Quantum Game with Photons - <AUTHOR> http://play.quantumgame.io/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of Light House game that I used to have on my phone.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bananadeve...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bananadevelopment.lighthouse)

If this was available as a mobile app, I would totally play it - nice little time waster.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool! I enjoyed playing a little during my lunch break. I've got to say, for what it is, it's very fun. I don't feel like I'm learning, but I also feel like I'm learning. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> As a physics student I always hated quantum optics. IMHO the by far least intuitive field in undergrad physics. I never got. Not even a bit. Circuits, Special relativity and quantum physics in the context of atoms was so much more approachable to me. I mean, I like physics. I wonder why optics is so different.

In the end all I did was learning some standard configurations of optical instruments. That and ray optics made me pass. Of course i forgot almost everything almost instantly.

I really love the idea to get a better intuition for what is going on by a game.

By level 30 I thought I understood how the Faraday rotator works in this game. In level 32 I feel like my solution should work, but it doesn't. It behaves completely different that I think it should. The help page don't help me at all.

I'd like to see some "debug" mode where I can freeze time and inspect the quanta.

Also I feel that the simulation sometimes "gives up" too early, and i can't see why something isn't working because it ends too early.

<comment><USER5> It looks like it ends when the 'chosen' path clicks for that round. That is, if you have a 75% chance of going on a long path and a 25% chance of hitting a rock immediately, 25% of the time it will end quickly (and not show the possible, but not chosen, path).

I, too, found that annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone explain why these two arrangements are not equivalent? They seem to both cause same phase shift and reflections, but the first one causes the photon to pass to the right, and the second - to split.

[https://imgur.com/a/OkEQY](https://imgur.com/a/OkEQY)

[https://imgur.com/a/Byo8E](https://imgur.com/a/Byo8E)

<comment><USER7> Reflection changes "left-right". So effectively, a sugar solution (rotating polarization) before mirror rotates it in the opposite direction (vs a sugar solution after a mirror).

Actually it is a tricky thing I realised while testing this game. I thought it was an error in code. But nope - it was how does physics work. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> @stared Great game, much appreciated! I have a question about level 20. If I put a sugar glass behind the laser and then two directly at the two outputs of the PBS, it doesn't work (interference triggers the bomb). If I move the two sugar glasses after the PBS behind the two respecitive mirrors next in each path (so the paths become Laser->SG->PBS->Mirror->SG in each arm), the interference works correctly and I pass the level. I just can't wrap my head around why the phase is different in each case. It would be really helpful to be able to inspect the quanta at each point in time so you can see how each element affects phase and polarization exactly.

<comment><USER7> Could you send a screenshot?

In any case:

Reflection changes "left-right". So effectively, a sugar solution (rotating polarization) before mirror rotates it in the opposite direction (vs a sugar solution after a mirror). Actually it is a tricky thing I realised while testing this game. I thought it was an error in code. But nope - it was how does physics work. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Vertical and horizontal here seem quite confusing. The absorptive polarizer with vertical lines drawn on it passes through photons passing through PBS, which game calls horizontal. So either the polarizer lines have negative logic (indicating what is absorbed, not passed through), or there is some inconsistency. Similarly, the horizontal polarization is represented as photon bouncing up and down ("vertically") if it travels right. This can get confusing.

I wonder if some polarization arrow can be drawn somehow, like: [https://encrypted- tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTAlDUU...](https://encrypted- tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTAlDUUJ0aYL_xuHo0cncUgy51JiyDw18V3Q-Nrko9eNpUWjnYmBw)

<comment><USER7> I admit I had a big struggle with visualizing polarizers. It is easy to do in 3D or some 2.5D. In 2D every visualization was confusing (the one we use is the least confusing).

Any ideas are welcome here (as long they work for every possible orientation and are 2D).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi, I believe, I am able to skip levels. If I finish a level, I can forward before the popup, and then again press next level on the popup window.

<comment> phoe-krk You can just click the level number in the list on the left side. No need to trick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Dear lord, please tell me where the cheat or hint pages are for this. I'm stuck.

97.9% against 100% and I simply don't know what to do.

.

Great game! :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Thought was Firefox related.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand what the point of having two adjacent lemonades is.

<comment><USER7> Each lemonade rotates polarization of light by 45 degrees. Two rotate by 90 degrees, i.e. changing from horizontal to vertical and vice versa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am stuck at 25, 31 and 34. Does anyone has a cue ?

<comment><USER14> 25.1-25.2: Avoid the left bomb first. Cut the right bomb risk to 50%.

25.3-25.5: Photons don't care about the direction of time. Fire one backwards in time from the detector to the emitter.

31.1-31.2: To avoid the bomb, the light must be polarized horizontal ASAP.

31.3-31.4: A sugar and a rotator in series, or a rotator and a mirror will preserve polarization going one way and rotate 90 degrees the other way. You may have to flip the rotator over by clicking on it.

31.5-31.9: Go backwards from the detector to figure out where the polarization has to be horizontal, and where it has to be vertical. You never need to consider interference.

34.1: Without rotating the polarization somehow, you'll never get enough photons through the filter.

34.2-34.3: Avoid hitting the rock and the top bomb.

34.4-34.5: You only have one option left for reflecting away from the bottom bomb. And you'll need vertical polarization to use it.

34.6-34.8: You can only absorb 25%, and it should be obvious by now which path you have to absorb from. Now arrange glass and vacuum to produce the correct interference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of spending hours upon hours on Chip's Challenge. Unfortunately this doesn't seem mobile friendly.

<comment><USER16> Have you ever tried Chip's Challenge 2? Chuck finally got the rights back and released it recently[1]. I actually thought the second one had even more interesting computer-themed mechanics than the first one, it's a shame it was released so late. There's also a nostalgic tileset you can drop in for CC2 (depending on which version you consider nostalgic)[2].

[1] [http://store.steampowered.com/app/348300/Chips_Challenge_2/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/348300/Chips_Challenge_2/)

[2] [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0klXLq7HW8sTzNhWTY3clo5Xzg...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0klXLq7HW8sTzNhWTY3clo5Xzg/view)

<comment><USER15> I had no idea there was a 2, thanks for sharing. Opening up that tileset brought memories of hours spent on certain levels flooding back!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Still trying to reconcile what's going on in level 2. Do I need to accomplish this over multiple attempts?

<comment><USER18> The game is trying to teach you how basic rules of quantum mechanics work. In reality, emitting a single particle leads to probability of it reaching multiple detectors with a given chance. You have to set the splitters in such a way, that all detectors can be reached with a chance greater than 0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Author here. Really excited to see Quantum Game on HN! :)

Just in case, project repo is here: [https://github.com/stared/quantum- game](https://github.com/stared/quantum-game)

For more on learning (and teaching) quantum mechanics, see: [http://p.migdal.pl/2016/08/15/quantum-mechanics-for-high- sch...](http://p.migdal.pl/2016/08/15/quantum-mechanics-for-high-school- students.html)

And BTW: a question to you (as I guess there are many JavaScript whizz kids): how to make it more reactive?

<comment><USER19> found a bug: if i click next after completing a level before the "you won" screen pops up and subsequently click next level on the "you won" screen i can skip two levels ahead

<comment><USER20> I was just about to comment the same thing. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Tip for those lost on level 1 - you can actually click on the mirrors itself to rotate them. Took me a while to figure that out...

<comment><USER22> And use Firefox.

<comment><USER23> Can confirm: clicking mirrors registers as a drag in Chrome 62.0.3202.94 under every circumstance I can find.

<comment><USER24> Works fine on 63.0.3239.84 / macOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't really make sense of interference. I made it to level 6, but I didn't understand the solutions for any of the 3 previous levels. I found some of the online help, but I'm not really making any sense of what it's saying.

<comment><USER26> This game isn't writing the numbers (complex-valued probability amplitudes of states, classical EM vectors even) anywhere so it's going to be pretty hard to relate what you're seeing here to the math that you'll find if you look up interference elsewhere.

I'll make an attempt here, though. I _think_ the effect on level 4 is totally classical so it shouldn't take too much background.

