HN user
And contact lenses too. A HBS case study I remember from grad school:
"Optical Distortion, Inc" A new product, contact lenses for chickens, is to be introduced by a small firm formed to market the product. An entry strategy must be planned including price, sales force, size, and location. Allows data for computation of economic benefit to farmers. Includes state-by-state chicken population data for planning a rollout sales program.
Thanks for reminding me that I haven't been to the Lost Art Press site in a while. I have a few of their books; they are fantastic. If you are interested in quality woodworking tools and high-quality woodworking books (both in terms of content as well as binding and paper), check them out.
I hadn't seen their "Build a Chair from Bullshit" book before. I've always been a little intimidated at the thought of building a chair, but this one looks like it's easy to build and has nice lines. Definitely more involved than the OP's chair, but it still looks still approachable with basic tools and skills.
https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/BAC...
Edit: As mentioned in dlbucci's comment below, I forgot to mention that it's available for free as a downloadable PDF book as well as for purchase as high quality bound book on their site. If you have any interest in an easy to build chair with an attractive design, it's worth a look.
These were my go-to guys for sciencey stocking stuffers at Christmas for my kids. Their catalog was always a joy to read, with excellent puns.
Like the guy who wrote the linked article, a GoFundMe for a for-profit enterprise rubs me the wrong way. However, I just donated because of all the great memories they've provided me and my kids. Seems like those of us that like these things may need to pitch in from time to time.
I wonder if something like this could have helped Lindsay's Publications, who went out of business a decade ago. I have so many fantastic books from them. They're really worth a HN post all on their own.
https://makezine.com/article/workshop/lindsays-technical-boo...
You're spot on. The IBM XT was introduced immediately after I graduated and went to work. My employer's employees got a 20% discount from IBM, as IBM was a client. I bought an XT (PC + 10MB hard drive) for $4K (list price $5K). A lot of money then for a new grad. The contrast between then and now is stunning.
And software costs... this was also the era when every "application" (think accounting software: accounts payable, payroll, accounts receivable, word processing) was $495 per application. A small business could easily pay $2-5K for basic software to run their business. And then, of course, it was a nightmare to setup and use and almost impossible to pull off without a "consultant".
But VisiCalc -- it was such a game changer. A totally different way of using a PC that enabled the "ordinary" non-computer person to become an order of magnitude more productive. I think Lotus 123 was the pinnacle of golden era of keyboard-driven spreadsheets, but it was only an incremental improvement over VisiCalc. The journey into the abyss began with Lotus Symphony.
I do like Excel and use it on occasion. But I pine for the days of lean software that did one thing exceptionally well.
Zuar | Sr. Software Developer (Python) | Austin, TX or Remote (US only) | Full Time
We're a rapidly growing profitable startup in the ETL space. Our seven person development team is hiring a Senior (8+ years) Python Developer (backend) to help grow Mitto, our flagship product. Your knowledge and experience will be put to use helping set product direction, define architecture/features, implement new features, and improve deployments and scalability. Our products are large and complex. Our team is small, but agile and highly productive. Developers with initiative, broad technical interests, and inquisitiveness will thrive in our environment.
Our stack includes: Linux, Docker, Python, FastApi, Pydantic, Postgres, SQLAlchemy, RocksDB, ELK
Deployed on: AWS and Digital Ocean via Terraform and Ansible
Benefits: paid medical, dental, vision, ten holidays and ten vacation days
Compensation: $Market + equity, 401K with matching
Posting: https://zuar.com/blog/senior-software-engineer/
Contact: careers@zuar.com
One of my favorites is "Zippy the pinhead" quotes (M-x yow). I believe this has been removed due to copyright issues, but it is still available if you look. Zippy's quotes could be sent to the doctor via M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead.
Not the OP, but my experience with Lyme 25+ years ago in New Jersey was similar. I took oral and IV antibiotics over multiple years. The antibiotics I recall taking are Claforan, Ceftin, Augmentin, Penicillin, Ampicillin, Rocephin, Doxycycline, Azithromycin.
While my symptoms would often improve during/after a course of IV antibiotics, they would always return. I don't ever recall thinking that one of them was what cured me. It was more like the symptoms gradually tapered off over years. I do, however, credit my MD's willingness to aggressively treat the symptoms with my eventual recovery.
Interestingly, both my MD and his wife (also an MD) had Lyme, as did at least one of their children. My advice to people who think they have Lyme is to seek out a physician that has experience in treating Lyme and a willingness to do so. At the time, there was a lot of pressure in the medical community to simply give two weeks of oral doxycycline and then tell the patient that they have to live with whatever remains.
