Why APL is worth knowing
26 by tosh | 3 comments on Hacker News.
Thursday, March 31, 2022
Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Monday, March 28, 2022
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Saturday, March 26, 2022
In a Fiery Speech Rallying Allies, Biden Denounces Putin and Seemingly Calls for His Ouster
By BY MICHAEL D. SHEAR, DAVID E. SANGER AND MICHAEL LEVENSON from NYT World https://ift.tt/EYtNvQG
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New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Wachy – A UI for eBPF-based performance debugging
Show HN: Wachy – A UI for eBPF-based performance debugging
11 by vivek-jain | 0 comments on Hacker News.
eBPF is an amazing technology that allows safely running user-supplied functions at pretty much arbitrary probe points in a kernel/user space context. Much has been written about how amazing this feature is for kernel observability. But as someone who writes user space code, what I find even more amazing is the support for tracing arbitrary user space programs, with no code changes and low overhead. However, doing in-depth analysis can get complicated and time-consuming. My goal with wachy was to make this debugging significantly easier/faster to use, by displaying traces in a TUI next to the source code and allowing for interactive drilldown analysis. If you get a chance, check out the start of the demo video since (AFAIK) it's quite unique and gives a much clearer idea than I can provide with just text.
11 by vivek-jain | 0 comments on Hacker News.
eBPF is an amazing technology that allows safely running user-supplied functions at pretty much arbitrary probe points in a kernel/user space context. Much has been written about how amazing this feature is for kernel observability. But as someone who writes user space code, what I find even more amazing is the support for tracing arbitrary user space programs, with no code changes and low overhead. However, doing in-depth analysis can get complicated and time-consuming. My goal with wachy was to make this debugging significantly easier/faster to use, by displaying traces in a TUI next to the source code and allowing for interactive drilldown analysis. If you get a chance, check out the start of the demo video since (AFAIK) it's quite unique and gives a much clearer idea than I can provide with just text.
Friday, March 25, 2022
Thursday, March 24, 2022
New top story on Hacker News: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads
Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads
38 by haakonzen | 7 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN community, we are Haakon, Hans Arne and Kris, co-founders of Carbon Crusher (www.carboncrusher.io). We are developing and scaling a technology and process that refurbishes roads in a carbon negative way. Roads with cracks and bumps are often a result of unstable ground beneath the road surface. There are currently many ways of repairing such roads, all which are polluting. You can exchange all of the road, or mill up and reclaim parts of the road and bind it together with a substance with “glue-like” properties such as bitumen, or you could add new asphalt, concrete or gravel on top of the cracks and bumps, then you’ll likely get the same cracks and bumps a year later, since this doesn’t stabilize the soil beneath. Our method is an enhanced, new way of full depth reclamation, with two main advantages: 1) Our proprietary built Crusher can chew and crush pretty much everything including stone and mountain surfaces, meaning we do not have to extract, transport and add any new masses and can re-use all of the road, even in rugged terrain like mountainside Norway. 2) Our binder. It’s based on lignin, a waste product from the paper industry, constituting around 1/3 of the volumes from trees. The majority of lignin is burnt, we make use of it as a binder in our roads instead, binding the carbon absorbed by the trees from the air. Our binder has no negative impact on vegetation, animals, humans or equipment. It is actually so harmless that our test-pilot Hans Arne often takes a sip of it to prove it to our customers and competitors! But it does not taste very good.. Here you see a video of our Crusher crushing large rocks (thrown in by Hans Arne): https://ift.tt/sbUWqnf... In combination, this results in approximately 20% lower cost compared to traditional methods, roads that on average last longer between each time they need repairs, and a reduction of Co2 equivalents from ~7-10kg positive to 5kg negative pr m2, or approximately 1 tonne net negative per 60 feet we refurbish, of a 2 lane road. We are innovating to improve efficiency and the carbon effect of both the Crusher and the binder. For the Crusher we are