m-i-l

> "Currently, ES and Solr, both based on Lucene, can't really manage vector representations" Lucene does have an ANN implementation due in 9.0, based on HNSW - see https://…

I did a 1,857mile (2,989km) road trip including some of the more remote parts of Scotland in an electric car last year. Interestingly most of the ChargePlace Scotland chargers were in public car parks…

I'd hazard a guess that most people will opt to urinate as far away from sources of high voltage electricity as they can. In the UK we periodically get news stories about people being electrocute…

> "popular idea that the UK was covered in dense forest after the ice age until modern times is mostly erroneous these days" When I was growing up in Scotland, I'm reasonably sure I…

There's a fairly mature one near where I live in London that isn't on the list either. I've submitted it. Agreed that it's great to know that special interest sites like this still…

Second time in under 2 weeks[0]. I wonder how much of this is related to people having paved over their lawns and gardens. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-57811613 from…

One of the important things I've learned from working in technology, is that technology sometimes doesn't work. I've seen people unable to charge their cars on ChargePlace Scotland beca…

The runway of the main airport on the Shetland Islands (Sumburgh Airport[0]) also crosses one of the main roads (A970[1]). Access is controlled by a level crossing with barriers closed whenever a flig…

It's not all good news - although the percentage of instances per age group have been decreasing, as the article says "the overall number of dementia cases is on the rise, due to the increas…

To put it another way, how do we know that the "expert recommended shopping results" won't be any different from paid adverts? Or that when they "share at least 20% of our topline …

Also from last year: "rather than try to build a search infrastructure from scratch, Neeva instead opted to use Bing's search API for its basic result"[0]. I thought that was a huge mis…

I had a similar super-creepy and definitely not just a co-incidence experience a while back, which I shared on HN[0]. Short summary is that it was almost certainly the result of Google buying my credi…

Looks good. I wonder if there'd be any interest in combining with my side project, which is a search engine for user-submitted personal and independent websites (and also search as a service). I …

Tangentially related: "Why bands are disappearing"[0] from a few days back, which points the finger at technology a few times, e.g. it is easier and cheaper for individuals to "download…

Slightly off topic, but I was listening to a piece of music[0] yesterday which starts with a sample of someone saying "I knew these people. These two people." followed by another voice repea…

In my view, "making the financial stake explicit and legal" and "[removing] it from the shadow area" won't prevent abuse, but would simply legitimise it. But at the end of the…

I like the aim of encouraging legislation with long term benefits, but I'm not convinced that monetising this process is the answer. If the crises of the past few decades have taught us anything,…

Note that, based on progress so far, they're not actually building a new search engine as such - they're spending the money on buying the results in from Bing and on marketing[0]. [0] https…

> "The willingness to believe crazy things increases when it feels like the world is dangerous and falling apart." People often overlook the socio-economic context of Tulip Mania, for e…

As far as I'm aware no-one has claimed to have found them so they might be still there, but I'd have thought it would be more likely that someone has found them but kept it quiet.

See also the story of Alan Turing's buried silver[0], which although a rational thing to do in the circumstances didn't end well. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=223…

If you extend to include artists, there's also the gravestone for Patrick Caulfield in Highgate which comprises the 4 large stylised letters D E A D "pierced through a sleek slab of stone, a…

This was a good read. I've read about personal websites being digital gardens, and describe my own as "more of a functional vegetable patch than an ornamental floral garden". However, I…

As a corollary, there was a very old joke that a Microsoft Windows virus would require that the user "Please insert virus disk 2" to complete the installation.

Certainly within London, you'll have a hard time finding a startup founder who doesn't have a privately-educated upper-middle class accent, i.e. who doesn't have wealthy parents. And wh…

In 2016 Musk did say "the first ship that goes to Mars, my current favourite is Heart of Gold, from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ... I like the infinite improbability drive"[0] …

From 2011: "So far, said [James] Espey, the company has retrofitted one car with an electric motor. If all goes well, he said, the company would start selling built-to-order electric DeLoreans ar…