jjindev

It's interesting, just yesterday I scanned the low cost system boards looking for one with SATA. I was wondering if I should replace the old PCs I use as filestores with something smaller, lower power, that could just run linux and rsync for me.

This does it ... but as others have said, the price is not really attractive compared to a used pc. I don't fault the design team for this. It looks like a great little board ... but probably for strategic reasons Intel would rather have us continue with those old pcs, rather than risk cannibalization of low-end pcs.

Update: I think I was slow to see the embedded focus of this board and it's IO. So of course it is priced against that world, and not the world of low-end or used PCs.

Just trying to show the Linux kernel as an inexpensive building block in this day and age. One that is used casually, in Raspbery Pi's, in virtualization, etc.

You now, in some sense those early visionaries were beaten by the disruptive innovators of their day.

I think the argument here is that 1000 little choices favoring incremental advantage in the short term add up to a sub-optimal long term, but I'm not so sure. I have a *NIX machine in my phone. Designers "threw it in there" as the easy path. And it works.

It was an interesting thing for me to do interviews, like the interviewee, and then hear the various objections of my peers. They were all over the map, more than any most common thing. All I can suggest is that you ask about the company's goals, adopt them, say you want to help ... basically insinuating yourself into the group as much as is polite in the setting.

(The thing I wanted was someone who wanted to help me get my project out.)

I was just thinking back to the 80's, when newspapers actually printed stories about "rm" and "ls" and unfriendly computers. This was as the GUI came in and cryptic commands were eschewed.

It took us a long time to accept the best of all possible worlds, GUIs more most people, and genuine, expressive shells, for a few.

For those few, rm is not a problem, no. In fact, it's a reminder that this isn't Kansas anymore.

What I saw, over a few decades in programming is that: Right off you start off with a split between people who love it, and people for whom it is a job. The jobs people seldom transition to loving it. On the other hand, each few years, a few loving-it people peel off to stable niches and quiet work. It's attrition. And so while I decry ageism (and that kids might think me less good than I am) ... prejudices can be somewhat odds based. Few people really keep on loving it and trying machine learning late in life. Perhaps each paradigm shift (I can use that, darn it!) leaves a few behind.

Isn't this all just evidence that "better" in most cases is a small margin? You can hate X, and prefer Y, but in most cases the X guys will finish their project. Methodology based crash and burns are pretty rare. And the things that are "not terrible" are not separated by that much.

There have been and will be problems, but it is probably safe to say Android "survived" fragmentation. This is success.

Dan Ariely's Coursera on Irrational Behavior spent much time on current research in these areas. Very interesting (and a good/fun course, should it come around again).

I think the tension might be that looking back, we see many big (money making) operations that ran on far less than 64GB(1), but looking forward we can all think of fun hacks we can do on cheap and common 64GB machines.

It's another way of saying that yeah, that's old-world pricing.

(1 - I remember when friends told me they were real-time tracking all the telephone calling cards in a moderate sized country, with a Sun and 1G of memory.)

Large organizations have a tendency to demand custom solutions, and then they want to throw the switch all at once. That is pretty much opposite the bottom up, self-organization, of HN themes.

If you could "bubble up" a "good enough" 911 system, it probably would be reliable and probably would scale. But the contract will be given to the company which will say they can provide a big custom solution on a deadline. It's almost worse if they believe it themselves. A dishonest vendor would at least understand the scale of the problem(s).

I only watched a bit, but isn't the idea that "phones become disruptive" contrary to other expectation, of ubiquitous computing? Needing "your device" to be self supporting seems to hearken back to rare computing.

(I think I'd like to see better communication between devices, with the expectation that a real Linux development machine will be trivially cheap from here on out.)

The simplest observation is that the Mauna Loa data series for atmospheric CO2 has been very consistent and shows a steeper curve over time. That simply must be net-net all of the environmental changes going on around the world. Really based on that data set no one should have ever hoped that "the plants could keep up," because they never have. That is not in the record.

