Is the doctoral thesis obsolete? - <AUTHOR> http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/phd-is-the-doctoral-thesis-obsolete/2020255.fullarticle <comment><USER2> > He would much prefer to see theses' introductory sections "written along the > lines of a good review article, where the student does a critical appraisal > of the state of the field".

Yes! A well-written thesis continues to be a very valuable contribution to the literature, but it is the parts that are _not_ original work that are most useful. The reason is that older researchers in a field have almost no incentives to write good and _truly_ introductory review papers, and the introductory sections of a thesis are often the best point of entry.

However, most theses are not well written because student don't have much incentive either.

> Hence, theses become bloated with "page after page of methods", along the > lines of: "I pipetted 2.5ml of this enzyme into that tube."

Yea, it's boring for professor on the thesis committee to read, but this sort of stuff is very valuable for students and postdocs, who often struggle to reproduce poorly-documented results from other labs.

> "Communication within the science world and with the public is becoming > shorter and snappier, yet our PhDs still seem to be stuck in the 1960s."

Ahh yes, just what we need. Thesis-by-tweet...

<comment><USER3> >Ahh yes, just what we need. Thesis-by-tweet...

Look, a lot of things don't need 100 pages of text. Of course, as a researcher, what you don't want to do is to make your research easy to read, because people may then assume that it was easy to do and therefore not impressive.

<comment><USER4> If you're simple, clear and first, you're going to get plenty of citations, though.

<comment><USER5> For CS? Not in your thesis, but maybe in a paper based on the thesis.

<comment><USER6> In natural sciences, thesis is based on papers. In CS, paper is based on thesis.

<comment><USER5> Both actually. Its just that your thesis won't get many if any non-self citations, even if it is really good. People will cite your paper, which they bother to take time reading (hopefully).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The doctoral thesis already is already essentially universally several papers stapled together in experimental science and engineering. The shortest compelling way to explain your results is a paper. Furthermore, the notion that your work over 3-8 years is one cohesive story has been violated by every graduate student I've ever met.

<comment><USER8> My thesis (in math / CS) was essentially several papers stapled together, except that I made the papers into chapters, expanded/rewrote bits and pieces, and added narrative to glue the chapters together.

This took about six months. In retrospect, I think this time was well spent. I developed my understanding of the material quite substantially by reworking it. But doing so was certainly not nearly as fun as writing new papers.

<comment><USER9> Same here except that for me it feels like wasting a lot of time, unlearning all my other skills and not staying up to date with current trends.

Having to rewrite polished and reviewed papers is aweful and not publishing stuff (except in a thesis) is unacceptable for many institutions, so I think making papers to chapters is the way to go as long as there isn't something completely different (e.g. no prose but making all data, hardware, software, documentation etc open source)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The UK process is great if the student's goal is to gain a PhD. After approximately 3 years of running experiments, you present your hypotheses and gather together your results and try to make it look like these are related.

If the goal is to have an academic career, this is not adequate. Graduating without having results that are good enough to publish in peer reviewed articles puts the UK student far behind others around the world who'll be competing for postdocs.

Having moved from a high profile lab in the UK to a high profile lab in the US, I was shocked at how far behind the US/French/German postdocs I was.

<comment><USER11> This is so true. A UK PhD is a gloried three year honours degree. Here in Australia traditionally PhDs averaged over 4 years (I took nearly 5 years, but I was working full time for the last 18 months after my scholarship ran out). I knew only one person who finished in the regulation time of three years - most people got most of their results in the last year.

When I was an academic my university put great pressure on us to get our students out in under 3 years citing the UK system. Of course when we raised the problems the UK system (ie having our students graduate with no papers) would have on them we were told basically to shut up and do what ever it took to get the students out on time. It became pretty common for supervisors to write their students dissertation and for more senior researchers to 'gift' results to students to get them out on time.

<comment><USER12> _It became pretty common for supervisors to write their students dissertation_

Wow! Academic dishonesty just to push people through the system? So much for abusing students as cheap labor!

<comment><USER11> Yep. Just one of the many reasons I am no longer an academic. I should mention that students are still being abused as cheap labor - the only change is the incompetent are getting pushed through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This infuriates me:

"But Leigh argues that unlucky students with no results "shouldn't be getting a PhD anyway", since the degree is awarded "for a contribution to knowledge, not for a good try"."

Translation: never do work on anything that has even the _possibility_ of failure.

Yeah, what a great way to advance knowledge.

This is just another extension of "negative results have no value in science".

</comment><comment><USER14> Although my opinion is unsubstantiated, the biggest problem is the barrier of knowledge : it takes longer and longer to familiarize yourself with an increasingly growing body of literature. Second, the low-hanging fruit tends to be picked, leaving researchers fighting for the few undiscovered scraps the remain. Third, papers are getting longer and more technical, with more data and co-authors. Forth, much longer approval times, high submission fees, and much higher rejection rates. Research seems to be a team effort now, of many people collaborating over years to publish papers that are very lengthy and technical that reflect only incremental progress in a field.

<comment><USER15> I think there is always low hanging fruit, you just have to know where to find it. Agreed that publishing papers, especially in top conferences, takes more of a team effort now.

<comment><USER16> I hope we don't train our young scientists to go after low hanging fruit _exclusively_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article seems to adequately describe the definition and obvious shortcomings of the word _thesis_; which is what a _masters_ student should be doing. A _doctoral_ student should be doing a _dissertation_.

I'm not sure why so many people want a doctoral degree, as opposed to a masters. It doesn't offer significant financial return on the investment over the masters and it's only really required for entrance to the ivory tower... and once you're there you're going to be dealing with way more B.S. than the horrors of writing an introduction...

The entire point of the dissertation is to formulate a complete picture of where things belong and how they interact. It should start from nothing and progress to your contribution. _It should outline pitfalls, mistakes, musings, ideas, future works, etc._ all things which are included in paper publications only minimally (and often requested removed by referees for being off topic!).

Yes, it takes 6 months of headbashing LaTeX editing and it comes out with stupid errors on the front page and no one will ever read it besides yourself and your advisors; but that's honestly one of the best lessons you can learn about life in the ivory tower... You _will_ waste months of your life going nowhere, you _will_ have headbashingly mundane paperwork to do more than you like to think, you _will_ screw it up (and need to understand that every paper has some dirty little secret), you _will_ babble on about things no one cares about... That's what being an academic is!

If you just care about progress for publications and get a pained feeling when your time appears (appears! every fuck up is a valuable lesson) to have been wasted, then you are not an academic and, yes, the experience will be pointless for you.

The truly disgusting thing is these advisors who are streamlining and mechanizing the process. Go ahead and check out which schools pump out the most PhDs per faculty and per time invested (China and India? I'm fairly certain?). Which journals will accept the most articles per time invested (again the same). Are these places onto something no one else is onto? They are capable of producing far more quickly and efficiently than the "archaic" systems...

Just wait 5 years and see why that's a mistake.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is only a critique of the monograph-type PhD thesis, which I agree that should become obsolete.

Where I come from, a thesis is 3-6 published papers and a 20-60 pages introduction/summary that explains the background a bit more than is traditional in a paper, and summarizes the results.

Yes, the student spends 1-3 months writing the summary part, but most of their time is spent on research and writing the actual papers.

</comment><comment><USER18> Reasons for thesis taking too long (and approximate time dealing with them):

\- Writer's block: couple of weeks

\- Dealing with braindead typeset standards, even with things like LateX libraries/helpers (some people still do it in Word): A couple of weeks to months

\- Dealing with all the citations (because whatever you write, barring the most obvious, has to be quoted): one-two months

\- Nitpicking by advisor: some weeks

<comment><USER19> >Nitpicking by advisor: some weeks

Lucky you. I was told to completely redo mine by my advisor.

<comment><USER20> Lucky _you_. My advisor has a reputation of not even reading theses ([http://www.thespectroscope.com/read/dont-stress-over-your- th...](http://www.thespectroscope.com/read/dont-stress-over-your-thesis-no- one-will-read-it-by-lenny-teytelman-318)) which makes it hard to gauge what the thesis should even be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [http://www.nature.com/physics/looking- back/crick/index.html#...](http://www.nature.com/physics/looking- back/crick/index.html#f1)

Crick et al wrote a 1-page paper (on the structure of DNA) for which they won a Nobel Prize back in 1953.

<comment><USER22> Adding Rosalind Franklin to the author list would have made it too long.</comment></comment>


Profitable with $0 seed funding? - <AUTHOR> http://www.share-house.com.au/ramblings/by-the-numbers.html <comment><USER2> This is particularly interesting because I find myself in somewhat the same situation. I've been working on a startup idea (<http://www.scriggle-it.com/>) with a team that's never taken (or sought) VC funding. The only investment we've put in has been time, and expenses paid for out-of-pocket, for things like the domain name, hosting, SSL certificate, payment processing gateway, and the like.

