Wind could power the entire world - <AUTHOR> http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0622-hance_global_wind.html <comment><USER2> Lemon/penny batteries could power the entire world, too. Here's the math:

One lemon/penny battery generates 0.0001 W. Thus, one kilowatt requires 10 megalemons. 10 megalemons produces 365 * 24 = 8760 kilowatt hours per year, or 876 KWH per megalemon per year.

The US consumes roughly 4 trillion KWH per year, which would require about 4.5 petalemon to power. Worldwide production last year was on the order of 6.5 gigalemons (13 megatonnes according to Wiki, 200g for the average lemon), so we have a bit to go, but this proves that a significant fraction of the US's electrical needs can be provided by lemon batteries currently. Minor implementation details such as maintenance of the lemon batteries, storage of them, operating lifetime, cost, and trivialities such as "Where do we find 4.5 petapennies?" can be hammered out at a later date.

(P.S. Less sarcastically, if you want to generate the world's electricity needs without being primarily reliant on fossil fuels, you have two options. The first is nuclear power. The second is dividing the world into permanent camps: those that have sufficient access to electricity to enjoy a standard of living comparable to America in the early 1900s, and those who do not. Group #2 will have to vastly outnumber Group #1.)

<comment><USER3> I agree that the best option availlable at the moment is nuclear energy.

But what about the thermic solar plants that are currently being built in the deserts of the US and Africa? Those with parabolic mirrors heating the pipes set at their focal point?

<comment><USER4> I foresee issues around the longevity of mirrors in sandstorms.

<comment><USER5> Legions of itinerant mirror polishers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suggest reading <http://www.withouthotair.com> for a reasoned discussion of this issue. A couple of quotes:

"if we covered the windiest 10% of the country [the UK] with windmills (delivering 2 W/m2), we would be able to generate 20 kWh/d per person, which is half of the power used by driving an average fossil-fuel car 50 km per day".

"I should emphasize how generous an assumption I'm making. Let's compare this estimate of British wind potential with current installed wind power worldwide. The windmills that would be required to provide the UK with 20 kWh/d per person amount to 50 times the entire wind hardware of Denmark; 7 times all the wind farms of Germany; and double the entire fleet of all wind turbines in the world."

</comment><comment><USER7> In theory, yes. And in theory, all we would have to do is pave over a few square kilometers of New Mexico and we can power the entire world with solar.

But these studies completely ignore all of the practical issues with wind power at its current scale, let alone scaling it to power the whole world.

<comment><USER8> Start now. Continue R&D and funding. In 10 years, the technology will be dramatically advanced and scaling will be far easier.

Just because it's hard doesn't mean it isn't worth doing anyway. When the Manhattan project started, they had no clue how they would come up with the theoretical quantity of nuclear material they needed. It was impossible. They went forward anyway and in the process invented the methods they needed to make it happen. Now we have nuclear weapons coming out of our ears.

<comment><USER9> They did a preplanned thing in Sweden when they built warships and planted trees suitable for new warships.

Now those trees are ready to be used -- but those pesky iron ships, from the 1860s onwards, got between. :-)

Check: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Fusion

Will they work? We will know in less than ten years. If they work, the money would be better used in battery research, to run cars on electricity.

<comment><USER8> If you wait because something better might come along which disrupts your present efforts, you will wait forever.

Eventually, you must commit to something while recognizing that you may have to be adaptable and change your course later. Success depends less on what you choose to do and more on the fact that you are doing it.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, but you need to do some sanity checking to see how likely things are to ever be competitive...

I agree that wind research should be done, but I really think/hope something better (lower investment costs and lower aesthetic impact) will be found.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's difficult to take articles like this seriously. This type of "if we covered the entire earth's surface with (wind|solar|biomass|exercise bikes), we could power the entire world" argument is already reduced to absurdity. There's nothing there even to poke fun at.

It's cool that some of these technologies are making progress and all, but really, is there anybody who actually thinks it's a good idea to scale them up to this level? In the name of the environment???

<comment><USER5> Let me put that another way.

"Does anybody think it's a good idea to depend entirely on a finite resource that can only be used once and also smells?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> And totally mess up my waves by reducing wind speeds. Stay away from my waves, you scoundrels!

<comment><USER12> I read that in a "get off my lawn" old mans voice.

<comment><USER11> Except with a 'surfer bra wannabe accent?

:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> i'm riding the thermal drafts of HN comment hot air right now, dude.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wind power is only available in certain parts of the world. Distribution would be a massive problem. Thousands of miles of cables and transformers are not easy to maintain.

<comment><USER5> We already have thousand of miles of cables and transformers.

My Aunt and Uncle own a wind power company and they cleverly sited nine turbines next to a coal plant so they would not have to run miles of cables.

These are trivial problems.

<comment><USER14> That must be the most uninformed thing that I've read in my life. How is the map of electricity cables between chad and congo?

Are you aware that wind power needs special sites? And you cannot just move it beside where you want it?

<comment><USER5> Yes I am aware of this and far from being uninformed I am speaking of things I learned from the owners of a successful Wind Power Utility. see Lingan under projects <http://www.confedpower.com>

They are in Nova Scotia, not Chad so I can't comment on the situation there.

Extra bonus points. This was a startup by people with no prior experience in the industry that has done extremely well from the getgo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Never thought wind power would destroy the environment.

</comment><comment><USER16> _could_ not _should_</comment>


How Far Apple Has Taken Us - <AUTHOR> http://www.iluvempire.com/2011/04/how-far-apple-has-taken-us/

<comment><USER2> My gut reaction is that this is ridiculous, but I've experienced the smuggness of Apple users (not all of us!) first hand.

I sat down in a cafe with a coffee and set out to use the free WiFi. I opened my MacBook, observed the AirPort icon as it negotiated a connection, and fired up a web browser once the icon indicated "connected".

Nothing.

I checked my network settings to make sure I hadn't statically configured DNS or some other obscure setting. I created a new "location" profile with the default settings.

Still nothing.

A man sitting in front of me, but facing away from me, was using a MacBook Pro, so I politely asked him if he was able to browse the internet.

"Excuse me, are you able to browse the internet," I asked.

"Yeah," he replied abruptly. I must have interrupted something important.

Somewhat quietly, and feeling bad for having disturbed him, I muttered, "Must be my laptop."

"Get a Mac," he quipped with a sneer.

His response was jarring. Here I was, sitting in a cafe with my own MacBook, being confronted by the fact that the stereotypical Apple user really does exist, watching as a couple across from us shake their head in disgust at his pretentious reply. I'm pretty sure they didn't even notice that I was using an Apple computer too. I couldn't let this stand.

"Thanks, I've got one," I replied with the smuggest, most _eff-you_ tone I could muster. Grins from several people in the vicinity seemed to indicate that I had put him in his place.

I didn't feel much better though. I'd much rather feel the warm embrace of kindness. That's why, when asked if the WiFi is working, I always take a moment to see if I can help the inquisitor, regardless of their platform choice. Pay it forward, friends.</comment>


Machine Intelligence in the Real World - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/26/machine-intelligence-in-the-real-world/ <comment><USER2> The article does a great job at helping create a language around the ML/AI field to help laymen reason about it. Shivon did a similar taxonomy based article last year titled The Current State of Machine Intelligence - also a good read.

Unfortunately Bloomberg Beta has the same blinkers on that the rest of the VC industry has. They use Context Relevant as an example but don't disclose their investment. Context Relevant is currently undergoing layoffs after recently kicking out their founder and CEO. I've been watching them for years, their pitch was classic VC bait. Even as an outsider I could tell that their tech stack and corporate culture was not going to work. Their glassdoor reviews makes for interesting reading. I've been using Context Relevant as a bellwether for the rest of the industry as I expect when they can no longer hide their losses there is going to be a whole class of data science / big data / ml VC funded service companies that will go belly up around the same time.

Which has me wondering how Bloomberg Beta will fair after that. I'm sure Mike Bloomberg will have bigger things to worry about at that point in time. People get sick of paying for fancy expensive charts showing them precisely how much money they're losing very quickly.

Anyway - that's enough pessimism from me for one day :)

TL;DR

A good read, but take with the usual prescription of a giant grain of salt

</comment><comment><USER3> My favourite recent real-world application of a "laser" focused industry- specific dataset is the crisis text line - it is both fascinating and unnerving to think that crisis response is something we can train computers to do (or in this case, _suggestions_ for crisis responders):

[https://youtu.be/KOtFDsC8JC0](https://youtu.be/KOtFDsC8JC0)</comment>


Ask HN: What's the process of writing a new programming language? - <AUTHOR> I know of the process on a very high level. But what would the first 5-10 steps look like for writing a language that would compile into C (like Go I belive). <comment><USER2> 1\. Sketch out what you want the first iteration of the language to look like. Write some example programs in your language.

2\. Write a lexer: a program which turns a string of source code in your language into a list of values like "open parenthesis", "plus sign", "if keyword", "identifier". These values are called tokens. To test your lexer, output each token and see if your example programs tokenize properly.

3\. Write a parser: a program which turns a list of tokens into a structured representation of your program's source code. For example, "if keyword" "identifier" "equals sign" "number" "then keyword" "print keyword" "identifier" might turn into an IfStatement with a predicate EqualsExpression (that itself has a left IdentifierExpression and a right LiteralNumberExpression) and a list of Statements for the code to run. You can write the parser yourself (look up recursive descent parsing) or use a parser generator tool to do it.

