Hi HN, in the past weeks I spent a lot of time videoconferencing. However, something was missing. Classical videoconferencing works fine with a small number of people, but when the group gets larger it becomes very static. I built this in my spare time to improve things. The positional audio (use headphones!) makes it easy to pick out voices, and moving around makes splitting off into smaller groups very natural.

This is built using the AFrame library, but I haven't enabled real VR device support. Mainly because hardly anyone I know has one. Also, the webcam images will become a lot less useful when everyone is wearing a headset.

Please give it a try and tell me what you think! Works great for informal gatherings, but if you really miss office meetings EveryoneVR has got you covered.

It turns out the premise of the brilliant game "Return of the Obra Dinn" was not unrealistic at all. Highly recommended! https://obradinn.com/

From the Dutch questionnaire (thanks for the link):

Q.: Kunt u, al u dat wilt, een deel van uw werk thuis verrichten? (Zowel incidentele als structurele mogelijkheden om thuis te werken tellen mee.)

1. Ja

2. Nee

3. N.v.t.

Translation:

Q: Can you, if you wish, do part of your work at home? (Both incidental and structural options for working from home count.)

1. Yes

2. No

3. N.A.

So basically the article is skewed, and 14% of people CAN work from home. Does not mean they DO work from home.

The way it is phrased, if phone calls, emails or text messages are work depends on the type of job. Unpaid work is still work.

Found it in this comment and thought it was interesting enough to warrant a submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21737951

Not eating meat (or eating less meat) is VERY cost-effective and very easy to do.

Only if you don't like the taste in the first place. Not being overweight and counting calories is another topic, but restraining yourself to a highly processed bean paste instead of grilling a steak in your backyard is a very questionable thing in terms of cost/impact.

it's literally nothing compared to importing less from overseas.

As a non-mathematician, for a 2d circle on a flat plane:

- The edge of a circle is curved (convex)

- It does not matter how small a piece you cut of the edge, there will always remain a convex curve.

- The edge of a square has straight edges, so you cannot put this piece at the edge. This means the old outside edge will have to be on the inside.

- You cannot fit the convex edges to each other or to a straight edge.

- Cutting a concave edge from the inside of the circle to fit the convex edge from the outside to will not help as it will produce a new convex edge.

Ergo: there is no place to put the convex outside edge of the circle, so you cannot turn it into a square.

So not so OBVIOUS, anyway. You need the notion of convexity (not so easy to give abstractly unless you already know the definition). Items 4 and 5 look clear but from there to obviousness...

Being visually intuitive is very different to being obvious.

This seems a bit pedantic. I'm certainly not a mathematician but it does seem obvious that you cannot cut a circle into any number of pieces and rearrange it to be a square, as a circle has curves which would prevent you from making the square a solid without gaps

No no; I’m trying to explain that “obviousness” is a bad idea to prove anything...

Like “an infinite te has an infinite branch”...

You could create a concave edge with a series of triangles (really, trapezoids).

Ps. I suppose this would really only work for an approximate circle, which is a polytope.

The signature method used by Linux mirrors has existed longer than HTTPS has, there's nothing homebrew about it.

I trust the file signatures, but if you need to write a full article arguing something is secure then it can be made more secure by making the system simpler and more standard.

You are going to become very upset when you discover the simplicity of TLS.

The apt system is simpler. HTTPS is merely more popular, and breaks existing apt use-cases.

> It would not be able to do so if APT was using HTTPS.

Oh, you are in for a surprise when you find out what middleboxes really do these days.

Interesting question. I never have. I just search for it if I need it. Usually on the web, but sometimes in the codebase.

I find the idea of a personal library of code snippets quite weird. The thought never crossed my mind and I know nobody who uses something like that.

I feel like it would just add overhead; I remember what project I wrote that function for, now I also have to remember where it is in my everything library? Why?

>Either you believe in random chance or you believe in God

Not really true.

"We don't know exactly how the Cambrian explosion came about, but have a lot of good evidence on how evolution works, which allows us to probe deeper into theories about what happened" is not equivalent to "it's all random chance!"

Isn't evolution random chance + selection? That's how I've always seen it.

Most religious people (or at least most widespread religions) essentially accept evolution, you know. Hard evolution denialism (especially young earth creationism) is largely peculiar to certain forms of evangelical Protestantism and some factions of Islam, these days.

A belief in evolution have nothing to do with atheism. Many religious people believe in evolution.

> I do not differentiate between agnostic and atheistic thought.

I find it very interesting that in de US there seem to be a lot of gnostic atheists (they know for certain there is no god, and are very vocal about this), while in Europe most people would be agnostic atheists, and they don't care as much.

In order to decide whether you believe in something, you have to know what "something" the question is about. The concept of "God" in western society is often so vague it is impossible to have an opinion either way - for some it means "the absolute", for some it means "the force of creation in the universe". I don't think you can meaningfully say you don't believe in such unspecific concepts. But if you go into more concrete religious beliefs, like "God created the world in seven days" or "God punished the wife of Lot by turning her into a pillar of salt" or "Jesus is the only path to God", then it is easier to decide whether or not you actually believe it or not.

My impression is Biblical literalism is more widespread in the US compared to Europe, which in turn is easier to decide for or against. Especially the discussion about evolution vs religion is almost entirely absent in Europe. Framing evolution as opposed to a belief in God means it is pretty easy to become an atheist, since we have overwhelming evidence for evolution.

Yes, at least I hope so. I've done my fair share of volunteer work, am involved in politics, and at work we build software for high schools.