1\. The solution to a problem involving light is called a wavefunction, which is just a name assigned to functions that map position and time onto what the wave is doing at that position and time. I.E. for a sound wave, W(x: position, t: time) => p: air pressure.

2\. The meat of a "wave equation" is essentially also a function, but it's higher-order. It maps wavefunctions onto wavefunctions, I.E. consider high- order function L, such that L(W: wavefunction) => X: wavefunction. The name for this map is an "operator," by the way.

3\. We can set up operators L(W) so that they map all "true and physical" wavefunctions on to the zero-function, f(x,t) = 0. This contrivance is the job of physicists to design; so for our discussion let's just take it that for every physically possible W(x,t), it is the case that L(W(x,t)) = 0. (And vice-versa, every solution to that equation is physically possible.) The equation L(W) = 0 is called the "wave equation," by the way.

3\. It is a property of L that L(W + Q) = L(W) + L(Q) for wavefunctions W and Q. This implies that if L(W) = 0 and L(Q) = 0, then L(W + Q) = L(W) + L(Q) = 0+0 = 0. Therefore, since physical possibility <-> L(W) = 0, then we may conclude that the sum of any two physically possible wavefunctions W and Q is another physically possible wavefunction, W+Q.

4\. Ignore time and look at my nice graph[0]. This illustrates adding two functions (there A(x) and B(x) ) which also happen to be solutions to the wave equation. Play around with the parameter _p_ , (whose purpose is to let you select A to be one of many horizontally offset versions of itself) and see if you can make A + B do anything noteworthy.

[0] [https://www.desmos.com/calculator/iwa3auxvuz](https://www.desmos.com/calculator/iwa3auxvuz)

5\. Hopefully in looking at my graph, you have noticed that for some values of _p_ , A+B became flat everywhere. Now, I can finally explain what's going on with level 4. When the beamsplitter produces two beams from one, the two functions it shoots out have two different values of _p_ , the dynamics detailed in [1]. If _two_ beams are incident on the splitter, _four_ beams will shoot out, and since some of them are overlapping in space they will add and you'll see the superposition effects. See my drawing [2]. (By the way, the parameter _p_ is called phase, and the verb for the thing the waves to under superposition is called interference.)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_splitter#Phase_shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_splitter#Phase_shift)

[2] I've drawn it here. Please don't over-interpret it, I just sketched it in paint without a lot of attention to detail. [https://imgur.com/a/7YLMa](https://imgur.com/a/7YLMa)

Hopefully this is helpful and sheds some light on the underlying physics!

<comment><USER27> Thanks for the great explanation! If you don't mind, I had a question about '3.' I get how it's used in making your larger argument, but as a thing in itself I'm kinda lost. Part of what I'm wondering is how it's okay to say 'L(W) = 0' when earlier you described L(W) like 'L(W: wavefunction) => X: wavefunction'; so is the zero in 'L(W) = 0' just shorthand for something like 'L(W) = (f(x,t) = 0)'?

(I'm also curious why mapping to the zero function ends up being the central criterion for physical possibility—but I'm guessing that's a rather deep subject ;))

Edit: NVM I see what's going on with 'L(W(x,t)) = 0' now: the equation is equating the full _evaluation_ of the nested functions on the left (using the x,t params) with zero. When written like 'L(W) = 0' it looks like it's equating the _function_ returned by L(W) with zero.

<comment><USER26> > _it looks like it 's equating the function returned by L(W) with zero_

There is a deeper point to be made here that I'm glad you brought up. Functions form a vector space (because they satisfy the axioms of vector behavior, basically because they can be added to each other and scaled by constant multiples). In linear algebra the symbol 0 often does double-duty as the zero vector, which is defined as the vector that doesn't change other vectors when it's added to them. So, here, when I write L(W) = 0 I'm implicitly invoking 0 = f_zero(x,t) = 0.

As for why "mapping to zero" has a physical basis, well, it's really more of a thing we're always guaranteed to be able to do. You can always subtract everything from the right-hand side of an equation! For example, Wikipedia introduces the one-dimensional wave equation as D_t^2 u = a^2 D_x^2 u. I can also write that as L[u] = D_t^2 u - q^2 * D_x^2 u = 0, so L[u] = 0. (In my notation, D_x is the derivative with respect to x, and D_x^2 is the second derivative with respect to x.)

The _real_ question is why the addition thing works; if I had to try explaining it I would just say it's just _fundamental_ that Maxwell's equations are linear, and when dealing with things that aren't, we usually approximate them with linear functions anyways[0]. That's how gravitational waves emerge from GR, by the way: at low energies the nonlinear equations behave nearly linear, and in that approximation the familiar wave equation falls out.

[0] If you zoom in to a small enough range in the graph of all but the most esoteric functions, the thing on your screen will look like a line. Try it, it's a good intuition to have.

<comment><USER27> Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks. I missed this in your original phrasing, "We can SET UP operators L(W) so that they..."—but I think I see now: equating L(W) with the zero function is algebraically convenient, since we want to solve for an unknown function/vector, and using zero there allows us to be 'agnostic' about what that unknown function/vector is (any other value would 'say something' about the unknown).

> The real question is why the addition thing works

Unfortunately I'm still at the point where I can't see why it should be surprising that it works. I'm assuming that by the 'addition thing' you are referring to the fact that adding two wave functions always produces another wave function—or maybe it's something about the characteristics of the wave function produced through adding? I'm not sure how linearity plays into things here. Maybe it's surprising that it's possible to form a linear operator (I'm assuming the "operator" you mentioned is this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_map)) for wave functions? I guess not though since it's probably just using the structure of those functions as vectors and it doesn't matter what they're 'about'. Nope, not sure :)

<comment><USER26> While the wavefunctions are vectors by virtue of being functions, it still remains to be seen that the set of "physically possible" wavefunctions is _also_ a vector space. For example, if the physics were such that we were equating the local kinetic energy of a string to, I don't know, it's position or something, we would end up with an equation looking like (D_t f(x,t))^2 - f(x,t) = 0. It still can be written as an operator (not all operators are linear), but the addition thing wouldn't work anymore. It's a remarkable pattern in physics that those squared terms tend not to appear in reality.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Development of Sequel - <AUTHOR> http://jeremyevans-pres.heroku.com/heroku201205/index.html

<comment><USER2> Sequel is wonderful and for me represents a much more natural way to program than both heavy and lightweight ORMs (hibernate and AR).

There's a lot of syntax magic going on to give the appearance of a clean SQL DSL, but it leaks through more often than not. Still, better than anything else I've seen.

What's up with the presentation and meaningless photos taking up all the space? Black text on a white background and nothing else would be a lot better.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a sort of meta-commentary, why is this presentation _two hundred and twenty four_ (224!) slides long? Am I alone in thinking this is totally, absurdly unreasonable?

<comment><USER4> It was very tightly delivered. It is pretty amazing that it either is the case or appears that Jeremy knows exactly what slide is going to follow the current one, sentence to sentence. For a one-hour-ish talk, that means many slides last less than thirty seconds.

This is meant to be delivered rather than read, but in retrospect the delivery was, in and of itself, rather incredible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I switched from ActiveRecord to Sequel about a year ago because I needed good support for composite primary keys, and I've never looked back. It's a phenomenal library, highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER6> This has been developed for five years? How have I not heard of it until now?

<comment><USER7> I haven't either.

As I'm going through the deck, I'm studying each slide and note. It's loaded.

ACID, simplicity, culture, documentation, TDD, prioritization. And more I overlooked I'm sure. Each has nuggets of wisdom.

This is Good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unfortunately, I can't read this as the site is utterly and completely broken on my iPhone. I'm usually able to ignore rendering issues but this really takes the cake.

Can someone provide a summary?

<comment><USER9> It's also broken on my MacBook running Chrome. I can only see the first/title page.

<comment><USER10> Use the cursor keys (right is forward and left is back) to browse through the slides and I had to go into fullscreen mode to see the comments at the bottom of the page.