I'm our sysadmin and backend programmer, and then another guy does graphics and site design, and we have an ideas/customer relations/PR-type guy. We've also got a guy working when he can on a Java-based client-side application that syncs with our site. We launched the site last October and have netted a few thousand dollars in profit, thus far. We're still totally committed to our idea, and it's occurred to us that seeking/taking VC funding might be a smart next step. It would keep me from having to work a second, "real" job, and allow us to hire a friend of mine, who's a top-notch coder but is married and can't quit his current (barista) job unless it's profitable for him to do so. Furthermore, we're trying to expand into in the cell/SMS arena, and VC funding would allow us to pay for a short code, an SMS gateway, etc.

Having no VC experience, however, we're wondering whether venture capitalists would even consider us, what their terms would be, what VC "stage" we would apply for, etc. Any comments, suggestions, or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER3> I really dig your site.

<comment><USER2> Why thank you. =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is interesting but completely discounts the social aspect of investment.

I don't know much about it, but my guess is that a good angel or VC will make serious efforts to get your business to the next level. They'll undoubtedly know people you won't. They also are free to say no, meaning they can give criticism without rose colored glasses.</comment>


A good coder? - <AUTHOR>

A comment from http://journal.dedasys.com/2012/03/22/im-not-good-enough-to-work-on-open-source-software
"You never will be good enough of a coder unless you hinge your existence on your code. Not your business skills. Not you marketing skills. Not your people skills."
Penny for your thoughts. <comment><USER2> Sounds like some kind of OCD obsessive, or the plot to a bad sci-fi movie. Hinge your existence on your code? What does that even mean? I code therefore I am? How good is "good enough", anyway? It's quite possible to churn out decent code without it being the hinge of one's existence.

The same comment goes on to say "When you jump of the cliff their is exponential growth before you hit the ground. When its time to pay bills well climb back up the cliff when you get to the top of it you will find your self much further." so there's either an awful lot being lost in translation, or this is someone to whom coherent thought does not come easily.

</comment><comment><USER3> From just the quote you provided it sounds like he's being melodramatic, but with the full comment + the post I _think_ he's saying you'll only get to be a good enough coder if you try to support yourself solely from your coding efforts.

Plenty of examples to counter that, although it might be true for some. Having to get good fast in order to put food on the table certainly sounds like it'd be motivating, although in a way I'd find unpleasant.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder why people worry about how good <anything> they are. Isn't life all about continuously improving yourself and using whatever skills you have to create value for yourself and this world? Doesn't matter how good/bad you are there is always room for improvement.

"Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem; work hard to improve." - Alan Perlis

</comment><comment><USER5> I feel that code accompanies intuition and design. Code should be a way of expressing these ideas to a computer. High efficiency code is not what drives a successful start-up , ideas are

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://journal.dedasys.com/2012/03/22/im-not-good-enough- to-...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2012/03/22/im-not-good-enough-to-work-on- open-source-software)</comment>


Writing Hello World in Web Assembly (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://wa9ace.net/2017/04/20/hello-world-web-assembly.html <comment><USER2> Interesting to compare this to the Hello World that's now possible with WASI and its fd_write function:

[https://github.com/CraneStation/wasmtime/blob/e530a582afe6a2...](https://github.com/CraneStation/wasmtime/blob/e530a582afe6a2b5735fd7cdf5e2e88391e58669/docs/WASI- tutorial.md#web-assembly-text-example)

<comment> s-macke Here is the Hello World example for WASI in headerless C using clang. A little bit more code but also more general.

[https://gist.github.com/s-macke/6dd78c78be46214d418454abb667...](https://gist.github.com/s-macke/6dd78c78be46214d418454abb667a1ba)

<comment><USER3> slen() returns 1 more than it should, or is it meant to include the '\0'?

<comment> s-macke Yes, you are right. This function should behave as the ordinary strlen function. Fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's always nice to see a blog that doesn't have ads or even a Google tracking snippet. :)

<comment><USER5> It is, so I sent him some BAT.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I appreciate it!

<comment><USER6> Same. Sent you some as well. Nice writeup.

<comment><USER7> [https://basicattentiontoken.org/](https://basicattentiontoken.org/) for anybody else wondering

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems like Web Assembly is one of those things that's changing so fast that a 2 year old article is probably already outdated. Is this still relevant?

<comment> s-macke The article describes WebAssembly at a low level and use the assembly language wast. Therefore, it is still relevant if you want to understand WebAssembly at this level. The specification has not changed in the last 2 years.

However the tooling around WebAssembly changed a lot. E. g. the compilers start to fully support the wasm target.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Man that is an extremely ugly language. Is this supposed to convince people to use it? Who's designing this language?

<comment><USER10> It's mostly a target for other things to compile to. (The hint is in the name.)

<comment><USER11> I don't think the poster you're replying to was serious, rather they were trying to make a joke (which I agree does not add anything to the conversation, however).</comment></comment></comment>


Britain's GCHQ agency denies wiretapping Donald Trump - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39300191 <comment><USER3> The State Department has issued an apology to GCHQ via diplomatic channels. Which is unprecedented. The US should not be needing to apologise to one of its closest allies, ever.

I agree with John Gruber on this, POTUS's allegations are the actions of a man whose elevator does not go all the way to the penthouse of Trump Tower.

<comment><USER4> _The State Department has issued an apology to GCHQ via diplomatic channels._

Do you have a source for this?

<comment><USER5> [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/17/us-makes- formal-a...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/17/us-makes-formal- apology-britain-white-house-accuses-gchq-wiretapping/)

"Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, have apologised over the claims. "The apology came direct from them," a source said.

General McMaster contacted Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the Prime Minister's National Security adviser, to apologise for the comments. Mr Spicer conveyed his apology through Sir Kim Darroch, Britain's US ambassador."

<comment><USER4> Here's another quote from the article:

 _Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, have apologised over the claims. "The apology came direct from them," a source said._

It's based on an anonymous source.

Here's another quote from that same article:

 _" Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command - he didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice - <USER2> used GCHQ."_

So we're going to discard what several anonymous sources said, but we will believe what some other anonymous source said?

<comment><USER5> Right, it goes both ways. Trump based his tweet on Fox News reporting from an anonymous source. The Telegraph is reporting from an anonymous source. Do you believe both of them?

<comment><USER6> GCHQ has now made a public statement, so the Telegraph was correct. It isn't in the habit of publishing made-up bullshit (aka fake news). Fox, on the other hand...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's GCHQ's usual silence - at most they say "we don't comment, can neither confirm nor deny, etc."

There's a denial.

And there's saying it's "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" which goes beyond a mere denial. For GCHQ, this is very strong language.

<comment><USER8> You're probably right - although saying the accusations are "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored" isn't strictly speaking the same as saying that they're untrue. GCHQ could believe that (although they happen to be true) it's nonsense and utterly ridiculous for commentators to be asserting so without any evidence, and it would be much better for everyone to ignore the accusation.

<comment><USER9> I'm British, we don't like to overstate things. When you see GCHQ call something "nonsense" and "utterly ridiculous" you can be assured that they are denying it.

And I think there's something more. I would read into their statement that they are very angry.

<comment><USER10> Yes, this is exactly that I took from it. It's a massive slap in the face. We aren't even going to bother with protocol, you a being a major bell-end.

<comment><USER11> American's need to start using bell-end as an insult.

<comment><USER10> It would be welcome relief from 'ass-hat'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For me, it's not that I have complete faith in the morality of Obama, NSA & GCHQ. It's that Trump has not presented any evidence for his claims, even circumstantial. If he believes something, there should be a reason for those beliefs, and he should be able to present it. There is no point debating someone who refuses to support their stance.

<comment><USER13> >For me, it's not that I have complete faith in the morality of Obama, NSA & GCHQ. It's that Trump has not presented any evidence for his claims, even circumstantial.*

Whether Trump, Obama, Clinton or even Pailin had said it, and whether they gave evidence or not, it's obvious that it happens.

Not from an smoking-gun evidence based standpoint, but from a knowing history, and people, and such agencies priorities and how lose their leashes are standpoint.

When it comes to such agencies, evidence is the last thing one would find. It's not like their advertise their operations except in extreme fiascos. But such wiretapping is completely in agreement with the essence of what they do.

<comment><USER12> I cannot base my beliefs about specific events on my general sense of what kinds of things happens. To take an example claim: "Trump is getting money that are essentially bribes from a Brazilian oil company." That feels plausible to me, and fits my general view of Trump and the world. But I don't believe it's true, in fact I just made it up.

<comment><USER13> > _I cannot base my beliefs about specific events on my general sense of what > kinds of things happens._

Lacking concrete evidence, that's exactly the kind of thing you should base your beliefs of specific events on.

<comment><USER12> Not without any specific evidence. Otherwise I'd have to believe an almost infinite number of things that seem possible and fit my worldview.

<comment><USER13> > _Otherwise I 'd have to believe an almost infinite number of things that > seem possible and fit my worldview._

You don't have to believe them as absolute facts, just assign a possibility to them.