4\. Write a code generator: a program which goes through your structured representation and outputs lower-level code (in this case, C) for each expression and statement.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure this is vastly oversimplified, but thanks for writing a quick summary of the steps. Do you have a good recommendation for books on compilers other than Dragon?

<comment><USER2> I don't know of any good books, sorry! There's plenty of helpful stuff on the web, though it can be hard to sift through. Personally I think just trying to write the code is the best way to learn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Go read the Jack Crenshaw series of articles. It's not the most relevant nowadays, but you can't beat it for simplicity.

<comment><USER5> Highly Recommended. It really helped me simplify the process of writing a compiler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is a place to start:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniques,_and_Tools#Second_edition)

<comment><AUTHOR> As the question is about a side-project, does the book also dive into languages that compile into another relatively high-level language (i.e. C) apart from writing a language the compiles directly into assembly? I'm more interested in building something light-weight to understand the general process than building something completely from the ground up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you are interested new languages, then you might want to think about writing an interpreter first, and then writing a compiler later when you have more experience with your new language. Languages like Prolog are good for making interpreters, along with Lisp/Scheme and ML/Haskell.

</comment><comment><USER8> I haven't made my own programming language yet, but I am working on a from- scratch C compiler ([http://recc.robertelder.org/](http://recc.robertelder.org/)), so I'll give you a few ideas:

1) You'll probably want to start by thinking about what the programming language will do, and what the grammar ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Backus%E2%80%93Naur_F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Backus%E2%80%93Naur_Form)) of the language will look like. I would recommend starting by writing an LL grammar ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LL_grammar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LL_grammar)), so you can write a recursive descent parser for it ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_descent_parser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_descent_parser)). You will also need to be careful to not introduce indirect, or direct left recursion into your grammar ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_recursion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_recursion)).

2) The first step will naturally lead you to need to consider tokenization: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenization_(lexical_analysis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenization_\(lexical_analysis\))

3) Some caveats of step 1 include the dangling else problem ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_else](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_else)) and other grammar ambiguities ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguous_grammar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguous_grammar)). A recursive descent parser will likely need to do backtracking so you'll want to think about how you can also backtrack any internal state that gets build up as the parser does its thing.

4) Once you can create a full parse tree and can traverse it, you can consider code generation. For un-optimized code, this is probably the easiest part, but once you start to considering possible optimizations, you'll probably want to write a 'back-end' and you could probably spend the rest of your life creating new optimizations.

5) Of course, this all gets more complicated if you want to do it differently with an LR grammar or if you want an interpreted language. You can also think about things like just in time compilation, etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Go programming language doesn't compile to C. Compiling Go is faster than compiling C.

If Go transpiled into C code first, and then had to compile resulting C code, then that entire process would be slower.

The Nim programming language compiles to C, so you may want to reach out and ask their community. It used to be called Nimrod, but is now Nim.

The Rust programming language leverages LLVM instead of transpiling to C, so you may want to take a look at how that is done. A recent post about Rust MIR is well-written and is an enjoyable read for anyone interested in compilers.

</comment><comment><USER10> First you write an RPN calculator. Make a program that takes the input: "3 4 * 4 + 2 /" and figures out that the answer is 8.</comment>


Show HN: Helix – a habit tracking app - <AUTHOR> https://helix.startuplab.io/about <comment><USER2> I love these habit tracking apps. It's better than the others without all the feature bloat. But not really helpful unless it can be a phone app.

But personally I'm looking for more of a SOP kind of app.

Like every work morning I'll take my nootropic stack, set aside my things to do list, meditate, pray, etc. I don't do this on non work days, and my work days aren't exactly Mon-Fri either.

On some days I have to do a Skype call and there's a list of things to do then - turn off fan & windows, check mic, put on a collared shirt.

There hasn't been any apps that help me set up a 'habit checklist' for certain situations. It would be good to just choose what routines I want to do today or tomorrow.

<comment><USER3> I was running into this issue with a "task reminder bot" running through facebook messenger since I would be off from work on a thursday or something an it would still nag me about work tasks. Do you think it would be better to have an option for "Work Day Routine" vs "Day Off"?

<comment><USER2> I think you should be able to select sets of routines. Something like a morning exercise routine might go on Tue Thu Sat, but people would still want their work day and day off routines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like this. Have you seen [https://chains.cc/](https://chains.cc/)? It's a similar app. What's the difference between a check mark and thumbs up? Being able to reorder tasks would be really helpful, as would some notion of being able to group tasks together (maybe just layers of indention or something).

Edit: Found info on the check v thumbs up. Love the idea!

>Mark the day with every time you successfully complete a microhabit, and mark a day with every time you accomplish more significant progress.

<comment><USER4> Another nice feature would the ability to skip days. i.e. I'm going to exercise every MWF, and I'm going to go on the info diet M-Thursday.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! I've just deployed the beta of my new habit tracking app.

I'd really love to hear some what you think. Do you like it? Would you use it? What would you improve? Can you share some advice on which steps I should take next?

Source:

[https://github.com/raymestalez/helix](https://github.com/raymestalez/helix)

(note that it's in early beta, bugs are possible)

<comment><USER5> I have had a very similar idea for a tracking app for a looong time. This is by far the closest I've seen to my idea.

I would definitely use something like this. However, I would primarily want to use a mobile app for daily tracking. It would also be nice to be able to set a daily reminder time for each item I'm tracking so that I remember to fill it in.

Is this just a fun side project, or do you plan to monetize somehow?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your reply!

Helix works on mobile quite well already, and soon I am planning to make it progressive, that is you can add it to the home screen, it'll work offline, sync with the server when it can, and be essentially indistinguishable from a native app.

I haven't implemented notifications yet because I'm not using them myself, but I'm definitely planning to, apparently many people find them useful.

Yes, I am planning to monetize it, once I'll complete all the main requested features, it'll cost $12/year. But everyone who joins during the beta and sends me feedback will get free lifetime accounts =)

<comment><USER6> Quick question: once you monetize it, will it remain open-source?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing! It seems quite similar to the Loop Habit Tracker ( [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.isoron.uha...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.isoron.uhabits) ), an Android App with the same goal.

</comment><comment><USER8> Really great simple interface which enabled and encouraged me to jump right into it!

Some feedback I'd like to give:

\- First thing I noticed was that I'd like to re-order the habits to give them a priority.

\- The 'streak counter' didn't change when I entered the past few days of accomplished habits. I've ticked off the current week and the counter still sits at 0.

\- On first use, it'd be great to enter a streak further back than the current week. For example, I know an existing habit streak from Duolingo or a meditation app. Being able to enter these as pre-existing when I start using Helix would be great, so that the numbers match up. Bonus points for not making me manually check every single box of an existing two-months streak. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Very well done. Unfortunately there are already thousands of mobile apps that do the same.

Yours is the best I've found so far, but I'll not use it nonetheless. I've already tried others and failed.</comment>


Ask HN: Comp Sci or Data Science/Analytics? - <AUTHOR>

If someone had a choice between an MS in Comp Sci or Data Science/Analytics, which direction would you recommend? Why? <comment><USER2> Depends upon what you want to do and what the programs really offer. I am a former college professor and two degrees of the same name from two different universities can be totally different. That being said I think the question you need to ask yourself is do you lean towards fields like Operations Research or Engineering? Do you want to spend your days running advanced analysis to find answers or do you want to program systems and design networks?</comment>


Ask HN: What app do you wish existed but doesn't? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> That's the million dollar question: * An app that makes you see and use new tools and frameworks that appear on HN (preferably in contained VMs)

 _A pdf reader that let 's you search quotes on reddit to see what comments are about that quote.

_ Binge-reading and listening eBook reader: challenge is not to break the chain between listening (preferably TTS) and reading. Good books example: Infinite Jest, Buddha discourses etc.

 _Meditation app that_ (gruesome alert) makes you meditate on impermanence by seeing a corpse of yours (oldify + zombify).

 _Netflix for classics books with movies (Albert Camus The Stranger etc)

_ Blockchain crypto for religious communities cause money and religion don't go good hand in hand.

Etc...

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, I just want a game like Magic: The Gathering that isn't so expensive to play drafts, but still has the strategy involved, and I want it to have a mobile client. Honestly, I like the format of LCGs (I like buying things all at once instead of buying random chances), but I don't know of any that do drafts, and I don't know of many that have mobile clients.

I don't use many apps on my phone, all of my important work happens on my desktop or laptop, and I honestly prefer open source software when it will work even if the experience isn't as good (less risk of it completely going away). If I knew what would make my life better, I'd probably just build it and start my own company selling it. However, I don't have the time to make a game (and it's a very risky venture), and games are a lot less fun when you make them yourself, so I will always prefer to buy those.

My current side project (likely to die in the next few weeks as I get tired of it) is an LCG that has a draft system, constructed system, mobile client, and your option of subscription (pay $X/month for unlimited draft) or per-event entrance (and winnable entries). If someone builds a good enough replacement first, I'll give up and pay.

<comment><USER4> Hearthstone has all of this if I'm not mistaken?

