Hacker News Reader

_Robbieon On Leaving California and the Silicon Valley

Mountain Winery, Bing Concert Hall, Frost Amphitheater, San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, Spieker Center for the Performing Arts

_Robbieon Heliogen, backed by Gates, says it has achieved a solar breakthrough

That sounds like Caia (https://solenica.com/).

_Robbieon Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?

I have been working on a visual programming language for Haskell: https://github.com/rgleichman/glance Currently, it uses Diagrams and Graphviz to visualize Haskell programs. Please email me since I think there is a lot we could discuss.

_Robbieon Glance, a visualizer for Haskell code

The link is a blank page for me.

_Robbieon Glance, a visualizer for Haskell code

Rotating nodes is an easy way to reduce line crossings. Here's a comparison [0].

However, it does seem that vertical and angled text is harder to read than horizontal text, so there is room to improve here.

[0] https://gist.github.com/rgleichman/f812150151b549ca9f634832c...

_Robbieon Glance, a visualizer for Haskell code

Graphviz is only used to find the positions for the nodes using Graphviz's Neato algorithm. The nodes and the lines themselves are all rendered using the Haskell library Diagrams [0].

The next step for the project is to improve graph layout (see Glance issue here [1]), which likely means moving away from Graphviz.

What tools to use for interactivity or an editor is still up in the air.

[0] http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/

[1] https://github.com/rgleichman/glance/issues/1

_Robbieon Glance, a visualizer for Haskell code

Creator of Glance here, happy to answer any questions.

_Robbieon New XPS 13 Developer Edition Lands in Europe, United States and Canada

Here's my reply to another comment about the keyboard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051133

_Robbieon New XPS 13 Developer Edition Lands in Europe, United States and Canada

I got the Developer Edition XPS 13 9360 two weeks ago. I have never encountered the repeated key press problem some people with the XPS 15 seem to have had. Compared with my old X1 Carbon, the keyboard on the XPS 13 is not very good. On the XPS 13 the keys are flat, there is very little key travel, and very little resistive force. The lack of resistive force means that your fingers experience much more force when the keys are pressed (similar to tying on a touchscreen's hard surface). From looking at the reviews of the XPS 13, it sounds like these lackluster keyboards are the norm for Ultrabooks. The `, and \ keys are very small, and the Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End keys are overloaded with the arrow keys. There is only one super key, which is on the left.

Most of the time I use an external keyboard. If you only cared about the keyboard I would definitely recommend getting the X1 Carbon over the XPS 13.

_Robbieon New XPS 13 Developer Edition Lands in Europe, United States and Canada

I got a Developer Edition XPS 13 9360 two weeks ago. My compatibility experience:

- DisplayPort over USB-C alternate mode did not work at all in Ubuntu 16.04 (unplugging the USB-C cable froze the computer). So I upgraded to 16.10, and DisplayPort over USB-C now works, probably because 16.10 has a newer Linux kernel with better support for USB-C. I do encounter this bug (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1634449) where the external monitor will sometimes flash black when the mouse moves between monitors.

- The headphones are very noisy. When playing audio the hiss can be eliminated by running "alsamixer" and increasing the "Headphone Mic Boost" to 10 db gain. Depending on the monitor, there is 0 to very very little hiss when routing the audio through DisplayPort or HDMI and using my monitor's headphone jack. Annoyingly, when first playing audio, it takes about 2 seconds for the audio to start playing though the headphone jack on my DisplayPort monitor.

- Sometimes the touchscreen does not register touches after waking from suspend. A workaround is to close and open the lid.

- Occasionally (this has not happened in a few days), the wifi will disappear. Running "sudo systemctl restart network-manager.service" gets it working again. Also, iwconfig always reports "Bit Rate=1 Mb/s" even though the actual speed is much faster than that.

- Dell disables the super key out of the box. You have to uninstall the "dell-super-key" package, and add the super key keyboard shortcut with ccsm. (see http://askubuntu.com/questions/751661/dell-developer-edition...). Dell says that disabling the super key is not their choice (http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/46...)

Otherwise, everything seems to be working well. I have not tested it, but as far as I know Thunderbolt 3 does not work with Linux yet, so Thunderbolt 3 docks probably won't work.

_Robbieon Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

The link you cited seems to be answering the question "Does more education for an individual decrease poverty for that individual?", while the original post is answering the question "Does more education for a society decrease poverty for society as a whole?". These are two very different questions, and it is quite possible that they have opposite answers.

_Robbieon I Drove Chevrolet's Bolt

The 2016 Toyota Prius is 4.54 meters. The Bolt is 4.17 meters.

Bolt specs: http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/vehicles/bo...

_Robbieon My Struggle with the Last Great Taboo: Admitting My Salary

Here are the salaries for all University of California employees. https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/

_Robbieon What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

To this day I will stay at the bottom of the org chart being an engineer cause that's where I want to be. -Steve Wozniak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJif4i9NRdI#t=290

_Robbieon Functor and Monad in Swift

The simple explanation is that the word functor is being used for two different concepts.

I found this question on Stackoverflow.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16353066/how-are-functors...