In the Texas Hill Country bluebirds used to be common. I'm not claiming that their decline is due to house sparrows, but it's clear that house sparrows can be quite harmful to many cavity-dwelling native birds. They can be extremely desrtuctive; it is not uncommon for them to kill both parents and offspring to take over a nest or nesting spot. One of many resources on the topic:
Nor did I. I've been using gimp a few times a year for 15+ years -- i.e., never enough to build much muscle memory. Your suggestions will make a huge difference for me.
I was first exposed to Awk when I started work at Bell Labs in the late 80s. Until then, I'd been using either Lisp or C exclusively and was really blown away by how simple some things were in Awk. I used it with impunity to munge all sorts of data for input into fault prediction tools I was working on. Speed was never an issue for me, so I never explored the potential improvements offered by 'awkcc'. Although perl was becoming the new hotness at that time, Awk remained my goto tool for many years.
If you are interested in learning Awk, I highly recommend "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger. It's about the same size as the original "The C Programming Language" and is equally well-written. Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13451454
Probably not. A hardware description language (HDL) is used to program the behavior of the FPGA (that's the FP in FPGA). The HDL is usually stored in flash or EEPROM. As you mention, flash supports a finite number of writes; I'm not sure about EEPROM behavior. The bottom line is that the typical FPGA can only be programmed a fixed number of times (e.g., I think Altera is ~100). Some FPGAs can only be programmed once.
Same thought here. I was imagining that some sort of timing analysis / fingerprinting could possibly be going on.
But to what end? A valid password is a valid password whether it comes from user that takes 2 minutes to type it in, a password manager, or a bot.
In my opinion, the title is a little unfortunate. I almost didn't click on it, as I was expecting a video of someone putting an apple laptop in a blender or some such. It isn't that at all.
Rather, it's actually quite interesting and well done. The presenter goes through the process of diagnosing and repairing a dead keyboard and trackpad on an apple laptop. The owner was quoted $750 for the repair. He determines that the problem is caused by a single bad resistor. There is good, high quality microscope video of him removing and replacing the SMD resistor.
If you aren't familiar with how all this is done but have an interest, it's worth a watch.
The laptop is really a bit of a red herring. If the person is the sort that would be inclined to retaliate against the company, they could have taken a copy of the pii whether or not the laptop was in the picture.
You could offer them payment for signing a severance agreement. You would do this in recognition of their significant contributions to date. The agreement would reiterate that they are bound by their existing NDA, explicitly state that they have fully deleted any company info/files that they may have had in their possession, acknowledge that disclosure of any private company info could have significant negative impact on the company, and could possibly include non-disparagement wording.
Here are a couple of ideas, none of which do exactly what you want. However, they may give you some ideas...
PDFMiner[1] is a python toolkit for PDF. Among other things, it extracts text from PDF files. It also has a tool that lets you find objects and their coordinates in a PDF file. I have not looked at the latter functionality, but it may get you your words and locations.
I've used Tesseract[2] to convert scanned documents into searchable PDF files. Since a search of the PDF file will highlight matching words in the scanned document, it clearly knows where words are and the letters that comprise them. This might be another approach.
[1] https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/wiki/ReadMe [2] https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/wiki/ReadMe
Dude, you are too young at 29 to consider yourself a failure. You're not even half done.
I see nothing but good advice so far -- challenge, exercise, lighten up on yourself. However, I'll offer up something completely different... allocate a chunk of your time to helping others. Focus on their problems and challenges (not yours) and use your skills and background to help them improve their situation. It is incredibly rewarding to look back and see how your actions have materially helped the lives of others. Churches, other non-profits, Big Brothers, community groups, etc. are often starving for skilled volunteers like yourself. And hey, while you are busy helping others, you might bump into a nice lady. It's a great way for them to see you for who you really are, not just what you look like on the outside.
BTW, I just watched Unbroken tonight for the first time. What an awesome story. The number and magnitude of the challenges that this guy went through were staggering -- and he never gave up. The challenges just made him redouble his efforts. Get some inspiring things to watch and read.
Friends? Get some quality ones. If you have any toxic friends, dump them. If a good group of friends doesn't happen by accident, you should consciously cultivate one. You need a group of friends that will support and encourage you, and it's your duty to do the same for them.
Not sure what type of diagrams you are looking for, but PlantUML has a handwritten 'skin' for the usual UML diagrams.
The best way to make “your house pet’s life more wonderful” is to ensure that it is consistently obedient at any time without having to resort to bribery. IMO, the best training guide/philosophy is that of William Koehler. “The Koehler Method of Dog Training” is no longer printed, but you can easily find used copies on Amazon. The book is excellent and I’ve found his methods to be the most reliable way to get a well-behaved and happy dog.
