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cliff commented on How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft   clarkwakeland.com/blog/20... · Posted by u/linebeck
bboygravity · a year ago
And apparently the astronaut !touchscreen! GUI is written in Javascript (not a joke).
cliff · a year ago
I think I was the person who originally proposed to implement the crew control UI in a web browser, and I participated in a week-long retreat in beautiful Bend, Oregon where we implemented the first prototype.

At the time, some very good flight software engineers had been working diligently on a new UI framework that was written in the same code style and process as the rest of our flight software. However, I noticed a classic problem - we were working on the UI platform at the same time that we were trying to design and prototype the actual UI.

I made some observations:

1) We can create a prototype right now in Chrome, with its incumbent versatility.

2) The chip running the UI can actually reasonably run Chrome.

3) Web browsers are historically known for crashing, but that's partly because they have to handle every page on the whole Internet. A static system with the same browser running a single website, heavily tested, may be reliable enough for our needs.

4) We can always go back and reimplement the UI on top of the space-grade UI platform, and actually it'll be a lot easier because we will know exactly functionality we need out of that platform.

The prototype was a great success; we were able to implement a lot of interesting UI in just a week.

I left SpaceX before Crew Dragon launched, so I'm not sure what ended up launching or what the state of affairs is today. I remember hearing some feedback from testing sessions that the astronauts were pleasantly surprised when we were able to live edit a button when they commented it was too hard to reliably press it with their gloved finger.

As for reliability, to do a fair analysis you need to understand the requirements of the mission. Only then can you start thinking about faults and how to mitigate them. This isn't like Apollo where the astronauts had to physically reconfigure the spacecraft for each phase of the mission -- to an exceptionally large extent, Dragon flies itself. As a minor example of systemic fault tolerance, each display is individually controlled by its own processor. If a display fails, whether due to Chrome or cosmic radiation, an astronaut can simply use a different display.

Also, as a side note regarding "touchscreens" -- I believe some (very important) buttons did launch with Crew Dragon, but buttons and wiring are heavy, and weight is the enemy. If you're going to have a screen anyways, making it a touchscreen adds relatively trivial weight.

cliff commented on Faster LZ is not the answer to 150-250 GB video game downloads   richg42.blogspot.com/2023... · Posted by u/ingve
saberience · 2 years ago
Your experience is not my experience at all. Blizzard is the gold standard for me in starting games faster than any other launcher. In fact they are the only one I’ve seen that lets you play the game part way into the download. No other dev seems to have this technology.

I waited hours to play Witcher 3, Cuberpunk, Assassins Creed Odyssey. With WoW I was playing within minutes.

cliff · 2 years ago
Other games have 'start with partial download' technology. In fact, the core tech of the team that eventually created Valve's Steam was downloading assets on-the-fly so that you could start playing a game before everything was downloaded.

I worked on Guild Wars 2, which has this feature. I made a first prototype of it that streamed all content on-the-fly. It's pretty easy to implement - you have an abstraction that asynchronously loads a file off of the disk, and you can just make that download from the network instead.

The tricky part is when you want to ensure all the assets are there for a specific area before you load in, or simply knowing what order to download things in. For example, there was a starter area of Guild Wars 2 that spawned monsters from many other areas, this meant that the manifest of what was needed was enormous for that area.

So the 'playability' threshold becomes a trade-off between game experience (assets popping in as you play) and quick entry.

cliff commented on The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company   costplusdrugs.com/... · Posted by u/yawnxyz
alexosh1 · 5 years ago
Hi guys, Alex Oshmyansky here, CEO of the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company. Crazy to see our little project at the top of Hacker News!

We're planning to introduce a lot more drugs with transparent prices later this year, cutting out monopolistic middlemen in the supply chain and alleviating pharma drug shortages, particularly for rare and orphan disease conditions.

We are looking for a few devs (fullstack, frontend, and backend). If anybody is interested, drop me a line at alex@costplusdrugs.com

In the meantime, happy to answer questions if anyone is interested!

cliff · 5 years ago
The website says you're planning to build your own manufacturing plant. What will that plant do? Will you actually be manufacturing your own medication?

If so, would that include manufacturing the active pharmaceutical ingredients or will you be sourcing them from generic manufacturers and then making the final drugs at your plant?

cliff commented on Widespread fraud in the generic drug industry   peterattiamd.com/katherin... · Posted by u/ravar
jimbob45 · 6 years ago
Well this is fascinating but the notes run out and I don't have three hours to listen to a podcast. Does anyone subscribe to this site that can share the notes?
cliff · 6 years ago
It would be better to read the book she wrote, "Bottle of Lies". I highly recommend it.
cliff commented on Carcinogens Have Infiltrated the Generic Drug Supply in the U.S.   bloomberg.com/news/featur... · Posted by u/refurb
cliff · 6 years ago
If you haven't read it, I highly recommend the book 'Bottle of Lies' which was released a few months ago. It details systemic corruption in a number of generic pharmaceutical manufacturers.

It also details how the FDA is struggling with monitoring overseas manufacturing.

cliff commented on Day of the Tentacle   filfre.net/2019/06/day-of... · Posted by u/doppp
Svip · 6 years ago
It's not necessary to have played Maniac Mansion beforehand? I'll admit this has been my main hesitation. I remember when Monkey Island III was big in the late 90s, I was hesitant because I hadn't played the two games that came before it.

I ended up doing it anyway at the time, but later I would play all three, and the third one really benefits - in my view anyway - from having played the first two ones, even though they can all stand on their own. So I wonder whether Day of the Tentacle is similar?

cliff · 6 years ago
DOTT is a totally free-standing game -- and amazing.

They address this in the linked article (also from personal experience) -- you really don't need any context from Maniac Mansion to thoroughly enjoy DOTT and they are really totally different games in style and substance.

cliff commented on Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software   wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Mai... · Posted by u/LinuxBender
rwiggins · 6 years ago
Awesome, thanks for that! By the way: that integration has been co-opted for use by a bunch of overlay software, like gw2taco [1].

So, even if not used for Mumble, it's now a pretty big feature for other 3rd party software. I use it regularly myself.

(For the unfamiliar: gw2taco et al use position/viewport data, I guess, from the GW2 Mumble API to draw an overlay on top of the game with navigational markers/aids.)

[1]: http://www.gw2taco.com/

cliff · 6 years ago
Cool, that was actually what I had hoped would happen! It was fun creating public APIs; the ArenaNet leadership was extremely supportive.
cliff commented on Mumble – Open source, low latency, high quality voice chat software   wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Mai... · Posted by u/LinuxBender
ethebubbeth · 6 years ago
I still use mumble with friends for general voice chat.

I really wish more games implemented its MumbleLink API for positional audio between clients. https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Link

For example, GW2 implements so people sound relative to where your characters are if they are on the same map. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/API:MumbleLink

The API has also allowed for other tools such at GW2 Tactical Overlay (http://www.gw2taco.com/) to present additional positional information.

cliff · 6 years ago
Happy to see people using that! :) I implemented that Mumble integration while I was at ArenaNet.

Deleted Comment

cliff commented on Show HN: Our alternative to recruiter spam   trypitchbox.com/... · Posted by u/bitsweet
bitsweet · 13 years ago
Yes if they are serious about being pitched relevant jobs. It is one of the filters so we don't pitch jobs that will not meet your basic salary exceptions. If you don't have experience and your expectations are unreasonably high then you likely wont receive many pitches.
cliff · 13 years ago
My salary expectation is pretty different based on whether I take a job in Seattle, San Francisco, or Austin. How is this accounted for?

u/cliff

KarmaCake day514April 1, 2008View Original