working on making it smarter in addition to being powerful, with more and smarter sensor tech and from being dragged behind a tractor towards being autonomous, which could increase efficiency by 40-50%. For the binder we are experimenting with new combinations to store more CO2, adding to the lignin base we use now. We are looking at a range of new biological additions such as other types of refined lignin, other carbon negative materials and potentially programmable carbon negative molecules that can mimic the favorable binding properties, and we aim for a 5x increase in carbon capture efficiency within a few years. We’re three climate vikings from Norway with big hearts, bound together from earlier tech adventures. Kris dropped out of college at age 19 to found his first software company, and met his hardware match Hans on another project 10 years ago. Kris invested when Haakon co-founded Katapult and started scaling sustainability and tech companies 6 years ago, and early last year we all excitedly decided to join forces to build Carbon Crusher. The very first road though, refurbished with our method, was made 14 years back in Hans Arnes hometown, “Heart Valley” in Norway. Being able today to drive, touch it and see how good it still is, is a nice unique competitive edge for us and that our recent customers appreciate. Even if volumes have been limited so far it’s good to also have actual recent happy customers (municipalities, cities, counties and a few industrial companies) as ambassadors, as the road business is very conservative; we have sometimes struggled with being nicknamed “the tree glue folks”…. To scale our impact faster, we are working on changing from one off tender projects where we do the full refurbishment service for our customers, public or private road owners, towards a crushing as a service model with longer term contracts, licensing of tech to contractors and less people and hardware involved from our side. On the product expansion side, we are currently most excited about developing software using satellite imagery that can monitor road health and identify repair needs for road owners effectively and give instant quotes and Co2 savings potential, we call it “SkyRoads”. Further, we are working on new complementary road tech that can enhance and add to the carbon potential from our solution. This includes sustainable top layers and capturing and dissemination of energy captured by the roads. We want to re-invent the way we think about the 44 million miles of roads covering our planet, directly emitting over 400 million tonnes CO2 every year in building and maintenance, indirectly more through heat reflection. Our goal would be to 5x the carbon reduction potential of our current solution, using roads as a platform for a host of technologies on carbon reduction. On an annual basis, that could be 2 Gt each year. It’s a very conservative industry with limited innovation, especially on the climate side, and we believe someone needs to make those stretched targets. All this inspires us; to make our planet’s roads, which is often overlooked in climate discussion, a part of the solution. It will require hardware, biotech and software innovation, and that excites us. If we succeed, our direct and indirect carbon impact will contribute in a meaningful way to our shared climate challenges. We are super excited to launch this and be part of the YC community. Hopefully this post gave you some new interest in sustainable road tech. Please do reach out with any questions and we'll try our best to answer! You are also more than welcome to reach us also by email any time on contact@carboncrushing.com. Thanks!
38 by haakonzen | 7 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN community, we are Haakon, Hans Arne and Kris, co-founders of Carbon Crusher (www.carboncrusher.io). We are developing and scaling a technology and process that refurbishes roads in a carbon negative way. Roads with cracks and bumps are often a result of unstable ground beneath the road surface. There are currently many ways of repairing such roads, all which are polluting. You can exchange all of the road, or mill up and reclaim parts of the road and bind it together with a substance with “glue-like” properties such as bitumen, or you could add new asphalt, concrete or gravel on top of the cracks and bumps, then you’ll likely get the same cracks and bumps a year later, since this doesn’t stabilize the soil beneath. Our method is an enhanced, new way of full depth reclamation, with two main advantages: 1) Our proprietary built Crusher can chew and crush pretty much everything including stone and mountain surfaces, meaning we do not have to extract, transport and add any new masses and can re-use all of the road, even in rugged terrain like mountainside Norway. 