Hacker News Reader

jdcon Coronavirus relapse cases continue to rise in S. Korea

To be clear, things are still looking good for South Korea in general[1], but it's good to know that relapse is possible.

1. https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200418001051325

jdcon Employers who use software to take screenshots of workers’ computers

Goodhart's law in action

jdcon We've Built Cities We Can't Afford

Oh I see. Thanks for the elaboration. I definitely agree that large shocks are best avoided, but I do think that ceteris paribus, bringing housing prices down relative to wages would decrease homelessness.

On the other hand, there's a lot of Americans on their nth mortgage, though so any policy aimed at driving housing prices down would have to factor that in.

jdcon We've Built Cities We Can't Afford

It's because GP cherry-picked a paragraph from the History section of that article and ignored the actual present per-capita homelessness rates.

jdcon We've Built Cities We Can't Afford

That may well be, but is fair to displace people because their productivity isn't increasing quickly enough?

jdcon We've Built Cities We Can't Afford

In Japan, house prices commonly depreciate.

Maybe that's why their homelessness per capita is almost 57 times lower than the States'.

jdcon Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?

Timeline of computers and the Internet

Very high level, but it spans 100 BC to 2018 CE, and it covers highlights from the Antikythera mechanism to the Mother of All Demos to Hypercard to the GDPR.

https://www.geek.no/noroff/timeline/

jdcon A Taste of GPU Compute [video]

Have you looked at SYCL yet?

jdcon Covid-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California

But by immune, do you mean asymptomatic and contagious?

jdcon Egoless Programming (2011)

There's definitely a good number of people that are extremely reluctant to cede ground of any kind, including accepting criticisms of themselves.

jdcon Pcileech WebRadar – browser based radar cheat for CS:GO

It's not throughput if the 240 refreshes per second are evenly-spaced apart in time. It's a polling rate and it absolutely effects responsiveness.

jdcon Pcileech WebRadar – browser based radar cheat for CS:GO

Haha, how is 240hz not quick enough for these guys?

jdcon UTF-8 Everywhere

Cf. newtype in Python and Haskell.

jdcon Amazon to add 75,000 more jobs amid coronavirus pandemic

Why are they advocating for said closures?

jdcon Why It’s So Hard to Create New Processors

> EDA tools are expensive, yes. But you are not just paying for the tools, you are paying for all the engineering support being those tools.

So I can buy the tool without the support contract?

> Bugs and problems happen in any development tool [...]

So it's automatically a wash? Why bother trying to improve things if there will always be bugs, right?

> [...] whether it is a problem with their tool or a problem with their setup, to the point that they can deploy a new version of their software on the spot just for you.

I'm not impressed. This is a kludge.

> And they have actual engineers on the other end of the line who know the product like the palm of their hand.

Okay, that actually sounds pretty nice.

jdcon Ask HN: Linux: Controlling files spans on a HDD/SDD

Question: under Linux is it possible to reserve a block of the hard-disk such that the application can definitely append only write in that block?

My understanding is if you're developing a filesystem or working with persistent memory, assuming this kind of control may be necessary; otherwise you're probably just confused.

That being said, it may well be that only appending helps the filesystem (eg. ext4) to keep the file contiguous. So if that's your angle, you probably want to learn more about your filesystem of choice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extent_(file_systems)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocate-on-flush

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/349769/linux-dax-di...

jdcon The new coronavirus appears to take a greater toll on men than on women

Does anyone know if this this is generally the case with influenza also?

jdcon Worst economic crisis since 1930s depression, IMF says

I can't help but think we could close a lot less shops if everyone wore (even sub-N95) masks

jdcon With ventilators running out, doctors say the machines are overused for Covid-19

Just put an exhaust filter on. Amazon had a bunch listed

jdcon Lossless Image Compression Through Super-Resolution

There's also TVeon

https://tveon.com

jdcon Ask HN: What have you built with no-code tools?

I couldn't find a price anywhere on that site. Do you know what it costs?

jdcon Jobs Aren’t Being Destroyed This Fast Elsewhere (US). Why Is That?

Canada for instance

https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/services/...

jdcon Ask HN: Best practices for ethical web scraping?

It seems to me that you are conflating ethics with compliance.

jdcon Windows 10 Hosted App Model

I don't think using the open-core model gets them off the hook.

jdcon 'Ventilators' donated by Elon Musk can't be used on coronavirus patients

Could these machines not be used for the patients without a contagious respiratory infection who need help breathing?

That way the proper ventilators are available to people with covid-19.

jdcon Jitsi Meet – Improving Scale and Media Quality with Cascading SFUs (2018)

Have you tried BigBlueButton?

jdcon How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

(Hint: Refactoring is usually an inefficient way to write a second system, with all of the downsides of the second system effect.)

Sounds like you are saying that refactoring is usually incompetently done to me.

jdcon Whole Foods employees are staging a nationwide 'sick-out'

I think discarding any product said employee could have touched (eg. baked goods) and sanitizing the store would be cheaper than a full shutdown.

jdcon Eclipse Theia 1.0 – Open-Source Alternative to Visual Studio Code

But just to be clear, Oracle does not control Eclipse IP.

jdcon People are planting more vegetable gardens

A very on-brand comment from that fellow. But if you not doing it to pass the time, I'd suggest using a bread machine!