</comment></comment><comment> good-idea Lucrative app idea generator

</comment><comment><USER5> This probably isn't the best way to come up with the idea for your billion dollar app.

</comment><comment><USER6> A volume dampener for each and every car stereo within a 50 yard range, as long as they are in that 50 yard range.

</comment><comment><USER7> A social network that build relationships rather than extracts value from them.

</comment><comment><USER8> An app that people want to use to voice their pain points when doing a trade- specific verb (e.g., fact-check, meta-analyze, triangulation).

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://mobile.twitter.com/ideas_ten](https://mobile.twitter.com/ideas_ten)

And the folks that, that account is following have some interesting ideas

<comment><USER10> "Idea 737 : Electricity which can be transferred from place to place through air rather than wires."

Incredible idea. This would revolutionize our world and get rid of ugly power lines. Just need to find some engineers ready to change the world by building a prototype. I will give the right EE/react.js developer 10% to be part of this amazing opportunity and build their portfolio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I want an app that eliminates paper receipts and let's me receive an electronic record instead.

</comment><comment><USER12> App that reverses entropy

<comment><AUTHOR> What do u mean "reverses entropy"? Makes things more predictable</comment></comment>


How I learned deep learning in 10 weeks and won $5,000 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/recognizing-traffic-lights-with-deep-learning-23dae23287cc#.isvd5wlhd <comment><USER2> This title is highly misleading! I was hoping to read an account of how the author learned deep learning in 10 weeks and not just his approach of solving the problem which was still pretty interesting.

<comment><USER3> I find titles like this very frustrating. They may as well be appended with "and you can too!" to really wrap up the late night info-mercial feel.

Perhaps I am just jaded after seeing hundreds of very similar articles where the title suggests a great feat has occured and made them money in the process, then it boils down to be a self-promotion of the author.</comment></comment>


A Source Code Typo Allowed an Attacker to Steal 370,000 Zerocoin ($592,000) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/a-source-code-typo-allowed-an-attacker-to-steal-370-000-zerocoin-592-000-/ <comment><AUTHOR> I feel bad for laughing</comment>


Kamikaze Marketing (why usage billing kicks freemium's bottom) - <AUTHOR> http://lmframework.com/blog/2009/07/kamikaze-marketing <comment><USER2> Micro billing is an interesting model. But I think he "underestimates" the mental burden of checking whether a particular service or content provider is billing me correctly. Flatrate tariffs are popular for a reason.

It makes me uneasy to think that 40 different websites would use my credit card details to bill me whenever _they_ thought I had used their service.

Of course, there's a way to lower that mental burden by introducing a middleman. Someone who would run an application/content provisioning platform and hence would be able to check all usage data, enforce contracts and resolve conflicts.

Guess what LM (the author's company) does. On their "vision" page (<http://lmframework.com/page.php?id=vision>) they say "Our kids will not access multiple websites. They will simply use their favourite stream manager". So I guess LM would be that "stream manager", gatekeeper to what was once known as the web.

It seems likely that a model like this will be popular for some sorts of services. But I very much doubt that LM will play that role.

So many people want to be the platform on which everything runs, the store in which everything is sold, the gate through wich every HTTP message passes, the cloud in which all our data lives. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, they all want to be that.

Micro billing may be a good idea, but starting a company that aims to be the new mother of all platforms, including a new business model, application provisioning model, data model, application development paradigm and what have you, that's a Kamikaze business model if I have ever seen one. <http://lmframework.com/page.php?id=lmf>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for a great comment.

It's true that we are attempting to solve quite few problems in one go, but this just reflects the nature of the challenge - rather than any particular desire to blow ourselves up.

If you look at AWS, they spent $2 billion implementing their vision of cloud services. They understood that you can't just graft a business model onto existing technology, so they created a platform where the technology and revenue system go hand-in-hand.

We're trying to do something similar for the browser. We don't aim to own or dominate the platform. It will be very open, with space for any number of compatible billing systems.

D.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> i found the articles interesting. i say articles because i clicked through to another one of the author's articles, as well as clay shirky's 2000 post.

<http://lmframework.com/blog/2009/06/freemium/>

[http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/12/19/micropayments.ht...](http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/12/19/micropayments.html)

i thought the post provided a fair bit of detail and discussion. it wasn't fluff, though also not flawless.

</comment><comment><USER4> The "micro billing" proposed in this article is composed of micropayment that are tallied in the background. As far as I can tell, the only difference between microbilling and micropayments is that there's no confirmation dialog.

You're still deciding every day whether or not to spend the 20 cents.

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree. My interpretation of Shirky's thinking is that the dialog is the issue, rather than the payment size.

The key is to create an almost friction-free and fair method of payment. People are happy to pay a fair amount for content (cf. the piracy argument) as long as it's hassle free.

The usage component is essential so that people don't end up paying for services they don't use. If you stop using a service you stop paying for it. No lock-in.

D.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When the author submitted his previous article I replied here at HN with the Clay Shirky link and a thought experiment. I like how the new article contains the Clay Shirky link and a thought experiment but doesn't mention Hacker News, or the discussion we had here, at all.

Anyway, I predict failure. Let me know when there's stock I can sell short.

<comment><AUTHOR> David,

When I wrote the original article I was already aware of Shirky's views on micro payments, but it's true that the comments both here and on my blog made me understand that this issue was more important than I had previously thought - and so for that I am certainly grateful to you.

As to my use of a 'thought experiment' - well I've been doing them ever since I tried to get my head around relativity 20 years ago. I can't remember if Shirky uses a thought experiment in his original article, but even if he does, I don't see it as being particularly relevant.

As to you wanting to short our (yet inexistent stock) - well, I can see you're upset, but isn't that a bit harsh?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For an interesting take on microbilling in combination with web access have a look at Ted Nelsons work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will do

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Problem is trust. You need to be a well-established retailer before well- established banks will allow you to charge credit-cards for an arbitrary amount without explicit permission.

<comment><AUTHOR> There will always be explicit permission from the consumer.

But you're right about trust. For this reason we are not trying to roll this out ourselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Microbilling in the form presented in the article is still so unpopular as a method of payment that I doubt its worth considering at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> How can a model that has never been tried be unpopular?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> really tasteless (and unfitting) comparison. and your blog is ugly.

<comment><AUTHOR> The term 'Kamikaze' crops up frequently in the media out of its original context. For example, the UK chancellor used the same term to describe the bankers who created the housing bubble (<http://bit.ly/Qdmlj>) - so I don't see how it can be tasteless.

I'm sure if a company started giving away free cars in the hope of charging for premium petrol then they would probably attract similar (if not stronger) adjectives. And the workers in the plants making cars for money would certainly get caught in the shrapnel.

As for my blog being ugly - I couldn't agree more.</comment></comment>


Reducing website spam - <AUTHOR> http://www.scirra.com/blog/61/reducing-website-spam

<comment><USER2> "Most of the time they are oblivious to it. Some of the time they feign ignorance. The ones who are oblivious to it after a bit more questioning appear to have hired 'SEO Experts' to help improve their website rankings. These 'experts' then start up their various pieces of spam software and sit back often charging the site owners a lot of money for that service."

Back in the time when I was too lazy to install Akismet and manually managed comments on my blog (via moderation), I used to see from time to time annoying SEO comments - a fake profile with genuine-sounding comment, backlinking to a website catalog. When I was especially bored, I used to go to such catalog in order to find the SEO company who was spamming me.

On one occasion I contacted a private photo studio, asking if they're using SEO company XYZ, as links to them are all over the catalog. It turned out that they just hired a SEO company to 'position their website', without knowing anything about how it's done. I explained the situation (sending screenshots), and the studio immediately ditched the SEO company and hired another one. I was amazed by this attitude and featured a special advert-like post on my blog for them and we're in good contact since then.

<comment><USER3> Good story! Being proactive like this is a great idea, and I think I will try the same when we get some more. A lot of it is from this sort of thing, people who don't really understand what they are paying for which is what I tried to highlight a bit.

<comment><USER2> Thanks :).

Yes, you're right. I currently don't have any other idea how to deal with those small, spammy SEO businesses than to raise awareness about the subject and hit their customers directly. It's sad, because the customers here are usually not to blame - like you said, they neither know nor understand what's going on here. I was quite (pleasantly) surprised by the immediate reaction of that particular person, who 'out of respect for my space in the Internet' decided to take action that cost her money. I deeply respect such people. "Vote with your dollars" mindset should be encouraged, IMO.

Anyway, here's the story - it's in polish, but maybe HN folks from Poland will find it interesting (and get to know about one thoughtful photographer) - [http://temporal.pr0.pl/devblog/2011/09/19/spam-seo-i- fotogra...](http://temporal.pr0.pl/devblog/2011/09/19/spam-seo-i-fotografia- slubna/).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A couple of ways I've handled the spam situation in the past:

1\. Base64-encode your form field names and decode them server-side prior to processing, or...

2\. Create one-time use field names using md5 hashes of random numbers, map them to their true fields and store them in a session. Then process against those on the server side post-submit and clear the slate. (I used this method more often than not.)

3\. Control the visibility of the honeypot field with CSS rather than "type=hidden".