After all, nothing, even "this table is real" has a 100% fact status (we might be in a dream or a simulation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Its curious that the GCHQ statement doesn't actually contradict Trump. Trump claims he was wiretapped _before_ the election, but GCHQ have denied spying on him when he was president-elect, i.e. _after_ the election.

<comment><USER15> Trump's tweet was, "Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory."

"just before" reads to me as the starting point in his accusation, not the ending point?

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't try to read anything logical or coherent into that tweet, Sean Spicer has been trying to walk it back and say it's just about surveillance in general and wasn't specifically about Obama.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What is even the problem here? Why shouldn't the GCHQ wire tap the US president? At best you could complain about US intelligence agencies if they used foreign intelligence agencies to circumvent restrictions on targeting US citizens. But foreign intelligence agencies spying on US citizens, especially politicians and not average citizens? No matter whether it is the GCHQ, Russia or somebody else, that is simply their job, especially since the US itself doesn't care much about friends and enemies in this regard.

<comment><USER6> >Why shouldn't the GCHQ wire tap the US president?

Because it would be highly embarrassing for the UK if that actually happened, and would severely damage the special relationship.

<comment><USER17> Why would that be embarrassing for the UK? Maybe you could call it embarrassing for US counter intelligence but even there it only seems justified if it would be done in a blunt manner and still go unnoticed. I won't dispute that it would not be good for the relations between the US and the UK, on the other hand the US doesn't care much either when it is spying on allied leaders. So the UK spying on the US president seems fair game under current circumstances.

<comment><USER6> Is there any evidence that UK/USA is spying on each other _without_ the other country's permission and knowledge? It seems unlikely...

<comment><USER17> Maybe Five Eyes members give each other a special treatment, maybe they share enough information that additional spying isn't worth it. With Germany there is at least one example that I am aware of where the US spied on a close ally and as far as I can tell did so without permission.

But that is actually somewhat besides the point. I don't know whether the UK spies on the US in ways unknown to the US, I am not even sure whether or not it is likely that the UK wiretapped Trump even give the GCHQ statement. My point was merely that it would not be too surprising or outrageous if they did.

<comment><USER6> >With Germany there is at least one example that I am aware of where the US spied on a close ally and as far as I can tell did so without permission.

And that caused a big scandal. I wonder if the USA is still doing it.

The other thing to bear in mind is that the USA is more powerful than UK or Germany, so it's possible they feel they can get away with it if nobody finds out.

<comment><USER17> The US refused to sign any no-spy deal with Germany and did not rule out spying on the German government in the future. They may or may not be doing it currently, but they certainly still consider it legitimate. It also seems unlikely that Germany was an exceptional case, it seems more likely that the US is spying on all governments of interest, it just did not become public. This makes me also quite wary with respect to the UK. They may have special enough relations to get a different treatment but I don't think that the UK should feel too comfortable even with such agreements in place.

If nobody finds out, you always get away with it, no matter how much or little power you have. The interesting case is if someone finds out, how well do you survive the ensuing fallout? In this case more power may of course be helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bear in mind, Trump has already rescheduled a state visit to the UK leery of the reception he's gonna get from British people, whose attitude towards him could be described as "lukewarm" at best This sort of thing most certainly won't help.

<comment><USER18> crowds as far as the eye can see, waving the flag and chanting 'Oi! Trump! Wanker!'

<comment><USER19> Off topic: ~15 years ago a colleague stayed in a small town in Colorado where everyone seemed to use "wanker" as a term of endearment. My colleague, being from the UK, was surprised to be greeted with the statement "Oh you're from the UK you must be a wanker".

Apparently this was caused by the local policeman being from the UK and he'd been going round using the term for years and the locals had interpreted it as something nice.

<comment><USER20> Aside: where on the scale of U.S. epithets would the term "wanker" fall? Would "cock-sucker" be about right?

(I got asked this very question by an American relation a few years back.)

<comment><USER21> As an American somewhat versed in British TV and movies, I always assumed wanker to be more equal to "asshole" or "son of a bitch", something you call your friends when they've done something bone-headed or mean-spirited. Definitely below "cock-sucker" in severity and far, far below "motherfucker".

<comment><USER20> Thank you. I feel suitably enlightened :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now that Trump has severely pissed off every intelligence service, what consequences do you think this will have? Will they be more hesitant to share intelligence with him?

</comment><comment><USER22> Don't think this would be within GCHQ's remit, more MI6.

<comment><USER23> GCHQ is signals intelligence, so if he was tapped, it was probably by GCHQ. But let's face it, he wasn't, Trump is an imbecile that is just parroting right-wing media accusations.

<comment><USER24> You kind of have to wonder if Trump is even aware of the implications and consequences of what happens when POTUS spouts off completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. You have to wonder if he fully groks that he isn't "just some rich guy" any more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why would anyone ever believe what an intelligence agency says? This would be akin to listening to a snake oil salesman about the qualities of snake oil.

EDIT: My point is much larger than whether or not they wiretapped Donald Trump. My point is that what an intelligence agency says about what it's doing is completely irrelevant because it has very low correlation to what they actually do.

<comment><USER26> Suppose it is true that they wiretapped him. Then Trump has every incentive to prove it so, at huge risk of embarrassment to them. They could easily say "no comment" and nobody would blink an eye. So why actively lie about it?</comment></comment>


Looking for quick advice on an Echeck / ACH processing. - <AUTHOR>

Sorry, I am not sure where else to ask.  I am going to be doing mostly payment processing, so I will need to be doing direct payments into people's accounts.
I have procrastinated in this part of the process, but I would really like to be able to send payments by Dec 1.  Only a couple dozen a month at first, we'll see how it grows.
Looking for something with flexible integration, this project is in python if that matters.  We will also be accepting infrequent medium sized deposits. <comment><USER2> Check out ach direct. Many of the big guys like Paypal used them when they were first starting out.

Good service and pricing. Www.achdirect.com</comment>


Minority Report in UK AI Policing – Social Network Profiles [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.excellenceinpolicing.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/EIP17_2-5_Utilising_Data_Science.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm really surprised they haven't went into more detail on the spatial aspect. Understanding the 'where' of crime has historically being quite important.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Among the 1349 KPIs, 32 KPIs have been identified for their strong predictive power"

"The most important KPIs are related to the social network of the nominal"</comment>


Lists, Vim, and You - <AUTHOR> https://robots.thoughtbot.com/lists-vim-and-you <comment><USER2> Why is this better than using sed?</comment>


Show HN: A loop station based on WebAudio and WebRTC - <AUTHOR> http://weblooper.hackandstack.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello everybody,

This is the (old, made 2.5 years ago) application I implemented for my BSc thesis called "WebLooper".

It aims at simulating a loop station like the one often used by DUB FX (BOSS RC-50, here is an example of it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhBoR_tgXCI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhBoR_tgXCI) ). But do not expect even 5% of its features. :D Although you can create "online peer-to-peer concerts" (based on WebRTC). I've only tested it on Chrome but I'll try to work on it to make it compatible with at least Firefox.

I was looking at some of my old projects and then, since the source code of this one was already on GitHub, I decided to put it online to let others try it. It has some ugly bugs and the code was written on a serious rush but, hey, maybe someone might have fun with it and, maybe, improve the code him/herself or give me some (constructive) feedback?

(A big thanks to the author(s) of RecorderJS and PeerJS!)</comment>


Why Private Equity Is Ripe for Vanguard-Style Disruption - <AUTHOR> https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1h7r2s6bz1c3m/Why-Private-Equity-Is-Ripe-for-Vanguard-Style-Disruption <comment><USER2> "Yin said there are plenty of other simpler, 'passive-like' approaches to investing in private companies to consider, including models that don't use leverage."

PE is debt in today's environment. The funding does not come primarily through investment but through the partnerships that lead to leverage the business would not normally be able to attain.

</comment><comment><USER3> First you would need a PE exchange for liquidity. Good for startup share liquidity pre-IPO also. Price it at auction, employees chose to take the $$ or they have an immediate IRS basis. Most would sell a fraction to cashflow taxes.

SEC friction on "public" is bad for the economy. Instead of binary we need the reports/accounting under certain standards on a spectrum from fully private to fully public.

<comment><USER4> Serious question - why does anyone think PE can be disrupted if techies and techie founders have not been able to disrupt our own broken illiquid equity situation?

The only answer can think of is (pessimistically) that the system is broken because it is profitable (to some) to keep it broken for many others. PE wields far more influence Than pre IPO tech equity so I definitely don't see that being disrupted first.</comment></comment>


Hydroxychloroquine does not prevent Covid-19 infection if exposed, study says - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/03/hydroxychloroquine-does-not-prevent-covid-19-infection-in-people-who-have-been-exposed-study-says/ <comment><USER2> Would have been nice to know what doses have been given.

