HN user

_mulder_

537 karma
Posts7
Comments207
View on HN

This is not new. Existing Carriers have been offering 100GbE services for some time although the type of customer who requires this type of service is few and far between.

As for 10GbE for residential, if this is literally 10G to the home then that is something new (as a product offering, technology is not new). Interesting to know how they do the hand-off as 10GbE interfaces are simply not useful for home use.

Unfortunately it's not practical to do this for most people who have neighbours. I don't want to hear your classical music polluting my sound-space as much as I would some Techno or Heavy Rock at full volume (both of which are also more enjoyable at loud volumes).

And if you're listening in a car, then digital compression is the least of your audio problems.

Space X and Virgin Galactic are building completely different products. The only commonality is that they both go into Space (and Virgin Galactic barely even that).

SpaceX is not actually doing much in the way of 'new', to date. Their main product is an improved rocket engine design, but it's just an improvement on an existing product. (The self-landing rockets are amazingly impressive, but they haven't managed to achieve success with it yet).

Virgin Galactic is a completely new design (launching a passenger rocket plane in mid flight), at least in the non-military sector. That's a whole world of new unknowns they are having to overcome and, when you consider that, it's incredibly ambitious what they are hoping to achieve. They are less likely to achieve success as a result unfortunately. But well done for being the first to try.

The other big difference of course is money. SpaceX has way more funding behind it, and a much greater commercial potential.

I would also encourage the design team to keep in mind what their users actually use Audacity for. I'm only talking Anecdotally here, based on my own experience, but I would guess that a large number of users use Audacity for it's dead-simple audio capabilities, especially the ability to record sound from an internal sound source (ie; recoding the sound coming our of your speakers). Essentially, I believe many people use Audacity as a modern-day tape-recorder. For this, Audacity works amazingly well. Throw in the ability to trim the sound recording down and some very simple effects such as Amplify, Fade In, Fade Out, and you've got a very good, simple piece of software.

I may be wrong, but if they pile in more effects and 'advanced' functionality, like any form of batch scripting or API integration. They're going to bloat the software unnecessarily at the expense of the average Joe. That's going to make the UI situation even worse.

Perhaps the time has come for Audacity to offer a basic version, with limited effects, and a 'Pro' version (possibly paid for?) that can cater to the advanced user who wants more effects and automation options and won't feel alienated by a cluttered, technical UI.

Submarine Cable Map 11 years ago

Are you referring to the Gray Cable with all the landing points in Northern Canada?

Firstly, this is not the North Pole. There is no land at the North Pole, which is why it doesn't appear on the map. What you're looking at is infact the Ivaluk Network, designed to connect up remote Arctic communities (and I'm sure some Oil and Gas interests).

The other cable system going to the Arctic Circle is the Svalbard network connecting mainland Norway with this remote island. Why? Well it's the location of a ground station for Low Earth Orbit satellites (including imaging/spy satellites).

"the circumvention of data caps sold by Deutsche Telekom (totally different from T-Mobile US) for users of Spotify."

This is not net neutrality, it is just Deutsche Telekom bundling a product with their subscriptions. It only becomes a net-neutrality problem if DT begin to prioritise Spotify traffic over other traffic (ie; let's allow Spotify traffic, but throttle iTunes).

I completely agree.

"in the event of a string of lights going out on your tree, replacing the strand is usually the best option. It’s pretty difficult to find that one bulb that’s causing the problem"

That one sentence sums up most of what is wrong with Christmas, and society, today. I find the "just throw it away if it's broken" attitude really difficult to accept. I would hope everyone reading HN has the self-awareness to consider where their possessions come from and what happens to them when they're thrown away.

Not really sure what the point of this is. How do Google Now and GMail Offline == 'The Web'? They are specific Apps designed to work in a specific manner, they are not 'the web'. GMail does work with any browser when accessed via 'the web'.

100% agree with the Apple example though. Why didn't they stream in a more accessible format?! It just served to annoy people and exclude even more people from the Apple elite.

a few years ago banks and financial institutions seemed to be especially bad at restricting access to just IE. Thankfully they seem to have got better, but maybe that's because I don't use Opera anymore!

Originally I thought this was going to be an attack on Hungary's Internet Tax or some freedom of speech protest, alas.

Misleading headline... Why emphasise 'Everybody' in the headline when this is not the case?!

From the article: "out of 2250+ people in Yahoo SDC Bangalore, only 250 remain".

Well, if 250 people will remain (plus the "Yahoo India teams, which looks at Yahoo.in web properties [which] are untouched") then quite simply, this is not 'everybody'.

