc of the President are irrelevant -- they are (and always will be) a puppet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As we know appr. 2 405 510 175 users in internet. If we send 1-2 dollar to US it can help. I can send something to save US.

<comment><USER20> I'd send a dollar but only if it went towards a swift kick in every single American's ass.

<comment><USER21> save ass its good facility</comment></comment></comment>


KVM host in a few lines of code - <AUTHOR> https://zserge.com/posts/kvm/ <comment><USER2> > However, no one forces you to use KVM directly. There is libvirt, a nice > friendly wrapper for low-level virtualization techniques such as KVM or > BHyve.

No, that's not what libvirt does. libvirt abstracts handling of tools like Qemu, or LXC. No lowlevel stuff.

When people talk about libvirt, they usually mean the libvirt daemon that manages VMs or containers using other programs and accepts XML machine descriptions as input.

The actual "libvirt" library is simply a front end library for talking to the daemon and is used internally by tools like virsh (CLI) or virtman (GUI tool).

Some ~7 years ago I used the libvirt library for a small in-house tool. It has the possibly shittiest API ever designed. No abstraction whatsoever, just a couple C functions that accept XML strings as input and possibly return XML responses from the daemon.

<comment><USER3> I think you underappreciate libvirt here. The qemu command line interface is really quite ugly and awkward to use. You might imagine that, in wrapping it, libvirt might fail to make it worse. But they actually succeeded!

(To be fair, if you're stuck for ideas for making something nastier, wrapping it in XML isn't a crazy starting point.)

<comment><USER4> qemu has its own (often unnoticed) config file format `-readconfig fname`. I use it instead of the command line when things are getting out of hand.

<comment><USER5> -readconfig is incomplete. You cannot express all features (and even several common features) through the config file. Also the config file field names are sometimes different from the corresponding command line names. It's considered an appendix by the upstream developers so don't be surprised if it disappears one day.

<comment><USER4> What features have you had problems with?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is also this LWN article which covers much of the same ground: [https://lwn.net/Articles/658511/](https://lwn.net/Articles/658511/)

I do like here that the author here went beyond minimal hello world and also showed how to boot linux

<comment><USER7> It's remarkable how much traction that article has gotten over the years; it's also cited by crosvm, rust-vmm, Firecracker, and many other virtualization projects.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for writing it!

I've shared that with a lot of people, because it's a great introduction to stepping through the abstraction of QEMU (or libvirt or whatever) and seeing what KVM can do. There's some good articles that start from VMx on up, which are fun too, but much more involved than KVM.

In general, this is a kind of technical content I'd like to see more of: here's a lower-level API, what can I do with it?

<comment><USER7> I enjoy such articles as well, especially when the lower-level API is something that most people only use through one piece of complex high-level software.

Similarly, it's fun to study containers starting with "unshare" and "clone".

<comment><USER9> Top tip, thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be trivial for VirtualBox to use KVM instead of shipping an (out of tree) kernel module that uses the vmx instructions directly. I don't understand what exactly is blocking VirtualBox from doing that. They already use HyperV in Windows instead of abusing vmx directly.

They could still keep their qemu fork and everything so that the driver compatibility is still top-notch, but at least they would not require out of tree kernel modules, and VirtualBox would also be concurrently usable with other KVM users.

<comment><USER11> Methinks IP may have something to do with that, but I'm not sure how.

<comment><USER12> I seem to remember that they've said it's because they think that their kernel driver has higher perf than KVM on latency sensitive I/O.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're interested in "other things" that can be done with KVM, take a look at the Solo5 "hvt" tender: [https://github.com/Solo5/solo5/tree/master/tenders/hvt](https://github.com/Solo5/solo5/tree/master/tenders/hvt).</comment>


Show HN : Beta version available - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoenary.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This site is still on Beta. It will be launched before the end of this year and right now we are testing our landing page and the messaging. We are also looking for early adopters who would like to test the beta version. Feedback will be highly appreciated.</comment>


The key to unlocking a glacier's past is a chainsaw and some quantum mechanics - <AUTHOR> https://massivesci.com/articles/dating-glaciers-using-chainsaws-argon-and-quantum-physics/ <comment><USER2> Brilliant title and of all the titles that you would expect to be clickbait, it is not, and makes perfect sense once the article is read.</comment>


Why Solipsism Is Bullshit - <AUTHOR> https://webhome.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Philosophy/axioms/axioms/Why_Solipsism_is.html <comment><USER2> Solipsism embeds a lot of un-articulated axioms in "I". The author's point is valid in that respect, that we need more axioms than just "I am", which is true, and they are all smuggled into our definition of what we mean by "I" and "am".

Just take "I", and ask _what_ am I? Or _how_ am I? And so on. What is this "I" that I cannot doubt that I am? If we use dream physics, for example, we can answer a lot of the issues the author raised, which were, ultimately, mostly problems with the fact that "I" remains undefined.

With dream physics, we can easily see that, given an "I" that works like a brain (or the abstract construct I have explicated to myself as "brain", whatevs), that it's very trivial to have other so-called "split" versions of ourselves, and events that seem to surprise us, scare us, or even cause us physical pain - though every single event in the dream is fabricated by the dreamer embedded in the dream.

</comment><comment><USER3> Full of pearls and humorous to boot: "...since it is impossible to disprove solipsism rationally, it serves as a lovely tool for helping folks to see that all the other, more sensible-seeming philosophies, are also Bullshit as they can't even logically refute a solipsist."</comment>


Writers Have a Serious Advantage Over the Rest of Us - <AUTHOR> http://mic.com/articles/98348/science-shows-writers-have-a-serious-advantage-over-the-rest-of-us

<comment><USER2> If i understand the article, this mainly applies to written dairies. Which made me wonder..