<comment><AUTHOR> 800 mg once, followed by 600 mg in 6 to 8 hours, then 600 mg daily for 4 additional days

(The second link in the first paragraph takes you to the NEJM paper.)</comment></comment>


Clever method to reduce multiplication on paper to counting and addition - <AUTHOR> http://www.vostok.es/blog/how-the-japanese-multiply

<comment><USER2> They say it's taught in Japan; I teach in elementary and junior high schools here and have never seen this. Kids here memorize multiplication tables just like kids in America.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the title of the video seemed suspect, so I didn't use it.</comment></comment>


Has philosophy ever clarified mathematics? - <AUTHOR> http://mathoverflow.net/q/182215/85415 <comment><USER2> As you may know, many mathematicians turned philosophers while trying to do work on the foundations of mathematics. It seems like logic was the gateway discipline. What we now know as the analytic turn in philosophy of early 20th century came from such as lineage before it devolved into philosophy of language. Frege, Russel, Whitehead, and Wittgenstein are well known in this line of thought. However, the history of philosophy and mathematics goes way back to pre-socratic philosophers like Pythagoras and centuries later Aquinas and then Descartes. The question posed is rather strange given that mathematical development has often been formed by philosophical thought. I guess by clarifying the author means providing solutions (since he/she mentions that "mathematical insight" is nowhere to be found in the literature)? Since philosophy is not the same as doing mathematics the only kinds of clarification that philosophy will provide is in terms of distinctions, definitions and criteria: what is a proof, etc. This is because 'philosophy of x' is always meta discipline.

</comment><comment><USER3> Carlo Rovelli: "Why Physics needs Philosophy"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ0uPkG- pr4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ0uPkG-pr4)

A few notes from the above:

* the beginning of astronomy == plato's school

* the scientific method as falsification == Popper

* quantum theory / relativity / Heisenberg == positivism (If I don't see it (e.g. electron orbitals) it doesn't exist) (* e.g. complementarity)

* Einstein claimed that his reading of Schopenhauer was crucial to thinking about time, space, etc...

in essence, you are doing philosophy when you're re-evaluating your methodology and using a evolving reflective feedback loops to change your thinking.

<comment><USER4> > quantum theory / relativity / Heisenberg == positivism (If I don't see it > (e.g. electron orbitals) it doesn't exist)

Wow, that is such a non-sequitur that it casts doubt on the whole thing.

<comment><USER5> Furthermore, I believe there was quite a lot of physics done before Popper explained how to do it. He said many valid and insightful things, but it was not necessary for physics for him to say them.

<comment><USER3> Popper didn't explain "how to do physics", nor did he invalidate previous physics, nor did he "invent the scientific method". But would you not agree that he influenced how scientists interpreted the scientific method? This is the point I'm making.. please don't reduce it into a blanket idea such as "phsyics could not have been done before Popper" which isn't anywhere close to what I said.

<comment><USER5> I think it is close to what you said, though apparently not what you meant.

What this discussion is sorely lacking is actual examples, so let me offer one up: reproducibility has lately become an issue in several branches of science, and maybe it would not have done so without Popper's insights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Frege, Russell, Whitehead, Pierce--of course!

It doesn't help that many philosophers of mathematics are, for obvious reasons, either also logicians or mathematicians, so demarcating between advancements in philosophy of mathematics that clarify mathematics and advancements in mathematics that clarify mathematics can be a bit of a fool's errand.

Whatever the case, I dislike it when folks from the sciences or mathematics try to discredit or dismiss philosophy--funnier still, and luckily not as bad, is when they question the _value_ of philosophy without realizing that question is in and of itself a highly philosophical question!

Philosophy has been around for a long time and isn't going anywhere in the perceivable future (though I suppose it depends on what metaphysics of time you subscribe to :) ).

</comment><comment><USER7> On the flip side, here's an example of mathematicians clarifying philosophy.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Alder#Newton.27s_flamin...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Alder#Newton.27s_flaming_laser_sword)

<comment><USER8> > On the flip side, here's an example of mathematicians clarifying philosophy.

But only by doing philosophy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bill Lawvere was heavily influenced by philosophy in his [revolutionary] contributions to the development of Category Theory [1][2].

[1] [https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/William%20Lawvere#RelationToPh...](https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/William%20Lawvere#RelationToPhilosophy)

[2] [http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/9768/have- prof...](http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/9768/have-professional- philosophers-contributed-to-other-fields-in-the-last-20-years/9814#9814)

</comment><comment><USER10> In some sense Grothendieck's investigations could be considered "philosophical"; in the early 20th century algebraic geometers studied objects called "varieties" and Grothendieck's coup resulted from asking the question "what is the general class of object with which we can do algebraic geometry?". Today scheme theory is entirely mathematical, but a scheme had to be conceived as a philosophical concept first. The link also mentions Turing's elucidation of the Turing machine as a similar process.

There is also the case of Frank Ramsey and Piero Sraffa, who were the only close friends of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and who went on to make major epistemological contributions to economics (and Ramsey was a philosopher in his own right): Ramsey was the first person to really clarify the concept of a subjective probability, and Sraffa was central in the capital aggregation controversy.

<comment><USER11> I am not familiar with Grothendieck's work and with algebraic geometry in general, but Turing's work was rather unique, and very much philosophical in nature[0].

I am basing the following on Turing's 1936 paper, _On Computable Numbers_ [1], on Juliet Floyd's chapter on Turing's mathematical philosophy[2], and on Robin Gandy's 1988 paper, _The Confluence of Ideas in 1936_ [3].

The generalization of mathematical concepts has always been an important part of mathematics. In fact, Gandy writes that this was precisely the concern with Church's claim that the lambda calculus can express all algorithms ("a vague and intuitive notion", in Church's words). It was thought that perhaps a genius could some day generalize the notion further to include lambda- definability as well as things that fall outside it. But then Turing appeared with arguments of a very different kind. For one, his construction of an automatic machine, while precise, was completely arbitrary. It was clear to everyone from his treatment that while his math concerns a specific formalism (what's known as the Turing machine ever since Church named it so), it really covers _all_ formalisms. For another, his proof of undecidability is very different from the one normally presented as the proof for the undecidability of the halting problem (which is really due to Martin Davis). Turing's proof, Floyd notes, makes no use at all of _any_ logical construction, and does not rely even on logical contradiction or the law of excluded middle (which are expected to hold in many "reasonable" formalisms) but on more basic philosophical principles that must hold in any and all formalisms.

Gödel called Turing's achievement a "miracle". In 1946 he said (quoted in Gandy's paper):

 _...with this concept one has for the first time succeeded in giving an absolute definition of an interesting epistemological notion, i.e., one not depending on the formalism chosen. In all other cases treated previously... one has been able to define them only relative to a given language, and for each individual language it is clear that the one thus obtained is not the one looked for. For the concept of computability, however,... the situation is different. By a kind of miracle it is not necessary to distinguish orders, and the diagonal procedure does not lead outside the defined notion..._

[0]: Turing was a mathematical philosopher among other things, and is known for his discussions with Wittgenstein, published in _Wittgenstein 's Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics_.

[1]: [https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf](https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf)

[2]: [https://mdetlefsen.nd.edu/assets/201037/jf.turing.pdf](https://mdetlefsen.nd.edu/assets/201037/jf.turing.pdf) to appear in _Philosophical Explorations of the Legacy of Alan Turing_

[3]: [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=213993](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=213993) published in _The Universal Turing Machine A Half Century Survey_ , 1995

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't the crux of this back and forth proofs that rely upon the axiom of choice vs those that do not?

It is my understanding that philosophers have added a lot to our understanding of how the axiom of choice impacts logical reasoning about things which matter to humanity in concrete ways.

<comment><USER13> What proofs?

Axiom of Choice cannot matter to humanity in concrete ways (except as an artistic activity), because the Axiom of Choice only applies to uncountably- large sets, which have no realizable physical meaning in the Universe.

<comment><USER14> It's an interesting question

However while there are no physical realizations of infinite sets, they're used all the time in math

So I guess mathematical entities do not need to be connected to physical elements

<comment><USER15> Of course. It's not clear that the "real" or even "natural" numbers meaningfully correspond to any physical phenomenon. They're just abstractions and tools for making predictions and reasoning about our experiences as humans, which don't necessarily reflect how the world actually is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's a joke: Mathematics is just applied Philosophy.

It bears some truth :)

<comment><USER17> I've thought of that more of a serious thought than a joke. At my college we had a joke that physics majors washed out and became math majors (because the faculty were assholes); math majors washed out and became philosophy majors (because they couldn't handle rigor); and philosophy majors washed out and became anthropology majors (because they couldn't handle homework)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bishop Berkeley's response to Newton might qualify. Newton had something useful but Berkeley showed he hadn't proved anything. It wasn't until Cauchy (?) proved things rigorously that calculus was on a solid footing.

</comment><comment><USER19> Philosophy often revolves around questions of purpose in life, and any non- mathematician might wonder why someone would devote their life to the study of advanced math. The question of purpose becomes even more interesting when a mathematician spends decades solving theoretical math problems that have no immediate practical use in engineering or programming. Any mathematician who's engaged in such problems wouldn't have any trouble understanding his own motives; for him, the philosophy is so obvious that it goes without saying. But an outsider might see his actions as inexplicable - as inexplicable as an ascetic monk spending a week meditating on a frigid mountaintop.