<comment><USER11> Didn't work in chrome, was banging head against wall for almost 15 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you find the many slides with little text on each frustrating then `lynx -dump $url' gets you just the text to quickly skim.

</comment><comment><USER13> I switched from AR to Sequel about 3 years ago and haven't looked back. It's a far superior ORM and much easier to extend than AR. Jeremy is an excellent steward of the project.</comment>


Ask HN: JavaScript library for chart like GitHub commit history? - ben-gy <comment><AUTHOR> This can be accomplished with D3.js[1] to bind data to HTML elements -- a div block, in your case -- and color them based on value.

D3 is a big library, so you'll likely only need these modules:

        d3-selection
        d3-scale

[1]: [https://d3js.org/](https://d3js.org/)</comment>


Wooga releases mobile HTML5 Game as Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.wooga.com/labs/

<comment><USER2> Just to be precise, only the game engine is open source. "Images are licensed under a Creative Commons License and are provided separately," and this CC license is BY-NC-SA which is neither FSF- nor OSI-compliant.

<comment><USER3> This looks like a good thing for the liberated pixel cup to be used to replace those assets. <http://lpc.opengameart.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like they are ceasing development because of technical limitations and user engagement problems that come with it being an HTML5 app vs native app.

[http://gigaom.com/europe/facebook-should-be-worried-about- wo...](http://gigaom.com/europe/facebook-should-be-worried-about-woogas- html5-exit/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a way to release an HTML5 game that isn't open source (viewable code)? Other than obfuscating the code isn't it necessarily available to the user?

<comment><USER6> You can wrap it up inside a web view and deploy as a native app. This is what frameworks like PhoneGap are for. Given the game is available in the iOS app store, this is probabably what they did, assuming they didn't write their own wrapper application.

<comment><USER7> obfuscating the js would still be more important, as there are probably some simple hacks to get all the javascript back from the web view or the js file used by the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Will be interesting to see if this benefits the original game any later on. Maybe people will write Android games using it and contribute back the ability to the original, etc.. Or maybe they won't, etc..

</comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't work in Firefox

<comment><USER10> There is an issue open[1], looks like a fix is in the works.

1\. <https://github.com/wooga/Pocket-Island/issues/2>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Excellent, this is great stuff. I wish they had released a separate HTML5 Game Engine. At a glance, it looks like everything is tied pretty closely to the game itself. I've been looking at engines like Isogenic and Construct 2, but here you have a large HTML5 game larger than most had been able to demonstrate. Plus, its open source, where the previously mentioned engines are closed source and require a license purchase, although Construct 2 has pretty good documentation on how to make games. I really like what Wooga did with this.</comment>


Jack Dorsey says he's rethinking the core of how Twitter works - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/15/jack-dorsey-says-hes-rethinking-core-how-twitter-works/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b96830032136 <comment><USER2> It would be trivial to have a Twitter people would appreciate:

1\. Strictly a time oriented feed. If I don't want to see someone's tweets I will unfollow them.

2\. Rankings in 2 dimensions for 2 scores, each out of say 1000 since with so many millions of subscribers 100 wouldn't be fine grained enough. Then let ME determine what ranking I want to filter on.

Reality is that Twitter is not about free speech or any other high minded ideal, but about manipulation of public opinion.

That all this is happening in the 90 days before the 2018 mid term elections is not a coincidence.</comment>


BespokeSynth: Software Modular Synth - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/awwbees/BespokeSynth <comment><USER2> Wait, does it actually draw the waveforms in the lines between the nodes?

That's brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111eleven1111!!!

<comment><USER3> Thanatos has bespoken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awful confusing UX, take a look at VCV Rack for comparison

<comment><USER5> Kindness be fucked; the programmer clearly has the talent and motivation to not care and to have surely already discovered VCV Rack. What's bad about it though? VCV Rack's eurorack skeumorphism forces inefficient arrangement of modules because they're forced into a grid, forces separation of inputs and controllers like knobs unlike a synth like Audulus, which is totally unnecessary in a non-physical medium, ends up with a far less consistent modules because they're designed like eurorack modules of various brands. All these problems don't even compare to how VCV Rack spends a lot of extra resources on graphics because everything looks physical.

<comment><USER6> I actually think this is _much better_ than VCV Rack from a computer UX perspective. Makes a lot more sense to arrange things.</comment></comment></comment>


A Formal Apology for Metaphysics [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://philpapers.org/archive/BARAFA-6.pdf <comment><USER2> Probably one of the few people that read the whole thing, but the argument is, in my opinion, pretty weak. It basically boils down to making some kind of equivalence between metaphysics and pure mathematics. Of course, it ignores the main force of mathematical progress: theorem-building. Metaphysics might be "interconnected in much the same way" as Dr. Baron argues, but let's not kid ourselves. To argue that metaphysics is as "conceptually interrelated" as mathematics is is a real stretch. Just consider volume: it's estimated that around _a quarter of a million_ theorems are proved every year. That's real, measurable, progress; what's the metaphysics equivalent?

The distinction between "internally applied metaphysics" and "externally applied metaphysics" on page 14 is a shameless red herring. The _only_ thing we ought to care about, given the preceding section on applications of pure mathematics is "externally applied metaphysics," but in typical philosopher fashion, Dr. Baron equivocates for a few unnecessary pages. Finally, let me leave you with this gem: "All three cases are examples in which scientists appear to be doing metaphysics. Computer scientists build models of objects and categories in order to provide the resources for artificial intelligence to successfully navigate the world, or make judgements [sic] about it." Yeah, that's not metaphysics; it's pretty much just regular taxonomy (and, by the way, the term of art is _labeling_ ). TensorFlow models have nothing to do with metaphysical models, and this is exactly why philosophers get such a bad rap. They extend far beyond the reaches of their knowledge base and don't even have the courtesy to look up "machine learning model" on Wikipedia.

<comment><USER3> Mathematics is metaphysics. I'd like your refutation to center on any nuance which might separate the two disciplines other than the sad fact that many philosophers don't learn much maths.

Logic is metaphysics: [https://philpapers.org/archive/ALVLIM-3.pdf](https://philpapers.org/archive/ALVLIM-3.pdf)

Logic is mathematical, logic is _categorical_ (structured in a deep way amenable to category theory), maths is categorical: [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/rosetta.pdf](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/rosetta.pdf) [https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/internal+logic](https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/internal+logic) [https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/topos](https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/topos)

Ontology is categorical: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1889v2](https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1889v2) [https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.00526](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.00526)

The working programmer _is_ an ontologist and a taxonomist, but this fact isn't well-understood.

<comment><USER4> This kind of response really grinds my gears about these discussions of philosophy (more often than not related to metaphysics). You're referencing the mostly unobjectionable features of the field to defend the objectionable features, when there is very little similarity between the two. You can't defend ontology language games by appealing to the truth of logic or mathematics, as they share nothing of relevance in common. If you want to give an actual defense of the things people find objectionable about metaphysics, you have to defend the features being attacked, not tangentially related things that happen to be categorized under the same broad label.

>Logic is metaphysics:

Maybe this is true, but _doing_ logic isn't _doing_ metaphysics. One does not need to take a stance on the metaphysics of logic to study and create formal systems.

>The working programmer is an ontologist and a taxonomist, but this fact isn't well-understood.

Not in any substantive sense. There is a surface-level connection between what a programmer does and a metaphysician does, but this is the extent of the connection. The ontologies studied in metaphysics attempt to make true substantive statements about what exists in the actual world. The programmer is merely stipulating the basic objects and relationships in a fully contingent domain of inquiry. The programmer is doing metaphysics only if you remove anything of substance from what we take the metaphysician to be doing.

<comment><USER3> And this kind of response really grinds my gears; I am relatively certain, given the time scales involved and the nature of your response, that you didn't read my links, and you haven't provided any of your own. Nonetheless!

Doing logic is doing metaphysics. Suppose 1+1=2 for addable numbers, that you have oranges and can add more oranges, and also that the number of oranges you have is an addable number. Now you know, as a matter of plain old philosophical handwavey logic, that if you have 1 orange, and you add 1 more orange, then you'll have 2 oranges. Easy, right? This generalizes to any topos and it's known as "internal logic". The slogan we have is, "a topos is a place for doing logic".

