paulvs

Could someone please explain what this project is about? I gather it's a new implementation of the Swift language without using Xcode's compiler and Swift standard library, but I find the full readme very undescriptive of what this is and why it's useful.

EDIT: Clicking through the source I found about a dozen files in total, mostly scripts and make files.

"Flight-proven" as opposed to those inferior non-flight-proven rockets we're so used to. In a few years, perhaps flying your cargo on an un-flight-proven rocket will be the risky option. I applaud SES for being the early adopters, and SpaceX for always pushing the boundaries.

I remember reading this a while back on HN, for those interested in the discussion, here's the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523

To get better closeup pictures, if possible, aim the probe for the planet and live stream picture home all the way to impact.

Although I'm not sure these probes are at all steerable, either autonomously or remotely.

Maybe the three word code is localize to the Mongol language (the article mentioned what3words adding support for the language).

I'm also curious about how many nomadic people have smartphones with a data plan to be able to generate their address.

> limitless choice debilitates far more than it liberates

This, is one of the main sources of time waste and stress in everyday life. Take choosing a car insurance policy, each insurer will provide many options with only minor or irrelevant differences, making comparing competing offers hard.

Look at foodstuffs in supermarkets, many times, packaging will come in a many different sizes in many different brands, leaving comparison a challenge.

I admire what some supermarkets in Australia did when they introduced info on price per 100g for all weighable items.

It's ludicrous that someone would risk their reputation and their company's future for a mere 32 more loans on the company growth report. I can't imagine how these loans made a significant difference to these reports. These revelations could be just a scapegoat for more serious fraud.

I agree, I can imagine NASA became complacent, stopped embracing risk, prioritised perfection over practicability and became similar to many public sector departments.

On a side note: In the photo given of 10^100 - 999...(99 9s) = 1, there should be 100 9s, not 99 9s, for the result to be 1.

Some would argue that going to space has much more to do with human survival than our current reproduction problem, which is actually an overpopulation problem rather than an underpopulation one.

One Apollo astronaut when criticised by a commentator that the NASA moon budget would be better spent on other humanitarian causes such as feeding the poor in Africa, his response was along the lines of:

The money spent annually on cosmetics in the USA dwarfs the amount spent on the NASA space program. (Can't find reference on the net.)

In 2015, the global cosmetics market was $61B USD [1], that's a roughly the cost of one thousand trips to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) with a 5,500 Kg payload, or a grand total of 5.5 mega tons to GTO.

We have the resources to become a spacefaring race (at least to the neighbouring planets in the solar system), we simply need to prioritise what's really important.

[1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/259217/global-make-up-mar...

My opinions so far:

Gaia's Children - 5 stars

Reflection - 4 stars

Mean and Clean - 2 stars

Just read Gaia's Children (~35min) - a great piece. I actually listened to it in the car on the way to work using iOS's text-to-speech, which was very good quality.

As I see it, the 350ms delay was added to support zooming via double-tap. What I don't understand is why double-tap zooming is necessary when we have pinch-to-zoom? Can't zoom via double-tap be sacrificed for instant clicks and everyone is happy?

We as a civilisation are evolving from human labour to automated labour, these are the growing pains of that transition.

It is reasonable to expect that within a century, human physical labour for reward will be considered such a backward practice. Humans are capable of so much more than completing repetitive physical tasks, why not give such work to machines?

Every time we choose to buy a hand-made garment instead of one produced by a machine, because our conscious tells us that people need jobs, not machines, we're only treating the symptoms and not the cause. It's an inevitable process that automation will begin taking jobs, it already has as we already know. It starts at the bottom, working its way towards ever increasingly difficult-to-automate tasks. The only one safe is the programmer, he who works to put himself out of a job.

The only question is, what do all the jobless people do?

For a good read, I recommend: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Looking for jobs with e.g. "php" and "javascript"? Try this chrome plugin for searching for jobs on this thread:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-whos-hiring-job...

Brisbane, Australia -> Asunción, Paraguay

I finished uni in Austalia and moved here to Paraguay a few years ago for a sea change. My father's family are here so I was not absolutely lost. I loved learning a new culture and language.

I applied for Embedded Systems Engineer, but since I'm looking for remote work, and I'm not sure if this position is remote, I'm going to apply for other positions as well (I have solid experience with web development on mobile and Objective-C on iOS). I hope this is OK.

I made a Chrome plugin for multi-keyword search for jobs here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-whos-hiring-job...

What's the difference between a simulation and the real thing? It reminded me a little of Permutation City by Greg Egan.

To be precise, light can travel through a medium in a straight line, but it bends when it passes from one material to another. The light bounces off the inner walls of the fiber in a zig-zag fashion as it propagates, so it cannot possibly travel at the speed of light. It depends on the index of refraction as mentioned.

Search for jobs on this thread using multiple keywords:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-whos-hiring-job...

The second plugin I wrote, please feel free to test it out/give feedback.

This is a Chrome plugin I wrote to search for jobs using multiple keywords on Who is Hiring:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-whos-hiring-job...

I remember seeing this posted on HN a few months back.

Here's the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8932737 (see the comments for the correct link..)

I remember liking reading it.

When you reach for your phone, there's always a time when your hand is only halfway there, so theoretically, it'll never get there (Zeno's paradox). Since we know from practice that it is possible to grab your phone, the Great Computational Machine that runs the universe must be using floating-point numbers with a finite precision that round to the nearest whole integer when your hand is about to arrive.

Clearly, proof that we live inside a computer simulation ;)

Feeling like you're wasting your time when working in the IT industry is common to anyone that has any real dreams in life I think. I'd much rather be working for Space X than making banking apps. I think the only way out if your keen to do your own thing is to get some industry experience, make a company, and if it's good enough to sell, sell it, rinse and repeat.

I'm with Elon Musk on this one "I'd like to die on Mars, just not on impact".

A physicist's poem:

To wonder as we wander through this world of mysteries many, is to fulfill the purpose of man's creation and destiny; and he who does not wonder, or the mysteries have not moved, should be interred in the dampest earth, for he is dead and never lived. (Source: the author of a very old Penguin book I once had on relativity)

This letter exposes an eternal struggle that man always had; a fight between individual morality and group conformity. Morals are usually sought on an individual basis, while groups tend to be more immoral to outsiders, or at best, seek to maintain the status quo.