Using #1 OR #2 in addition to #3 I've never had to use CAPTCHA nor human tests. A few paid spammers have come around from time to time, but since automated software isn't sophisticated enough to pick apart which field's which it either doesn't even try or it throws whatever it can at the fields, getting locked up in server-side validation.

<comment><USER3> Good points. In regards to CSS I think it's important to specify exactly what you mean though. I've seen this implemented dangerously where they simply position the form control off the wide (left:-4000px). This is vulnerable to browsers auto filling!

However hiding it completely with display:none should be safe and is what I think you mean.

In our case, just hiding it works fine. We can upgrade this to a CSS solution if we need to upgrade it though. The main point is if your doing _something_ , you're ahead of the herd enough for spammers to generally leave you alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the forum I work on (custom software; forked from JForum) we used to get 10s of thousands of spam a day. That stopped almost immediately with the requirement of a verified email address.

We had tried CAPTCHA and honeypots but the spammers broke through it (we were being actively targeted). Once we used email verification, it forced the business owners of the email (Gmail, Yahoo) to implement better verification on their side and stop so many fake accounts from being created.

Spam is now a rounding error in my system (about 60 for every 56,000 daily posts).

I should also add that I subscribe to the broken window theory, so we also implemented Akismet to check all incoming posts for spamminess. We hide all posts that Akismet marks as spam, and it cleans up the place enough to (hopefully) ruin any spammer's SEO tactics. Once it becomes a futile effort to post spam that's just going to get hidden, they seem to stop aggressively targeting us.

<comment><USER3> Interesting thanks! We don't want users to have to verify email addresses as we see this again as a barrier of entry that will put people off. However I do see the necessity of it in your case as this doesn't always scale very well.

<comment><USER5> We were worried about implementing this feature too, citing the same issue. What we did was explain to the users why we were making the change, bless some of the existing users that are known to be in good-standing, and then provide a tiered view of the forum for those accounts with an unverified email address. The people in that group could post only text. However, once their email address was verified, they are automatically put into another group and they can post like normal users again.

So while it's a barrier to entry, we attempted to minimize it as much as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Important caveat for using honeypot hidden text fields: use a field name that is gibberish.

If you name the honeypot field something like "address" or "website", you get browser toolbars that will "helpfully" try to pre-fill the field for the user even though it's hidden. And then you're flagging legit users as spammers. I think an ideal system would simply require users who fail the honeypot field to submit a captcha rather than lock them out altogether.

<comment><USER3> I've done some tests and no browser appears to autofill an HTML hidden field. It's why we picked that method as supposed to CSS as I'm not sure the consequences of this.

Display:hidden on an input field would be OK, but there might be cases on some sites where the field loads before the CSS file. This could cause auto filling to happen. It's a lot harder to test this sort of thing with CSS rules, it's a lot easier just to use hidden fields.

I'd recommend using names such as "username" as honeypots as the likelihood of being filled are high.

<comment><USER6> Did you test browser toolbars? I've actually been bitten by this. I believe Google Toolbar for IE7 was one of the culprits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I managed to completely eliminate bot spam on a fairly popular site I administer through a combination of a honeypot form field and a simple human- testing question. This worked flawlessly for years, but a recent problem is spam accounts that appear to be filled in by actual humans rather than bots.

<comment><USER3> We just don't like doing that no matter how simple it is. A lot of our users are from all over the world (probably 50% from non English speaking countries) and it really makes it a lot harder for them to signup. Also anything that acts as a barrier no matter how weak WILL lose customers and signups!

<comment><USER8> So use math, the universal language. I had a site request that I try to stop spam on a evaluation/registration page. I added a randomized single-digit addition problem to the form and the spam ceased. A single input field where the answer is always 0 to 18 was all it took.

Or course, if someone took the time to target this specific site, that would be easily thwarted.

It still puzzles me just how this custom-made form got infiltrated by spam to begin with. Do people go around picking such forms and submitting form- specific bot-code code to some vast pool sold to bot operators? Or are bots far more intelligent than I give them credit for?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The complex captcha has shown has been taken completely out of context; it's at <http://random.irb.hr/signup.php> and its completely appropriate and funny

<comment><USER3> Fair point Will, I'll find a different image!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you site ranks highly enough for certain valuable keywords and the bad guys start specifically targeting you, a lot of these countermeasures are useless.

I get comment spam on some sites that I'm 99% sure is being posted by a human using a regular browser at an internet cafe in China.

<comment><USER3> If you're being targeted by humans, you're right, nothing you can really do. If they are using automates systems to target you best thing to do is start IP banning.

<comment><USER10> Ever since my forum got popular, I've had non-stop trouble with human spammers. Straight up IP banning doesn't work. Too explicit and obvious.

A better solution is to let them register, but check all registration/post IP addresses against the blacklist. If they match, unobtrusively move them into a usergroup that just seems like your site isn't working that well.

Works wonders.

<comment><USER11> Yep. There was an interesting article about this practice (hellban / slowban) a while ago:

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban- or-h...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or- hellban.html)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2619641>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been looking at a lot of spam lately as I'm developing services based on text classification as a web service at classifyr.com, and spam is kind of the obvious test. Initially, the site was getting 8200 spam attempts a day with a captcha that was 99.9% effective. The classifier is 99.99% effective and has cut down the number of spam attempts to almost nothing.

The ones that still get through on rare occasions copy legitimate content and usually link to sites that aren't inherently spammy (like grey-market pharmacies) for SEO purposes. I suspect these are actually posted by humans; a post can classify as suspect rather than spam or ham and these always do when they get through. When that happens, the user is asked a trivia question related to the site's subject matter. I think it extremely unlikely a spam bot would be able to answer correctly.

</comment><comment><USER13> Really? Is type="hidden" sufficient for an effective honeypot? If so I'll start doing this right away.

<comment><USER3> For us it seems to be yes. It catches lots out. But there are other ways of hiding the field such as with CSS which is probably safer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you rename the username field with something nonstandard, then autocomplete tools have a hard time handling it (think of email fields).

</comment><comment><USER15> I hope not to sound daft, but why do spammers do this? What is the benefit of automatically creating these accounts?

Are they trying to find some sort of exploit in your code that lets them send out emails?

<comment><USER16> As outlined in another comment, marketing/seo is often the reason. That is, bots will spam links. Either they want direct clicks or at least some SEO bonus.

<comment><USER6> The worst is the bots that are smart enough to figure out how to post spam on your site, but not smart enough to see that it's all rel=nofollow

<comment><USER10> I'm not convinced nofollow links are valueless.

<comment><USER10> Source: [http://www.socialseo.com/blog/an-experiment-nofollow- links-d...](http://www.socialseo.com/blog/an-experiment-nofollow-links-do- pass-value-and-rankings-in-google.html)

Google "nofollow seo value" to find other insights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wouldn't an obscurely named username field hurt accessibility? People using screen readers probably wouldn't be able to register.

<comment><USER18> That's a very fundamental conflict when implementing these types of anti-spam measures. Unfortunately anything that is screen reader friendly is often spam- bot friendly, (or, anything that is unfriendly to spam-bots will also be unfriendly to screen-readers) as both entities are programs that attempt to parse a web page.

Maybe include a link near the start of the form that says something like, "Screen-readers, follow this link."? The link would be to a one-time use page that is sane and accessible. I don't know...</comment></comment>


Introducing Autographer the World's First Intelligent, Wearable Camera.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.autographer.com/

<comment><USER2> I totally see this as the future of photography. Good pictures are all about timing (luck) - i'm pretty sure you could give a monkey a digital camera with enough storage and come up with a World Press Photo of the Year. I think about how different I take pictures now (snap snap snap and sort/discard) versus with film (every shot in the roll of 12 or 24 was precious). I see this as an extension of that. I'm pretty sure the future a camera smart enough to understand composition/color in order to know when is the right moment to capture a nicely framed image... and maybe to take more shots when there is a lot of movement or even to react to your body (higher temperature/heartbeat might indicate change in emotion/excitement so should capture more/continuous images). I'd actually like for this to be in a hat form or maybe glasses to capture images at eye-level. Damn, is this just where Google Glasses is going?

</comment><comment><USER3> Not exactly the world's first wearable camera per se ([http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potenti...](http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html)), but it will be quite interesting nonetheless to see its "intelligence" in action.</comment>


Show HN: -0.7 to -0.9 correlation between the VIX and our sentiment index - <AUTHOR> http://elite.kredstreet.com/analysis

<comment><AUTHOR> I should be more clear because there is a crush of data on the page. Look at the "10 Days Correlations Chart" de-select all but the Bull/VIX. Sorry, still working on the UI.

</comment><comment><USER2> I know what the VIX is, what is the source of social media sentiment? Seems like a lot of potential for distortion.

<comment><AUTHOR> We built a proprietary natural language processing engine which parses social media data looking for the specific "attitudes" bullishness and bearishness.

<comment><USER2> Ahhh, so proprietary sauce! I don't see any indication of when you have made changes to your engine or grammar in the graphs. This is a serious distortion from one perspective.

<comment><AUTHOR> Distortion in what sense?

<comment><USER2> The components and weighting of the VIX are fixed and known. But if your metric is secret, and you make ongoing changes to it, the viewer can not know when changes were made and their impact.

