436 karma · joined February 19, 2013
Even if you feel like Hacker News bandwidth is well spent on topics like creative writing curriculum design (and I clicked the link so I'm not saying it's not), I'd hope the specificity of that interest in the topic would yield a comment section with some thoughtful analysis from folks who read the link and spent some time thinking about the topic at hand.
You probably want to understand three areas in more detail than you'll get from the wikipedia links I sent: 1) cosmology (people gave several good recommendations already) 2) wrap your head around the weirdness of quantum physics. I really enjoyed Six Impossible Things by John Gribbin as a good intro to different equivalent ways of conceptualizing quantum physics. It's not heavy on math and you can do it as an audiobook without missing anything. 3) Standard Model of forces/particles. It's really helpful to do this as a part of a book or long article instead of just wikipedia. Some of the recommendations in #1 will cover this. I don't have any recent recommendations to give there, but I'm sure there's lots out there.
Here are few recent articles and papers that are good for jumping in to some recent news: Summary of all the detected gravitational events since gravity astronomy became possible: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.14533.pdf Here's an article on the above if the paper is too dense: https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-black-holes-offer-physici...
Puzzling out what changes in the brightness of Betelgeuse mean: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.10463.pdf
Another puzzle with changing star brightness: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.11268.pdf
And here's one that's helpful to get a sense of why proton/neutron physics is so complex and counterintuitive: https://www.quantamagazine.org/protons-antimatter-revealed-b...
A few of the resources below are good backgrounds, and Wikipedia is great for filling in your knowledge. Then to find interesting things to spark your hobby interest, I'd recommend following astronomers and astrophysicists on twitter, which will also help point you to interesting papers (which may take a lot of referencing Wikipedia to understand).
You'll need at least a little quantum physics to have some things make sense, so it's worth getting that from some of the links people mentioned below if you don't already.
If you don't know the topics below in detail, learn it from wikipedia to make sure you understand topics well enough to explore (in rough order): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysics - links to all the rabbit hole topics you may want to explore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_spectroscopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertzsprung%E2%80%93Russell_di... then look at all the "see also" topics on the last one to go over basic star physics Then for dramatic events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_red_nova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave
Some twitter folks for key topics (and you can find interesting papers and other twitter folks from there): @badastronomer (great for pointers/explanations for lots of topics) @astrokatie (cosmology) @nasaSun (the Sun) @jannaLevin (black holes, gravity astronomy) @matt_of_earth (host of PBS Spacetime, which someone else mentioned) @ajpizzuto (neutrino astronomy)
You could also give them some screen time, but try to keep it more engaging. For instance, video calls with their friends(clearly won't work long with the toddler though) or physical activities led by an instructor on the screen like kids yoga (Cosmic Kids Yoga is good) or dance.
Also, anyone who's used to teaching dance, martial arts, physical training, music, foreign language tutoring, etc is really struggling now with the quarantines. Many of them are trying to continue classes and one-on-one instruction over video (or would be willing to), and they could definitely use the extra money right now if your kids have been doing one of those activities or have something they're interested in and willing to follow on the screen.
While engaging screen time is not as good for them as real interaction, it seems that it is much better for them than just staring at the screen. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160715115023.h... https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/desc.12430 https://thriving.childrenshospital.org/video-chat-babies-gra...
Given lack of fast erosion from liquid water or significant wind (in a very thin atmosphere), whatever geologic process is smoothing out Pluto is happening quickly compared to other points of reference we have.
I use the example of Earth's geologic plates, but that's only one possible explanation. There's also speculation about freeze/thaw cycles of the planetary material and atmosphere (since it has an irregular orbit), movement of water-ice mountains, cryovolcanos, and other theories.
Some examples: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/du... https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh... https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/co... https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh...
The autocorrection and removal of terms accomplishes the same thing.
While I think these measures may be partially to help users, I think they're actually mostly cost-saving measures on Google's part.
IBM Board meetings notes: "We should buy the Cloud" "What?" "You know, the Cloud" "Why?" "We want to be the biggest"
buys weather channel
This seems ideal for future moon bases. If there are already large areas under the surface to protect from radiation and they're structurally stable, it seems like a great starting point. At that point a moon base only needs materials to make it air tight, rather than structurally stable, which means it would require getting much less material into orbit. It might even be possible to accomplish that with heat or chemical treatments of the existing moon rock, further reducing the amount of materials needed.
Since it's also possible to produce oxygen from moon rock (http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/lnews/lnmar97/oxygen.htm), it seems like this drastically reduces the cost/complexity of a lunar base.
Most of the "force them to do an NDA/MOU/make intentions clear" comments seem unlikely to work. Those comments assume that BigCo knows its intentions. Big Companies take a long time to reach decisions, so you have to give them time. Big companies have a lot of steps to reach internal consensus, and sometimes might take weeks just to get the right people in a room to make a decision, so trying to speed up their process could be like a "marry me or break-up" ultimatum too early in a relationship-- unlikely to result in what either party wants. The legitimate exception to that is if you're taking a big funding round or have external interest from another company. Overplaying that usually backfires though. The best approach is to share what you're willing to and stay engaged while limiting the amount of time the big company can take from your team. If they're taking forever to get to a decision, don't rush to have meetings: that limits your disruption while giving them more time to get to a decision. Don't hold up your roadmap unless they're committing to something or can give you a deadline of when they can commit.
Also, big companies typically won't use any NDA other than their own or sign a Memorandum of Understanding until well past the "seeing if there's room to do something together" stage.
Being too paranoid can make you seem like you're hiding something or just unpleasant to deal with and could kill a deal, but some paranoia is worthwhile. The key is being paranoid about the right things.