Doing metaphysics is doing logic. Want to know what's impossible? If it can be characterized purely by mathematical structures, and those structures' existence leads to contradiction, then it's impossible. Thus, "models" in the first sense of the original article, free unconstrained unicorn metaphysics models, are actually logically (and thus mathematically) constrained by "models" in the second sense, in the mathematical sense. A powerful example of this is M-theory, borne from string theory; right now, the "swampland" cleanup is sweeping through string theory and helping refine our sense of which particle physics are possible.

An ontologist in today's postmodern world surely knows that the (inherently mathematical!) structures that they are building and studying are created, not discovered; subjective, not objective; narratives, not truths. Mathematicians know this formally, via Tarski's Undefinability. Just like an ontologist tries to find models, a programmer tries to find models, searching for the database schemata and the class hierarchy that will match their problem.

(Indeed, what is "anything of substance"? Is it physical?)

<comment><USER4> >I am relatively certain, given the time scales involved and the nature of your response, that you didn't read my links, and you haven't provided any of your own

The content of the links didn't seem relevant to the objection I offered. Perhaps that's incorrect, but you didn't make the case.

>Doing logic is doing metaphysics. Suppose 1+1=2 for addable numbers... that if you have 1 orange, and you add 1 more orange, then you'll have 2 oranges.

I could object to doing math being an instance of metaphysics, but setting that aside, the issue is that the connection between logic and metaphysics is the "mostly unobjectionable" subset of metaphysics that I mentioned previously. So again, you can't substantiate the objectionable parts with arguments that only apply to the unobjectionable parts.

>An ontologist in today's postmodern world surely knows that the (inherently mathematical!) structures that they are building and studying are created, not discovered; subjective, not objective; narratives, not truths.

Here you seem to be admitting that metaphysics is unsubstantive! Metaphysics purports to discover what exists, not subjective notions of preferred taxonomies. But it is precisely the charge that nothing objective is being discovered that underpins the argument against metaphysics.

Now I understand why you see a close connection between what a programmer does and what the metaphysician does: they're both theorizing about contingent domains of inquiry, with no external objective facts at stake. But now I don't get why you object to saying metaphysics is unsubstantive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe readers will enjoy this related post from Bernardo Kastrup. It may argue the point better, or not. I can't argue myself as it's too obvious for me. It's a unwinnable argument in my opinion, since it drives right into what it means to know something.

Why dismissing philosophy threatens the integrity of science

[https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2018/12/why-dismissing- philo...](https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2018/12/why-dismissing-philosophy- threatens.html)

<comment><USER6> Only the most radical suggest eliminating philosophy, because that would include ethics and from that law, and also some art criticism. A much more common stance is that certain "impossible" areas of philosophy are a waste of time, and if you ask a "science-ist" to be specific about what they don't like, they'll probably only list those parts of philosophy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meta theories should be evaluated by their fruits, theories they help cognitive system to discover. By how good the theories are and how easy it is to discover them. For example: instead of teaching a child a great bunch of theories one can teach it a simple/short meta-theory and see if the child, based on its experience with the world, discovers a greater bunch good theories.

</comment><comment><USER8> This isn't an apology, it's blame-shifting.

"Don't hit people! Apologize to your sibling NOW!"

"Sorry mom, my sibling plays baseball and gets congratulated whenever they hit the ball; so we're really no different"

</comment><comment><USER9> The actual justification for non-directly-observable metaphysics is Occam's Razor.

<comment><USER6> How do you know that the true metaphysics of the world doesn't have one additional thing beyond your theory? There is no way, there is not even any way to get a sense of what pattern it is following.</comment></comment>


Why don't people have more sex? - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/05/why_dont_people.html <comment><USER2> A disappointingly shallow analysis, which seems to depend on the implicit assumption that sex is a completely free choice (historically almost the exact opposite is true) and that there are no countervailing forces that seek to circumscribe and direct sexual activity.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Sex stops being fun when you do it to close a gap between your marginal utilities._

That sentence right there is enough to kill a boner dead.</comment>


Reddit Political Ads Transparency Community - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditPoliticalAds/ <comment><AUTHOR> Reddit's US political ad policy[1] seems like a great compromise between Facebook's (allow almost everything) and Twitter's (allow almost nothing, which treats rule-following advertisers the same as rule-breaking ones).

Instead of trying to define or assess which ads are "Good," Reddit disallows a few very black-and-white situations - like ads that try to discourage voting - but otherwise focuses on transparency. The complete details of every political ad buy (including the buyer, the targeting, and the cost) are posted to this subreddit. Comments are on.

Here's the most recent 2 posts about ad buys: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditPoliticalAds/comments/hjr3ty/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditPoliticalAds/comments/hjr3ty/demand_biden_release_his_senate_records_joe_biden/), [https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditPoliticalAds/comments/hjseoy/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditPoliticalAds/comments/hjseoy/5_years_ago_the_supreme_court_decided_that_love/)

(Also: Imagine being able to see this information about every online ad, political or not.)

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/g0s6tn/chang...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/g0s6tn/changes_to_reddits_political_ads_policy/)</comment>


Cannabis Compound May Block Covid-19 Infection - <AUTHOR> https://www.labroots.com/trending/cannabis-sciences/17593/study-cannabis-block-covid-19-infection <comment><USER2> Soon doctors will prescribe blunts for their nicotine [1] and MJ mix.

[1] [https://www.qeios.com/read/WPP19W.3](https://www.qeios.com/read/WPP19W.3)

</comment><comment><USER3> Brownies for breakfast!</comment>


Walmart launching its own line of aggressively-priced Overpowered gaming laptops - <AUTHOR> https://www.notebookcheck.net/Walmart-is-launching-its-own-line-of-aggressively-priced-Overpowered-gaming-laptops.354171.0.html <comment><USER2> they look a lot like lenovos Y series to me, not that its a bad thing, at least theyre understated, ive never really understood why gaming laptops have to be designed like a boy racers subaru

<comment><USER3> They're targeting the boy racer Subaru demographic. Surprised Alienware hasn't just made a laptop that you can vape with.</comment></comment>


Perfect language decoder – private beta open - <AUTHOR> http://www.fidolabs.org/language-decoder-api-2.html Language Decoder is a NLP technology for information extraction for non linguists. <comment><AUTHOR> CrowdListener is an example of use. See how it can gather content to decode and how it is decoded. [http://www.crowdlistener.ai/venue.php?am=rest&av=4bd2177d046...](http://www.crowdlistener.ai/venue.php?am=rest&av=4bd2177d046076b055357371)</comment>


Xkcd: Free Speech - <AUTHOR> https://xkcd.com/1357/ <comment><USER2> Free speech is more than just some amendment to the constitution or some right Americans are guaranteed. It's a much larger concept about allowing people to communicate their opinions and ideas without fear of any punishment, not just legal punishment.

The reason for Freedom of Speech is to prevent people from basing their publicly held opinions on getting a job, being prosecuted, or anything else.</comment>


Ask HN: Can we get a ruling on political submissions? - <AUTHOR> There seem to be two sides to the debate here:
1) I come to HN to read about tech news and things interesting to hackers, not to read divisive political discourse.
2) Current political events absolutely should be on HN because the events concern the tech community and we have a unique position to be able to influence them.
Can a moderator make a ruling on what HN's official position is going to be?  Over the past few months, I've seen more and more purely political posts rising up to the top spots on the front page.  Many times they are flagged off the front page, but the fact that they are rising so quickly implies that many people want them there. <comment><USER2> The moderating staff tried a one week ban on politics. It didn't work and didn't last a week in part because it failed so spectacularly. One result: Almost every single submission had people threadshitting with announcements that "This is POLITICAL" as their way to protest the ban on politics.

Flag or downvote. Read the things that interest you. Ignore the stuff that doesn't. There is no obligation for you to read anything in particular and I have difficulty believing that anyone can manage to even read everything that hits the front page, plus all comments, etc.