One can re-play historical stock data and feed it to new algorithms without a distortion. But unless you are saving all the raw social media data and re- applying your filters to this historical data, your graphs are distorted.

Also, compared to the VIX, the volatility of the components of social media sentiment is quite high.

I am sure your system is useful and profitable, even if my criticism is accurate.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Linux distribution inspired by Chrome OS - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5369361/try-out-an-unofficial-but-working-chrome-os

<comment><USER2> It's not even a working "Chrome OS". It is a fan based unstable linux distro revolving around the Chrome browser. One might as well make chrome and open office the only two apps on his or her computer and call it chrome OS....

</comment><comment><USER3> Putting quotes around the name doesn't make this title less misleading.

This is not related to the official Chrome OS in ANY way. The key sentence here is "this early stab at a fan-made Chrome OS".

<comment><USER4> Maybe the quotes do nothing to make the title "less misleading" but the word "Unofficial" was a big hint for me.

<comment><USER5> I thought unofficial just meant not sanctioned for public consumption by Google, not that it wasn't actually ChromeOS at all.

ReactOS is _not_ an unofficial "Windows".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't very good. gOs at least looks nice and is simpler. <http://www.thinkgos.com/gos/index.html>

Doesn't have chrome but then again chrome on linux is fairly unstable for normal use. That said I use it normally :)

<comment><USER7> Wow, gOs looks like someone figured out Apple's secret sauce and they're applying it to a user-oriented Linux desktop. That is: keep it simple, avoid surprises, make it all just work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd be careful with this. I find it a bit suspicious this project is named "Chrome OS" and hosted on Google yet it has nothing to do with the real Chrome OS or Google. Seems very suspicious to me. No one would be dumb enough to create this type of confusion by accident. Would they?

<comment><USER9> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is a desktop even necessary for a Chrome OS? Why not put everything in browser tabs? Want to run OpenOffice? Just lick an icon, or select a bookmark, and run it in a tab. If a tab has its own process, why have the Taskbar _and_ tabs? Just have a tab per application, plus some sort of Expose-like thing within each tab.

If one developed a plug-in for VNC, this would be relatively easy to do in open source. Just run each app in its own virtual image, with the window manager tweaked to send an event asking for fullscreen to the first window that opens.

My girlfriend ran across a man-on-the-street survey, and it turned out that a big percentage of users aren't really clear on what a browser is anyways.

<comment><USER10> I am very, very curious to see the actual design for Chrome OS. I'm optimistic for something revolutionary and I am hoping to use it as my primary OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> a linux distribution _inspired_ by Chrome OS, that's all...</comment>


Magnet: Attraction on the Spot - <AUTHOR> http://www.tryMag.net <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, this is Alessandro Schiassi, founder and CEO of Magnet!

Magnet is the first on-site attraction app, merging the best aspects of online dating and real life approaching.

With the check-in feature, Magnet allows you to quickly browse and filter singles around you, in real-time. If there is mutual interest, you get connected with a 5-minute chat. Break the ice and meet up on the spot.

"It's not online dating, it's on-site attraction"

We just released today the beta and I'd love to hear feedback from fellow entrepreneurs! We hope to make dating safer, more efficient, and overall a more fun experience. Let me know what you think!

Alessandro</comment>


Why publish science in peer-reviewed journals?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.genomesunzipped.org/2011/07/why-publish-science-in-peer-reviewed-journals.php <comment><USER2> I have one single solitary paper that has been published in a peer reviewed journal, so my experience is present but limited.

What I gained out of the peer review process was an article that had grey areas filled in and statistical methods applied better. The quality of the reviewed article was much better than the quality of the submitted article. The reviewers were reading the article with an even-handed critical eye; they weren't just looking for support for their pet opinions.

There's also an aspect of criticism - criticism is expected from reviewers, but random dude A on the internet is frequently going to get something along the lines of "who are you to criticise my methods", or any request for more info declined. "Please provide more info" will work if you need to get a paper published, but won't work if you have _already_ published your paper on scribd - where's the motivation to do rework (beyond honour of course, but scientists are human and that does not always apply)

And then there's the point that popularity doesn't equal 'correct'. Here on HN I've seen time and time again that a throwaway _popular_ comment gets upvotes, and a well-reasoned but _unpopular_ comment gets downvotes. Peer-reviewed articles should be about scientific rigor, not visceral feeling. Consensus of the masses is orthogonal to the needs of scientific rigor.

The main article describes very, very little in the way of quality assurance.

<comment><USER3> Yes, the popularity of useless, emotive comments here really bugs me. There is an inverse correlation between the points I get for a comment and the amount of time and expertise I put into it.

In the scientific case, though, "popularity" would be measured by the extent of citation. (Really, it already is.) That is a considerably higher bar than "I think I'll click on that arrow." For a paper to be cited, it has to make enough of an impact that people remember it and its ideas shape their thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see a pretty significant issue with "one-click voting" for a scientific paper. Reading papers is often a tough exercise and one that involves rereading, thinking, and rereading again. How many times have you read a _dense_ webpage, reread it over the course of a week, then clicked the upvote on HN? Never. You glance at the webpage, think "that's neat" and click away.

This isn't to say that the journal-of-reviewers model is perfect, but I am wary of casually tossing it away in favor of "upvotes." Upvotes have massive semantic ambiguity: does it mean the article is accurate? Does it mean the article is funny? Is it maybe wrong, but important to think about? Does it merely match the reader's interest? How do you express something such as "we believe your underlying methodology is correct but aren't certain your analyses are rigorous enough to prevent X." A downvote?

<comment><USER5> A better model would be something like what the Real-World Haskell book used when it was under development: allow comments (anonymous or otherwise) on each paragraph, and refine the content based on those comments. Of course, this does have the twin problems that it doesn't keep results private, and makes credit assignment a _real_ pain :)

Even with all the problems it has, I actually prefer peer-review right now. Some of the stuff that gets self-published on arXiv is of sketchy quality, and there's just no quick way of figuring that out by just reading the abstract if a 'known' person hasn't co-authored it.

<comment><USER6> In physics at least, a substantial proportion of peer-review goes via arXiv first anyway, so it's not really an either-or. In many cases, the real peer- review happens when people see a new paper in their area on arXiv, they send in comments or challenges, etc. to the authors, and in the best case, by the time a journal article is submitted for formal peer review, many of the relevant peers have already reviewed and helped improve it.

Some mathematicians have also gotten pretty active in using blogs and wikis for peer review and even actively doing research. I don't expect journals to go away, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there are some areas of the sciences where they become more of a formal archival service: where papers go to be filed on shelves once the real action/review/dissemination has already happened.

<comment><USER5> fwiw, that's true for cs and stat, and I assume for math too. What I refer to is something like this:

[http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/AND+AND+ti:+riemann+ti:+hypothes...](http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/AND+AND+ti:+riemann+ti:+hypothesis+ti:+proof/0/1/0/all/0/1)

This is a particularly egregious example; but if I'm looking for something on a different subject where I don't know some of the notable researchers, or don't know what I'm looking for, it would take me a lot more time than I'd like to spend to filter out the more interesting papers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I'm in favor of opening up journals and possibly putting out some nonprofit alternatives, and while I recognize that the peer review process is definitely not without its problems, be careful not to discount it completely. I cringe when I hear phrases like "value to a community" and "collective opinion" used to refer to scientific articles. The average reader is not qualified to judge the merits of an article, hence the peer review process. Some great examples: the age of the earth, evolution, global climate change; three areas where public opinion is divided but experts overwhelmingly agree. The value of science is based on its accuracy (which is best determined by experts) not its appeal to the masses.

<comment><USER8> I was assuming that the article was suggesting a system that is similar to reddit, but with important differences. For instance, requiring real names and public voting records. Or, you could reduce a person's vote importance if they are voting on an article outside their area of expertise. There are probably other things you could do to.

<comment><USER9> Even cooler would be to have each person (explicitly or implicitly) set other people's vote importance. I can imagine a complicated system wherein voting cliques are detected, and used to feed back into the rankings of what papers show up on your page.

Ideally, the voting could be more than just "+1/-1" as well, potentially with a couple different axes, so that I could, for instance, say that I think a paper is important to the field, but likely wrong. Just because a paper is controversial doesn't mean I don't want it to be discussed (for instance, if it introduces a new computational technique, but the input data is flawed somehow).

<comment><USER4> You're matching an engineering solution to a social problem. Trying to map a paper's social significance to an abstract number is _really hard_ , and in the process you lose a lot of ability to present papers based on taste. Showing me a paper because "these numbers are high and you tend to like these kinds of numbers" is fundamentally different than "you should see this because it is groundbreaking." On the other hand, if we can create a metric for elegance and another for "brings the reader closer to enlightenment," then I'm all for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article doesn't touch on the fact that all this scholarship, usually funded in some way with taxes, is locked up behind pay walls unless you want to pay $10-$40 per article (that's probably a bigger obstacle). However, ArXiv works because at least with harder sciences you have proofs and empirical results that are more clearly defined. It would be harder to judge papers in economics, humanities, etc. (there's already a lot of variance in quality of scholarship even in the current published model, I don't see how it would flourish under an open model aside from becoming more like the blogs we read here - no offense).