Philosophy functions as an aid in that understanding. The mathematician might read it and recognize truth, if it is written well, and a non-mathematician might be able to learn the rationale for devoting one's life to math. It might have a strong enough effect to make someone gravitate towards that type of life.

Different works in the philosophy of math could deal with different aspects of the mathematical life, such as the inherent beauty of an elegant proof, and it could also go into the larger, more long-term purposes of math, whose effects might not be recognized until long after the mathematician is dead.

I would think that the best philosophy of math would need to be written by a mathematician. An issue with philosophy is that it's quite difficult to write it well. There is a lot of philosophy out there that's poorly-written. It might suffer from a lack of clarity or simply be inaccurate. To have a brilliant philosophy of math, you would need a person who is both a skilled mathematician and a skilled writer. That is a rare thing.

</comment><comment><USER20> Most of the famous mathematicians were driven by philosophy. For example Kepler wanted to keep perfection in the new model universe. He thought he could do it by using Plato's solids for the relative distances between the planets. He was wrong, but the mathematical attempts he tired help to form a more correct answer. The motivation was philosophical.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, philosophy has been dogged since Descartes with the self-imposed goal of providing a "foundation" for all knowledge enterprises (e.g. science, math) — by attempting to, put crudely, solve the mind-body problem and legitimatize that our thoughts and connection to the world are valid.

</comment><comment><USER21> > Question: Has it ever happened that philosophy has elucidated and clarified > a mathematical concept, proof, or construction in a way useful to research > mathematicians?

I would hope so! The short answer is the philosophy of Math will help you determine whether what you're researching is _true_! Surely it would be very bizarre to research something with complete apathy regarding its truth value. A few examples:

The famous Peano axioms [1] are widely used to prove such things as the commutative property of multiplication (ab=ba). But as the name "axiom" suggests, you just have to accept them as true or the whole thing crumbles. So why is it true that "0 is a natural number"? If this is false, much (all?) of math research is in big trouble! Does this suggest a sort of mathematical epistemic foundationalism? If so, what are its limits? When is mathematical research warranted, and when can we simply regard mathematical beliefs as properly basic?

Also, consider the realist/anti-realist debate [2, 3] which seeks to answer the question "are numbers, sets, functions, etc. actual features of the real world, or are they all just in our heads?" (or some refined variation thereof). If they are real entities, how is it that these non-causal things (like 5) lie at the very heart of the laws governing the physical, causal universe? But if they aren't real, then what possible explanation can one give for the perfect harmony of the physical world and these functions, that are ultimately all in my head? Moreover, why is belief in these unreal entities so widespread (I know of no "amathists")?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms)

[2] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism- mathematics/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/)

[3] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific- realism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/)

<comment><USER22> >So why is it true that "0 is a natural number"? If this is false, much (all?) of math research is in big trouble! Does this suggest a sort of mathematical epistemic foundationalism?

Math major here. To me, this seems like a non-nonsensical question. 0 is _defined_ to be a natural number. You could say (as Platonism does), that there is some "real" natural numbers out there in the universe, and ask if the Peano axioms define a system that is isomorphic to the real "natural numbers". Or you could ask if the Peano axioms acuratly define the artificial system that we informally think of as the natural numbers.

You could also ask if any system (real or abstract) can satisfy the Peano axioms. That is to say, are they internally consistent (and is there a constructive proof of such). Assuming this is the case, then (by definition) there will be an object that we call "0" that is a natural number. You can also ask if there is a unique (up to isomorphism) instantiation of the Peano axioms (there is).

<comment><USER21> > ...and ask if the Peano axioms define a system that is isomorphic to the > real "natural numbers". Or you could ask if the Peano axioms accurately > define the artificial system...

This is exactly what I meant. You can define anything you want. You can even do so in a sophisticated way such that your defined system is internally coherent. But internal coherence alone can't be the standard of measure of truth -- we need to ask "does our internally coherent system correspond with reality?" To the questioner on MathOverflow, _math_ will answer the coherence question, _philosophy of math_ will answer the correspondence question.

> To me, this seems like a non-nonsensical question. 0 is _defined_ to be a > natural number.

Is it merely definitional though? They're called "natural" numbers for a reason! These are the set of numbers that seem most obvious to us, the kind that (I don't think) we can teach. For example, you can tell a child "this is 1 apple", "these are 2 apples", etc., but other than the name, you really can't teach a person what numbers are. They just know. Why is that? It's clearly is more than merely definitional. And I think 0 falls into this category unlike, say, complex numbers. But notice, whatever your response -- even if you disagree -- we're deep into philosophy territory here with the simple axiom "0 is a natural number".

Regardless, thanks your your thoughtful response.

<comment><USER22> > For example, you can tell a child "this is 1 apple", "these are 2 apples", > etc., but other than the name, you really can't teach a person what numbers > are. They just know. Why is that?

I would argue that this is a question for psychology, with input from neuroscience, biology, and likely numerous other fields of science. What you are asking is not a question about the universe, but rather a question about the human mind: why is it that the natural numbers seem innate to humans. In the same way we can ask why language is innate in humans, or the skills to walk.

Regarding 0, historically, 0 has been much more controversial as a number. To the best of my knowledge, we have no evidence of it existing as a number prior to around 400AD India. Also, for the record, 0 being a natural number is denominational. So much so that many (most?) mathematicians (myself included) do not consider 0 to be a natural number. Math has not imploded because of this, we just waste a little bit of effort here and there to clarify what we mean when it is an important distinction.

>And I think 0 falls into this category unlike, say, complex numbers.

Funny you should bring up complex numbers. If we look at physics, we find that the complex numbers seem far more "natural" than the natural numbers do. In fact, I cannot think of a single physics theory defined over the natural numbers. In contrast, the complex numbers show up all the time. Even quantum mechanics, which (being quantized) would seem to be an ideal candidate for a natural number theory, ends up being defined heavily in terms of complex numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It might be interesting to ask the same question on the partner site [http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/](http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/)

</comment><comment><USER24> if you asked practicing mathematicians whether or not the philosophy of foundational mathematics, the hilbert programme, and wittgensteins consternation on the notion of equality were at all relevant...you would get a pretty dispassionate 'of course'. for whatever reasons most of these topics are taught in the philosophy departments and not the mathematics.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wouldn't mathematics simply be considered an epistemological branch of philosophy?

<comment><USER26> No, not at all. One could argue that analytic philosophy and mathematical logic have some overlap and inform each other, but even then, there are deep differences in their goals and methods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yep [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it's worth making it clear that Plato's contributions to political science, maths, physics, and religious thought were all framed at the time as philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER29> the top answer really doesn't leave much to argue about.

<comment><USER30> The top answer is extremely wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Never understood the definition of philosophy. Can philosophy be defined mathematically ?

</comment><comment><USER32> hmmm I would say philosophy "clarifies" where mathematics comes from.

</comment><comment><USER33> Yes, mathematics is just an unidirectional arrow of opinionated integers.

And 42.

</comment><comment><USER34> philosophy of philosophy, a godelian knot.

</comment><comment><USER34> philosophy of philosophy, a godelian-gordian knot

</comment><comment><USER30> > Secondly, remember that broadly the point of philosophy is to make things > not philosophy. In extremely simplistic historical terms, once natural > philosophy becomes rigorous it becomes science, once philosophy of language > became rigorous it became linguistics, and today we're seeing philosophy of > mind turn to neuroscience.

This is absolutely not correct, and elucidates little but the prejudices of the answerer. Philosophy of language has /not/ become linguistics, philosophy of mind has /not/ become neuroscience, and only a subset of natural philosophy has become natural science.

The philosophical questions discussed by Socrates have elided the grasp of both dogmatic rigor and empiricism for twenty-four hundred years, and there seems to be absolutely no reason to expect this to change.

The answerer has either no actual grasp of the history or content of philosophy, or has simply decided, apparently by fiat, to discard all but the most narrow positivism-flavored slice as nonsense.

<comment><USER35> You seem to have a certain grasp on that subject or at least feel very strong about it.

Unfortunately your post didn't correct any (perceived) mistake, it was mostly a longer way to write "That's not true". Would you be so kind and expand that reply a bit, so that I might find pointers/key words to look up myself?

<comment><USER36> I have a beginner level interest in philosophy of mind. I can attempt to add some information on how "...and today we're seeing philosophy of mind turn to neuroscience." is very wrong.

Neuroscience studies various structures and mechanisms of nervous system and brain. Even when they seemingly discuss 'consciousness', they tend to simply mean 'awareness'. I think most are generally familiar with other aspects of neuroscience.

In phil. of mind there are categories of consciousness or lack thereof, though Phenomenal Consciousness is more popular area of study (experiential side of consciousness). One of the key subject in Philosophy of mind try to show whether mind can possibly be physical (ex readable article: [http://organizations.utep.edu/Portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf](http://organizations.utep.edu/Portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf)), can mind be described computationally? (ex paper: [http://consc.net/papers/rock.html](http://consc.net/papers/rock.html)) Phi. of mind also studies accesses of consciousness, study methods on how to go about studying contents of consciousness etc.