2) Our binder. It’s based on lignin, a waste product from the paper industry, constituting around 1/3 of the volumes from trees. The majority of lignin is burnt, we make use of it as a binder in our roads instead, binding the carbon absorbed by the trees from the air. Our binder has no negative impact on vegetation, animals, humans or equipment. It is actually so harmless that our test-pilot Hans Arne often takes a sip of it to prove it to our customers and competitors! But it does not taste very good.. Here you see a video of our Crusher crushing large rocks (thrown in by Hans Arne): https://ift.tt/sbUWqnf... In combination, this results in approximately 20% lower cost compared to traditional methods, roads that on average last longer between each time they need repairs, and a reduction of Co2 equivalents from ~7-10kg positive to 5kg negative pr m2, or approximately 1 tonne net negative per 60 feet we refurbish, of a 2 lane road. We are innovating to improve efficiency and the carbon effect of both the Crusher and the binder. For the Crusher we are working on making it smarter in addition to being powerful, with more and smarter sensor tech and from being dragged behind a tractor towards being autonomous, which could increase efficiency by 40-50%. For the binder we are experimenting with new combinations to store more CO2, adding to the lignin base we use now. We are looking at a range of new biological additions such as other types of refined lignin, other carbon negative materials and potentially programmable carbon negative molecules that can mimic the favorable binding properties, and we aim for a 5x increase in carbon capture efficiency within a few years. We’re three climate vikings from Norway with big hearts, bound together from earlier tech adventures. Kris dropped out of college at age 19 to found his first software company, and met his hardware match Hans on another project 10 years ago. Kris invested when Haakon co-founded Katapult and started scaling sustainability and tech companies 6 years ago, and early last year we all excitedly decided to join forces to build Carbon Crusher. The very first road though, refurbished with our method, was made 14 years back in Hans Arnes hometown, “Heart Valley” in Norway. Being able today to drive, touch it and see how good it still is, is a nice unique competitive edge for us and that our recent customers appreciate. Even if volumes have been limited so far it’s good to also have actual recent happy customers (municipalities, cities, counties and a few industrial companies) as ambassadors, as the road business is very conservative; we have sometimes struggled with being nicknamed “the tree glue folks”…. To scale our impact faster, we are working on changing from one off tender projects where we do the full refurbishment service for our customers, public or private road owners, towards a crushing as a service model with longer term contracts, licensing of tech to contractors and less people and hardware involved from our side. On the product expansion side, we are currently most excited about developing software using satellite imagery that can monitor road health and identify repair needs for road owners effectively and give instant quotes and Co2 savings potential, we call it “SkyRoads”. Further, we are working on new complementary road tech that can enhance and add to the carbon potential from our solution. This includes sustainable top layers and capturing and dissemination of energy captured by the roads. We want to re-invent the way we think about the 44 million miles of roads covering our planet, directly emitting over 400 million tonnes CO2 every year in building and maintenance, indirectly more through heat reflection. Our goal would be to 5x the carbon reduction potential of our current solution, using roads as a platform for a host of technologies on carbon reduction. On an annual basis, that could be 2 Gt each year. It’s a very conservative industry with limited innovation, especially on the climate side, and we believe someone needs to make those stretched targets. All this inspires us; to make our planet’s roads, which is often overlooked in climate discussion, a part of the solution. It will require hardware, biotech and software innovation, and that excites us. If we succeed, our direct and indirect carbon impact will contribute in a meaningful way to our shared climate challenges. We are super excited to launch this and be part of the YC community. Hopefully this post gave you some new interest in sustainable road tech. Please do reach out with any questions and we'll try our best to answer! You are also more than welcome to reach us also by email any time on contact@carboncrushing.com. Thanks!