<comment><USER3> Politics should be allowed in my opinion.

The HN crowd has a very interesting take on politics that I cannot get anywhere else. Seriously, the most interesting stuff I read is here, and not anywhere else... it's comments from potatolicious, rayiner, tptacek, yummyfajitas, anigbrowl, etc. HN is still small enough to feel like a group of friends having interesting discussion... of course too much of anything is overbearing, and it's not like politics is all there is... but it should be here. I _learn_ every time I read rayiner's comment or any and all of the contentions that take place between so and so. I don't know any other place where I can find thoughts of such people in such a raw form. I want it to stay this way.

<comment><USER4> It's easy enough to feel like friends having a discussion if you have similarly leftist and statist politics to match some of the folks you mentioned. :)

For better or worse, a lot of the other folks and viewpoints here have been quietly squelched, mocked, punished, or outright banned by the moderators for being inconvenient or too abrasive or counter-message. In some cases, it's improved the signal-to-noise ratio, but it certainly hasn't increased diversity of thought.

The big problem with letting politics on here is that it tends, especially now with people being suuuuuper lazy about critical thinking, to just end up with folks shouting at each other and downvoting positions they don't agree with.

Time was one could dissent in a civil fashion here and receive upvotes for it --that time has long since passed.

<comment><USER5> You participate on lobste.rs as well, correct? How do you find discussions there in comparison?

<comment><USER4> I (and others) have made it an explicit goal to try and maintain civility and to focus on things that are immediately useful to tech practitioners. It's _amazing_ the amount of shit that gets cut out when you don't normalize the mindless upvoting of news, marketing, and politics.

The closest we've come in recent memory was a long grumping in a subthread about ESR in a submission involving Rust vs. Go.

The basic problem is just that there are a lot of people who want to inject politics into everything--and that's fine, and frankly even _correct_ \--but they don't realize that by doing so they destroy the safe space for civil technical discussion, of which there are few these days.

Some of the things that keep the discussions civil (in my estimation):

1\. Public moderation logs, none of the secret cabal stuff that goes on here. Thus, users never have a clear ground to say "help help I'm being repressed!". Towards that end, at least one user banned multiple times here has been a reasonably civil member of our community--though we do try to keep him from getting to longwinded about certain topics.

2\. People have multiple reasons to select why they're flagging something, and downvoting something just because you disagree with it is actively discouraged. Allowing people to get used to knee-jerk downvotes has made HN nastier, and it's something you can't really walk back.

3\. We have a clear tag system for organizing submissions, and a general policy of pointing out things that don't fit (and adding tags for new things). In this way, we get to ignore the brunt of articles--news, marketing spam, other bollocks--that would have to show up and be flagged away manually by the userbase. In effect, it seems people submit things with a little more care and submit things that are actually in the wheelhouse of the community.

4\. People are not afraid to point out when community norms are being broken, and are not afraid to use the mechanisms in place (meta threads, tag discussion threads, PMing) to fix those norms when they aren't working correctly.

5\. Invites are handled through the existing userbase, and we are all aware that we are somewhat responsible for who we bring in. In some small way, everybody feels directly responsible for the community and how it evolves--and they often put some minimum effort into vetting the people instead of just opening the floodgates to normies and marketers (for lack of a friendlier term).

~

I guess the other thing that helps is that, in general, we've had open discussion about the role of politics in the site, and the general population seems to recognize that, while some discussion is to be encouraged (and cultivated in places like our `culture` tags), we don't want to just start indiscriminately hosting submissions and their resulting arguments. Some, like me, would prefer that those submissions never appear. Others would be happy to submit politics all the time. The community though, in agggregate, is empowered enough and--for now--wise enough to strike a balance between those two extremes.

It's a good place, and I hope we don't fuck it up too soon.

<comment><USER2> _and it 's something you can't really walk back._

It is not something _easily_ or _readily_ walked back.

Nothing takes the past away like the future. If HN wants to walk it back, it can be done.

<comment><USER5> Agreed (and hoped for).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If there are any political activities or policies that affect tech community or companies, does that fit in here on HN?

Example: Many employees of tech companies are affected by Trump's immigration ban, and tech companies are recalling their employees as a result.

Example 2: Protests at Uber's office, and tensions among it's team due to CEO's relationship with Trump.

</comment><comment><USER7> From the guidelines [1]: _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they 're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon._

The recent news in the US might qualify as "some interesting new phenomenon" in a sense, but there's plenty of places to read about that elsewhere.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> HN's official position can be found in the HN Guidelines (see link at bottom of page):

 _" Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."_

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm firmly on the "I can get political news elsewhere" side.

<comment><USER10> Where? And where do you get good political discussion?

<comment><USER9> From my experience, there's almost no such thing as good political discussion via the Internet. I browse headlines from various sources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Politics is one thing, partisanship is another. I'd prefer neither on HN, but most especially the partisan stuff to not be posted. It seems inconsiderate at the very least. There are plenty of other venues for that.

</comment><comment><USER12> I vote for a democracy. Let the system of voting and flagging decide.

</comment><comment><USER13> There has been a moderator comment on politics:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404)

<comment><USER14> And three days later it was quietly ended with a comment that noted that it's impossible to separate politics from many the topics we discuss here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> PG - "make something people want". We don't want politics here...

<comment><USER16> Who are "we"? We, his majesty king?

<comment><USER15> We is the first person, plural personal pronoun (nominative case) in Modern English.

<comment><USER12> You mean "We are the first person, plural personal pronoun ..."

<comment><USER15> nope - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We)

<comment><USER5> Who are you including in the "we"?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rodents exhibit empathy by setting trapped friends free - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/336819/title/He%E2%80%99s_no_rat%2C_he%E2%80%99s_my_brother

<comment><USER2> I understand "empathy" to mean the ability to feel someone's emotions/pain/etc. What this demonstrates is that rats will go to another rat's aid, and nothing about their internal models for doing so.

It is oversimplifying to say something like "oh it's helping the other rat for selfish reason X", but it is equally misleading to apply human models of mind, which we have due to our unique ability to introspect and share that introspection with other members of our species.

Models such as kin selection (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection>) attempt to explain altruism within an evolutionary model, but even if there is a totally different cause for this particular altruistic behavior (and even if it is shown to be almost wholly altruistic, rather than just indirectly self- beneficial, assuming such a distinction exists), there are very few grounds to assume _empathy_.

The most interesting result to me is that the rats demonstrate distress at seeing the suffering, and cease upon release. But before talking about empathy again, we must show that the distress is its own separate thing ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test#Voight- Kampf...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test#Voight- Kampff_machine)) rather than mere frustration at failed attempts of rescue.

So, sure, we've learned _something_ , but I don't think we've demonstrated _empathy_.

<comment><USER3> There was a time when explorers observed a primitive tribe exhibiting empathy or even morality might exert the same kind of hand-wringing as you did about whether it is actually so.

<comment><USER4> Same thing happened with chimps and the discovery of tool use. Jane Goodall was met by the same resistance. It is a characteristic, I would assume of the social organism as a whole. We have a lot in common with our little burrowing social friends. Empathy being one of them.

Altruism is also indicated by leaving the sweets for the trapped rat.

Im not a neuroscientist, but I can guess the mirror neurons are at play.

<comment><USER5> I think what they try to avoid is anthropomorphization. It's not a good idea to make assumptions that assume human-like characteristics -else we end up with cartoons.

It's not to say that animals are incapable, but such assumptions cannot be made without the insight being held suspect.

<comment><USER3> Much has advanced in science since. We now know the role of various hormones and chemicals that influence our emotions. Oxytocin, adrenaline, etc. The trick to get out of anthropomorphization is to avoid being human-centric when making the observations. i.e. put on an alien hat and observe human behavior the way we might observe animal behavior, and then based on that say that one acts in a similar way to the other, and reason they may have similar motivations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That doesn't necessarily show empathy. In a dangerous environment, for instance, it can be better to have others around to lessen your individual risk. It could be freeing the trapped rat in the hope that when the big nasty humans come back they will pick the other rat.

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't your individual risk be lessened by leaving the other rat trapped, so that it is easy prey and more likely to get picked?