"Yahoo India is Laying Of 89% of it's workforce in India" is just as click-baity, but 100% more honest.

Judging from the Robot letter in the article, the easiest way to spot a robot-penned letter would be that specific words are all the same. Look at the word 'the' in the picture, or even the 'th' in 'this'. They're all identical.

The robot seems to be working from just a small pool of characters.

Some sort of randomisation algorithm would work well here, varying the size, weight and slant or jitter of each letter would at least make it appear more random, and harder to spot.

Having said that, if you are someone who works on this sort of invention, please take a long, hard look at what you're doing with your life and consider just how this invention is contributing to the advancement of mankind.

HFT in My Backyard 12 years ago

"scam"? Care to elaborate?

HFT has been around in Europe and is as well established as the US, so I assume the alleged scam relates directly to buying and operating Microwave networks. Seriously, please do provide more information, I am keen to learn more.

disclaimer: I've not read 'Flash Boys' yet, so apologies if it's all explained in that book

Property prices are fuelled primarily by population growth. If we look 30 years ahead, it's likely that the population of rich world countries (especially Europe[1]) will decrease as the baby-boomers, sadly, disappear. That could be a huge chunk of the current home-owning population leaving lots of empty homes, often in quite desirable areas. It would be safe to assume this extra supply would cause demand, and therefore price, to fall in the next 30 years.

Immigration could fill the gap but as the source countries grow in prosperity, perhaps immigration from them will reduce too.

This all depends on whether or not population will continue to increase, indefinitely.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growt...

Losing Music 12 years ago

Music is like your own personal life-diary that you don't even have to write. Music is such an important trigger for memories (along with smell which is even more powerful but less controllable) but the majority of people seem to take it for granted and make no effort to preserve these memories. It's staggering how hearing a song you haven't heard for 20+ years can immediately put you right back to being a kid, or some other nostalgic memory, even if only fleetingly.

Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to having my music memories overwritten; I've been known to leave clubs or bars or turn off the radio if a particularly personal song is playing because I don't want my original memory to be overwritten. My friends don't understand, to them music is just music and something to dance or shout along to. A handful of songs provoke extremely potent memories in my mind of when I was a kid. Hearing these songs is the only channel I have to experiencing that time of my life. The problem, and half of the beauty of it, is that I don't actually know what the songs are until I hear them. I keep intending to compile a list of which songs trigger these memories.

Infact I, along with most people I imagine, have a whole library of songs that read as mile-posts dotting throughout their life. Perhaps a particular song triggers a memory of a summer holiday, or high school party, or road-trips as a kid, or even just what you listened to whilst coding your first successful project.

The single worst thing that can happen to music is for it to be used for advertising. What may be a catch song to a marketer could be someone's last memory of a dead parent or friend. I commend artists, especially Radiohead, who vehemently forbid their music to be used for anything after it's been released. Thom Yorke (I think) did a great interview on the subject but I can't find it, annoyingly.

Perhaps the decay times on the trails is too long, but I can't really detect any patterns here, other than that people seem to walk, run, cycle and drive down roads. After a few mins, all this seems to do is highlight the road structure of a city. A shorter trail decay would highlight the people commuting and show activity for transport type by time of day.

Another interesting metric would be to adjust brightness based on length of journey.

An equally interesting, and perhaps more useful, question I always follow that with is "What's the worst thing about workign here"... The cop out answer is usually 'it's a big company so you get some politics and inefficiencies'.. I suppose a good follow up would be; "how does the company intend to change this going forward?" or even "how does it compare to other places you've worked"

This does seem to make sense, the more aware of your environment you are (the more you know), the more modest you become when you realise you don't know it all.

I hardly think modesty is a curse.

Isolated community bubbles are present in many industries with equally damaging effects. It's arrogance to assume it's just Tech because the 'unique selling point' of tech seems to be intelligence (ironically, probably the most common 'unique' selling point). Fashion, Film, Finance, Politics all have their own problems stemming from a self-selecting isolated elite.

A great response would be to just say "hold on", whip out your phone and Google the answer, show it to them and finish up with "How long did it take your other candidates to complete that task? next..."

Point being, you're demonstrating initiative and, that old cliche, thinking outside the box. Think Will Smith in Men In Black.

Some interviewers might be impressed with your lateral thinking, others might be annoyed at your attempt to be a 'smart ass' and avoid the intention of the question. But that's always the problem with these type of interview questions, it depends so much on the expectations of the interviewer.

I'd suggest starting the answer to each question with a clear Yes or No, Right or Wrong so people can skim through.

Example:

7. Fine, but I still get to send users their passwords once they created them so they don’t forget them, right?

No, Email is not a secure medium.....