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
Monday, March 21, 2022
Sunday, March 20, 2022
Saturday, March 19, 2022
Friday, March 18, 2022
Thursday, March 17, 2022
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Civic – Online Hub for Causes
Show HN: Civic – Online Hub for Causes
15 by mab477 | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN! Matias and Jessica here, we're the founders of Civic (https://civicapp.co/), an online platform that connects people to causes in their area. That could mean everything from volunteering opportunities to activism and politics. Every year, over 180M Americans contribute to social causes, yet doing so takes a significant amount of time and energy — information on how to get involved or take action often spreads through disconnected pages, newsletters, and word of mouth. Civic plans to solve this by creating a hub for people to find and organize events, connect, and donate to causes around them. We just launched our MVP in NYC, focusing exclusively on events. I (Matias) started working on Civic while still in college, where I also spent a lot of my time in politics, having worked with ActBlue and a presidential campaign. I also served as a hyper-local elected official in DC, where I represented about 2k constituents to the city. Jessica is a full-stack software engineer and spent 5 years working at Google before joining us. She's fully responsible for our tech and is the reason why we're able to build this at all. During my time in DC, one of the most interesting things I observed was how the causes that were most likely to get people engaged were the local/neighborhood issues that affected them directly. Yet, because of their local nature, those causes were also the ones least likely to get publicity. That plus the general lack of a true online hub for civic engagement led us to start Civic. The MVP is rough around the edges and we're definitely looking for ideas and feedback on how we can improve! Some of the features in our dev pipeline include an onboarding process to customize the content seen by each user (causes are very broad); easy and streamlined, no-fee donations to organizations; social "spaces" based on location and interests where users can meet and discuss issues with others; and much more! For those curious about revenue, we plan to monetize by introducing donations. Right now, over $300B are donated by individuals to non-profits in the United States each year, much of which goes through outdated platforms that charge high fees. We'd target smaller, local organizations that aren't well served by existing platforms, and would follow the same model as GoFundMe and a few other companies, allowing users to add an optional "tip" to Civic after each donation. From our research, this tends to lead to tips of about 6-8% per transaction. You can check out our MVP here: https://civicapp.co/ We'd really appreciate any and all feedback (especially related to features, new and existing), please let us know what you think! :)
15 by mab477 | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN! Matias and Jessica here, we're the founders of Civic (https://civicapp.co/), an online platform that connects people to causes in their area. That could mean everything from volunteering opportunities to activism and politics. Every year, over 180M Americans contribute to social causes, yet doing so takes a significant amount of time and energy — information on how to get involved or take action often spreads through disconnected pages, newsletters, and word of mouth. Civic plans to solve this by creating a hub for people to find and organize events, connect, and donate to causes around them. We just launched our MVP in NYC, focusing exclusively on events. I (Matias) started working on Civic while still in college, where I also spent a lot of my time in politics, having worked with ActBlue and a presidential campaign. I also served as a hyper-local elected official in DC, where I represented about 2k constituents to the city. Jessica is a full-stack software engineer and spent 5 years working at Google before joining us. She's fully responsible for our tech and is the reason why we're able to build this at all. During my time in DC, one of the most interesting things I observed was how the causes that were most likely to get people engaged were the local/neighborhood issues that affected them directly. Yet, because of their local nature, those causes were also the ones least likely to get publicity. That plus the general lack of a true online hub for civic engagement led us to start Civic. The MVP is rough around the edges and we're definitely looking for ideas and feedback on how we can improve! Some of the features in our dev pipeline include an onboarding process to customize the content seen by each user (causes are very broad); easy and streamlined, no-fee donations to organizations; social "spaces" based on location and interests where users can meet and discuss issues with others; and much more! For those curious about revenue, we plan to monetize by introducing donations. Right now, over $300B are donated by individuals to non-profits in the United States each year, much of which goes through outdated platforms that charge high fees. We'd target smaller, local organizations that aren't well served by existing platforms, and would follow the same model as GoFundMe and a few other companies, allowing users to add an optional "tip" to Civic after each donation. From our research, this tends to lead to tips of about 6-8% per transaction. You can check out our MVP here: https://civicapp.co/ We'd really appreciate any and all feedback (especially related to features, new and existing), please let us know what you think! :)
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: I made Devzat – It's like discord but in the terminal, over SSH
Show HN: I made Devzat – It's like discord but in the terminal, over SSH
19 by quackduck | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Run `ssh devzat.hackclub.com` to try it out! The repo is here: https://ift.tt/OJgTkqe (golang). It has markdown and emoji support, DMs, channels, and it can show images too. You can send code, and it gets syntax highlighted (you can change the theme). You can ping people like so: @user and it sends them a \a, which should play an audible sound if the terminal allows it. There's inbuilt games and rainbow names and a lot of other small things I don't remember right now. You might find the auth system interesting: it's based on a hash of ssh pubkey (bans use that and a hash of IP, so it isn't so easy to get around a ban) Also an interesting issue: bots that go around trying to brute force ssh into random IPs with common usernames. My current solution is banning if rapid successive joins are detected.
