Hacker News Reader

alando46on IBM to buy HashiCorp in $6.4B deal

Gg hashicorp

alando46on Show HN: Shadeform – Single Platform and API for Provisioning GPUs

Problem for our use case is saving on gpus is pointless if we have to keep paying egress fees for our 250 TB training dataset.

The single interface for any cloud GPU is cool, but hard to imagine it taking off without some additional features.

I think for lots of shops the hardest part isn't the compute but moving the data around. Ie for us, we use s3, some lustre caching and spot instance nodegroups. We are a deep learning research team that spends roughly 40-50k/month on aws compute for training jobs. I imagine this is somewhat mid tier, maybe more than some but certainly far less than others.

For inference, data egress costs could be less of an issue, but your service would really need to be almost invisible. It probably would be pretty complicated for a number of reasons, but if you could design a "virtual on-demand nodegroup"™ that I could add to my existing clusters and then map to whatever k8s stuff I want, that would probably be useful. I would need to be able to auto deploy a base image to the machine and then provision the node and register with my cluster.

Just some unorganized thoughts. Good luck and have fun.

alando46on Ask HN: Possible to send a message that will be delivered in 1k years?

is there an obvious best way to try sending today using some sort of digital message?

alando46on Tim Cook: Four-Year Degree Not Necessary to Be Proficient at Coding'

Lol duh hahaha

alando46on Many Americans Feel Cheated by Their Student Loans

Student loans reinforce existing socioeconomic boundaries. Effectively, if a student can't afford to pay tuition and living expenses upfront then the cost of a college education is 15-50+% more than for a student who comes from a wealthy family. How is this equal opportunity?

alando46on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2019)

Radiant Earth Foundation | DevOps Engineer | Oakland, CA | Onsite

Radiant Earth Foundation's core mission is to make insights from remote sensing data and machine learning an order of magnitude more accessible for global non-profits, humanitarian organizations, emerging economy governments, and others. https://radiant.earth

We provide a free platform that takes care of all of the geospatial processing and machine learning so that users with any level of remote sensing experience, from zero to expert, can use near real-time data to get geospatial insights for their use case.

In addition to our platform, we work with organizations on complex use cases with high-impact outcomes. Since our founding in 2016, we've worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (a primary funder), the Omidyar Network (another primary funder), as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, Schmidt Futures, the World Bank and more.

We work with a range of fellows and contractors to support our efforts, but our in-house engineering/ML team is just 2 people :) In addition to being somebody who is excited to be part of a small team working on large-scale problems (right now we're all generalists, to an extent), we're especially interested in applicants who want to help us foster a team culture of respect, inclusion, and diversity.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/2CLLzdK

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to shoot me an email: alando (at) radiant.earth

alando46on Ask HN: How to find a mental health professional?

https://openpathcollective.org/

You can use the search tool without being a member or qualifying for the reduced rate sessions. Really useful for those in the U.S.

alando46on Ask HN: How do you manage your mental health?

Hahaha

alando46on Ask HN: How do you manage your mental health?

I see a therapist in the same way that I see a dentist – even if there's no immediate crisis, preventative care is generally much easier than waiting until there is some sort of major issue.

If we have someone check our teeth and gums a couple times a year just to clean out the gunk and make sure everything is ok, why wouldn't we do the same for our (arguably) most important organ?

alando46on Hacker News Highlights: April and May 2018

Why they gotta be using Safari

alando46on Ask HN: Should/is Uber providing grief counseling for self-driving engineers?