I am a programmer, so i type a lot. Mentally walking each hypothetical path that every involved actor (me, user, machine, chance) can take, and ultimately writing a solution that fits all storyboards.

Do said (article) benefits apply to me at all? Do said benefits apply to fiction writers at all?

</comment><comment><USER3> Writing used a different part of your brain. Maybe this helps people break one and endless loop by creating a states change.</comment>


Revolutionizing Kernel Development: Testing with Rump (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/revolutionizing_kernel_development_testing_with <comment><USER2> If I had a time machine, the first thing I'd do is s/rump/& kernel/ in all old writings. The second thing I'd do is make a case for writing creat with an e.

<comment><USER3> do you mean, s/(?<=rump)/ & kernel/g? That'll tack " & kernel" on after every "rump": [https://regex101.com/r/rZ7kA2/1](https://regex101.com/r/rZ7kA2/1)

<comment><USER4> Wow that's ugly. The original regex is a valid POSIX BRE; it also works in GNU sed and FreeBSD sed with default options. But maybe your translation will be useful to others who only grok PCRE.

<comment><USER3> The original version isn't actually valid POSIX BRE. It's a sed specific meta- character that is specific to sed and won't work anywhere else [1]. It's not part of POSIX BRE (which doesn't cover substations anyway). The zero width positive look behind is common to many more languages than just sed for doing that substitution. There is one version that will work in all of them, s/rump/rump kernel/, but it repeats the first word

[1] [http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/unix/sedawk/appa_02.htm](http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/unix/sedawk/appa_02.htm)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Digg's New Algorithm is The Suck - <AUTHOR> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/diggs-new-algorithm-is-the-suck <comment><USER2> He complains about not being able to get a joke about underwear on the front page.

Boo-Hoo...

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't it supposed to be "teh" suck?</comment>


We Are Not Having a Productive Debate About Women in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://techblog.bozho.net/not-productive-debate-women-tech/ <comment><USER2> It is not productive because it is a (relative) non-issue. It's like the way a small number of "wedge issues" dominate the political agenda so that we have the same hand-wringing discussions for decades.

If Google was not bestride the world like a Colossus, and if it wasn't sucking the air out of the web and everything else, then women could go work for some other company and it would be Google's loss.

Silicon Valley isn't capable of having a discussion about "we can't build any housing" or "we import large numbers of male immigrants" or "we can't locate offices in the other 49 1/2 states", or "we can't house the homeless", or "we don't hire anybody over thirty".

Something has to be on the agenda, however, because otherwise it would be clear that politics has completely broken down, so they've got to pick the oldest and most eternal conflict of man and womankind.</comment>


The Importance of Realism in Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/08/10/the-importance-of-realism-in-startups/ <comment><USER2> _Age brings wisdom. Timidity, too. But age brings perspective. If older entrepreneurs are more cautious it's because life's experiences have taught them to be so._

I am so fucking tired of this old meme, that I think I'm going to vomit if I hear it again. _SOME_ older entrepreneurs may, indeed, be "more cautious" or "timid" or whatever. But there is absolutely nothing about being an older entrepreneur that mandates such a thing. Furthermore, there is a countervailing factor which rarely gets mentioned: older entrepreneurs are just as likely to be _more desperate_ to succeed, and hence not at all cautious or timid, because they are literally _running out of time_.

Speaking from personal experience: when I was 20, I could afford to lollygag and take my time and be patient and buy into the "good things come to those who wait" bullshit. Now I'm 40 and, last time I checked, I ain't getting any younger. If I'm going to make my dreams happen, I can't afford to do anything less than give 101%... Timidity, caution? Fuck that, ain't nobody got time for that here.

More than at any point in my life, I'm looking at this startup thing as a full-contact sport, and coming in with an attitude that I'm going to do whatever it takes to win. These are desperate times, and no cards are off the table, and we will fire every arrow in our quiver here... it's "do or die" time, ya know? But my 20 year old self lacked that sense of perspective.

Now I don't claim to be a "representative sample" in any formal statistical sense, obviously. But if I feel this way, I'm pretty sure there are other older folks who do as well, at least in the general sense.

<comment><USER3> I'm wondering why this meme persists too because clearly the first Dot Com Bubble wasn't all due to actions of "young" entrepreneurs. Plenty of "older" people decided to take risks (probably due to that desperation) until those risks stopped paying off altogether or it became obvious they never will.</comment></comment>


Benchmarks for the brand new Compute GPU on Amazon EC2 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cyclecomputing.com/2010/11/a-couple-more-nails-in-the-coffin-of-the-private-compute-cluster-gpu-on-cloud.html

<comment><USER2> Is there any actual explanation of how an EC2 instance would perform better than a physical machine ?

I find that kind of hard to believe.

<comment><AUTHOR> It only mentions using the same two GPUs (dual Nvidia M2050 GPU units), not the same overall setup. Before the bandwidth graph that shows EC2 really beating out the native setup, note this comment:

"Note the capped PCIe speeds in the client hardware are likely due to motherboard and chipset differences."</comment></comment>


Wolfram One-Liner Competition - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2016/11/09/the-2016-wolfram-one-liner-competition-winners/ <comment><AUTHOR> > Participants in the competition submit 128 or fewer tweetable characters of > Wolfram Language code to perform the most impressive computation they can > dream up.</comment>


Nintendo's Dream of Gaming On-The-Go Gets a Reality Check - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-21/nintendo-s-dream-of-gaming-on-the-go-gets-a-reality-check?cmpid=BBD102116_BIZ <comment><USER2> "fails to impress gamers". And here I was seeing a ton of people impressed in different subreddits last night. Anecdotal evidence is at its tricks again.</comment>