_Robbieon Yeah, I'm sick. Read all about it

I am skeptical that his explanations are completely pseudo-scientific and have no basis is fact. If these explanations sound unscientific, I think it is more likely that it from the author simplifying the explanation of his problem, and perhaps he is confused about or is miss-communicating what his doctors have told him.

  One person, who I was living with to shorten my commute to the hospital, which I was visiting three days a week for treatment ...

Getting treatment at a hospital implies that doctors identified some known medical condition they could treat.

  My body retains toxins—and not, like, generic “toxins” that health nuts talk about, I mean real toxins, like benzene and mercury.

If there are tests for benzene and mercury, this could indicate a medically detectable problem. He also seems to dismiss the pseudo-scientific explanation of toxins.

  My body rejects things it should keep, like magnesium. Especially magnesium. Also zinc.

Again, if there are tests for this, there might be some truth to this.

It is unclear how much of his description of his medical problems is known for certain, or how much of this is speculation. He admits that he "barely understand"s it. I would like to hear a medical explanation for why his explanation is impossible or problematic before concluding that it is simply pseudo-scientific gobbledygook.

_Robbieon Helm, a functionally reactive game engine

I used Helm for a simple 2D simulator/prototype for edge detection and orientation. Link to code below (it was my first Haskell program). While it was not a game in any sense, I found it quite fun and easy to use. https://github.com/rgleichman/sense/blob/master/AngleGripper...

_Robbieon A Year of Functional Programming

I will discuss Haskell, since I am not very familiar with other FP languages. In Haskell static typing is more useful than in other languages. This is because in Haskell the type signature of a function gives an upper bound of what the function does. In an impure language, a function may change any accessible mutable values and/or perform IO. These possible side effects mean that in an impure language the type of a function is a very weak indicator of what the function actually does.

_Robbieon Miracle health device crowdfunds $730k, but might be bullshit

This PDF has some test results and a more detailed description of the technology and science of the device. The article does not seem to reference it, so it was probably posted to the campaign after the article was written.

http://healbe.com/files/Healbe_HistoryTechnology_04031-C.pdf

_Robbieon Google's Nest Stops Selling Smart Smoke Alarms Over Fire Safety Concerns

Is there any more information on what exactly the problem was? From the article it is unclear if this is a pure software bug, a UI problem, or something else.

_Robbieon How the Most Expensive Game Jam Crashed And Burned in a Single Day

They only filmed for one day. Also, it sounds like the developers did not want anything do to with the production company afterwards based on how they rejected all potential fixes.

_Robbieon How a Swedish engineer saved a once-in-a-lifetime mission to Titan (2004)

Alenia Spazio’s insistence on confidentiality may have played a role in this oversight. NASA reviewers were never given the specs of the receiver. As JPL’s Mitchell explained to Spectrum, “Alenia Spazio considered JPL to be a competitor and treated the radio design as proprietary data.”

I am surprised that NASA would allow a piece of hardware on a spaceship that they do not have the specs for. Unless NASA/ESA do very extensive testing, this seems like a terrible practice.

_Robbieon Show HN: Trontium Reactor, the first USB Power Delivery battery

Confirmed.

_Robbieon New Mozilla CEO is allegedly anti-gay marriage – Firefox developers boycott

In general this seems like a morally contentious issue. Assuming that a large majority of Mozilla employees support gay marriage, and that Mozilla has no corporate policy against gay marriage, it seems questionable whether an entire company should be boycotted due to the political views of one member of that company.

_Robbieon Preschoolers outsmart college students at figuring out gizmos

I believe that this is the paper (or at least on earlier version) referenced.

Developmental differences in causal learning When children are better (or at least more open-minded) learners than adults: Developmental differences in learning the forms of causal relationships

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

_Robbieon The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage

I like this article, but it does not delve very deep into why the current perceived shortage exists. On the public policy side, there is probably a belief that more STEM professionals will increase the economic competitiveness of the nation, even if there is a surplus. From technology businesses' standpoint, it is in their interests to have a surplus of STEM graduates in order to maintain or reduce wages.

_Robbieon New study shows we work harder when we are happy

You are over-interpreting the study. The difference in productivity was for the task of adding five two digit numbers. This is a simple task very different from software development. The paper presents no evidence that effects on performance on this task is indicative of performance on other tasks.

Also, this experiment investigated short term happiness shocks, not long term general happiness levels. When the happiness shock was in the form of food, performance increased 15%.

_Robbieon It Is Time For Basic Income

I did see this. However, with Freicoin the demurrage fee is only used to pay the miners. In my proposal the fees would be paid back to all consumers.

_Robbieon Interview with Donald Knuth (2008)

Yes, I appreciated that too. I wonder if the media has had an impact on this. In a TV interview for instance, it might be considered rude to refuse to answer a question.

_Robbieon It Is Time For Basic Income

Is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with?

My proposal is an e-currency with a time based demurrage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency)) fee. The demurrage fees would be paid out equally to all consumers. The demurrage fee pay outs would be equivalent to a basic income. Since it is an e-currency, it would be independent of governments.

Why would businesses accept such a currency? In the future wealth inequality will probably cause economic demand to shrink. By accepting these types of currencies, businesses could grow while remaining profitable.