That's good. Obviously a horrible thing that someone lost their life but there's also the aspect of how rough this must be for engineers that were involved.

alando46on China’s Censors Ban Winnie the Pooh and the Letter ‘N’ After Xi’s Power Grab

Of course there are many scary things happening in China as well (censorship, power consolidation, etc), but all I'm saying is it isn't productive and doesn't make sense to use this news as another reason why the USA is the best ever (or some version of that)

alando46on China’s Censors Ban Winnie the Pooh and the Letter ‘N’ After Xi’s Power Grab

While this is certainly troubling in terms of what it means for our fellow Chinese humans, I'm not sure it makes sense to compare this to the U.S. We have a leader who didn't receive the majority of votes. Our government blatantly disregards what people want in favor of the elite (1 example being net neutrality), we support policies that have been shown to systematically oppress non-wealthy whites ("war" on drugs), millions in our country have no affordable healthcare options, we have more gun violence per capita than any other nation that's not at war, etc. This shouldn't become a China vs America discussion. Both China and America have big things to improve on. At least in China, the quality of life for the average person is increasing. In the U.S. many people can no longer afford to buy a house, have no savings, and are at risk of losing middle-class status.

alando46on G.M. Unveils Its Driverless Cars, Aiming to Lead the Pack

Completely agree.

alando46on WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

Ya they seem pretty sound to me.

alando46on Theresa May to create new internet controlled and regulated by government

What a waste of energy.

alando46on Show HN: Verb Master – A site for practising Spanish verbs

sweet man really great work. excited to see more languages on this. :)

alando46on Make the Internet Great

Interesting post. I'd wager that the real barrier isn't getting a high speed signal to everyone, but rather getting electricity so that everyone can charge a high speed device. Check out this pic of the earth at night: http://geology.com/articles/night-satellite/satellite-view-o...

alando46on Industrial-Strength Natural Language Processing in Python

Nice write up!

alando46on Ask HN: Stories about women who helped you to become a better programmer?

Of course it counts!!

alando46on Introducing Handle – Boston Dynamics [video]

wow this really has the potential to revolutionize the adult film industry

alando46on Introducing Handle – Boston Dynamics [video]

Citizens United (corporate personhood) already has laid the groundwork for that. If a corporation has the same rights as a person and an ai is a representative of said corporation, the ai would be protected under the corporate personhood umbrella.

alando46on Ask HN: I quit my job. Need advice

Hey great job and congratulations on making the leap! Sometimes it can be hard and scary to know what the right path is, but usually the first step is making a change to get off of the wrong path. Step 1 complete!

I'd consider taking a short break from programming if I were you. Why not get a temporary job as a river guide or something outdoors? Maybe go on a long backpacking trip or do some other kind of adventure. After getting crushed by years of corporate culture, I'm sure your soul could use a little fun and adventure to reinvigorate and recharge itself! In my experience, (I'm a software engineer engineer) the perspective gained from taking a temporary break and trying something completely different (that maybe puts you a little out of your comfort zone) can drastically improve overall confidence/happiness/wellbeing much more than any minor resume addition. Take a moment to emotionally regroup before you charge back into career life!

Seek adventure!

alando46on Ask HN: 100% salary and 5-day week or 80% salary and 4-day week?

I'm assuming office is closed.

alando46on Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

^same

alando46on Ask HN: Would Americans be happier if the US was several independent countries?

Is there any historical evidence suggesting that democracy can make enough people happy enough (to justify the pains of political negotiations) at the size/scale of the U.S?

alando46on Ask HN: What simple tools or products are you most proud of making?

Thanks! I'm working on linking it up an android gateway so anyone who wants to test / try it out only needs a local simcard and the ability to download the gateway software to an android handset. This basically already exists (https://telerivet.com/product/app), it's just a matter of setting everything up.

alando46on Ask HN: What simple tools or products are you most proud of making?

http://worlddev.io

Sms Lists is an sms craigslist for refugee camps. I made it after visiting a couple of refugee camps and realizing that it was really hard for business owners who made <$1/day to have any extra money left over to re-invest in marketing their businesses. Code is here: https://github.com/alando46/smslists

alando46on Magic Leap goes to Finland in pursuit of VR and AR talent

vaporware

alando46on Powerwall 2 and Integrated Solar

Any idea how much power these things put out when compared with a conventional solar setup? 1:1? .5:1?