I've talked to neuroscientist who despise philosophers talking about conciseness and claim their ideas are silly or can be ignored. There has also been cases where big name neuroscientist proposed silly ideas about mind that philosophers wouldn't begin to consider.

In short they study different things.

<comment><USER8> > Neuroscience studies various structures and mechanisms of nervous system and > brain. Even when they seemingly discuss 'consciousness', they tend to simply > mean 'awareness'.

You should give neuroscientists more credit! Some of them are aware of the philosophical problems surrounding subjectivity, and have tried to tackle them [1]. That's one of my favoured scientific theories on the source of subjectivity.

I can also sympathize with the disdain with whic some neuroscientists view some philosophers of mind. They've debated some completely ridiculous theories of mind in order to rationalize human importance. These consciousness debates are following the arc of vitalism, which the science of biology eventually simply replaced, and I expect these neuroscientists see it as a waste of time for similar reasons.

[1] [http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00...](http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full)

<comment><USER37> That attention schema theory is interesting but it still doesn't solve the Hard Problem: why information about colors _looks_ like colors, why information about surfaces _feels_ like a surface... how a biological system could experience joy or sadness, orgasm or terror, etc. They seem to be solving the very narrow problem of self-awareness, but not awareness in general. And I'm pretty self-awareness isn't a prerequisite for general awareness. (Just ask experienced drug users.)

To be fair, _no_ existing theory can explain subjective experience, so it's not a knock on that theory specifically.

There seem to be a subset of human beings who have convinced themselves they aren't conscious, even though it's not clear who they think they've convinced or who did the convincing. If you're one of them, that's okay... it's just not a conclusion I would personally endorse ("I" being whatever force is selecting the words that you're currently reading).

P.S. If something concludes that it's aware, then is it aware it has reached that conclusion? And if so, would that lead to an infinite regress? Perhaps that's what consciousness is... an infinite regress of awareness. :)

<comment><USER8> > That attention schema theory is interesting but it still doesn't solve the > Hard Problem: why information about colors looks like colors, why > information about surfaces feels like a surface.

Because every sensation has to have some distinguishable characteristics from other sensation for functional purposes. That's not the hardest part of the hard problem, accounting for subjectivity was always the hard part. Certainly there are questions that aren't fully answered, but I think this paper demonstrates that neuroscience can and has started tackling the tough philosophical questions.

> They seem to be solving the very narrow problem of self-awareness, but not > awareness in general. And I'm pretty self-awareness isn't a prerequisite for > general awareness. (Just ask experienced drug users.)

I don't know what you mean. Certainly "altered states of consciousness" alter the operation of this attention schema theory, by altering signal strength of some perceptions and/or impeding the function of the attention schema apparatus somehow. I'm not sure what you think this means for this theory.

> There seem to be a subset of human beings who have convinced themselves they > aren't conscious, even though it's not clear who they think they've > convinced or who did the convincing.

You're grossly misrepresenting this position. I and others believe we don't have true subjective awareness. "Consciousness" is merely a label for a reducible phenomenon, like cars. So yes we are "conscious", but we don't mean the same thing you mean by "conscious", which carries far more ontological baggage that's only justified by weak thought experiments.

Finally, your cute yet all too common response begs the question by your use of "who", ie. no one needs convincing to begin with. In fact, if we're just automota then we're merely claiming that our perceptions yield a false conclusion about the existence of subjectivity. That's what it means to be an illusion.

<comment><USER37> > I don't know what you mean. Certainly "altered states of consciousness" > alter the operation of this attention schema theory, by altering signal > strength of some perceptions and/or impeding the function of the attention > schema apparatus somehow. I'm not sure what you think this means for this > theory.

I was just saying that subjective awareness doesn't require awareness of the self as observer. One can become engrossed in a movie without constantly thinking about one's place in relation to the movie. But on second thought, I'm probably misunderstanding some aspect of this theory, as this counterexample seems too obvious.

> I and others believe we don't have true subjective awareness.

I'm afraid this just makes no sense to me. Aren't you subjectively aware of the computer in front of your eyes? If you claim to not have "true subjective awareness", I'm curious what "true subjective awareness" would amount to.

An illusion is when our subjective experience of reality does not match actual reality, but to claim that our subjective experience is itself an illusion? That seems like a contradiction in terms.

Anyway, I'm sorry if this is coming across as flippant. I understand where your belief is coming from (I probably had it myself at one point) but it's just not the way I understand the world now.

For me, the knowledge that I have true subjective awareness is a basic first principle, along the lines of "I think, therefore I am". Maybe I'm a brain-in- a-vat and this is all virtual reality, but I'm definitely experiencing _something_. Are you trying to deny the fact that I have experiences and sensations, or something else? Maybe we're just talking past each other...

Also, what "weak thought experiments" are you referring to?

<comment><USER8> > One can become engrossed in a movie without constantly thinking about one's > place in relation to the movie.

Being engrossed involves a suspension of awareness.

> I'm afraid this just makes no sense to me. Aren't you subjectively aware of > the computer in front of your eyes? If you claim to not have "true > subjective awareness", I'm curious what "true subjective awareness" would > amount to.

True subjective awareness requires ontologically committing to dualism, because subjectivity is then irreducible. By which I mean that no account for true first-person experience is possible using only third-person objective facts.

> An illusion is when our subjective experience of reality does not match > actual reality, but to claim that our subjective experience is itself an > illusion? That seems like a contradiction in terms.

That definition of illusion begs the question, like I said, so I categorically reject it. If you eliminate the dependency on "subjective experience of reality" you get "perception of reality does not match actual reality", which is exactly what I said.

> For me, the knowledge that I have true subjective awareness is a basic first > principle, along the lines of "I think, therefore I am".

Ah, but this too begs the question! The fallacy-free version is "this is a thought, therefore thoughts exist".

> Also, what "weak thought experiments" are you referring to?

P-zombies, Mary's room, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Has philosophy ever clarified mathematics?

Let's frame this question properly for analysis.

      All work of Aristotle is philosophy.
      Aristotle's work includes syllogistic logic.
      Syllogistic logic clarifies mathematical inference.
      Mathematical inference is part of mathematics.

      Therefore, some philosophy clarifies mathematics.

QED

</comment><comment><USER39> It strikes me that this is similar to the 'no true ai' paradox, where as soon as a program can do something, such as beat a human at chess, then it stops being AI and starts being just computation. As soon as something philosophical becomes rigerous or well understood, we stop calling it philosophy and start calling it mathematics.</comment>


Schema-less is usually a lie - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mongohq.com/schema-less-is-usually-a-lie/ <comment><USER2> 100% agree with this post and it's important to understand where/when schema in the code makes more sense than schema in the db.

If the DB is determining the schema and your code just mirrors it, you will inevitably do things like triggers, stored procedures, etc. that essentially put application code inside the DB. This makes testing and maintenance of such things all but impossible, even if it does make the DB queries fast. At the same time, your application still needs to mirror the schema of the DB or things will break.

"Schemaless" (query schemas) isn't better per se, but having the mindset of putting the schema in the code means you can write tests to ensure the schema over time. Depending on your perspective, one might be better than the other, but as they say "knowing is half the battle"

<comment><USER3> > This makes testing and maintenance of such things all but impossible

Developers have been maintaining such apps for decades without any problem. And everything is testable , even a stocked procedure.

If you dont care about data integrity, then make your application responsible for your schema...Some do care. Non-rel databases guarantee 0 data integrity, with very little performance gain over relational-databases.

Finally most frameworks allow developpers to generate the db schema during development without writing a single query. with all the cache layers like redis and other goodies , there is little to no reason to use non-rel databases.

<comment><USER4> A given RDBMS doesn't guarantee any data integrity. The integrity is a bit of a lie. I've seen plenty of _real world_ databases with software created by idiots where a DateTime field was defined as a VARCHAR. Or fields that should have been a VARCHAR created as CHAR, then bugs happen with the strings aren't auto-trimmed.

IMHO the database these days _SHOULD_ be fairly agnostic. Also normalization, which is the core of your so called integrity actually REDUCES performance. At my last job, our main VIEW into the data took over 28 join operations for some highly normalized data (much of which had to overcome some bad data in the db).

We setup a MongoDB database for searching against, as well as being able to pull up a single record without dozens of join operations, and it was a _LOT_ faster, against real-time data... the search that was replaced was a batch process that recreated a single table every half hour. In this case MongoDB was a _much_ better fit.

Sorry, but SQL databases don't guarantee any data integrity either. It's up to the developers that implement those schemas... and the fact is, for most of them, they are better off doing that in their primary application code.

Also, if you are using an ORM tool to "generate" your schema from code, then what advantage does said schema's "integrity" give you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with the idea that MongoDB has struck the right balance. I have seen production issues from manual editing of data which resulted in a floating point instead of an Integer.