There have been many experiments where people have passed on jargon-laden papers more fiction than research off to "respected" journals. If you can solve the quality/trust problem and make it acceptable for governments and other funding bodies, then we might move forward.

The thing about the current model is that they distribute pdfs of all things when I think the raw text, bibliography files, and even data should be distributed with the article and available at no cost.

<comment><USER11> _The article doesn't touch on the fact that all this scholarship, usually funded in some way with taxes, is locked up behind pay walls unless you want to pay $10-$40 per article (that's probably a bigger obstacle). However, ArXiv works because at least with harder sciences you have proofs and empirical results that are more clearly defined._

Most of the stuff on arxiv is _also_ published in peer reviewed journals. That's why they are called preprints.

<comment><USER10> But not necessarily. There are some landmark papers like Grigori Perelman's solution of the Poincaré Conjecture that only exist on ArXiv.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My experience (in computer science, ymmv) is that a vast majority of researchers would agree that, with the Internet, the profits made by journals are excessive relative to what they do (ie. what they actually do, not what they outsource to other researchers).

The reason why there are still there isn't because we're convinced that we need them (as the article implied), but because of inertia. This is the criterion by which most researchers judge each other and themselves, and it survives because few people have the guts to refuse it: everyone knows it's evil, but it's hard to walk away. People are lured by prestige, and by the tangible consequences of prestige (like funding).

We do not need a killer app to get rid of the journals, we need a good number of motivated and prominent researchers to opt out and bootstrap something else.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not to mention that publication bias leads to incorrect results. See [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies- dam...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies- and-medical-science/8269/) or the PLoS paper: [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal...](http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050201). I am most hopeful for Google Scholar or Mendeley (mendeley.org) to open this up, but who knows?

</comment><comment><USER14> Yesterday I got an email from a journal asking me to submit a paper. They needed it within 2 weeks. And it would be published 2 weeks thereafter. After I spewed coffee through my nose, laughing, I clicked the "spam" button.

Publication in real journals is slow; reviewers are asked to send comments within a month, but they often take more than that. Publication in real journals is difficult; the best-ranked journals reject 90 percent of submissions. Publication in real journals is flexible; complicated decisions about how to transform unpublishable into publishable are made in each step along a long, often meandering and complicated, path.

The simple answer to the question posed ("why publish in peer-reviewed journals") is that, for many fields, not doing so ends a career.

But if the question is, as it seems by comments here and in many conversations I've had with students, "what value do peer-reviewed journals have" the answer is that, for many fields, doing so improves the science for the individual paper, and for the larger corpus.

</comment><comment><USER15> The issues he discusses seem to be addressed by phygg, essentially a combination of arvix and digg for physics: <http://www.phygg.com/phygg/>

I see no reason why this shouldn't work for arvix as a whole.

<comment><USER16> Most recent "paper" on Phygg, fram July 2nd, begins _Red Bull Hats: Wholesale from factory, limited time! Get MLB Hats, NFL Hats, New Era Hats for your favorite teams_. It's gathered net upvotes. Most papers there have been automatically cross-posted from Arxiv.

I don't think we can take Phygg to be a proven model. There's a wider issue of how new gatekeepers can be established for such a new model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> and no mention of mendely? <http://www.mendeley.com/>

the pain point is that people are focused on the publication - you need to focus on the people. i don't care what you think about a paper, but i want to know what Feynman has published and who he keeps an eye on. professional scientists know who to keep an eye on - the rest is noise. science is the oldest social network there is...

</comment><comment><USER18> " _peer review is costly (in terms of time and money)_ "

This is an objection why? __Of course science costs time and money. __

 _"However, journals do perform a service of sorts: they filter papers, ostensibly based on interest to a community, and also ostensibly ensure that the details of an analysis are correct and clear enough to be replicated (though in practice, I doubt these filters work as intended)."_

Nobody cares about your doubts. Back it up.

<comment><USER19> >Of course science costs time and money.

One problem is that peer review is essentially free for the journals, and people have to take time for it out of the other things they have to do (like teaching, or scrambling to get Yet Another Publication before the tenure review comes up, or doing the reporting to 550 external agencies). People are expected to uphold the highest standard of rigour essentially in their free time. In that sense, the current peer review leads to waste, by decreasing the efficiency of the investments originally made into other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Using this system, you can still gather a bunch of web-published articles, print them out together, and call the results "Nature". Just in case you miss the current system.

</comment><comment><USER21> It gets you funding

<comment><USER22> This. I guess at least a fraction of scientists are open towards a change in reviewing. However, during funding applications and interviews, the number of publications in journals is _very_ important. Hence, if you want to make any chance in science, you submit to journals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The author's ideas are wacko and won't work.

I've published two technical papers in peer-reviewed journals where I was the only author, published several more papers in peer-reviewed journals where I had co-authors, and wrote a Ph.D. dissertation that was reviewed as "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication".

The papers I published were reviewed essentially on the usual criteria of "new, correct, and significant".

Here is one place the author gets way off track: For a technical research paper, e.g., new, correct, and significant, reading it is difficult, and judging if it is new, correct, and significant is more difficult. In an experimental science, judging if the work is reproducible adds more difficulty. It's TOUGH work.

The work is so tough that for some huge majority of papers that are published, nearly the only careful reading at least for some years will be during the review process. Maybe later the paper will get referenced, carefully read by many people, etc.

So, the idea of the article of this thread that commonly for papers that just appear on-line there can be 'votes' from many competent readings is just uninformed, misinformed, ignorant, just plain wrong, brain-dead nonsense.

Here's more: Now, when an author A sends a paper to journal X, there is a good chance that the paper is actually in or close to the specialty S of journal X. So, the reviewers of journal X have a good chance of being among the best people to review the paper. If journal X does publish the paper, then author A, the paper, and people interested in specialty S get a lot of help because journal X has said that the paper is new, correct, and significant for specialty S.

STILL, even with all this help for specialty S, the paper will likely be carefully and competently read at least for some years essentially only by the reviewers of journal X.

Since it is so difficult even with the help of journal X in specialty S to get such papers read, for a paper just posted on-line there is no hope at all.

Maybe in some experimental sciences reading a paper is relatively easy; however, judging if the experimental work is reproducible promises to be difficult.

Maybe not in experimental science but in essentially all of the rest, there is a fundamental difficulty about research that is new, correct, and significant: Almost necessarily nearly no one will understand the paper easily or understand the paper at all. Else, given basic academic competitiveness, the results in the paper would long since have been old instead of new. So, the research and review processes have to work always right at the edge of what can currently be understood at all. For meeting this fundamental difficulty, the present journal system helps, and just putting papers on the Internet is hopeless.

<comment><USER16> Did you read the Richard Smith article he linked to?

<http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/12/S4/S13>

<comment><USER23> Okay, I just read

<http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/12/S4/S13>

Yup, again, his ideas are wacko and won't work.

Again, the main problem with just putting the papers on-line and letting people 'review' them then is that mostly the papers won't get read nearly as carefully as with the present peer-review process; or, even if some paper does get read carefully, other readers mostly won't have any very good way to know this.

Uh, publish several well regarded papers in specialty S, and then maybe get invited to review some papers in specialty S. Do well reviewing and impress some journals in specialty S, and maybe get invited to be an editor of a journal in specialty S. Do well as an editor, and when Elsevier, etc., starts a new journal in specialty S, maybe get invited to the the editor in chief. That takes ballpark 20 years. Net, the present paper review system has a severe 'promotion' mechanism that is an enormous aid to quality the journal readers can value. That is, the readers have a good way to know about the quality of the reviewing. With the proposal of this thread, even if a paper got a careful review, the readers would not know this. That is, the proposal throws out the baby with the bathwater.

As I described, reading research papers and judging if they are new, correct, and significant is TOUGH work. The present process makes a good effort at this tough work, and his proposal omits any very serious effort at such work.

With irony, eventually his proposal would lead to a system of 'upvotes' from 'respected reviewers'! Or, "I don't understand the paper, but it was upvoted by Professor Issac Iatrogenic at Sawbones Medical School."!

He still wants voting, but he has no well designed 'voting system', and the present peer-review process does. If he wants a better system, then okay, but his proposal is for essentially no system, and that would be much worse.

For his many arguments, mostly they omit a big, huge point: He's considering the problems with the papers that were accepted but is not considering the no doubt on average much more severe problems with the huge number of papers that were rejected. His proposal to 'publish' just by posting on the Internet would result in all the rejected papers also being posted and, then, of course, soon, still more junk papers.

Why buy Tide laundry detergent? Why drink Coke? Are we afraid that both Tide and Coke might give us something toxic? No. Of course not. Why? Because Tide and Coke have been used by many millions of people and are from companies with a huge financial fortune to lose if their quality falls. So, we 'trust' Tide and Coke. So, Tide and Coke are for us valuable 'brands', "valuable" because we can trust them because we know how much evidence there is that the products are at least okay.

So, similarly, the peer-reviewed journals provide researchers with such valuable 'brand names' they can trust better than just some paper posted on the Internet.

Net, the author of

<http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/12/S4/S13>

just doesn't 'get it'. He's looking for something he wants, doesn't get as much as he wants, and proposes a system that is still worse.

Let's take his point about publication delays. That doesn't matter very much! Once the paper is submitted, it's no longer a secret, and mostly relevant researchers don't actually have to wait for the printed version two years later to make use of the paper.