Koehler trained dogs for the military during WWI and went on to train dogs in a number of Disney movies. His techniques are intended to produce consistent off the leash obedience. There is no question as to whether or not the techniques work. However, trainers following the “pure positive” and “death before discomfort” philosophies view Koehler’s techniques as old-fashioned and cruel. Personally, I find it cruel, sometimes even dangerous, to allow a dog to determine when it will and will not be obedient.
Koehler’s approach may not be for you, but you should at least educate yourself about it as an alternative.
Could more accurately titled: "Free Demos of BobCAD CAD-CAM Software that You Can Purchase from BobCAD".
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that users will continue to be able to export all of their data (not just contacts) after tomorrow. The link provided in the above post only pertains to upcoming restrictions to the LinkedIn API. The API restrictions obviously restrict what third party sites/services can obtain, but, as far as I can tell, there are no new limitations on what a user can directly export via the following link:
https://www.linkedin.com/settings/data-export-page
Not trying to be pedantic here, but I think the "Export your data while you still can," is, perhaps, a bit of an overstatement. It's what got my attention anyway.
TL;DR -- A user will continue to be able to export all of their data after tomorrow, but third party services may be restricted.
10+ years ago, a software development manager that worked for me had obvious problems with public speaking, even to small in-house groups (5+ people). She attended Toastmasters and, after a couple of years, was a changed woman. She now makes a great living through consulting and professional development seminars she sells.
Granted, she was both highly motivated to improve and extremely talented, but after seeing the complete transformation she underwent through Toastmasters, I became a believer in Toastmasters.
I think Toastmasters is perceived by most as a conclave of dorky awkward people who like to give boring speeches in front of a captive audience. It may or may not be that, but my experience with her and others, is that it is also quite effective in imparting valuable communications skills.
I think many view boys that earn their Eagle Scout rank in the same way -- they are square, uncool, dorks, doing things that nobody cares about -- anachronisms. But, in the long run, the life skills they get are priceless.
My experience has been that that there are many technical prodigies in any industry. However, the population of technically competent people that are highly effective communicators is quite small. Being at ease when communicating in the large, or in the small, gives one a huge leg up in competing with their peers.
My personal opinion is that it would be hard to go wrong giving Toastmasters a shot.
No idea about your background/skillset, buy you might want to consider volunteering with an organization that pairs technical folks with disabled people to build custom solutions to help with their disability. This is particularly true if you are interested in more than just programming (e.g., mechanics, electronics, fabrication). Here are two that I am aware of:
Tetra Society (http://www.tetrasociety.org/) Tetra recruits volunteers to design and fabricate items that overcome barriers faced by people with disabilities, of all ages and across North America. Their main page currently features a project that allowed a 19 year-old guitarist with muscular dystrophy play the guitar again. Anyone that's a "maker" type should visit the Tetra site and look at their complete project database -- some are quite impressive.
SpeakYourMind Foundation (http://speakyourmindfoundation.org) The SpeakYourMind Foundation is a growing team of engineers, clinicians, designers, hackers, and social entrepreneurs dedicated to empowering these individuals to re-connect with the world. Our goal is to turn our prototype technologies into viable, affordable and life-changing solutions for the many people with neurological injury and disease who struggle to communicate.
For some inspiration, check out this blog: http://www.hackingsma.com/ It's by the father of a young boy (~2yo?) that can only move two fingers and his toes. It details how he successfully designed a built a wheelchair his son could use to explore his surroundings. When you stop to think that only a tiny fraction of the kids with needs like this have parents capable of providing this sort of help, the need for volunteers becomes clear very quickly.
Quite different than working on the current hotness in FOSS, but perhaps more rewarding in the long run. Just a thought.
Pretty much the same story for me. When I first joined the Labs, I got a 5630 (the successor to the 5620), also called the 630 MTG. At the time, it was an impressive piece of equipment that was a huge improvement over a regular tty.
I found the video to be somewhat lacking in interesting technical details -- there really were a lot of neat things going on in the background to make it all happen.
Readers waxing nostalgic might enjoy Rob Pike's paper describing the 5620. It provides an in-depth look at what was going on behind the scenes.
http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/blit/
Of course, I subsequently got a Sun 3/60 and never looked back. But it was fun while it lasted.
Anyone with an interest in the Holmdel facility will likely enjoy this photo album of the now-empty site.
http://www.newenglandruins.com/bell-labs
It was an impressive building at the time. Having worked there for years, it is rather unsettling to see it featured as an abandoned urban site.
I've been using Pelican for over a year and have been pleased. It's mature, but still has active development and a strong community. A few major features:
* markup languages (reStructuredText, Markdown, etc.),
* code highlighting via pygments
* themeable
* simple to use
* support for automated deployment