19 by quackduck | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Run `ssh devzat.hackclub.com` to try it out! The repo is here: https://ift.tt/OJgTkqe (golang). It has markdown and emoji support, DMs, channels, and it can show images too. You can send code, and it gets syntax highlighted (you can change the theme). You can ping people like so: @user and it sends them a \a, which should play an audible sound if the terminal allows it. There's inbuilt games and rainbow names and a lot of other small things I don't remember right now. You might find the auth system interesting: it's based on a hash of ssh pubkey (bans use that and a hash of IP, so it isn't so easy to get around a ban) Also an interesting issue: bots that go around trying to brute force ssh into random IPs with common usernames. My current solution is banning if rapid successive joins are detected.
Monday, March 14, 2022
Sunday, March 13, 2022
Saturday, March 12, 2022
After Days of Uncertainty, a Ukrainian Soldier Is Laid to Rest
By BY YOUSUR AL-HLOU, NATALIA YERMAK, BENJAMIN FOLEY, BRENT MCDONALD AND BEN LAFFIN from NYT World https://ift.tt/843awzC
via IFTTT
Friday, March 11, 2022
Thursday, March 10, 2022
New top story on Hacker News: A word used only by Postgres developers
A word used only by Postgres developers
37 by ccleve | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I came across a word in the Postgres source code that I'd never seen before: "frammish". https://ift.tt/0JSdeP5 : > Therefore, they offer both exclusive and shared lock modes (to support > read/write and read-only access to a shared object). There are few other > frammishes. User-level locking should be done with the full lock manager > --- which depends on LWLocks to protect its shared state. It sort of makes sense in context, as a "feature" or a "flourish". It also appears on the pg_hackers mailing list: > There has been some talk of separating the power to create new users > from the power of being superuser (although presumably only a superuser > should be allowed to create new superusers). If the planned pg_role > rewrite gets submitted before the 8.1 feature freeze, I might look at > adding that frammish into it. and here, from 19 years ago: > And we get ragged on regularly for the non-SQL-standard features we've > inherited from Berkeley Postgres (eg, the implicit-FROM frammish that > was under discussion yesterday). No amount of googling turns up a formal definition or usage outside of the Postgres community. "frammish.org" doesn't seem to be related. Are Postgres developers starting to evolve their own dialect? Should we call an anthropologist?
37 by ccleve | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I came across a word in the Postgres source code that I'd never seen before: "frammish". https://ift.tt/0JSdeP5 : > Therefore, they offer both exclusive and shared lock modes (to support > read/write and read-only access to a shared object). There are few other > frammishes. User-level locking should be done with the full lock manager > --- which depends on LWLocks to protect its shared state. It sort of makes sense in context, as a "feature" or a "flourish". It also appears on the pg_hackers mailing list: > There has been some talk of separating the power to create new users > from the power of being superuser (although presumably only a superuser > should be allowed to create new superusers). If the planned pg_role > rewrite gets submitted before the 8.1 feature freeze, I might look at > adding that frammish into it. and here, from 19 years ago: > And we get ragged on regularly for the non-SQL-standard features we've > inherited from Berkeley Postgres (eg, the implicit-FROM frammish that > was under discussion yesterday). No amount of googling turns up a formal definition or usage outside of the Postgres community. "frammish.org" doesn't seem to be related. Are Postgres developers starting to evolve their own dialect? Should we call an anthropologist?