<comment><USER6> Maybe. On the other hand, the trapped rat might be safer as a predator might not be able to get into the cage.

There are plenty of possible ways things could work out. For instance, if the rats have figured out that the humans can identify individual rats and treat them different (which they might figure out if the humans have done several kinds of experiments on the same rats because each experiment would have a control group that gets different treatment), the rat outside might think "the humans but this other rat in the cage--if I let it out, then when they come back they'll be distracted putting it back in, and might leave me alone".

Or maybe it would be good to let the other rat out so that if danger arrives, you can go hide in the cage.

Or it could make sense to have the other rat out so that the two of you can more quickly explore the environment and find a way to escape.

The main point is that you can't really attribute letting the other rat out to empathy, as there are many other possible explanations for why a rat might let another rat out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Alternate title: Study finds humans selectively block their empathy towards some fellow mammals

</comment><comment><USER9> I am continuously amused by how humans get in a huff when people anthropmorphize animals' actions... "surely it can't be empathy!" ... "we don't know if the rat is _really_ feeling the trapped rat's pain!!"

The question is: why not? Who are we to say that rats (or dogs or cats or crows or elephants or . . . ) can't feel another's pain?

Dogs have been known to show emotion. Elephants have been known to show emotion. Chimp mothers express sorrow when their child dies. And so on.

But people will come up with contorted explanations for these phenomena: dogs must 'smell' some pheromone that triggers such behavior... chimp mothers are only grieving because it's loss of a valuable tribe resource ... or things to those effect.

You know what? Believe what you will. But I have seen more empathy coming from animals than some humans (see Dick Cheney).

<comment><USER10> I agree. Animals feeling emotions is one of those things that I believe, but can't prove. It just strikes me as another version of the "humans are the center of the univese" theory. Also, it's hard for me to believe that nature hasn't come up with emotions before humans evolved. I'm not saying I understand it very well, but the major brain structures responsible for emotion go back fairly far along the evolutionary tree.

Lastly, I just have trouble believing that what I see with my own eyes isn't emotion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The easier way to determine if humans are the only species who have empathy...

Talk to any dog owner.

<comment><USER7> All that will tell you is that humans will anthropomorphize anything.

I would agree with the dog owner, but then you sometimes hear owners of non- social animals (e.g. snakes, octopuses) claiming their pets have empathy. A few people even claim their _cars_ have empathy.

<comment><USER12> My car loves me. I'm serious, it's like it knows that I take really good care of it and try not to overwork it when I can. You should see how it responds to my touch far better than any one else's when I'm driving it in the mountains or in inclement conditions.

I can tell when it's happy because it's purring, and when it's working too hard it groans and squeals instead. It lets me know when its hungry (oil change indicator), thirsty (windshield wiper indicator), sick (service needed indicator), or just plain out of breath (low tire pressure indicator).

I don't understand how some people can be so cruel and say that it can't think and feel for itself. They think just because a human built the machine that built this car, that they're automatically superior to it. They just won't take the time to listen.

I used to be like that, but one time... I killed a car. It was by accident and I really didn't mean to do it, but the sounds it was making when it was dying; oh god, the sounds. You would know cars can feel and understand if you heard them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My god, other animals besides us have the capacity for empathy. I thought humans were the only creatures in the universe that had the potential for emotion or intelligence. Mind blowing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Very interesting page on rat social behavior: [http://www.ratbehavior.org/norway_rat_ethogram.htm#SocialBeh...](http://www.ratbehavior.org/norway_rat_ethogram.htm#SocialBehavior)

</comment><comment><USER15> I set a mouse trap yesterday morning and last night went to check on it. The mouse that was caught in it was pretty much gone from being eaten by another mouse (which I'm guessing is the one that I caught this morning). I guess nobody told them about this study.

<comment><USER16> Mice are pretty much just herbivores. I think you might something other than just mice to worry about...

<comment><USER14> I think he meant that the mouse was eaten by a rat. Rats are much bigger and hunt, kill and eat the similar but smaller mice.

In fact there is a term for it: muricide.

Rats also practice infanticide.

So, yeah rodent morality is also complex.

<comment><USER15> No, it was just another mouse. My original comment wasn't very clear, but I saw it running away when I came to check on the trap. My wife thought that was really gross, but then I reminded her of the time that we saw a seagull eating another smaller seagull while it was still alive and still walking. That topped everything I've seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Video showing the rodents in action [http://www.newsy.com/mobile/video/study- rats-show-each-other...](http://www.newsy.com/mobile/video/study-rats-show- each-other-compassion-empathy/)

</comment><comment><USER18> maybe less empathy and more, hey you can help me

</comment><comment><USER19> My question is: why don't we show more empathy towards animals? The experimentations and vivisections, urban sprawl and deforestation, the abandonment of pets when they become inconvenient - we as humans don't consider the cruelty of our actions.

We figure as long as it can be profited from or paved over, it's justifiable. It's not.

One day mankind will grieve because of the suffering we have caused animals. But by then it will be too late.

<comment><USER20> Why do we show any empathy towards animals? You can't kill and eat something you empathise with. Empathy towards humans makes sense but I don't see the evolutionary advantage of treasuring all life.

That said, I can't even kill spiders. It doesn't make any sense but I've an unavoidable feeling of guilt if I don't release them outside unharmed. Yet I have no problem eating meat. My empathy is irrational.

<comment><USER21> "When one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it's statistics." - Stalin (not confirmed).

Empathy is irrational, since it relies on identification with the other being. It's always easier to identify oneself with a living being than to a piece of meat.

On the other hand, it's also very rational; it's a much better strategy than if it was guided by pure knowledge, since it optimizes cooperation: otherwise, you'd either be completely indifferent to someone you can actually help (e.g. injured person near you) or live in mental anguish by the fact that you know that thousands are constantly being killed by wars, curable diseases, etc.

<comment><USER22> The only actual source I've ever seen for that Stalin quote was the fictional Stalin from the computer game Command and Conquer: Red Alert. Is this quote actually attributed to the real Stalin? Has the quote been floating around since before 1995 or so, when that game was released?

<comment><USER23> Wikiquotes has a segment on this quote.[1] It's uncertain whether Stalin said it to Truman at the Potsdam conference, or whether the quote was actually said by someone else and misattributed to Stalin, but it is certain that the game designers didn't make it up for C&C: Red Alert.

[1] <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Misattributed></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sacrificing Trust for Virality: Spammy Mobile Apps - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/86286817b874

<comment><USER2> Path is a well-enough designed product that I'm certain somewhere along the line someone had to have said, "Well let's automatically select all of their contacts and let them deselect if they don't want them," and then someone else said "let's just keep the 'deselect all' button" the same color as the bar behind it." I'm pretty sure someone on the Path marketing team was OK with the idea that they were going to trick you into inviting all of your contacts.

Yet Path claims to be a social network for close friends and family. If they were really concerned about the overall value of the product and not numbers, shouldn't it be offering up ways to choose the closest people to you instead of hoping you accidentally spam all of your friends? They'll get away with it, but it's a very, very short-sighted move.

I believe they were hoping you would accidentally message every one of your contacts, and actions such as these warrant uninstall by those who have already downloaded the app and refusal to download by those who haven't.

<comment><USER3> _Yet Path claims to be a social network for its close friends and family. Shouldn't it be offering up ways to choose the closest people to you instead of hoping you accidentally spam all of your friends?_

Path originally forced you to a friend limit of 100. Needless to say that makes exponential growth more difficult, so the limit was removed and marketing strategies were...changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _It's my hope that under these conditions, apps that are genuinely growing will rise to the top, and those attempting to engineering their own virality will dissipate into irrelevance._

Unfortunately, when the current paradigm is to create and flip startups in the short-term, it's almost encourage to get rapid growth, long-term health be damned.

<comment><USER4> Until discoverability improves, gaming the system will succeed.

<comment><USER5> How do you expect discoverability to improve?