As an aside, and for the HN audience, boy ... "long read" pages that require the mouse to be mid screen for the scroll wheel to work are really pretty annoying.

To answer indirectly, I have Rokus I use for Netflix. I've always wanted freedom to roam Youtube as freely. That would be enough to make me choose this (if my Roku 3 was not a recent purchase).

Has Google been holding full Youtube navigation as a content card against the other dedicated players? (as opposed to media pcs) Is this where they spend it?

This is slightly tangential, but bear with me. I'm mid-50's, and when I started programming it was a weird thing. I'd say I was a computer programmer, and I might have been the first one that normal people had actually met.

It is amazing now to see the world buried in programmers (and more being produced with people from Pakistan & etc. in Coursera's Startup Engineering).

More amazing that a lot of really good work is being done.

So how does it graph? Plateau or Vinge-ian take-off?

Is the flocking around software apps appropriate or an over-concentration of human capital?

I'm not saying there should be no tab/filter options (I used filter/folder options before tabs arrived). I'm just suggesting sticking the 3 defaults on everyone was a bad idea. Just adding the "+" and directing to a how-to would have been IMO appropriate.

I think good criticisms are vital, and the default in social networks is probably to discourage them. The tendency is toward social affirmation. Even siloing. Certainly criticism should [not] be the predominant mode. Far from it, but we should be open to any "yeah, but ..." It might be a good catch.

There was some religion then also, that "modes" were too much for the human brain.

In general, I think it would have been smart to offer tabs to high volume users. When I only have 10 new things, tabs are ... stupid.

(Amusingly it put an old girlfriend's "my new page is at" in promotions.)

I like it also. My Special Eyes have trouble with default HN. For me, like orf, the faded colors are a bit of a strain.

Also, if I don't open a story in a new tab, but go out and back, I sometimes have trouble finding the entry I just used (and its comments). A color for "just visited" would be nice.

Perhaps the idea that research facilities could become self-funding via IP was well-intentioned, but I agree that it was (is) ultimately counter-productive. It is counter-productive in several ways, including discouraging free scientific communication, creating barriers to entry, and establishing a tragedy of the anti-commons, ...

This was a very sad story. Charcoal fires are prodigious producers of CO. That said, I'm sure we've all seen photos of arctic explorers or Himalayan climbers melting snow in their tent with a small stove. I suppose the general answer is that it is always dangerous, but sometimes you can get away with it. Some specific fuels and stove types produce less CO per unit heat.

http://www.backpackinglight.com/ has several scientific reports (some premium$) with specifics.

For me personally, a candle lantern is about as far as I'd go, and even "cooking in the vestibule" I'd want a good breeze.

Both Hollywood and Silicon Valley have what the economists call Cumulative Advantage. IOW, network effects with critical mass make them "the" destination for a people with a certain dream.

zero, actually. Not super intentional. I tend to unplug my speakers and plug in the headset only when I need it. The cell phone is in the other room.

I did like the old days when forward facing cameras had slide shutters on them.

In MOOC "hype" and "backlash" I see echoes of early open source.

Related: Six Brain-Damage Scourges That Cripple IQ in Sub-Saharan Africa

http://www.amren.com/news/2012/04/six-brain-damage-scourges-...

Toffler should get some credit for "prosumer," years and years ago.

I met a doctor recovering from a very bad breast cancer. Her opinion, for what it's worth, was "get lots of sun, and inspect for skin cancers - they are easy."

My gut feel, based on a BS Chem and then casual reading, has been that the occasional vitamin is best. Keep a bottle in the cupboard, take a one when you feel like it (no more than once a week). Replace the bottle when it expires.

Chances are you don't need it, and I think the body is really good at snatching up things it needs when that pill rolls by.

(I worried about the kidney/etc burden of daily excess, but the idea that daily excess could spur excess in the form of cancer does not surprise.)

OK, maybe running with a HUD would be fun, current pace, previous pace on course ....