Let's take his point about the 'cost' of reviewing: Well the reviewers LIKE to review because it helps them keep up in their fields and, thus, is good for their careers! The effort to review is not a 'cost of the peer-review system' but just routine work by the reviewers for their own careers. In a hot field, reviewing the papers can be an advantage in time; the reviewer gets the papers maybe two years before someone just looking at published papers.

Let's take his point about reviews of papers after they are published: Sure, over time, including after publication, the reputation of a paper can change. He wants to use this effect to replace the initial peer-review process. But he ignores that he is talking about papers that have been published and, thus, have passed peer-review, that is, are already 'certified' as being on the inside of the fence. If just publish papers on the Internet, then that first step of being 'certified' will be missing and the paper might just languish much longer before anything like the after publication review process he likes now.

Or, he's missing the big point about how to filter water: First, just before the pick up of the pump, have a screen that filters out the rocks down to the size of sand. Second, have a fiber filter that filters out all the solids down to about 10 microns. Maybe next deal with the usual suspects of compounds of calcium, iron, and manganese. Next deal with bacteria. Next maybe use reverse osmosis or distillation to deal with everything else. Likely now have some good water to drink. Well, paper reviewing also has 'stages', and one of the early ones, but not the last one, but one that helps the last ones, is peer- review. E.g., we don't ask the reverse osmosis to filter out the gravel!

His point about novel, original, or innovative work being rejected is poorly considered: We're not talking popularity of fashion frocks here. Instead, novel, etc., or not, a paper still has to be new, correct, and significant. Believe me, a solid proof that P = NP will not be rejected because it is too 'novel'! It will be accepted because the work is, again, new, correct, and significant. It is 'novel' mostly because it is especially significant. Again, to get published, pass new, correct, and significant. If after that the paper is also wildly 'novel', so be it; it still got published!

He missed the big, huge point about focus on research specialties: As I described, if paper from author A goes to journal X in specialty S, then likely already the paper is in the right set or an appropriate set of editors, reviewers, and researchers. If the paper is well regarded, then the people in specialty S learn about it fairly quickly. So journal X serves as an 'accumulation point' for specialty S. If just publish papers on the Internet, then lose the value of such 'sets' and 'accumulation points'.

So, indeed, if his proposal were to become accepted, an early step would be to have, for each specialty S, a special place to post papers in specialty S.

Then to keep down the noise level, that special place for specialty S would have a 'moderator'. A good 'moderator' would be the editor in chief of journal X. Soon he would get too busy and would want some editors, say, from journal X. The editors would get too busy and soon would want some reviewers, say, from journal X. Then all concerned would want some quality control for their special place for specialty S. So, the moderator would call himself the editor in chief again and insist that his editors insist that their reviewers actually do good peer-reviews. Maybe the whole Internet site would be sponsored by Elsevier. Then they would charge for the papers that passed the reviews. Now except for tree cutting, we would be back where we are now.

If he wants to improve the quality in publishing, then I have a suggestion for him: Do some brilliant research work, write it up as a paper, and submit it!

<comment><USER16> Richard Smith does not propose a voting system, but the complete elimination of gatekeepers. It's worth emphasising that he is talking about biomed exclusively: other disciplines have different scholarly cultures. Most crucially, the commercial impact of biomed papers is higher than in other fields.

When you write

>reading research papers and judging if they are new, correct, and significant is TOUGH work.

I agree, but when you write:

>The present process makes a good effort at this tough work

I am surprised you say this. Smith points to studies that show that referees' opinions have very little correlation, which suggests the minimum level of filtering actively done by referees is very low. It does not follow from this, though, that the institution of journals considered as a whole does not perform a useful filtering function, which is to say that I agree with you about your point about successive filters.

>Publication delays Many journals follow anonymous reviewing and forbid distribution of preprints.

The other point, which he does not make, is that referees have very little incentive, besides the opinion of the editorial board, to do their job properly.

>His point about novel, original, or innovative work being rejected is poorly considered. ... If after that the paper is also wildly 'novel', so be it; it still got published!

There's no doubt in that case that the journal has been an impediment to science.

I don't advocate abandoning peer review. I do think we should be more open- eyed about the problems with it. It is a costly system, and one that does not work the way it is intended. Science needs gatekeepers, as you argue, although they need not resemble the current journal system.

<comment><USER23> On Smith's article and a voting system, uh, I read Smith's article ASAP! I was assuming, without careful checking, that Smith's article was much like that of this thread. Looks like you got me in some too fast reading!

Yes, it looks like these articles are for biomedical work. I'm sure it's different in many small respects and maybe some larger ones.

Uh, I said that the present system makes a good "effort", and you countered with some of the problems with the "results"! You may be right!

The "correlation" is not very impressive: The review process is not quite that simple. Here's a dark, dirty little secret: Often at some point in the toughest part of the paper, some reviewer thinks, "I tried to look up the background for that, and I don't have the prerequisites even for the background. I can't take out a year to study to be ready to read this paper. The parts of the paper I can read look rock solid. The new parts I can read look nice. His references are high quality. His writing is carefully done. He doesn't make wild claims. It looks like a solid piece of work. I can't find anything wrong with it. Let him publish it: If it has a big error, then maybe that will come out and be on him. I'll give him a pass and go to dinner." or some such. So in this case correlation doesn't mean much!

"Many journals follow anonymous reviewing and forbid distribution of preprints." Sure. In most simple respects, the paper is still all locked up until it appears in print maybe two years after submission. Still work goes on! So, the author of the paper can present parts of the work in lectures and seminars. Guys down the hall know and can start working on extensions. The author can work on extensions and give talks and reference the paper as "in submission". Generally the word gets around! Net, the publication delay doesn't much slow the actual research work. That is, the actual exploitation of the work in the paper doesn't really start just with the publication and people reading that, Instead, 'the word gets around'.

"The other point, which he does not make, is that referees have very little incentive, besides the opinion of the editorial board, to do their job properly." The referees have a LOT of "incentive ... to do their work properly" if they want progress in their academic careers! Good referees get invited to be editors; good editors get invited to be good editors in chief. A referee, editor, or editor in chief is a 'gatekeeper' and, thus, a somewhat powerful guy. If the journal is good, the names are up in lights. So, professional reputation is enhanced. Professional connections are made. In terms of HN, there are connections in a professional social graph. A referee, editor, etc. gets to know who the up and comers are in their research field. They get early notice of new research results and, then, can start working on extensions. If they do a bad job, then their editor will soon not send them anymore papers to review!

"There's no doubt in that case that the journal has been an impediment to science." I don't see that. Einstein published general relativity. People are still trying to understand it, test it, and understand the implications. So, at the time of publication, just how novel it was was not at all clear. But it got published and passed the first step in the filter. Slowly people understood that the paper was very important and worked hard on it. The publication process didn't end the work on the paper but did its job. I can't believe that many of the reviewers actually understood the Riemannian geometry. Still the paper got published. If the paper was actually nonsense, then that would be on Uncle Al.

I believe that the current system is okay. The people objecting just want the system to be much more than it is; they may be asking for too much. One way to improve is to quit chopping down trees, but that change is likely on the way. But replacing the current system by putting papers on the Internet and letting nearly anyone 'vote' would be much worse.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some game developers unhappy with Apple, Nintendo - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/03/04/nintendo.apple.games/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This applies, not just to games but apps in general.

One train of thought is that the App Store is lowering the value of software.

The other train of thought is that App Store is making it easier for indie developers to get seen.

</comment><comment><USER2> The end of the article makes a good point about the browser being the long term solution. However, does Apple have any incentive at this point to push browser-based games forward on the iPhone?</comment>


Patent application – Head mounted display - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/patents/US20140098009 <comment><USER2> That [what was originally posted]'s not a patent number. It's the publication number of a patent application. Just because one applies for a patent does not mean that it has been granted.

This is the granted patent:

[http://www.google.com/patents/US8605008](http://www.google.com/patents/US8605008)

The publication is dated the same as the grant date because Apple used a legal trick that allowed them to defer publication of the application (originally filed in 2008) until the grant actually happened.

</comment><comment><USER3> This Yahoo patent from a few years before seems very similar to this concept: [http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20100103075.PGNR.&OS=dn/20100103075&RS=DN/20100103075)

Do notice the Apple logo on the side of one of the sketches:

[http://www.seobythesea.com/wp-images/yahoo-virtual- reality-g...](http://www.seobythesea.com/wp-images/yahoo-virtual-reality- glasses.jpg)

And the talk of virtual reality games (without actually building them):

 _A virtual World Of Warcraft-type overlay can be generated that is superimposed on the real world by wearable device instead of being viewed on a computer screen. According to the virtual overlay, user can be enabled to play in the real world, but be fighting virtual characters._

From: [http://www.seobythesea.com/2010/04/yahoo-exploring- virtual-r...](http://www.seobythesea.com/2010/04/yahoo-exploring-virtual- reality/)

<comment><USER4> Prior patents in the area are one of the main reasons (aside from funding) I think Oculus hooked up with Facebook. They were in a position to get squashed under the past 20 years of VR patents and endless lawsuits. At least now the trolls will know the trial is going to be massively expensive and will be fought to the death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _At Apple, we were always asking, What else can we revolutionize? We looked at video cameras and remote controls. The craziest thing we talked about was something like Google Glass. We said, "What if we make visors, so it's like you're sitting in a theater?" I built a bunch of those prototypes. But we had such success with the things we were already doing that we didn't have time._

\- Tony Fadell

[http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016339/an-oral-history-of- apple...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016339/an-oral-history-of-apple- design-2013)

<comment><USER6> I strapped a display to my face with full 6 DOF head tracking and played Dactly Nightmare in a bar circa 1994. My Fiance shot me. My head bounced down the stairs. Big screens up above allowed all the people gathered round to watch from either of our perspectives. Fuck off Apple you didn't invent any of this. Notice what how the list of claims starts:

1\. (canceled)

<comment><USER7> What? Claim one being listed as "canceled" can mean any number of things. Most likely that claim one was unnecessary or did not narrow the scope enough and so as canceled _by Apple_.