I really wish MongoDB had support for a strong schema in the DB besides indexes (in addition to existing support for schema-less). I only actually want schema-less at most 20% of the time, but I am stuck with it for everything outside of indexes.

<comment><USER6> Completely agree. I'd love it if you could provide collections a baseline set of document validation rules- rules that only apply to fields you explicitly mention.

I guess what I want is a schema- _ish_ database, where I can say "these 5 fields are required and must conform to these rules. Anything else is fair game."

<comment><USER7> I've been looking some something similar to what you've described. I recently discovered PostgreSQL has a 'hstore' feature which seems to support this. You seem to be able to make a normal table and then specify one column to act like a key/value dictionary. These values can even be included in queries.

[http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/hstore.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/hstore.html)

<comment><USER8> PostgreSQL also has JSON support. You might want to check out Christphe Pettus's presentation on this subject:

[http://thebuild.com/blog/2013/07/02/postgresql-as-a-nosql- da...](http://thebuild.com/blog/2013/07/02/postgresql-as-a-nosql-database/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3838131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3838131)

'...but every time I see "Schemaless" in MongoDB, I think "oh, so you're implementing schema in your application?"'

<comment><USER10> And missing most of the centralized documentation people use everywhere.

But if you only have one application, you don't need centralized documentation.

<comment><USER4> You can create an API for data access that validates a given document schema... you don't have to operate in the open.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cassandra is not schema-less. I covered this in my recent article on Cassandra Myths: [http://www.infoq.com/articles/cassandra- mythology](http://www.infoq.com/articles/cassandra-mythology)

</comment><comment><USER12> To me, schema-less simply means that you don't need to maintain the data structure in a separate schema definition. It doesn't mean that your data doesn't have a structure - the structure is in your data, query and indexes, it's just easier to change without that extra "schema" definition.

<comment><USER13> It's not easier to change. When you have a schema-less database you don't change the schema, you add a new one for new data. Any data with an old schema continues to have it. So at any time you have up to _n_ schemas simultaneously in your database if you changed it _n_ times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't this akin to the idea that many dynamic programs actually have fairly static types?

<comment><USER15> Stretching it: natural language was grammatical before grammar was invented. Natural laws existed before they were discovered. But it can be easier to change grammar/law/types/schema when not explicit.

<comment><USER16> _"...it can be easier to change grammar/law/types/schema when not explicit."_

Now that's quite interesting statement. I'd say it is true for humans but false for computers and it's paradoxical to think about why this is.

If computers were an intelligent as humans, you wouldn't have to worry about giving your program any structure because the computer could change that structure later. But sadly, spaghetti code isn't what it's cracked up to be.

Similarly, an application where don't bother thinking about your schema beforehand isn't going to be application which you can change easily later.

<comment><USER14> It is not just spaghetti code, though. Right? It is code that does not constantly check that input fits an expected pattern. Which is most code. I'm reminded of this talk by Sussman.[1] Essentially, in software we are (understandably) adamant about not modifying the input of our application for "pure" functions. Nature goes right the opposite, often attempting to make the input work at all costs.

So, whereas a schema based application that models a user with an address is unable to cope with being given two addresses. A schema-less approach where it just stores blobs simply stores what it was given. If code that reads this is unable to make sense of multiple addresses, it will raise an error. Not necessarily unlike a user being told to send a package to an address, but given a list of addresses.

[1] [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know- How-T...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-To- Compute)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Indexes on collections in MongoDB are very much "schema"

I think that's all you need to read in this post. It's... rather thin IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here are some slides from a good talk by Martin Fowler about schemalessness and how there is always an 'implicit schema' [http://martinfowler.com/articles/schemaless/](http://martinfowler.com/articles/schemaless/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't a schemaless database just a filesystem?

<comment><USER3> it'w worse , it is basically a bin where you throw paper. You can still search for a specific one ,but as you throw more paper in the trashcan , it gets more complicated to find the paper you want. but hey ,it is easier and faster than to organize them on a rack they say ...

<comment><USER4> It really depends on the non-sql solution... Most of which do have indexed keys for retrieving data at the very least (key-value storage), and use Map- Reduce in order to perform basic queries, or you setup your own indexed records.

MongoDB specifically allows for additional indexes to be used as part of general queries, or the aggregation methods available. MongoDB even has some nice built in features for querying against geolocation data. They do have some limitations, but in general it works quite well.

Your analogy comparing non-sql to a trashcan is a bad comparison... a better comparison would be to a set of file cabinets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> i feel like a lot of people seem to jump on to "schemaless" dbs because they feel the can just dump whatever they want into the database. they also run into a problem later on when they realize that they need to care about data integrity and types.

<comment><USER4> Or you have a data structure that would require a lot of tables for what equates to a single record of interest.

In my last job, we were presenting search, and display of classified listings for cars. The normalized data required, iirc, 28 join operations to get most of the data for a single record (for display), about 12 iirc for the search support (not including geo/location based searches), and a second lookup for related data.

This could be replaced by a single query in a non-sql database. There is a real cost to these kinds of structures in SQL... There are a _LOT_ of use cases where a single record structured as a complete object is much better than having to break up said structure into dozens of fields.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I believe Kyoto Cabinet is an example of a truly Schema-less DB:

[http://fallabs.com/kyotocabinet/](http://fallabs.com/kyotocabinet/)</comment>


Series A Startup CEO Salary - <AUTHOR> http://startuplawyer.com/venture-capital/series-a-startup-ceo-salary <comment><USER2> so how much should the salary be for a Series A startup CEO? I'd wager: ~$40K.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which Series wasn't specified, but Peter Thiel said[1] $100k - $125k.

If the CEO only needs $40k/year to live comfortably that should be his salary.

If the CEO left a job making $200k/year, or has a family/mortgage/other responsibility, he might need more.

I think paying whatever-the-CEO needs to live comfortably with a maximum cap of around $100k seems pretty reasonable.

1\. [http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best- predictor-...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-predictor-of- startup-success-is-low-ceo-pay/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Chrome now the standard for web developers? - <AUTHOR>

I've been using Firefox in combination with Firebug for years and it seemed that most web developers are quite fond of that combination. But in the recent year or so the development of Firebug not only has slowed down, but seems to be target of mockery.
I've been listening to a ton of podcasts this year and everytime the topics browser or development tools comes up people are talking about Chrome. Sometimes mentioning Firefox with a certain tone that implies "If you're still using that old...".
I'm surprised. I like Firefox as my main browser. But there is probably a connection between the development speed of Firebug and the popularity of Chrome's developer tools. Having two browsers running using only one of them to develop feels rather odd, but I feel like I'm missing out otherwise.
What happened that made Firefox vanish out of the vocabulary of most developers? <comment><USER2> I made the switch from FF to Chrome about a year and a half ago. Here's my two cents:

What sold me was better memory management and better (in general) CSS3 rendering. I normally work with two windows open, one that has all my cookies and stuff so I can do web searches, and another with a blank persona so I can do development. Having two instances of Chrome running vs. one instance of Chrome and Firefox running seemed to lead to less crashes.

Regarding the dev. speed of Firebug, the lead dev on Firebug went to lead up work on Chrome's Dev tools[0]

I still find Chrome's dev tools lacking and the interface hard to navigate. I also miss the plugin ecosystem that Firebug had (I could send xdebug messages straight into Firebug, which was amazing!)

[0][http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20080338-264/firefox- world...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20080338-264/firefox-world-loses- web-dev-guru-to-chrome/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't know he switched. That's disheartening. The Firefox developer tools sadly aren't anywhere close to what I like to use. Although it's been quite some time since I checked. I always miss the ability to do xpath queries directly in the browser (which is a rather hidden feature in both Firebug and Chrome though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Firefox lost it due to bad memory and plugin management (what I remember reading), and Chrome came in the right time when people were looking for something faster and snappier. After that, Chrome's developer tools outstripped firebug too. And they were faster in implementing a lot of HTML5 features. But I think firefox is making a big comeback now. They have made their browser much faster and there is a lot of exciting work happening on their developer tools. I'm slowly getting frustrated with Chrome on my android, and firefox seems far better on it. I was stuck to Chrome due to the sync, but I am considering moving to firefox for desktop and mobile.

I'd also like to say that Chrome is in no way a standard and shouldn't be considered as one by any developer worth his salt. If you make a website that doesn't work as well in firefox, you have lost my respect. (unless you are doing a Chrome experiment or something).

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes - there has been a shift from Firefox/Firebug over the last couple of years. Google has put a lot of effort into improving the developer experience, both UI and features, while F/F has improved at a somewhat slower pace. Google has also put a lot of effort into courting developers at conferences and with blog posts and video tutorials with people like Paul Irish and Addy Osmani. It has been very effective - just look how often Chrome DevTools is now mentioned on HN vs Firebug. Lastly the growth of Chrome's browser marketshare means it make more and more sense to develop on Chrome. One key to all of this was the earlier switch to more frequent and automatic browser updates.