There are thousands of new apps on the market on a daily basis, all of them overlapping with each other and apps that are already on the market to a greater or lesser degree. Who is going to reduce that flood to the "best" of a particular category, worthy of your time and money, and on a regular and timely basis?

Granted, current app stores could be better, but you'd still have the discoverability problem simply due to the volume of apps now on the market.

<comment><USER4> See the web.

The way people find websites has advanced far beyond the link directories of the 90s.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 238 Attempted Bribes of Amazon Should Be Illegal - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/145493/238-attempted-bribes-amazon-illegal <comment><USER2> > It's also not worth it because, as San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg wrote in > his letter declining to submit an Amazon proposal, "it's hard to imagine > that a forward-thinking company like Amazon hasn't already selected its > preferred location." Thus, the public bidding war is just a ploy to squeeze > out additional subsidies, to play cities off one another. "Blindly giving > away the farm isn't our style," Nirenberg wrote.

Pretty smart of that mayor to see through this.

Two things bother me with this. 1) It's not applied fairly. If Amazon gets a tax break to locate in CityX then I should also be able to get the same tax break to locate my business there. I'm okay with different cities and states competing in the form of different tax rates and services, but these special deals have to stop. 2) The United States really needs to start behaving as a single country in the best interest of the whole United States. These jobs would still be created somewhere without tax breaks, and we'd _all_ be better off if that happened. Instead we are all collectively worse off in this model where we negotiate against ourselves.

<comment><USER3> "2) The United States really needs to start behaving as a single country in the best interest of the whole United States." I'm sure there is some founding father quote which says basically exactly that. I wouldn't hold my breath... Edit: I should add, for the most part, I think the US does a pretty decent job at it too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay, that's fine as long as it also becomes illegal for local governments to shake down the well-off and their companies by voting to raise taxes on them.

<comment><USER2> What you say would make sense if you were suggesting some government was targeting specific well-off individuals. E.g. say Bellevue decided to institute the Bill Gates Tax which required Bill Gates to pay $1 million a year. But as you put it, you're basically arguing against any normal progressive tax scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel the same way.

<comment><USER6> Me too.

I also cringe whenever I think of the ludicrous amount of my tax dollars that NYC gave away to the Yankees (one of the richest sports teams ever) and the Mets to rebuild their stadiums.

<comment><USER7> Side note, today I found out the Yankees don't have names on their uniforms, only numbers. Apparently this used to be the tradition in all of sports until about the 60's. Absolutely mind-blowing that I never noticed this, and it made me like the Yankees a little bit more and appreciate their (to some extent) humility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The governor of Missouri just used a nonexistent hyperloop from Kansas City to St. Louis in his proposal. Might beat out that $7 billion one.

</comment><comment><USER9> Put more succinctly, whomever wins this, loses. Small business will wind up paying for Amazon's share of the taxes.

We all lose when this happens.

</comment><comment><USER10> There are clear benefits to both Amazon and the winning city were the transaction to occur, and no loss other than status quo were it not to. This is not bribery.</comment>


10 Interview Questions Every JavaScript Developer Should Know - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/javascript-scene/10-interview-questions-every-javascript-developer-should-know-6fa6bdf5ad95 <comment> ix-hispana Is he right on composition? He seems to think it's about size ("small units of functionality"). Really composition vs inheritance is about dynamic versus static. Acquiring the functionality at runtime or at compile time. This is explained in the book he cites.

Perhaps I'm missing something.</comment>


Show HN: PyRanges, Performant Pythonic GenomicRanges (Bioinformatics) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/biocore-ntnu/pyranges <comment><AUTHOR> Dunno if there are enough genome hackers here to care, but I have been longing for something like this my whole bioinformatics career.

Criticism even more appreciated than praise :)

Preprint: [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/609396v1](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/609396v1)</comment>


Asking for feedback: Mandrill/Mailchimp + GA data visualisation app - <AUTHOR> Hey guys, I've made a mockup of an app I want to build and would love to know what you think about the demo and if you have any ideas on how to reach potential customers.<p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gUdoDlGCgU <comment><USER2> Is there a prototype [maybe using sample data] people can play with?</comment>


Show HN: Real-time raytracing as web page background - <AUTHOR> http://www.taodyne.com/presentation/index-reveal.html#/references

<comment><AUTHOR> This page uses a specific shader courtesy ShaderToy that does real-time ray- tracing in the background. You can verify that it's real-time by moving the mouse. Moving left and right changes the amount of "frosting" on the cakes. Moving up and down changes the zooming factor. Enjoy.</comment>


Linux gets frozen, what do you do? - <AUTHOR> http://www.jovicailic.org/2013/05/linux-gets-frozen-what-do-you-do/

<comment><USER2> Wikipedia tells me you don't need to hold Ctrl. Just Alt+Print Screen. I just tested it in a VM and it works. Should make it a bit easier.

And I have to say, at first i thought this was a trolling attempt to get us to try to push this sequence. But that's a really cool feature - I didn't know about - even after using Linux for years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the update. For years I use this with Ctrl, never got a thought to try without.

Btw, on the wiki page I mentioned is also written that: Under graphical environments (such as GNOME or KDE) 'Alt'+'PrintScrn/SysRq'+key combination generally only leads to a screenshot being dumped. To avoid this Print Screen feature the magic SysRq combination should include the Ctrl, becoming 'Ctrl'+'Alt'+'SysRq'+key.

So I guess it depends from the environment.

<comment><USER2> Oh that one I didn't see, thanks. However, it makes me wonder why Gnome/KDE can "hijack" this key combination. I mean it is a bit strange for a userland application to be able to intercept kernel level features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can remember this with following mnemonic: Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring.

</comment><comment><USER4> Follow-up question: Linux gets frozen and you don't have physical access, what do you do?

<comment><USER4> Answering my own question: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key#Alternate_ways_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key#Alternate_ways_to_invoke_Magic_SysRq)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I didn't know about this. I'll update my post as soon as I catch some time. If you want, leave me my your twitter username, so I can mention you :)</comment></comment></comment>


Services that you wish exists - <AUTHOR>

Just a survey :
Like to know what products (or services) that you want someone else to build, but you would pay to use it ? <comment><USER2> I'd like a comically aggressive wake-up-call service. Like, they show up at my house and throw water on me if I try to sleep in.

</comment><comment><USER3> A continuous feed that reported the problems and frustrations of people from a wide variety of backgrounds.

<comment><USER4> aka twitter?</comment></comment>


Egg Expressions (Oil Regexes) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oilshell/oil/blob/master/doc/regex-manual.md <comment><USER2> Oil is a fascinating project. I really hope it gains some traction once it is stable.</comment>


Automation vs. Customization - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/11/24/automation-vs-customization-ideal-manifestation-of-creative-energy/

<comment><AUTHOR> Very curious what other folks personal desicion making process is when it comes to specialization versus automation.</comment>


Poachers break into French zoo and kill white rhino - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/03/07/poachers-just-killed-a-beloved-white-rhino-inside-a-french-zoo/?utm_term=.28468cd3f30b <comment><USER2> Cultural enriched zoe</comment>


How Perfect Pricing got me 1500 Sales in 2 Days - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/perfect-pricing.html

<comment><USER2> Here's the HN thread from last week talking about the eBook mentioned in this article: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3731047></comment>


Please don't lobby. Disrupt. - <AUTHOR> http://clipperhouse.com/2012/01/18/what-legacy-politicians-actually-fear/

<comment><USER2> There was a time when the attitude among technology companies was innovate. No one lobbied not even Microsoft it seemed like the attitude was getting the government involved was a can of worms best left alone. It seems like that all changed when the we started converging with other industries and the other industries where playing dirty. At which point many of the large companies had no choice to get into the lobbying game and it devolved from there. But that is the issue at hand, if you don't employ the same tactics then other industries have the advantage of legislating you out of business. If you do employ it, you eventually lose your soul and start to become the abuser.

On a side note, the patent wars have a similar parallel. For a long time they where looked at as a form of mutually assured destruction. But someone actually pressed the red button.