<comment><USER6> Usually the claims build upon previous claims. You start out with the general and move on to the specific, often citing previous claims with language like: 4) An unumthingamajig as in claim 1 with added... to... Deleting one of the early claims is likely to remove the foundation from some of the later ones. But sure, we mustn't judge based on what's no longer there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pre and post YouTube, there were hundreds if not thousands of patents for "tv/video over the Internet." I wonder if there is such a swarm of patent trolling over VR now?

</comment><comment><USER9> This is just a natural land-grab situation for an emerging market. Expect to see lots of applications similar to this in the coming months/years.

I wonder who will win the race...

<comment><USER7> Er, no it isn't. Given the filing and priority date, this patent was filed well before the likes of Google Glass were announced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any theory from people better versed with patent law on whether Google is gearing up to "fight" (IP-wise) Oculus or any other serious VR companies?

<comment><USER11> Google? This is an Apple patent.

<comment> nevi-me The danger of not reading the article, coupled with the lack of these third- party sites not showing a patent application status. Last year there were some clowns in South Africa who went around boasting about their shiny patent, which had been awarded in the US and had priority in many other countries. Instead of realising how terrible the implementation of their software patent was and improving their product, they went to startup competition places disclosing their business model, talking about how they planned on getting Google, Facebook, to licence their product.

The patent was eventually rejected in the US, but third-party sites still list it as granted. They lost time from a lack of innovation due to trusting the patent and left competitors to build clever and more useful implementations of their product. Plus in SA software patents are invalid, so their right to recourse is weak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A hint to Oculus and Facebook?</comment>


VW One-Ups Tesla with a Revolutionary Battery Breakthrough - <AUTHOR> https://marker.medium.com/p/be51849ea092 <comment><USER2> "Still, there were "hundreds" of other hurdles the team had to overcome to make the battery work"

</comment><comment><USER3> link is 404</comment>


Why Azure Arc Is a Game Changer for Microsoft - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/janakirammsv/2019/11/05/why-azure-arc-is-a-game-changer-for-microsoft/#484f2a485430 <comment><USER2> "With Azure Arc, customers can manage resources deployed within Azure and outside of Azure through the same control plane."

Hasn't there been on-prem tools that manage not only a local data center but also Azure/AWS/GCP resources (typically part of the DR plan)? What am I missing — seems like the only news is that Azure is the first of the Big Three cloud providers to host this ability.</comment>


When OS X Won Me Over - <AUTHOR> http://now.violet.is/writing-her-name

<comment><USER2> I'm sold.</comment>


Personal Desktop Whiteboard and Pen - <AUTHOR> https://fluidstance.com/products/slope <comment><USER2> $60 feels quite steep when I could just use a notepad. I can see how someone might find it useful though. Perhaps if it was $15-$20, I might get one.</comment>


V8-GL: A Toolkit for creating Desktop Hardware Accelerated Graphics with JS - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/philogb/v8-gl

<comment><USER2> Interesting stuff. I've been working on some WebGL stuff and it would be interesting to see if it could run as a native desktop app also. Maybe they could ensure to be using the same api (OpenGL ES) just to make that possible.</comment>


The Leisure Agenda - <AUTHOR> https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/the-leisure-agenda/ <comment><USER2> This looks interesting but seems to be a paper brochure just published on the web, so is quite inconvenient to read on the web. I couldn't get through it.</comment>


Ask HN: How do YOU define a junior developer? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Doesn't know how to debug. Doesn't know why trivial bugs happen.

Examples for front-end dev (CSS/HTML/JS)

Uncleared float causing a collapse, collapsing margins, poor selector priority or confused about why X has priority over Y. Div soup structure with unnecessary divs/floats to attain desired layout. Off-by-one errors in Javascript (without being able to identify it) or not being able to identify when they are out-of-scope or what `this` is referencing.

Once they stop making silly mistakes they become a `developer'` At which point the kinds of mistakes they are making are less trivial and occasionally overlap with problems `senior developer` have. But they can confidently debug and generally solve their own problems so require less attention from other devs.

<comment><USER3> Everybody is junior developer sometimes.

Everybody sometimes makes stupid bugs and doesn't see why. Everybody sometimes doesn't know obvious things. Everybody is beginner sometimes. I think that even when senior programmer learns new approach, new project, new language, new paradigm, new tool etc. is as confused as beginner.

I think senior/middle/junior are just hierarchy markers to:

\- define your salary

\- define your responsibilities in project/company

\- boost your ego (senior), or keep you to stay humble (junior)

"At which point the kinds of mistakes they are making are less trivial and occasionally overlap with problems `senior developer` have."

I don't know what you mean. I think every developer in a team is often experiencing similar problems. For example architecture, code quality. You could say that only seniors must be thinking about this. But this is not true, because when there is spaghetti code in project - whole team has this problem. Even junior developer has to deal with spaghetti code (for example), even if he is not experienced enough to write clean code (or even he made this code himself xD).

Besides the biggest problems in development are often not technical ones but more people/management related ones. It doesn't really matter if developers are good or bad, if the project or team is poor managed, or if there are some communication issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Someone who values learning over dominance; the more you learn, the more junior you'll feel.

<comment><USER5> Learning is a sign of growth, not a sign of weakness.

If a senior developer remains stagnant, they'll quickly fall behind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Junior developer: Does not define tasks, needs occasional help completing programming tasks.

</comment><comment><USER7> Style Guides, UI Blocks and how they bill for their hours.</comment>


North Pole surges above freezing in the dead of winter, stunning scientists - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/02/26/north-pole-surges-above-freezing-in-the-dead-of-winter-stunning-scientists/?utm_term=.a08b2b96636b <comment><USER2> In case WaPo won't show you the page, here is the same story from the Weather Network:

[https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/arctic- storm...](https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/arctic-storms-bring- another-winter-heatwave-to-north-pole/79190)

</comment><comment><USER3> why does this website say that it is -24? [https://www.yr.no/place/North_Pole/Other/North_Pole/](https://www.yr.no/place/North_Pole/Other/North_Pole/)

<comment><USER4> _Forecast_. By modelling, not by measuring - i.e. "this is what our model says is most likely to happen"; apparently the weather is not very predictable ATM.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand. Is the temperature now at the north pole above freezing, if so where can I see the temperature? Is WaPo forecasting that the temperature will be above freezing? According to the article:

> While there are no direct measurements of temperature there, Zack Labe, a > climate scientist working on his PhD at the University of California at > Irvine, confirmed that several independent analyses showed "it was very > close to freezing,"

What does that mean? Do they not have a device measuring the temperature at the north pole at all times?

<comment><USER4> It's a frozen (or not) ice at sea, one the most remote places on Earth. How would you suggest such device to function? (Could be possibly solved, but it's surprisingly nontrivial.) South pole is at least somewhat stable; but you can buy a cruise to the North pole on an icebreaker.

<comment><USER3> I guess my knowledge of the north pole is really bad. When I look at google maps or any other globe, I see that the North Pole, similarly to the south pole, is full of ice. Are you saying that that is not the case? Are there no scientific stations there?

<comment><USER4> Note the map at right (Wikipedia): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pole) \- while the South Pole is on the Antarctic continent, it's all floating ice up north, even though it's usually several meters thick. While historically the arctic polar expeditions used sleds, nowadays people mostly sail there - either in submarines, or on icebreakers.

(Apparently Russians tend to float a temporary station nearby, but no permanent bases - as the ice is always moving: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barneo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barneo) )</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Natural Gas Use Is Rising. Is That Good News or Bad News for the Climate? - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/natural-gas-use-is-rising-is-that-good-news-or-bad-news-for-the-climate/ <comment><USER2> The difference between using natural gas and any other hydrocarbon fuel is pretty much neutral.

But overall hydrocarbon use is continually increasing, due to the underlying problem which is also the same underlying problem for most of the world's other problems.

And that underlying problem is the World's ever-increasing population growth. It's pointless trying to reduce carbon emissions if we don't also try to maintain a constant population or even reduce that population at the same time. Because the emissions-increase due to population-increase will swamp all of your hard-fought emissions-reductions.

The Chinese went in the right direction with their "One Child per Couple" policies, but a better step would be to introduce a "One Child per Woman" policy world-wide.

Over the course of about several generations, the World's population would drop about 50% without any kind of "deliberate-killoff" apocalypse.</comment>