Editorial: I'm not sure this is a good thing. Chrome DevTools can be used to influence the web dev ecosystem and Google has very different interests than most developers. But so far they seem to be playing fair as best I can tell.

</comment><comment><USER5> Back in 2008, FF was on a downward spiral. It was getting bloated, slow, annoying... And then Google came out with Chrome.

It took FF less than a year to get their s __t together and fix their browser. Today it 's great, but the harm was done. Most of the people who moved to Chrome never looked back, and still remember FF as a slow, annoying browser.

</comment><comment><USER6> Also I think in the next few releases FF is going to improve their tools a lot! Now, chrome seems to be pushing development of very marketable features (For the better or worst) like speed while leaving aside privacy or other focus... I hope FF can regain traction in the long run or any similar projects...

</comment><comment><USER7> I still use Firebug, mainly because I'm more familiar with it than I am with the Chrome developer tools, I like the UI a lot more, but that's probably my own personal taste rather than it being a better UI. I rate it as being on-par with the Chrome developer tools, and quite frankly I don't consider either to be better than the other for general front-end dev.

That being said, I am really not a fan of the in-built Firefox dev tools. For the life of me I don't understand why Mozilla are dedicating their time to building up their own dev tools when Firebug is the preferred environment for front-end devs that use Firefox. Again, this could just be down to personal taste, but it feels like it's a wasted effort. I'd prefer to see those developers spending time on improving Firebug.

</comment><comment><USER8> IMHO Firebug is superior to anything regarding web dev (hence, Firefox)

<comment><USER9> The Chrome/Webkit debugging tools are pretty fantastic:

[https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer- tools/](https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer-tools/)

I'd be interested in what you get out of Firebug that I don't get out of Chrome's debugger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We're developers, we are both tool makers and tool users. Limiting ourselves to either Chrome or Firefox (or IE or Opera or...) is - well - stupid.

Use the tools we have. Use all of them. Make sure your code works everywhere (reasonable - I.E. 6 is as far back as I go currently) Anything else is a disservice to your self, your craft, and your users.

</comment><comment><USER11> I use Safari , chrome for testing compatibility

</comment><comment><USER12> I think Firefox has stumbled in the past few years but will experience a resurgence for two reasons: 1) privacy issues and a growing, healthy distrust for the behemoth that is Google and 2) the Chrome browser is slow, less responsive and more resource hungry on the popular Windows 8 OS.

Also, Firefox is a great browser!</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you turn for good data on market salaries? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
When negotiating salary with HR (or as HR) for a software engineering position, what sources do you usually rely on for numbers about market salary and total compensation?
Sites like glassdoor/payscale/salary.com/indeed give numbers, but they do not make it clear how old the data points are, how many they include. They also do not account for biases of self-reporting by employees or companies.
In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics gives general information[1], but since their numbers are often a couple years old.
Are there any good sources you would recommend? What about for large cities outside of the Bay Area?
1. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm <comment><USER2> Using old data is fine from a macro point of view.

Contrary to SV spin, there hasn't been an "explosion" in salary levels (and in the few areas where salaries are high, they've been that high for a few years now).

>When negotiating salary with HR (or as HR) for a software engineering position, what sources do you usually rely on for numbers about market salary and total compensation?

As far as this goes, it is more an art and less a technical exercise. If you're proverbially a "sweet talker", you should be able to negotiate up to the companies maximum cap for that position.

Finding out what that cap is? Well that is the art.

As per your original question, try to get cozy with the hiring departments at universities and the HR that visits those universities to get some data on their salaries.

I think most people these days rely on glassdoor and/or payscale because they seem to provide (mostly) accurate data.

<comment><USER3> Anecdotally, most people just use glassdoor or similar sites. However, be sure to keep in mind that the way they group "similar" jobs may not be perfect.

For example, "software developers" in Philadelphia have an avg salary of $76,387, whereas "software engineers" have an avg salary of $71,476. The difference? I have no idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mainly from talking to colleagues, I haven't found a particularly accurate site.

Salaryfairy.com was the heart of a Show HN[1] and they made some great claims but I've found it very low in my area (Boston). I _know_ I'm underpaid (intentionally, I work at a place not known for high salaries, but I like it) and yet I've yet to see someone's profile where the crowd wisdom was higher than my salary. Furthermore both the site's and the crowd's estimate for me were well below my salary

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7449356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7449356)

</comment><comment><USER5> Sign up for an account at [http://hired.com/](http://hired.com/) & participate in the auction. You can set your location & will get an understanding of what is market for your area.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really like salar.ly -- it's a collection of salaries of people with work visas (they have to report their salaries) that acts as a decent proxy for salaries as a whole.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aren't H1B workers known to have depressed salaries relative to their domestic counterparts?

<comment><USER6> Sure, but it's consistent (I think ~15% or so based on some anecdotal evidence), so you can still use the data effectively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't checked in quite some time, but AngelList used to do a great job at this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Glass Door.</comment>


How to Write a BitTorrent Client, Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.kristenwidman.com/blog/33/how-to-write-a-bittorrent-client-part-1/ <comment><USER2> I recently went through the same thing – building my own simple BitTorrent client, mostly just due to curiosity about how the protocol works. There were some tricky parts, most of which are outlined in this but I found the underlying concept so simple. I guess simplicity is a requirement for scale and resilience.

I wrote up my adventure too: [http://seanjoflynn.com/research/bittorrent.html](http://seanjoflynn.com/research/bittorrent.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> For "Writing BitTorrent Client" workshops I've made, I have created "introductory" tracker and peers (they, for example, display friendly errors if you make invalid protocol requests): [https://torrent.zielmicha.com/](https://torrent.zielmicha.com/)

The source is on Github: [https://github.com/zielmicha/torrent- workshops](https://github.com/zielmicha/torrent-workshops)

(unfortunately you need to register before using it, but you can even use fake mail)

</comment><comment><USER4> If anyone is interested in a similar writeup for a bittorrrent client for node.js, check out my tutorial here: [http://allenkim67.github.io/bittorrent/2016/05/04/how-to- mak...](http://allenkim67.github.io/bittorrent/2016/05/04/how-to-make-your- own-bittorrent-client.html)

<comment><USER5> Love! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Feross has some great implementations of the different pieces of BitTorrent (including parsing torrent files, magnets etc) in JavaScript on his GitHub[0]. Would recommend people take a look if they find this blog post interesting.

[0] - [https://github.com/feross?tab=repositories](https://github.com/feross?tab=repositories)

</comment><comment><USER7> this is actually pretty cool. i think cryptocurrencies could benefit from the implementation of some design features from the bittorrent protocol.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is something that's been on my list of things to do for a while and I've never gotten around to it. Thanks for this post.</comment>


Postnatal exposure to household disinfectants and risk of overweight in children - <AUTHOR> http://www.cmaj.ca/content/190/37/E1097 <comment><USER2> This has a pretty decent sample size. I hope they can narrow down which cleaners have this effect. Also my first thought when I saw that "eco- friendly" disinfectants didn't kill bacteria is that they just don't work.</comment>


Court Limits Display of South Africa's Old Apartheid Flag, Citing Hateful Legacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/08/21/753074028/court-limits-display-of-south-africas-old-apartheid-flag-citing-hateful-legacy <comment><USER2> To be honest, it's much more a ban than anything else.</comment>


Music-Recognition Breakthrough: Digital Sound Separator - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20606/?a=f

<comment><USER2> That's cool. Reminds me of 1984 and how they had computers synthesis books, etc. The differences between live music, and highly processed digital recordings is insane. I guess art is ultimately constrained to it's medium, and if you're planning on cutting your music onto CD, computers are going to be doing a lot of work for you.

(Ever read the insert on the Elephant Album?)</comment>


GUI application written entirely in F# - <AUTHOR> http://kalidor-web.com/ <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> All 100% project code - even interops and COM object creation is pure F#.</comment>


Ask HN: Did HN just change font? - <AUTHOR>

... and if it did, any explanations as to why? <comment><USER2> I think it has always used Verdana for text and Courier for input & code. [http://web.archive.org/web/20070405032412/http://news.ycombi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070405032412/http://news.ycombinator.com/) What does your browser render it as? (Right-click -> Inspect Element, click "Computed" at the top of the right-hand pane.)

Edit: oh, now it's "Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif" where it used to be "Verdana, sans-serif". So if you have Geneva but not Verdana, and Geneva was not already your sans-serif font, it will look different.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you - appreciate the reply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yep, I came to the "Ask" section to see if anyone else noticed it.</comment>


Secret Deal Helped Housing Industry Stop Tougher Rules on Climate Change - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/climate/building-codes-secret-deal.html <comment><USER2> "This round, the homebuilders have opposed changes that include requiring better insulation in attics and air ducts, as well as a proposal requiring new houses to be equipped with the circuitry required to install a plug for an electric vehicle — potentially making it easier for homeowners to switch to electric cars in the future."

Homebuyers should not be forced to pay for things they don't want.

</comment><comment><USER3> We all have to pay for climate change we don't want.</comment>