</comment><comment><USER3> My take:

Please don't lobby. Shed light.</comment>


Ask HN: How is the tech scene in Canada? - <AUTHOR>

I guess I am specifically wondering about Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. <comment><USER2> I live in Vancouver. There are quite a few startups in the Gastown area, and a few small offices for large companies like Microsoft, SAP (not that small), and Amazon, and recently, Facebook and Twitter (to come?).

In terms of the work, I've been seeing a lot of Java, and C#/.NET work in Vancouver. Which for me as someone whose experience has been full-stack web development (LAMP/WAMP, PHP, SQL/no-sql DBs, HTML/CSS, JS frameworks), it's quite hard to find a suitable positions.

Also a few Ruby positions opening up lately, but very few.

All I know about Toronto is Google has an office there while they don't in Vancouver. It'd be best if a local Toronto or Montreal dev could provide some insight.</comment>


Show HN: Truck.app – an rsync client for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://bonhardcomputing.com/truck/#2018-06-15 <comment><USER2> I'm sure this is a good app, but I don't even check Show HN that often and I've seen this being posted many times now. I know that HN allows reposting of a link if it didn't generate discussion last time. Is there anything against this frequency of reposts? [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=http:%2F%2Fbonhardcomputing.co...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=http:%2F%2Fbonhardcomputing.com%2Ftruck%2F&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)</comment>


Ask HN: at&t says my router is interfering with their cell - <AUTHOR>

This feels like a scam to me, but a dude from P3 Communications said he was a contractor for at&t, came to my building asking to look around to find the offending device that was disrupting their cell tower.  If they found something, they'd force me to replace it.  It felt scammy to me, so I told him to come back, has anyone ever had something like this happen, is this legit, do I just go with it? <comment><USER2> This sounds like a scam. The frequencies used by cell phones, and those used by WiFi routers, are (a) different, and (b) the subject of much study, with the conclusion that there's no prospect of interference between then.

If someone from AT&T really intended to fight with you about your router, it would be national headlines, because it would imply that the FCC got it wrong. In fact, if this were true, it _should_ be national headlines.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_frequencies#Frequency_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_frequencies#Frequency_bands_used_by_GSM)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels)

Not to oversimplify, but cell phones don't require access to the same frequencies that are used by WiFi routers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man, the guy mentioned baby monitors going rogue and interfering and I had the same thought, if the FCC sends a new father to prison for not letting a dude in to go after his baby monitor, that would definitely be a headline</comment></comment>


Free-falling Zynga needs fast turnaround - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/technology/dotcommentary/article/Free-falling-Zynga-needs-fast-turnaround-3796892.php

<comment><USER2> Why does this surprise anyone? Did anyone really think a company built on virtual farming, and cloning any new games that popped up without regard to employee morale was a great long-term bet?

<comment><USER3> Actually can we change this to:

Why does this surprise anyone? Did anyone really think a company built on selling illegal scams[1], and using the psychology of addiction to inform game design with a leader who stole stock from employees and treated them horribly was a great long-term bet?

I bet on companies that are honest, admirable and treat their employees well.

[1] "More than $200 was illegally charged to Swift's credit card over several months, the lawsuit alleges. It seeks compensation from Facebook and Zynga for Swift and thousands of others, says attorney John Parker, who represents the plaintiff." - [http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2009-12-07-games07_ST_N....](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2009-12-07-games07_ST_N.htm)

<comment><USER2> Well, building a business on an addiction might be terrible morally, but it usually makes for good business ventures (gambling, porn, alcohol, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given their resources, they could try creating non-shit games. Why not try and create an awesome console/PC title? I just don't get why they insist on making the same uninspired games over and over again. They had a good run, it's not working anymore. Time to move on.

<comment><USER3> Thats like asking "Given {insert name of rich scam artist here}'s resources why doesn't he actually sell real paintings. Dishonest people [1] like to run dishonest companies, would be my guess.

[1] [http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2009-12-07-games07_ST_N....](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2009-12-07-games07_ST_N.htm)

<comment><USER5> That's true, it's not in their DNA. On the other hand they could just buy a promising indie developer, throw money at them and get out of the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It surely sounds terrible from the author's point of view. Would love to hear the proponent side of the story.</comment>


This is why news sites are fatter and slower than ever before - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/452213/this-is-why-news-sites-are-fatter-and-slower-than-ever-before/

<comment><USER2> The interweb is now completely unusable without an ad blocker anyway. All the new 'trends' all lead to more and more annoying behavior too.

Like, the off topic video that will autoplay when you scroll down to the bottom of an article...

Or the even more annoying 'click to go to my survey' middle screen floater for website you've never visited before (and never will return to, obviously). This one is obviously made to force users to 'click' somewhere and claim some sort of advert click..

Oh, and of course, the EU cookie warning garbage.

That's not even mentioning the gigabytes of flash[ing] ads on each sides that luckily AdBlock is quite good at trimming.

<comment><USER3> > All the new 'trends'

Like the huge ass photo at start of every article, forcing me to scroll down before reading anything.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Our first app – A geo-blogging iOS app with a 3D globe at its heart - <AUTHOR> http://cloudit-app.com/

<comment><USER2> Love the idea! A few suggestions though:

• The tutorial/intro is very intrusive. Ideally you should just let the user get started – the UI is intuitive and doesn't need much explanation. Help pages or instructions should be optional instead of forced; or at least you should be able to dismiss/skip them quickly.

• Allow users to browse the content without signing in; I want to see what the product is and how it works before I give you my email address and information.

• Don't ask permission for push notifications until later; initially I don't know what they're for and why I'd want them from your app. [1]

But it's a great app overall. Also noticed you're from U of T Engineering -- I'm in ECE1T6, so hi! :)

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/04/the-right-way-to-ask- users-...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/04/the-right-way-to-ask-users-for- ios-permissions/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey man! Thanks for the great feedback! Much appreciated. Working on an update right now, so I'll keep these things in mind. MIE1T4+PEY here :) good luck on exams!</comment></comment>


MacOS could drop below 6% market share this month - <AUTHOR> https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=9&qpcustomb=0&qpsp=204&qpnp=13&qptimeframe=M <comment><USER2> from the "Can you explain the Net Market Share methodology for collecting data?" part of NetMarketShares FAQ[0]: "[...]43% are commerce sites [...]"

Could it just be that christmas shopping skews these statistics? Then again, statistics for the previous years don't seem to support this theory.

All in all this doesn't seem like information I would want to base any claims on.

[0] -> [https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#methodology](https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#methodology)

<comment><USER3> Just like Alexa Rank, can't take either serious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> April is 9.56%, so I shouldn't trust those stats a lot

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Netmarketshare's figures for all operating systems vary in unbelievable ways ... and April's 9.56% looks like one of those unbelievable variations. (The Mac share went up 2 points for no discernible reason, then came down 2 points over the next three months.)

It's not too far-fetched to believe that the Mac's share used to be roughly 7-8% and is now roughly 6-7%, which is as much as I'd take from Netmarketshare numbers.

However, that would be against the historic trend of the Mac's increasing market share, and I don't see any evidence for it in the marketplace. The people who were waiting for new Macs didn't stop using their old Macs.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, if more people are using Macs/Macbooks, it doesn't click.

For this, I always try to compare stats from three sites, because they all differ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder why they are not including Chrome OS?

<comment><USER7> Seconded. Their statistics without Chrome OS are of little interest, and a distortion of actual desktop trends.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't the Linux column include Chrome OS:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Desktop_and_laptop_computers)

<comment><USER6> I don't think the Linux column includes Chrome OS. Chromebooks have recently outsold Macs. The Linux numbers couldn't be that small if Chromebooks are included.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Key word from title is _desktop_ , although I presume that does include laptop, but not other mobile devices.

<comment> dumb-saint MacOS doesn't run on other mobile devices.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure what higher-level point the GP was trying to make[1], but I'm fairly sure they knew macOS doesn't run on mobile. Their implication is that were mobile devices included in the tally they would have contributed significantly to the denominator.

[1] I suspect it is that macOS + iOS would be a better numerator to pit against "Windows on all devices". However the GP having corrected themselves immediately means its not clear what the point is.</comment></comment></comment>