BetaCygni

Hi HN, in the past weeks I spent a lot of time videoconferencing. However, something was missing. Classical videoconferencing works fine with a small number of people, but when the group gets larger it becomes very static. I built this in my spare time to improve things. The positional audio (use headphones!) makes it easy to pick out voices, and moving around makes splitting off into smaller groups very natural.

This is built using the AFrame library, but I haven't enabled real VR device support. Mainly because hardly anyone I know has one. Also, the webcam images will become a lot less useful when everyone is wearing a headset.

Please give it a try and tell me what you think! Works great for informal gatherings, but if you really miss office meetings EveryoneVR has got you covered.

It turns out the premise of the brilliant game "Return of the Obra Dinn" was not unrealistic at all. Highly recommended! https://obradinn.com/

From the Dutch questionnaire (thanks for the link):

Q.: Kunt u, al u dat wilt, een deel van uw werk thuis verrichten? (Zowel incidentele als structurele mogelijkheden om thuis te werken tellen mee.)

1. Ja

2. Nee

3. N.v.t.

Translation:

Q: Can you, if you wish, do part of your work at home? (Both incidental and structural options for working from home count.)

1. Yes

2. No

3. N.A.

Found it in this comment and thought it was interesting enough to warrant a submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21737951

Not eating meat (or eating less meat) is VERY cost-effective and very easy to do.

As a non-mathematician, for a 2d circle on a flat plane:

- The edge of a circle is curved (convex)

- It does not matter how small a piece you cut of the edge, there will always remain a convex curve.

- The edge of a square has straight edges, so you cannot put this piece at the edge. This means the old outside edge will have to be on the inside.

- You cannot fit the convex edges to each other or to a straight edge.

- Cutting a concave edge from the inside of the circle to fit the convex edge from the outside to will not help as it will produce a new convex edge.

Ergo: there is no place to put the convex outside edge of the circle, so you cannot turn it into a square.

I trust the file signatures, but if you need to write a full article arguing something is secure then it can be made more secure by making the system simpler and more standard.

I don't care for home-brew security, I need something standard.

Also... the firewall at work breaks APT HTTP pipelining. Very very annoying. It would not be able to do so if APT was using HTTPS.

Interesting question. I never have. I just search for it if I need it. Usually on the web, but sometimes in the codebase.

I find the idea of a personal library of code snippets quite weird. The thought never crossed my mind and I know nobody who uses something like that.

I do not differentiate between agnostic and atheistic thought.

I find it very interesting that in de US there seem to be a lot of gnostic atheists (they know for certain there is no god, and are very vocal about this), while in Europe most people would be agnostic atheists, and they don't care as much.

Isn't evolution random chance + selection? That's how I've always seen it.

To be honest, we don't know either, so the agnostic viewpoint (compared to atheistic) would be that it is equally valid. Either you believe in random chance or you believe in God.

I'm always perfectly happy when someone calls the big bang the moment of creation. It could have been.

Yes, at least I hope so. I've done my fair share of volunteer work, am involved in politics, and at work we build software for high schools.

...it has not really invented or discovered anything more innovative than making the lower stages of their rockets land vertically...

Which is innovative enough for me. Cheap reusable rockets have been the holy grail of spaceflight for a long time.

There is still a lot to be done, but the current pace is high. I'm optimistic.

Just a simple misunderstanding/communication problem. The "DNS-only" option seems to be reached by clicking "Pause website", that will "temporarily disable CloudFlare". Seems quite reasonable to still have the certificate available, so it can be used right away when you unpause.

Very cool, and somehow very creepy! This is how we will be hunted when the machines rise up ;)

It seems to be mostly about dealing with everyone's crap, trying to fight fires and constantly battling with the other managers and tech team to get things done. I haven't even written a line of code in months.

Welcome to management! You're dealing with the crap so your people can do their job. If you get to code a few weeks a year then you're lucky.

If you really don't enjoy it, go find something else. There are a lot of highly technical jobs that should prove a real challenge.

Note: not the Ultramarines http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Ultramarines

I'm just a developer who by habit starts counting from 0. I meant to start at January 1st AD 1 0:00 AM.

The definition is very arbitrary: a centi-arcsecond. Why not celebrate a galactic quarter second every 704 days? Just as arbitrary, but much more relatable. As starting point, just take the year 0, so we're living at 4 galactic minutes and 21.25 seconds now.

Ah, at the bottom it says:

Steven Galbraith, April 1, 2016.

He got me. I do worry about some future era where encryption is impossible though.

As a result we recommend increasing elliptic curve key sizes from 256 bits to 3072 bits.

Ouch, if true, that's a major blow. I was starting to like these elliptic curves!

edit: April 1st guys:

Steven Galbraith, April 1, 2016.

Yes, you need to have a local backup. I actually prefer that, it's another backup location for when files are accidentally (or deliberately) deleted or damaged.

Attic + s3cmd sync works fine for me. At least, well enough that I won't be using a closed-source solution. If this is released as open source, great!

We're very good at dikes. We don't have much practice with hydroelectric dams though ;)

Even if you encrypt your email, the subject line is not encrypted

Ouch, some people are going to get bitten by this...

It is not straightforward at all. Most homeless people suffer from a mental illness. You'd have to treat that first. Some of them might not want to be treated though...

The notion that the owners of capital would want to have homeless people is absurd. The "capitalists" would like everyone to be working, as higher production means more profits for them. The state may need to step in with a minimum wage (or basic income), but otherwise the system should work fine.

I'm torn. I love open data, but I fully expect that someone will (partially) deanonymize this.

So the AssetServlet had a memory leak? Serving stuff from nginx is undoubtedly more efficient, but it would have been nice to know the real cause instead of just the workaround. If you work around a problem it has the nasty tendency to come back to bite you at another time.

I'm not talking about myself, those are my experiences with hiring developers.

During CS you don't learn how to write code, you're just learning about architecture and algorithms ;) There is just not enough real-world practice involved.