You should obviously talk to a lawyer to understand the protection the existing NDA gives you, but there's really no purpose in getting a stronger NDA until they've made up their mind what they're doing (because until then, they won't sign one anyway). Unless you've come up with something dramatically new in your architecture (as in you don't use Map-Reduce because you invented something much better), sharing the architecture can be a good way of building some trust and helping them understand how they might integrate without giving too much away. I don't see a big company doing things like changing their architecture or algorithms because they found a better way to do things-- there's just too much inertia to changing those fundamental things in a product if they're close to market, and they'll be sensitive to IP issues too. You should be more worried about them learning from your knowledge about effective customer/selling tactics or about them sizing you out as competition (which would focus on features instead of technology). You usually wouldn't protect yourself against that much in an NDA, so you need to be smart about sharing enough to impress them without giving them too much.
It's usually a bad idea to let them look at code at all until they have an agreement in place about their intentions (that's when the LOI or MOU comes in). They should be making a big effort to protect their own people from IP pollution at that point. If they're wanting to look at code and don't have formal agreements in place, you should wonder if you're really dealing with the corporate part of the company or just some random product team that isn't going through the process they should (which could innocently be because they don't know what process they should be following).
One good way to judge how serious they are is who you're dealing with. If you're just dealing with engineers or junior PMs, it isn't serious at all. If there are more than 2 levels of PMs involved, then they're probably really considering doing something.
Similarly, you can try to tell what direction they're leaning for the relationship. If the titles of the people leading the discussions are Business Development or Solutions, they're probably leaning towards a commercial arrangement, if there's Corporate Strategy or Corporate Development involved, they might be looking at M&A. Don't draw conclusions about the likelihood of M&A from the Corp Strategy or Corp Dev titles though-- it only tells you that's the direction they're looking at it, not how serious they are.
Rather than trying to force an agreement, you can test how much visibility the effort has by trying to get a meeting with a senior executive (someone who runs a product area or BU) and see if they make it happen.
In some cases, a subsequent investment round will buy out the VCs (and/or founders) by buying some or all of their stock.
A few typical situations where this could happen: 1) a particularly interested investor (often a company in a similar space) is willing to pay a premium on the price they'd get elsewhere to align strategically or make sure a supplier or partner stays in business. 2) The VCs sell the stock to later-stage VCs or private equity. This can happen if the needs of the company/founders and VCs don't align. For instance the early VCs want to get out because they prefer to invest in quick hits and don't want to keep their attention on the company for the long-term, so they sell the stock to someone that's willing to take years (and the resultant risk) for a pay out. 3) The founders or the company itself buys out the VCs. Typically this would happen for situations where there's a different vision for the company, for instance the founders want to turn it into a lifestyle business, or a case like #2 where the VCs are losing patience. If the company buys the shares, it has them to distributed to new employees or to limit the number of outstanding shares and therefore increase the price per share.
Ignoring the obvious issue that AWS is a service and not a software business (and they have very different growth characteristics), the data on the graph is incorrect. Perhaps calling it a "tech" company would have been more clear.
AWS's $3.1B revenue in 2013 would be year 3 of the graph. Everything after that is speculation, but is compared to actual historic data from other companies (without explanation).
Several of the other companies lines seem significantly off also. For instance MSFT's first billion dollar year was 1990. By year 3 they were making $2.76B, not the just under $2B shown. By year 4 they were showing $3.75B, not the under $3B shown. By year 6, MSFT was making $5.94B, not the $4.5B shown. Similarly, the lines for CRM and VMW are showing lower revenue numbers than the actual ones for the later years. For instance CRM should be $3.72B in year 4, not the $1.75B shown.
If you stop the graph at year 3, where actual AWS data stops, AWS has grown only a little bit faster than MSFT. Also, the periods graphed for MSFT, CRM, and VMW all include recessions, whereas AWS is growing during a boom.
Because the density of the neutron star and the Red Giant are so different (average Red Giant density is about the same density as water), the neutron star can keep a distinct structure/orbit for 1000 years or so. When it gets to the core, fusion occurs in a halo around the neutron star instead of through the normal sort of fusion you'd get in a Red Giant core. This leads to a different ratio of nuclear isotopes, which is how you can determine these objects aren't typical Red Giants.
The resulting objects survive around 70 million years before the neutron star core absorbs enough mass to turn into a black hole. However, the predicted rate of birth/death of these objects indicates there may be a few of these in the galaxy at any given time.
In other words, it's not really an objective test, since TV programs were built with commercial breaks in-mind.
Not all intellectual property is legally protected against theft this way though (otherwise any disclosure of IP could be theft). The bar for intellectual property to be legally considered a trade secret is high. If the IP isn't sufficiently secret, it's legally less clear whether you can really steal it. Just stamping it "secret" isn't enough. To be a trade secret the company needs to prove that it's a secret, that the secrecy of the IP is highly valuable (for instance loss of the IP's secrecy hurts a competitive advantage), and that they've made significant attempts to keep it secret by limiting access to "need-to-know" people and protecting the IP though appropriate security and secrecy.
In this case, it sounds like the defendant may have gained physical access to a building he didn't legally have access to (ie company made an attempt to limit access with some security) and copied data off a server. MS is arguing that this hurt them financially.
A defense against this might be to claim that even if the data might have been valuable and releasing it harmed the company, they didn't treat it with enough secrecy/security for it to be considered a trade secret. If that's what the court decides, then there could still be a civil suit (breaking employment NDA contract, etc), but it wouldn't be a criminal matter.